The Royal University Hospital in Milan was a fortress under siege. The air, thick with the stench of antiseptic and despair, hummed with the frantic energy of a losing battle. Gurney's lined the corridors, bearing gaunt, sweating forms wracked by the dry, hacking cough that had become the soundtrack of the pandemic. Here, the abstract red dots on Kael’s map became a chorus of suffering.
To human senses, it was chaos. To Dr. Lyra Sable, disguised in blue scrubs and a surgical mask, it was a symphony of decay. She moved through the ICU with a quiet purpose, her identification badge—forged for a Dr. Isabelle Rossi—swinging from her neck. But her true diagnostic tool was her nose. She filtered through the overwhelming smells of bleach and vomit, pinpointing the specific, greasy wrongness of t
