The air in the Level 4 biocontainment lab was a sterile, recycled sigh, scrubbed of all life and scent. To Lyra Sable, it was the purest environment for science, a vacuum where variables could be controlled and data observed without contamination. Before her, encased in transparent polymer, the latest strain of the virus—designated Morbus Letalis Variant Gamma—swam in a nutrient broth. Electron microscope images flickered on a secondary monitor, showing the fiendishly elegant protein spikes that allowed it to latch onto host cells with such devastating efficiency.
Her rational mind was a fortress, and within its walls, she was besieged. The genomic sequencing data was a chaotic jumble of mutations. The pathogenicity models were failing. Every time she thought she had identified a conserve
