His name was Mircea, and he was a ghost who wouldn't stay dead. A Constanta dockhand, a grizzled man with a laugh that rattled windows, he'd been one of the first in the city-struck by the Gamma variant. When the human doctors in the backed-up hospital had put his chart in palliative care, he'd become another in the making statistic.
He was also one of the first to be helped by the pack's covert intervention. During the darkness of a wild night shift, a "nurse" with abnormally calm amber eyes had replaced his IV bag. The contents were no miracle cure, but they were enough—a carefully measured inhibitor that gave his powerful immune system the crucial edge it needed to strike back.
Mircea lived. He pulled through, and it was deemed miraculous, a tribute to his own unyielding vigor. He was
