The Bucharest Municipal Hospital was a textbook case of managed bedlam. The air, thick with the scent of antiseptic, sweat, and the sweet, sticky odor of fear, was a physical assault on their keen senses. For Dr. Kael Fenris, concealed in a white coat that was slightly too tight and a name tag reading "Dr. Mihai Popa," it was like trying to listen for one instrument in a shrieking symphony.
He strolled down the busy ward, his human mask one of serene professionalism. But beneath, his mind was a high-speed diagnostic computer. The nurse's pulse, rapid and thready as she stood beside a patient in bed twelve—dehydration, but not yet serious. The shallow, gasping respiration from behind a curtain in the corner—the virus was consolidating in the lower lungs. He did not require a stethoscope; h
