The Geneva room was a temple to a new god.
Where Dawud's life had been a desert of dunes and Arabic script that burned like the sun, this was a world of mahogany, blue shag carpeting, and the soft, antiseptic hum of simultaneous translation.
The World Health Organization's Emergency Session on the "Jamil Anomaly" was necessarily to be a bastion of reason against the wave of fear and superstition that was spreading.
But as the numbers streamed onto the massive screens that lined the walls, reason itself was starting to warp under the pressure of the implausible.
Dr. Aris Thorne, Oxford virologist with the face of a worried bloodhound, toyed with his microphone. "The term 'contagious cure' is a misnomer, and a dangerous one," he began, his voice as crisp as any scholar could hope for. "W
