(Kealen)
It started with the children.
That was the thing about the sickness — it moved the wrong direction. It should have hit the elderly first, the ones whose wolves were slower and whose systems were already working harder. That was what Mira told us in the first briefing, her voice careful and precise the way it got when she was managing her own alarm. Respiratory illness in wolf territories typically followed predictable patterns.
This one didn't.
Bren was the third child in the east compound to develop the fever. His mother brought him to Mira on a Tuesday, and by Thursday there were nine cases, and by the following Monday there were twenty-three and the pattern had stopped being coincidence and become something else.
Something with a name, as it turned out.
Mira called it Gre
