Elena spent the following three days buried in genetic sequencing data, comparing Farrow's modified strain against the original pathogen her father had first encountered a decade earlier. Marcus stayed close, bringing coffee and food she often forgot to eat, watching her work with quiet concern.
"Talk me through it," he said, sitting across from her cluttered desk. "Not the technical parts. Just what it means."
Elena rubbed her eyes, exhaustion evident. "The original strain converted people in exactly six minutes. Consistent, predictable, which is actually why we managed to build effective containment protocols around it."
"And this new version?"
"This new version has almost no detection window," Elena said. "Farrow engineered it to stay asymptomatic for nearly an hour before conversio
