In the six months since Tuan’s death, Lien had become obsessed with identifying the historic source of the virus. Her hope was that victim genealogies would lead to a common source, a ground zero. But so far, she had found no pattern at all. There were family lines tracing back to every populated continent in every possible direction. Rather than zooming in on an obvious historic source, the genealogies revealed thousands of possible infection vectors to explore. It was time to admit defeat. This approach was a dead end.
Most of the institute’s funding was being pushed in other directions, the global race for a cure fueling a variety of clinical trials designed to prevent the virus from triggering, or remove it from the genome through genetic therapy. Lien didn’t think they would succeed.
