PROLOGUE
Atlanta, USA - 12:00
That morning, Cordelia Foxx had woken up at 6am and drove through the cold streets of the city in direction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters. Inside its walls, in the enormous underground labs that were strongly guarded and kept in secret to the public, there was a group of scientists developing the possible cure to cancer. She typed the security code of the laboratory and put on her white coat.
"Joanne, how is subject number sixteen doing?"
"His level of carcinogenic cells has decreased and the metastasis has stopped. With luck, the cancer will start eradicating in one week."
"Well." she wrote down the heart rate of the patient and walked to the next computer. "Daniel, what about yours?"
"No changes on patient number seventeen, at least not in the last twelve hours. Except for this." He handed her a file. "Read page three. There's something strange about the number of cancer cells. Its level has been increasing gradually and then dropped suddenly, as if it had disappeared."
"This is strange. Has he had vomits or fever?"
"No. Everything is normal, except for that."
"Oh, shit!" someone screamed. "Code Black!"
Cordelia approached the origin of the sound, running towards the glass that separated them and the patient number four. A thirty-year-old man that lied on a bed had started to have seizures, and the small wounds of his body had opened and were bleeding. A group of doctors, wearing positive pressure protective suits, entered and surrounded the man. The sound of the computers and of the sensors whistling in the room was deafening, but nonetheless they could listen to the shout of one of the doctors that fell onto the floor, one of the sleeves of his protective suit ripped. The others grabbed him and fled, leaving the patient alone in the small room. He was a strong man, a former wrestler with muscles and piercings all over his face that had just discovered that he had cancer. He stood up, approaching the glass and hitting it hard again and again. The glass trembled. He hit it again with his fists. Cordelia, ignoring her assistant's cries, approached the man, studying his face from behind the glass. He wasn't human, not anymore. His eyes were white, and the visible parts of his body had started to change to a paler color before acquiring a greenish tonality that surrounded all the bruises and wounds he had. Cracks started to appear in the glass. Cordelia walked backwards, approaching the exit as she felt the man's blind gaze finding her. She shivered. There was no man anymore, just something that hit the glass furiously and groaned, his mouth wide open. The glass broke and Cordelia screamed.
She didn't know how, but she had escaped the lab. When she got to the main hall, the front doors of the building were already sealed. People had started to panic, running in all directions and begging for the security guards to let them out. Whatever had happened just minutes before wasn't good and it had a high possibility of being extremely contagious. Her mind had raced, imagining all the possible consequences of the disaster as she tried to remember know if there was some kind of back door. Suddenly she had remembered the building's canteen, where she had had lunch for years, and ran in its direction.
'I'm alive' was the only thought that kept crossing her mind as she drove through the streets of the city, and the words she kept chanting as she walked into her apartment. The white walls of the luxurious place only reminded her the horror she had just lived. Everything was blurry, but at the same time she could remember some scenes perfectly. The man from the lab, a security guard trying to stop him. The man biting the guard's arm and ripping it off, digging its face into the flesh. She gasped, taking a sit on the couch and hiding her face between her hands.
Biology student Cordelia Foxx finds uses simple technique as a cure to cancer, the headlines had claimed years before. She had been the genius mind that had discovered that supposed cure; her face had been in science magazines and newspapers for weeks. Everyone in the medical community seemed to know who she was. What no one else except for her researching team knew is that the pathogens used for the cure transmitted through the air, and that the bacteria that had killed that man and turned into that kind of creature had a high possibility of leaking through the walls of the CDC. If it did, what would be the consequences? She finally arrived to a conclusion: she had to flee. But, where can I go?