The continent was Africa; the country was Egypt, the time some decade and a half earlier. The home was of Ambassador Iah.
She woke with a start. Her entire body ached, her head was pounding and she couldn't control the retching pains of her stomach. She was sick, really bad sick. It hit her no sooner than she sat up. The urge to purge her stomach of any remaining contents she hadn't lost the night before.
It hit her esophagus like a hot fire roaring up. She tried to get up. She didn't make it but there was a pan beside her bed.
Her next ripple of purging hit the wastebasket.
She laid back her sides heaving slight tears trickling down the corners of her eyes. She had nothing left to cry out; all she wanted right now was to die. Then it struck her, the victims. The victims she thought as her fist clenched around the spread and sheets. The second wave of nausea hit her. It didn't let her down. It was even more painful than the first.
She sobbed, wanting nothing more than to make the pain go way to stop the vomiting. She wanted to be held; she figured if this was the way she was going to die vomiting. She at least wanted to be held in someone's arms. To feel that calm reassuring touch as someone stroked her cheeks. To be soothed and called a little princess.
The wave hit her a third time without warning. She couldn't even make it to sit up. She was going to die, by her bodies own cruel vial fluids. Her world faded into a burst of burning white light.
The gunmetal gray med-a-vac helicopter flew in tight formation with four other identical helicopters bringing relief to what was left of a once bustling state. In each one a doctor was position in back and awaiting touchdown in the respective areas they would be working in.
A cocky young camouflaged sergeant looked out the nearest open port. His black polished sun glasses mirrored a rippling scene of the streets below. Dead lay upon the dead, in the streets.
He pointed out at the vista, yelling over the whup – whup of the blades beating above them. "Sad, man. Look at 'em. Their all so gone."
A young doctor inched nearer the sergeant. He peered out unprepared for the sight that greeted him. His stomach knotted. He had to remind himself, this is what he signed on for. This was war, even it if was against an unseen enemy.
"Well Doc' whatcha think killed them, eh?" The Sergeant inquired as the lit up a cigar that smelled suspiciously like apples.
Young doctor Anderson absented mindedly waved the sickening smoke from his air space, as he settled back against his wall. He didn't immediately respond. Instead he took up his black medical case.
"Well?" The sergeant inquired again, though it seemed more like needling now.
"Parasites, disease, plagues, maybe a new string of virus." He looked at the cocky sergeant now, his own black sunglasses concealing his eyes, but reflecting their surroundings.
"Palace ETA, two minutes." A raspy voice echoed over their head sets.
"Lieutenant Barnard, have you made contact yet?" Dr.Anderson replied, as his fingers laced through the handles of his medical bag.
"Not, yet Doctor, but the landing pad is in sight and it doesn't look good."
Nothing could have of prepared Doctor Anderson for the sight that greeted him and the Sergeant.
After passing three alcoves, several doors, and more dead than he cared to continue counting Anderson looked at his armed escort.
"Well it's quite apparent everyone is dead here. But they weren't murdered in some revolt. At least not one you can use your weapon on."
The sergeant turning out to a jumpy person jerked his gun at even the slightest breeze. "What about our ambassador?"
"Well." Anderson paused beside a withering corpse. "Here's our ambassador. And I believe that's his wife, there."
The sergeant cast a disdainful eye on the corpses. So he didn't see the bony woman when she staggered into him, and grasp his lapel. He had no time to react, fear had cast him frozen. She was muttering something. A pray or curse to ward off the besieging the evil. She made a sign, rubbing at a talisman. "The Princess is ill. Princess is dying. Please the Princess is dying."
She died her fingers still intertwined into the terrified sergeant's flight jacket. Her dying words lingering heavily in the air between the two men.
That day as the med-a-vac helicopter took off from the helipad of Ambassador Iah home, it left with the only surviving member of a once prominent blood line. If the ivory skinned girl survived the brutal attack of the ravenous virus perhaps she would survive, recruitment. After all that was what this was wasn't? The ground work for a futuristic team, but who or what was next?