Ellie awoke lying tangled in in the bedsheets wrapped around her. Sitting up, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got out of bed. Walking over to the large mirror on the other side of the bed, she examined her naked form. Her body had changed much over the past two years. The first of those years alone had changed a lot. When she had looked in this same mirror a year ago, she had noted the various changes a year of starvaton, exhaustion, and brutal, intense combat had wrought. Her muscles, once as soft and weak as any other female human's, had become harder and stronger than most males. Scars had marked her body in several places, and her face had become drawn and haggard with eyes that once held joy and laughter but now had seen too much. Her brown hair had gone down to just below the neck, but during the day was usually pulled back in a ponytail. Her tits had been small and underdeveloped, normal for a girl of 14. And overall she was rather attractive. The woman who she saw in the mirror now, a year later, was exactly the same except for several things: the most obvious of these was thar she looked like she had swallowed a basketball. Her abdomen extended nearly two feet out, it having been six months since she first created new life within her. The other difference related to her pregnancy was that her tits were a bit larger, able to hold a decent amount of milk to feed the starving kid. Another difference between the strong, battle-hardened virgin of last year and the expectant mother of this one was her hair: it was now short, cut in a style identical to that of the girl in an old photograph that was framed and displayed by her bed. Finally, the last change that had occured over the last year was her visage. Her face was no longer so drawn and haggard as it had once been, and while her eyes still had seen far too much, there was some joy and laughter in them once more.

Ellie left the mirror and picked up her clothes, which had been passionately ripped off her the night before. She also picked up those of her mate and threw them all into the hamper. As she dressed in new, clean clothes, she reflected on the events of the past year.

After the battle, with their home base compromised, the Fireflies which now included Ellie and her new parents Joel and Marlene, relocated to another state, where they were now housed in a temporary base while a new permanent base was being built underground, to allow for increased stealth and secrecy. During the move, Marlene found herself pregnant, which thrilled her and Ellie, although Joel grumbled about being too old to be a new father. "I want the joys of grandparenthood," he'd said. "Well be careful what you wish for Daddy." she'd responded. "That might be sooner than you think." Her words proved prophetic, for at the same time she was getting to know a young man by the name of Andrew Deazza. They had quite a bit in common, and within a few months she was head-over-heels in love with him. Joel took an immediate liking to him as well, and by the time their temporary base was settled, Andrew and Ellie had consummated their love, resulting in her present condition.

With the sample extracted from her body, the medical geniuses among the Fireflies had managed to synthesize a cure for the terrible pandemic that had destroyed civilization. To test it, they devised advanced firearms that fired sirynges designed to auto-inject upon impact. Firefly troops armed with these weapons ventured out into the wasteland to fire them on the infected. The results were incredible. Clickers and bloaters would die, although the latter needed to be stuck with at least a dozen syringes to be killed. Examination and autopsies of their bodies revealed results far beyond what they'd expected. The cure's effect on plague matter was compared among the elated scientists to flesh-eating bacteria, krokodil, (an abominable "drug" originating in Russia that killed and rotted flesh) or some sort of highly corrosive acid. It literally killed, rotted, liquefied, dissolved, and obliterated it. It was unbelievable! When Ellie witnessed the autopsies firsthand, she broke down and cried for hours while Joel held her, crying himself. Tests upon runners, those infected whose appearance had not yet changed, were mixed. Some of them were cured, but others, those who had been infected long enough, not long long enough to turn them into clickers but enough that the mysterious fungus had consumed and replaced enough of their bodies, died. In other words, the sooner you were stuck after getting bitten or inhaling spores, the better your chances of survival. Even if you did survive, you felt incredible agony as the substance coursed through your body, burning every last molecule of the plague into oblivion. In addition, survivors as well as uninfected people who recieved the cure were in for another surprise, for it had also changed their cellular makeup: they would never be infected by the plague again, no matter how much they got bitten or how many spores they inhaled. Upon learning this, Ellie again broke down and cried for hours. Grief and pain consumed her at the knowledge this miracle came too late for Riley, Sam, and Henry, but also relief and joy that they had not died in vain. The Fireflies decided to wait until their base was complete and they had moved into it to leak their public announcement of the cure to the press, but with mass-production only a matter of time, the Fireflies had taken the first step toward planetary salvation.

Leaving her bedroom, Ellie headed to where her parents lived. Joel was there in front of his computer watching a recorded news broadcast, and Marlene was sitting on the couch nursing her 3-month-old infant son, Henry. "Hey Mommy." "Hi sweetie!" Marlene greeted her daughter warmly. Ellie sat down on the couch and started loving on Henry. "Joel, will you stop watching that?!" The unusual annoyance in her mother's tone made Ellie stop and walk over to see what her father was watching. It was a news report that sucked happiness from her heart. One made nearly 22 years ago. The day the world ended.

"Stuck in the past, Daddy?" she said softly. "Kinda" he said. "I've been thinking about the plague. Something tells me that no evolutionary accident or judgement from God brought it upon us." "Sarah said as much." "Did she?" said Joel raising his eyebrows. "When I asked her about it, she said, 'that abomination began in nature, but what it is now was made by man.' I said 'Did the government do this?' and she said 'Men without honor did this.'" "Oh my god." Marlene slumped over. "I knew it the whole time. I just didn't want to believe it." "Did she say anything else?" said Joel. "No." His daughter looked at him. "But the age of the plague is over. The time of the cure has begun. And the powers that be will pay in blood for what they have done to our world."