Three Weeks After Exposure
Berlin Central Hospital, Ward 8B
Nurse Isabel Weiss frowned at the clipboard.
Five more cases overnight. All presenting with the same pattern: low-grade fever, persistent dry cough, dizziness, and fatigue. Two were sanitation workers. One was a teenager daughter of a worker. The others? Unrelated, but lived near the affected districts.
No sign of bacterial infection. Negative for influenza, RSV, and COVID strains. No one was in critical condition. No cause for alarm.
Still, she scribbled "Cluster Pattern? – Refer to Virology" in the margin and passed it to the attending physician.
Behind her, a man coughed violently into his elbow.
Four beds over, a child wiped blood from his nose.
Week 4 – The Pattern Emerges
Berlin's District 12 was unofficially labeled the Cold Zone by city workers. Sanitation crews were calling out sick at record numbers. No deaths since Lars Meinhardt but some had collapsed on the job. Several reported persistent tinnitus. One woman claimed to have a shadow in her vision that moved when she blinked.
Still, there was no media alert.
Hospitals began quietly tracking cases under the term "Sewer Flu" a nickname among nurses because nearly every patient was connected to the city's underground. Unofficial. Internal use only.
Doctors weren't panicking. Most patients recovered.
But something wasn't right.
Week 5 – The Households Fall
Dario Meinhardt was coughing more now. He'd stopped going to work.
His sister had it. So did her kids. The girl at the corner shop? Sick. The man who fixed their boiler? Gone.
Everyone was getting "the flu."
In other cities, similar clusters appeared London, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid. No clear source. No mutations in the virus. No urgent warnings from health ministries. But it was spreading quicker than flu season, slower than panic.
No one wore masks yet.
Flights still landed.
Offices remained open.
Just a nuisance illness, they said.
Week 6 – First Travel Restrictions
A leaked memo from the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) sparked online rumors:
"An unidentified respiratory agent is causing region-specific spread with apparent low mortality but unusual neurological side effects, including visual distortions and recurring migraines. Investigate environmental vectors. Possible zoonotic factor."
By then, over 12,000 infections had been logged across Europe.
Mild. Manageable.
But rising.
Local governments issued voluntary stay-at-home recommendations. Airlines offered free rebooking. Schools remained open, but sanitized twice daily.
And still no one knew what was causing it.
Week 7 – The Pets
It started with a video.
A woman in Wuppertal filmed her pet hamster behaving erratically spinning in tight circles, then freezing for hours, barely breathing. When it died, its body was slightly bloated, and something inside it pulsed beneath the skin.
Vets called it an anomaly.
Until two more cats in Berlin were found dead with inflamed lymph nodes and rigid muscle spasms.
Lab results were inconclusive. No viruses. No bacteria.
Only traces of unusual cellular activity in the spinal fluid.
Researchers assumed environmental toxins.
They were wrong.
Month 3 – The Time Spread
Within eight weeks of the first recorded case, the illness had touched every continent. Air travel was curtailed. Regional lockdowns emerged. Case numbers outpaced tracking systems.
The virus had a name now: CRV-3 Clinical Respiratory Variant Three. It was officially labeled a Class 2 Health Concern, then quickly escalated to Class 4 when neurological symptoms began to show in 6% of patients.
But still, mortality remained low.
Barely 0.4%.
It didn't kill often.
What it did was... linger.
It passed easily.
And it didn't go away.
And in the background more pets were falling ill.
Birds. Ferrets. Stray dogs.
Some began to act aggressively. Others simply disappeared. Wildlife agencies began collecting carcasses in silence.
No public statements.
Not yet.
Humanity was watching for the next monster virus.
But what came was something else.
Something slow.
Something clever.
Something alive.
And the world had no idea it had already opened the door.