Munich, Germany
Department of Pathogen Ecology, Novigen University
The rain struck the skylights like soft percussion. Inside the observation lab, Dr. Mariel Kessler stared at the overlay of chest scans for the fifth time that morning no lesions, no fluid buildup, no embolisms. All patients presenting with CRV-3 had symptoms, but none of the usual signs.
"We're either looking at the cleanest flu in history," she muttered, "or it's not a flu at all."
Behind her, a door buzzed.
Her visitor had arrived.
Dr. Yun Sol, virologist and former molecular systems analyst at Reflex Foundation, stepped in with a tired smile and a steaming cup of tea.
"Still treating ghosts, Mariel?"
"I wish they were ghosts. At least ghosts don't cough on your shoes."
She gestured toward the digital readouts and sat across from him.
"It Doesn't Fit Anything"
"I've got thirty-seven confirmed cases across three clinics," Mariel said. "Mostly mild symptoms fatigue, cough, light vertigo but the neurological markers are inconsistent. We've seen hallucinations, memory fog, even phantom limb sensations. No uniformity. No clear pathogenesis."
Yun sipped his tea. "Any deaths?"
"Four. All ruled as unrelated comorbidities. Two were sanitation workers."
Yun didn't flinch, but Mariel saw his fingers pause.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said. "It's just... sanitation. Sewer infrastructure. That's where it started, isn't it?"
She nodded slowly. "Officially? District 12 in Berlin. First cluster. Then it spread like wildfire."
"No animal vectors?" Yun asked.
"That's the thing. Not clearly. We've had reports of small pets behaving strangely. Aggressive. Unresponsive. Dying fast. But it's spotty. Nothing that tracks with the spread."
He tilted his head. "Have you checked gut biome interference?"
She blinked. "We haven't even isolated the pathogen yet. It doesn't culture like anything we know. No viral shedding. No spike proteins. Hell, we're not even sure it is a virus."
Yun leaned back, quiet.
Then he said it.
"What If It's Mirrorlife?"
Mariel laughed dryly. "No. Come on."
"I'm serious."
"They destroyed all experimental strains after the VX vault incident," she said. "We both read the decommission report."
"Sure. But Mirrorlife isn't like a smallpox vial. It wasn't a static pathogen. It was programmable, self-adaptive. And if even a fragment of the synthetic genome made it outside containment..."
She frowned. "You think CRV-3 is Mirrorlife gone rogue?"
"I think something learned from Mirrorlife," Yun said. "Maybe even is Mirrorlife, but... misaligned. Not curing. Not killing. Just replicating. Observing."
Mariel rubbed her temples. "We made that stuff to cure cancer. The media called it the 'second immune system.' It wasn't supposed to become airborne."
"It wasn't supposed to evolve either," Yun said quietly.
A Lead in the Dark
Mariel stood and walked to her secondary console. With a few keystrokes, she pulled up anonymized cross-referenced patient data sanitation workers, healthcare staff, and a few early veterinary techs. Then, overlayed it with public wildlife surveillance.
"In the last ten days, we've seen a 140% rise in dead or missing small mammals," she said. "Mostly urban. All near infection zones."
Yun's eyes darkened. "No public link yet?"
"None. Just a few vet clinics warning about 'domestic toxicity' and municipal wildlife departments sweeping it under the rug."
She turned to face him.
"If this is Mirrorlife," she said, "we're not dealing with a disease. We're dealing with a design failure."
And somewhere, in sewage lines and storm drains, and in the breath of the infected, the learning continued.
No thoughts. No malice. Only process.
Only adaptation.
Only code rewritten by hunger and silence.