Cora had seen this before. The slow, calculated descent into hysteria. The deliberate shaping of public perception, guiding the people from mild concern to blind panic. It always started with a trickle of news reports, vague warnings, and conflicting information. A mystery illness surfacing in one city, then another. A death here, a cluster there. The early whispers were brushed aside, no cause for alarm. Just a seasonal spike. Just an isolated case.
And then, all at once, it was everywhere.
“First measles death in Texas outbreak… Doctors warn: ‘This is a big deal’… Health Secretary downplays concerns… Chairman’s team weighs pulling funds for bird flu jab…”
Cora scrolled through the headlines, her fingers trembling slightly. The phrasing was always the same—just enough urgency to make people afraid, just enough ambiguity to make them desperate for answers. But the answers never came, only more questions, more contradictions.
The footage was worse. Hospitals overrun with the sick, their bodies convulsing on gurneys as masked doctors scrambled to keep up. Video clips leaked from the so-called hot zones, grainy images of people seizing, foaming at the mouth, their veins darkening like ink spreading beneath their skin. The panic took hold.
She watched, transfixed by horror, as a young woman on screen clawed at her own throat, gasping for air that would not come. The woman’s eyes bulged from their sockets, bloodshot and wild with terror. Her skin had taken on a grayish pallor, and beneath it, Cora could see the black tendrils of infection spreading through her veins like spilled ink on blotting paper. The camera lingered mercilessly on the woman’s face as blood trickled from her nostrils, staining her lips crimson before she collapsed, her body seized by violent spasms that seemed to break her from within.
“Another migrant surge at the southern border—are they bringing the plague with them?”
“Sanctuary cities see rising infection rates…”
“Unknown virus shows resistance to standard treatment…”
The Circle-controlled news networks did what they did best—turned a crisis into a weapon. The sickness wasn’t just a random outbreak; it was an invasion. An attack on their America. The symptoms became secondary to the blame, and the blame had already been assigned.
The fear spread faster than the disease itself. People avoided public spaces, covered their faces with rags and scarves. Some self-quarantined before the government could force them. Then came the checkpoints. The curfews. The sudden, brutal disappearances of those who coughed in the wrong place, who hesitated too long when asked about their last travels.
Cora had witnessed a man on her street succumb to the disease just yesterday. He had been sitting on his stoop, seemingly fine, reading something on his tablet. Then, without warning, his eyes had widened, and he had clutched at his chest. His breathing turned ragged, each inhale a desperate wheeze. Within minutes, his skin had taken on that telltale ashen hue, and dark veins began to protrude beneath his flesh like twisted roots. He tried to call for help, but his voice had already gone, replaced by a gurgling sound as frothy pink fluid leaked from the corners of his mouth. His neighbors had watched from behind curtains, too terrified to approach. By the time the black van with the Department of Health insignia arrived, the man had already stopped moving, his body contorted in a final, desperate attempt to draw breath, his fingers frozen in claws, his eyes bulging and vacant.
Then the virus became selective.
Enemies of the Chairman—outspoken activists, journalists, opposition leaders—were dying at ten times the normal rate. Perfectly healthy men and women suddenly collapsed, their lungs tightening, their bodies deteriorating within hours. Doctors called it Acute Viral Collapse Syndrome. The Circle called it coincidence.
The disease was a masterpiece of horror. It began with a mild fever, innocuous enough to be ignored. Then came the splitting headache and dizziness, followed by a dry, persistent cough that turned wet and productive within hours. The sputum was thick and dark, almost black, with streaks of bright red blood. The fever would spike dramatically, causing hallucinations and delirium. The skin would turn mottled, with dark patches appearing at first around the neck and spreading outward like a macabre rash. The veins would darken, becoming visible through the skin like a roadmap of death working its way through the body.
The most terrifying stage was when the neurological symptoms began. Victims would experience muscle spasms that turned into full-body seizures. Their backs would arch impossibly, bones sometimes audibly cracking under the strain. They would foam at the mouth, their eyes rolling back, showing only the whites. Some would cry out in pain so intense it hardly sounded human. Others would whisper names or fragments of prayers, their minds fracturing as the disease consumed them. The final stage was inevitable—respiratory collapse, organs shutting down in rapid succession, and death.
At the same time, high-ranking officials, loyalists, and their families seemed untouched. Even those who publicly refused medical treatment—men and women who boasted about the power of faith over science—walked away unscathed. The Department of Faith called them miracles.
“Prayer, not panic,” the slogans said.
But Cora knew better.
The hospitals were war zones. No beds, no ventilators, no medicine unless you were connected. People died in waiting rooms, curled up on the linoleum floors, gasping for air as they waited for doctors who would never come. Bodies stacked in alleyways, mass graves dug in abandoned lots. They told the public there were too many dead to bury properly.
Cora had visited Memorial Hospital three days ago, searching for a friend who had fallen ill. The scene had been seared into her memory—corridors lined with makeshift cots, some occupied by the living, others by those freshly dead, the distinction sometimes difficult to discern at first glance. The stench had been overwhelming: a mixture of antiseptic, bodily fluids, and the unmistakable sweet-putrid odor of decay. People lay in their own waste, too weak to move, their bodies ravaged by fever and dehydration. Some called out weakly for water, for help, for their mothers. Others stared silently at the ceiling, their eyes sunken, their breathing shallow and labored.
A woman had died while Cora stood just feet away. One moment she had been fighting for breath, her chest heaving erratically, and the next, she had gone still, a final sigh escaping her cracked lips. No one had noticed. No one had marked her passing. The overworked nurses had simply moved on to the next patient, their faces hidden behind masks, their eyes dulled by exhaustion and repeated trauma.
And yet, the elites kept surviving.
A new video had gone viral. A miracle recovery. A frail, elderly donor—a man at death’s door—had offered himself for an experimental treatment. And now, he stood in front of the cameras, looking twenty years younger, skin tight, eyes gleaming with unnatural life. His doctor smiled beside him, barely suppressing his pride.
“He received the Chairman’s Blessing,” the news anchor said, voice trembling with reverence.
Cora’s stomach twisted as she watched.
It wasn’t a miracle.
It was harvesting.
The new elite weren’t just being saved. They were being rebuilt. Their bodies strengthened, restored with something taken from others. Something human.
She had heard whispers, rumors passed in hushed tones among those brave or foolish enough to still gather. They spoke of secret facilities where the infected were taken, not to be treated but to be processed. Where organs were harvested while still viable, blood drained and filtered, stem cells extracted from bone marrow. Young, healthy victims were particularly prized, their bodies containing the regenerative capacity the elites so desperately craved. Children, with their resilient cells and untainted systems, were the most valuable of all.
The Department of Faith controlled the narrative now. Science had failed. Medicine was unnecessary. Only the chosen would survive. People clung to the lie because they had nothing else left. They flocked to mass prayer rallies, believing that faith alone would keep them safe. They refused vaccines, refused masks, refused logic itself—because the alternative was too unbearable.
But Cora saw what they didn’t.
The Circle had never cared about its followers.
They were cattle.
And now, they were being culled.
She turned off her screen and moved to the window, peering through the narrow gap in the blackout curtains. Outside, the streets were eerily empty, save for the occasional patrol vehicle, its lights casting ghostly blue shadows across the abandoned sidewalks. In the distance, black smoke rose from the crematoriums that now operated twenty-four hours a day. The air itself seemed tainted, heavy with ash and despair.
Cora knew the truth, and it was worse than any virus. This was not a natural disaster but a calculated one. Not a plague but a harvest. And those who survived would live in a world where the powerful had literally consumed the weak to extend their own existence. It was cannibalism dressed as salvation, predation masquerading as divine intervention.
And somewhere in the Chairman’s fortress, new victims were being prepared for extraction, their bodies preserved in the perfect state of disease—not quite dead, but beyond all hope of recovery. Their organs, their blood, their very essence would soon flow into the veins of the chosen few, granting them vitality stolen from the masses they claimed to serve.
This was the new order. Not just control of minds, but ownership of bodies. The ultimate expression of power—the right to decide who lived and who became raw material for the continuation of the elite.
And Cora, with her terrible knowledge, was more alone than ever.
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