Many of the offices in the building had been converted to bedrooms where staffers like Millen now lived. He wondered how long they’d be there. Everyone at CDC headquarters was stressed and sleep deprived, but also incredibly focused. They all knew that the next few days would determine the fate of the world. For those like Millen, who had seen firsthand what the X1-Mandera virus could do, there was an added sense of urgency.

Everyone working and living in the building had tested negative for the X1-Mandera virus. Some were CDC employees, but the vast majority had been assembled from the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and FEMA. There were a lot of new faces, and the place was chaos most of the time, but Millen was glad for the work. It kept his mind off Hannah—a little anyway. It was a losing battle though. He constantly came up with scenarios in which she was still alive. He imagined her escaping whoever had raided the village. Or that her captors had fallen sick, and now, being a physician, she was in charge; they needed her, couldn’t kill her. Above all else, Millen wished he could turn back the clock and take her with him that morning when he went to the cave. Or at least say a proper goodbye.

He pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he entered the Emergency Operations Center. He needed to be focused for his shift. He signed in and walked past the giant screen that displayed all the cordon zones across the US. Real-time stats displayed requests for supplies and personnel.

Not a single operator sat idle; a hundred conversations were going at once. They all began with, “BioShield Ops.”

A shift supervisor was rerouting a transfer truck full of medical supplies from the cordon in Durham, North Carolina to the one in Cary.

Riots had broken out in San Antonio; troops were being sent from Austin, and the CDC was routing additional medical staff with proper training.

Near Tulsa, a barge carrying oral rehydration salts had sunk.

In the conference room, the other shift supervisors were gathering for the mandatory meeting that took place an hour before their shift began. Millen braced himself for the updates; they were usually bad news. He sat down in one of the rolling leather chairs and waited.

Days ago, he’d watched Doctors Shaw and Shapiro attend a meeting in the same conference room. He had sat in the auditorium then, watching the people at the long conference table discuss decisions that would affect thousands, possibly millions, of lives. Now he was in the same position, literally. The weight of the responsibility was daunting, but there was nowhere he’d rather be.