Millen had been asleep for two hours when the announcement came over the loudspeaker.

“EOC shift personnel, report to Auditorium A.”

The tone was urgent.

Millen’s bedroom was a small office in the interior of the building. It was dark and cold, but it was quiet.

He turned on the table lamp, rolled out of the cot, and staggered to the desk where his pants lay. He pulled them on and rushed downstairs.

The auditorium was filled to capacity. Phil stood at center stage, working a laptop.

“All right, listen up. The White House has received another message from the Citium—a video. I’m going to play it now, then we’re going to discuss what we’re going to do about it. Please keep quiet.”

On the screen behind Stevens, the video played. Sick people stood in the streets of a city, in a line that stretched for blocks. Many coughed as the video panned past them. Some were in wheelchairs. Toward the front of the line, people had rolled their sleeves up. A man in a white coat with a Red Cross logo held a jet injector. He pressed it to each person’s shoulder, pulled the trigger, then changed out the single-use protector cap that covered the injector nozzle.

A woman seated at a table spoke to each person who’d been injected, typed something on a laptop—presumably the person’s name—then handed them a sticker.

The camera zoomed in on one of the stickers.

X1 Guéri

The subtitle read X1 Cured.

The camera panned around, showed the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

The scene changed. It was another city, with a similar line of people, their shirtsleeves rolled up as well. On a hill above them, crumbling stone ruins towered. The Acropolis. Millen recognized the Parthenon instantly. Athens.

A man’s voice began to speak over the images. He had a slight British accent.

“Earlier today, the people of France and Greece received the lifesaving cure for the X1-Mandera virus. We offered you the same cure. You declined. You sentenced your citizens to death so that you could stay in power. We are providing this video to give you one last chance.

“Do the right thing for your people. Save their lives.

“We ask very little. We seek a peaceful world, where no human can kill another, where science is the engine that turns the world, not greed, not war, not hate or selfishness.

“In the event that you require further proof, we have covertly deployed the cure inside your borders for you to confirm.”

The video changed. On screen was a white woman in her mid-forties. A teenage girl and a younger boy sat with her, a black background behind them. The woman faced the camera and spoke with a southern drawl.