Before the outbreak began, the virus was nothing more than a liquid compound in a test tube with Rich’s name on the side of it, resting innocuously on his shelf in the lab’s freezer. [Insert chemical name here], he called it, [insert scientific name here]. What started as a daydream his freshman year slowly took on a life of its own as his coursework led to more and more time in the school’s laboratory.
He moved from theory to practice with animal trials. Mice responded positively to the drug—small injections allowed their bodies to heal faster than usual, and one promising specimen even seemed to cure itself of the cancerous cells Rich introduced into its body. He wanted to move onto larger creatures, something more analogous to humans, but the school had limited funding for graduate stu
