The gnawing hunger in David's stomach was a familiar companion now, as relentless as the sun that beat down on the parched earth. They'd been moving for weeks, the landscape a blur of endless fields and skeletal forests, punctuated by the silent, haunting shells of abandoned towns. Iris and Alex, though hardened by the trek, were nearing their limits, their faces thinner, their movements carrying a constant hum of fatigue. Survival was a grim arithmetic problem: calories in versus calories out, days without a fresh water source, the chilling calculus of how much longer their scavenged supplies would last.
He'd found the portable radio in the ruins of a small-town hardware store, tucked beneath a collapsed shelf, its antennae surprisingly intact. He'd hoarded the batteries like gold. Every evening, once Iris had finished scouting and Alex had plotted their next leg, David would sit slightly apart from their meager campfire, turning the dial, searching for something beyond static. Hope was a dangerous thing, but the need for information, for any sense of the world beyond their small, desperate bubble, was an addiction.
Tonight, there was something. Not much, but enough to make the hair on David's arms prickle. Fragmented voices, faint and distorted, flickered across the frequency. He adjusted the dial, straining to hear.
"...major losses... coastal regions... UN forces... overwhelmed... containment failed..." The voice was tinny, official, but laced with a profound weariness. It was a military channel, one he recognized from his days in uniform.
Then, a new voice, strained and familiar. The President. His words were broken, punctuated by static bursts, but the grim message was clear: the Cerebral Necrosis Virus (CNV) had indeed spread globally. Continents were falling silent. The scale of the catastrophe was unfathomable. David's gut twisted. He'd known it, intellectually, but hearing the President's haunted voice confirm the world was truly dying… it was a cold fist to the gut.
"...priority on unique human assets... immune subjects... vital to humanity's survival... critical data recovery..."
David's hand instinctively snapped to the dial, cutting off the broadcast. The sudden silence was jarring, filled only with the crackle of the campfire and the distant, lonely cry of a coyote. He glanced at Iris, who was sharpening her knife, seemingly oblivious, then at Alex, who was meticulously cleaning his rifle. He hadn't heard. Good.
The words "unique human assets" and "immune subjects" slammed into David like physical blows. They were looking for Iris. For him. The fear of experimentation, of dissection, of losing his daughter to a sterile lab and becoming a specimen himself, was a cold, constant dread. It gnawed at him, twisting the already fragile threads of his resolve. The outside world, even the remnants of his own government, was a new kind of enemy.
He continued to scan the frequencies, more cautious now, his paranoia a living thing in his chest. Days later, he picked up something new. Not military, not government, but a faint, almost mythical murmur circulating amongst the scattered, desperate voices of other survivors. Whispers of a name. A legend.
"...Thorne... Dr. Aris Thorne... searching for a cure... collecting data... anomalies..."
David froze. Thorne. Aris Thorne. The brilliant, often controversial, virologist he remembered from pre-CNV news cycles. The man who'd been at the forefront of genetic research. A 'Cure Seeker'. The fragments coalesced into a desperate, tantalizing lead.
He considered the implications. A cure. The word hung in the air, a mirage shimmering in the vast desert of their survival. But then came the chilling caveat: "anomalies." Was Thorne looking for people like Iris? Was he a potential savior, or just another desperate mind willing to sacrifice everything, including Iris's humanity, for a solution?
David weighed the risk against the reward. Staying adrift in the wilderness was a slow death. Seeking Thorne was a leap into the unknown, a potentially fatal gamble. But it was also the only chance for answers, perhaps even a way to fight back, to truly understand the CNV, to reclaim something from this Apocalypse. He kept the specific details of Thorne's alleged interest in "anomalies" to himself. He would frame it as a mission for knowledge, for a chance at a real future, not a desperate hunt for a new form of captivity.
He turned off the radio, carefully replacing the scavenged batteries. Tomorrow, he would speak to Iris and Alex. He would tell them they had a new objective, a new direction in this boundless, broken world. He just wouldn't tell them all of it. Not yet.