The following months were hell.
Noah stopped going to work. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. He spent his days sitting on the living room floor, a bottle of alcohol in his hand, staring at the withered flower on the balcony, drunk, wondering where he had failed, what sign he had ignored, how he had been so stupid.
His younger sister, Luna, had to travel from London to Barcelona to take care of him.
—Noah, please —she begged, kneeling beside him—. You can't do this to yourself. She's not worth it.
—You don't understand —Noah whispered—. It wasn't just her. It was... it was our child. She killed it. She killed our child.
Luna hugged him tightly, and Noah clung to her like a drowning man to a raft, his red eyes filled with all kinds of pessimistic feelings.
Another three months passed before Noah became functional again. With Luna's help, he slowly began to take back the reins of his life. He returned to work, although his gaze had lost its former sparkle. He moved to a small apartment on the outskirts. And he swore never to trust anyone again.
But the world gave him no respite for mourning.
Two years after Valeria's disappearance, a new virus ravaged the world, known as the N-13 Virus.
Noah recognized the genetic structure of the new virus after analyzing the first infected patients. The virus operated with an immune evasion mechanism that he himself had modeled in his lab years ago, a replication sequence that he himself had created, the same research that Valeria had stolen from him.
He froze in front of his computer screen, his heart hammering against his ribs.
It was his.
His research, his design, his damn obsession with viral evolution... all of it had been used to build a killing machine.
—My God —he whispered—. What have I done?
---
The first months were chaotic.
Noah watched the news with a mix of horror and guilt: overwhelmed hospitals, mass graves, governments falling like houses of cards. Over thirty million dead in two years, and each of those deaths bore his signature as an accomplice, though no one knew it.
But it wasn't just guilt he felt. It was also rage.
The only ones capable of financing such an operation were governments or global-scale organizations with enough resources to erase any trace of their crime. And at the center of it all, like a spider in its web, was Valeria.
His woman. The mother and murderer of his child. The murderer of thirty million people.
He hated her with an overwhelming intensity.
When the World Health Organization issued an urgent call to the world's top virologists to develop a cure, Noah hesitated.
He didn't want to save anyone. He wanted to watch the world that had taken everything from him burn.
But then he received a message from Luna.
"Brother, if you don't do it, someone else will. And if someone else does it, they win. Because you're the only one who knows how to deactivate what they created. Don't give them that satisfaction."
Noah read the message three times.
Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
His sister was right. It wasn't about saving humanity. It was about snatching their victory away from those monsters. About proving to them that, even though they had robbed him of everything, he still had something left: his knowledge.
So, he volunteered.
The laboratory they assigned him to was an underground facility somewhere in Europe, the exact location never revealed to him. There, he joined a team of scientists from around the world, all working against the clock to find a cure while the planet crumbled outside.
Noah worked eighteen-hour days, non-stop, speaking to no one more than was strictly necessary. His colleagues respected him, but also feared him. There was something in his gaze, a calculating coldness, that kept them at a distance.
---
The months in the lab were exhausting. Noah barely slept or ate.
His face was gaunt, with deep dark circles marking his eyes and an unkempt beard he hadn't touched for weeks. However, unlike the classic image of the exhausted scientist, his gaze didn't show tiredness… but a strange, obsessive calm.
Little by little, he began to understand the virus's structure. It was brilliant, no doubt. But it also had weak points, small cracks in its structure that Noah started to exploit.
One night, after sixteen hours at the microscope, he found it.
The exact sequence that neutralized viral replication.
Noah leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen, feeling neither joy nor relief. Only a cold determination.
The last few months were the hardest.
Noah knew that as soon as the cure was ready, someone would come for him. They couldn't allow the man who knew the truth about the virus's origin to remain alive. So he worked in secret, hiding his real progress while showing partial results to keep his supervisors happy.
He also prepared his legacy.
He copied all the data, all the proof, all the evidence he had gathered about the virus's origin and saved them in an encrypted file that he sent to his sister Luna, with instructions not to open it unless he died.
—If something happens to me, find investigative journalists. People who aren't afraid of power. Give them this.
—Noah, what are you talking about? —Luna asked, frightened—. What's going on?
—I can't explain now. Just trust me. Please.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
—I always trust you, brother.
Noah hung up and stared at the ceiling of his small room. For the first time in years, he felt something akin to peace.
The night the final results appeared on his screen, Noah knew the end was near.
He read the last line of the report, confirming the cure's effectiveness. Then he let out a dry, harsh laugh, full of irony, echoing through the entire lab.
—Haha... —he ran a hand over his face—. So it did work after all.
The researchers around him stopped working. One by one, they turned toward him, confused at first, then alert. They had spent months locked away there, isolated from the outside world, working against the clock while the entire planet crumbled.
—Dr. Astaros? —someone asked cautiously.
Noah slowly rose from his seat and turned the monitor so everyone could see the results.
—See for yourselves.
For a few seconds, no one spoke.
Then, the room erupted.
—I-is this real…?
—The mortality rate dropped to zero!
—Viral replication was completely neutralized!
—My God…!
—He did it! —shouted one of the researchers—. Dr. Astaros did it!
Applause and excited voices filled the lab. Some even began to cry with emotion.
—Congratulations, Dr. Astaros! —they shouted around him.
Noah smiled.
—Thank you —he replied—. None of this would have been possible without you.
But as he spoke those words, his gaze drifted for an instant to the memory of green eyes and a betrayal that had changed everything.
—Dr. Astaros! —a researcher approached, eyes shining—. This will save the world!
—Save the world? How ironic… —he thought as he watched his colleagues celebrate—. They broke my life to destroy the world… and now I'm the one who's going to ruin their plan.
Noah's motivation was never to save humanity.
It was pure revenge.
And now, finally, he had the perfect weapon.
Although he didn't think he could bring his enemy down from their pedestal, at least he could prevent them from moving forward with their plans now that he had a cure.
His expression hardened as he thought about this.
Suddenly, a sharp blast cut through the air.
BAM!
Noah's body slumped forward. The world spun for a fraction of a second before going dark, as a crimson stain spread across the back of his head.
—KYAAAAAA!
The scream was interrupted by a second shot. Then a third. A fourth.
A thin researcher, wearing glasses, calmly put away his pistol after eliminating the remaining six.
He clicked his tongue.
—Geniuses are always so troublesome…
He approached Noah's corpse and kicked it aside while making a copy of the research results from the computer.
The man then lit a cigarette and left the lab. Minutes later, the entire lab exploded.
---
The next day…
Rain fell heavily on a cemetery.
In front of a black coffin, a young woman of about twenty stood motionless.
She clenched her fists.
Her older brother was never an affectionate man, but he lived for his work… and had died for it.
—I won't let this end here —she whispered.
She clutched a USB drive in her pocket as her eyes burned.