Professor David Reich was sitting on a bench in the corridor outside the negative-pressure isolation room on the fourth floor. Deep mask marks were etched into his face where he had taken off his protective suit. He had been caring for patients for twelve hours straight.
“Dr. Reich.”
Nurse Carol approached. Carol was a veteran who had worked in this ward for fifteen years. Her eyes were bloodshot as she spoke.
“The patient in Bed 15 just…”
Carol’s voice trembled.
David raised his head.
“Did he pass away?”
Carol nodded.
“Nine hours after admission. He was fine this morning, then around lunch he developed a fever, in the evening he had trouble breathing, and now…”
She leaned against the wall.
“This is already the third patient we’ve lost before we could even do anything. Did we do something wrong?”
David spoke weakly.
“It’s not our fault. This is something we don’t understand.”
“That patient in Bed 15… his daughter came with him this morning, holding a doll. She told him, ‘Dad, get better soon and play with me.’ But now I don’t know what we’re supposed to tell that child…”
Carol sobbed quietly.
David gazed out the window with gloomy eyes. The night view of New York was still glittering. A city that knew nothing. A city where this terror would soon spread.
Carol wiped her tears and said,
“The patient in Bed 3 also dropped to 85% oxygen saturation. It was 95% just two hours ago. At this rate, he probably won’t make it past dawn.”
“I know. But all we can do is increase oxygen, give fluids, and do our best.”
To think there was no other option but to do their best and watch them die…
A deep sense of helplessness pressed down on them.
Carol asked carefully,
“What the hospital director said… about a doctor coming from Korea. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“They say that person can treat this?”
David nodded.
“They said he’s the only one we can trust right now. The WHO actively recommended him, and it seems a powerful politician is backing him.”
“Huh, a politician?”
Carol frowned.
David wasn’t certain either.
“I don’t know much myself. But we’re in a situation where we have to grasp at anything.”
David looked at his watch. 11:45.
“It’s about time for the medical team from Korea to arrive.”
“How many are coming?”
“Four. One doctor and three researchers, apparently.”
“Four people are going to stop this situation? What is this, a movie?”
“I wish this were a movie too. Then everyone would come back to life at the ending.”
From the end of the corridor, a young nurse named Michael came running.
“Professor. The medical team from Korea has arrived.”
***
Professor David Reich, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Brooklyn Medical Center, greeted Taeho and his group at the emergency room entrance.
“Thank you for coming all this way.”
“Hello, Professor. I’m Dr. Kang Taeho.”
Taeho turned back and introduced his team members.
“This is my research team. Deputy Director Seong Gihwan of the Geumsan Research Institute, Dr. Jeong Minsu, and Dr. Sophie.”
“Thank you, all of you. I heard you came straight from the airport…”
“Let’s go see the patients right now.”
“Right now?”
“Don’t we have no time to waste?”
“This way, please.”
They walked down the corridor and stopped in front of the anteroom to the negative-pressure isolation ward. Protective suits hung in the changing room.
“You’ll need to put on protective suits here.”
Once everyone had put on their suits, David pressed the intercom.
“Inside, external personnel entering. Five people.”
—Confirmed. Opening the door.
With a hiss, the first door opened. They entered the anteroom.
The door closed, and the sound of the negative pressure system activating could be heard. The pressure gauge on the wall pointed to a negative value.
“Minus 2.5 Pa. Normal.”
David confirmed it.
They entered through the second door.
Twenty-seven patients were hospitalized inside. All of them were wearing oxygen masks, and seven were on ventilators.
The sounds of machines and alarms rang out in a jumble, while three nurses hurried frantically between the patients.
David opened one patient’s chart and explained.
“The symptoms are all the same. High fever over 39 degrees, rapid onset of respiratory distress, and a tendency toward microhemorrhage. Conjunctiva, gums, and in severe cases, even hemoptysis. Platelet count drops, D-dimer rises, and it progresses into multiple organ failure.”
Taeho took the chart.
“How long until death?”
“It appears to be around 24 to 48 hours after admission.”
David’s voice trembled.
“It’s too fast. There’s no time to treat them. Flu test, COVID test, RSV, adenovirus. Every known respiratory virus has come back negative. The genetic analysis results aren’t out yet.”
“How long will that take?”
“There’s a huge backlog all at once, so I can’t make any promises.”
“Current number of deaths?”
“Four. One more died just a little while ago.”
David lowered his head.
“We’re completely stuck, Dr. Kang. We don’t know what to do.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and spoke honestly.
He was already in despair at the speed of death, which was faster than COVID-19.
He simply wanted to grasp at any straw; he did not even have the energy to preserve his pride before a medical team from the distant East.
Taeho slowly looked over the patients. Then he approached the nearest one.
A man in his forties, oxygen saturation 88%, respiratory rate 32.
‘Bio Vision.’
When Taeho shouted inwardly, the patient’s condition unfolded three-dimensionally before his eyes.
A red aura was swirling violently in the lungs.
The characteristic pattern of the Ebola-Corona chimeric virus.
He quickly scanned the other patients as well. They all showed the same pattern.
Taeho turned around.
“Professor, I’ll test them immediately with the diagnostic kits I brought.”
“What kind of kits are they?”
“Diagnostic kits for the Ebola-Corona chimeric virus. We can confirm infection within two hours.”
“What’s their accuracy?”
“99.7%.”
David frowned, looking half-doubtful.
A novel virus whose identity they didn’t even know, and yet they had already prepared diagnostic kits?
Who exactly were these people?
In the meantime, Taeho looked at Gihwan.
“Gihwan, prepare the kits.”
“Yes, Director.”
Gihwan took a portable case out of his bag. Inside the silver case, fifty diagnostic kits were lined up neatly.
“Dr. Sophie, please set up the specimen collection system, and Dr. Jeong, record the data.”
“Understood.”
The team members began moving in perfect order.
David asked with a startled expression,
“You mean you’re starting immediately?”
“Isn’t every second urgent?”
“That is true, but…”
With nothing to say, David took a step back.
They used the diagnostic kits on all twenty-seven patients.
When Sophie collected specimens with a nasopharyngeal swab, Gihwan immediately placed them into the kits. Jeong Minsu recorded patient information and specimen numbers in real time.
Taeho carefully checked each patient’s symptoms and classified their severity.
“Patient 4, Level 3. Oxygen saturation 84%, respiratory rate 36. Prepare for intubation.”
“Patient 7, Level 4. Multiple organ failure in progress. Consider ECMO.”
“Patient 12, Level 2. Still mild. Early treatment possible.”
The nurses wrote down Taeho’s instructions.
His diagnoses were fast and precise, as if he were a machine.
Seeing the systematic way the doctor from Korea handled the situation, they began to trust him more and more.
Watching from the side, David muttered,
“What is that speed…? I’m seeing it with my own eyes, but I can’t believe it.”
Nurse Carol, who heard him nearby, nodded as if in agreement.
Gihwan checked the result of the first kit.
“Positive!”
He shouted. A clear red line appeared on the monitor.
“Patient 2, confirmed positive!”
Sophie read the next result.
“Patient 5 is positive too!”
“Number 9, positive!”
“Number 14, positive!”
The results poured in one after another. Jeong Minsu typed them rapidly into the laptop.
Professor David stared at the monitor and bit his lip. His hands were trembling.
“Are you saying they’re all positive?”
“Yes.”
Gihwan confirmed it.
“Twenty-seven out of twenty-seven. One hundred percent positive.”
The final results were out.
Taeho sent the file to David.
“All patients are positive for the Ebola-Corona chimeric virus.”
David connected it to the computer and opened the file.
The screen showed the test results for all twenty-seven patients, organized at a glance. Viral load by patient, severity, even predicted progression speed.
“Is this real?”
David’s voice cracked harshly.
“A chimera of Ebola and Corona…”
He collapsed into a chair. He had worked as an infectious disease physician for twenty years, but he had never seen a virus like this.
He had already despaired when he didn’t know the virus’s identity. But now the situation had become even worse than that—truly the worst possible scenario.
How much time would it take to develop a treatment?
How many New York citizens would die in the meantime?
David felt his breath catch in his throat and let out a sigh as he looked at Kang Taeho’s group.
They were calm, as if they had expected all of this.
With the faintest hope, David asked,
“Th-then, is there perhaps a treatment? Ebola has a fatality rate of 50%, and if this has combined with Corona…”
“There’s no treatment available immediately, but there is a way.”
At Taeho’s answer, David swallowed hard.
***
4:00 a.m., fourth-floor laboratory, Brooklyn Medical Center.
Professor David opened the door. A dust-covered laboratory appeared.
He wore an apologetic expression.
“This is the only molecular biology lab in our hospital. It was shut down three years ago because of budget issues… The equipment is a bit old.”
Gihwan looked around the laboratory. PCR machines, centrifuges, and electrophoresis equipment sat covered in dust.
“It’s all right. Everything we need is here.”
“If we combine it with the equipment we brought, it’ll be more than enough.”
Sophie said as she put on gloves.
Jeong Minsu took a laptop and a portable sequencer out of his bag.
“Director, shall we analyze the patient specimens first?”
“Let’s do that.”
Taeho nodded.
A moment later, Sophie returned with ten patient specimens. They were viral samples collected on nasopharyngeal swabs.
“We’ve secured the specimens.”
“Good. Let’s start with RNA extraction.”
Gihwan opened a reagent kit. It was a high-speed RNA extraction kit brought from the Geumsan Research Institute.
An ordinary kit took two hours, but this one finished in thirty minutes. It was a special product of the Geumsan Research Institute that Gihwan and Taeho had developed together.
Gihwan placed the specimens into tubes one by one and added reagents. The centrifuge began to spin.
Beside him, Sophie restarted the PCR machine. The machine, which had been turned off for three years, flickered as it booted up.
“Checking device status. Fortunately, it’s functioning normally.”
Jeong Minsu opened a program on the laptop. Viral sequence analysis software filled the screen.
“As soon as the sequence comes out, I’ll begin analysis immediately.”
5:00 a.m. The centrifuge stopped.
Gihwan took out the tubes and checked them.
“RNA extraction complete. Purity 1.8. Perfect.”
“Start sequencing right away.”
Taeho gave the instruction.
Sophie took out a portable nanopore sequencer. It was a small device the size of a USB stick.
“Oxford Nanopore MinION. Real-time sequencing is possible.”
She injected the RNA sample into the device. Data began flowing onto the laptop screen.
A, T, G, C…
The base sequence was being decoded in real time.
Taeho watched the screen and gave an order to Rema.
‘Rema, comparative analysis with the Abu Dhabi prototype virus.’
—Beginning analysis. Comparing with Abu Dhabi prototype virus…
—Seventeen differences found.
—Five in the spike protein, three in polymerase, four in the nucleocapsid…
Taeho organized Rema’s analysis results in his head.
“Dr. Jeong.”
“Yes?”
“Pull up the Abu Dhabi virus sequence file on the screen and run a comparative analysis against this.”
“Yes, just a moment.”
Jeong Minsu tapped on the keyboard. Two sequences appeared side by side on the screen.
“Huh? Differences came up!”
Jeong Minsu enlarged the screen.
Gihwan peered at the screen beside him.
“Seventeen? Why did they change so many?”
“I wonder…”
Jeong Minsu and Sophie tilted their heads.
At that moment, Taeho answered.
“It was tailored to the demographic characteristics of the region. New York is a multiracial city, so they adjusted it to infect a broader range of people.”
Taeho pointed at the screen.
“Here, look at position 362 of the spike protein. Aspartic acid has been changed to glutamic acid. This mutation increases binding affinity to the ACE2 receptor. In a multiracial population with diverse HLA types, its infectivity rises.”
Jeong Minsu checked it on the computer.
“You’re right. I ran the structural prediction model, and the binding energy increased by 20%.”
“And serine has been changed to threonine. This mutation accelerates the replication rate. That’s why the patients are deteriorating so quickly.”
“Insane…”
“They’re truly vicious.”
The team members clicked their tongues.
Taeho clapped his hands.
“All right, shall we pick up our pace now?”