Infected

20: ☣The File☣

"WE did it!" Jim had grown tired of hearing that same phrase for the umpteenth time now.

"Nini?" he asked, "Did what?"

"We cracked the password!" Tamana blurted out, "though Derek did most of the work but we did it! We're in!"

"Never doubted you. Not one bit!" Jim exclaimed, ignoring the glaring look that Derek was giving him.

"So, what's in it?" Jim asked, finding himself a seat.

Derek and Tamana realized they had not even opened the file amid the celebration for the past ten minutes.

Derek then double clicked on the file and a slew of sub-files popped up, running down the entire window.

"Whoa, that's a lot," Jim muttered.

Derek clicked on the very first one.

More windows popped up on the screen. Tamana dragged her seat closer, adjusting her glasses.

"It's clearly my father's work," she said.

"Can. . .can I?" she asked, reaching out for the mouse and getting Derek's hand instead.

"Sorry," Derek said awkwardly, handing over the mouse.

"So this first sub-file contains epidemiologies about viruses."

"Epimelodies?" started Jim.

"Epidemiologies," Tamana corrected, "In layman's terms, it's like a background about the virus."

"What kind?" asked Derek.

"Ebola, common influenza, avian. . .all of them!"

Tamana scrolled through tons of information about viruses until she found one entry that stood out from the rest of the viruses.

Entry Cov19-2023

"Okay, guys. Here's what he had on the coronavirus," Tamana said.

"Last edited on July the eleventh," remarked Derek, noting the time stamp indicated at the entry's header.

"That's the day he was killed, right?" Jim asked and Tamana nodded in response. "So that means he was working on a cure."

"We haven't established that yet," Tamana added, scrolling through the information.

There were a lot of notes, all analyzed under different buttoned subheadings such as 'Causes', 'Symptoms', 'Mutations', 'Spread'. . .

Tamana clicked on the 'Mutations' button.

More information popped up, this time centered on the coronavirus, where Tamana was then looking at more epidemiologies, mutations and vaccines.

There was something similar in all of these other titles. Something that everyone there saw. It was the term 'Pandora'.

"No way, " exclaimed Jim, "Pandora as in the Pandora variant?"

"That's impossible," said Derek, "the variant was announced just hours ago. How could your dad have known about it?"

"Because he had discovered it earlier," Tamana muttered, reading through the introductory notes of the Pandora variant. "It had mutated earlier back in 2020."

"And it's only attacking people now?" quizzed Derek.

"I don't-I don't understand either," Tamana muttered to herself, scrolling down the window.