Page 36 of Outbreak Protocol

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FELIX

Spring arrives in Switzerland with a quiet, defiant beauty. It greens the lower slopes of the Alps, breathing life into meadows that seem oblivious to the fact that much of the continent is dying. From the window of our chalet, the world looks deceptively whole.

Inside, the late afternoon light slants across the kitchen table, illuminating the faint pencil marks on Emma’s homework.

She sits with her tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth, a picture of pure concentration.

I lean over her shoulder, the familiar, clean scent of her hair a comforting anchor in my day.

“Seven times eight,” she murmurs, tapping her pencil.

“Fifty-four,” I say automatically.

She glances up at me, her brow furrowed with the gentle condescension only an eight-year-old can muster. “ Non , Uncle Felix. It’s fifty-six. Madame Dubois says so.”

A quiet pang, familiar as my own heartbeat, resonates in my chest. “You’re right.

My mistake.” I ruffle her hair, and she giggles, turning back to her worksheet.

It’s the new architecture of my mind: fully functional, mostly reliable, but with the occasional crossed wire, a phantom limb where perfect recall used to be.

The neurologist says I’ve regained 85% of my pre-infection cognitive function.

Most days, I’m grateful for the 85%. Some days, I miss the other 15% like a lost friend.

In the background, a Pan-European news broadcast plays softly on a tablet, the newscaster’s crisp, neutral accent a sterile counterpoint to our domestic peace.

“...ongoing sanitation efforts in the German Lost Zone continue to show progress,” she reports.

“Territories are being secured according to protocol, neutralizing endemic reservoirs to ensure continental security.”

Sanitation efforts. Lost Zone. The clinical language makes my country sound like a contaminated lab sample. I feel a muscle in my jaw tighten, but then Emma tugs on my sleeve.

“Eliza’s birthday party is on Saturday,” she says, her eyes wide with the gravity of the occasion. “Can I go? There’s going to be a magician.”

The sudden, wonderful normalcy of the request is jarring. A child, worried about a birthday party. A magician. It’s a precious slice of the world we fought for. “Of course, you can,” I say, my voice thick with more than just the words. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Later, after Emma is asleep, her dreams hopefully filled with rabbits pulled from hats instead of the shadows that used to haunt them, Erik calls me over.

He's at the table, his face illuminated by the glow of his screen.

The easy contentment of the afternoon has vanished, replaced by the intense focus I know so well.

“Felix, you need to see this.”

It’s not his usual data stream of infection rates or supply chain logistics. On the screen is a formal, encrypted communique, bearing the emblems of the World Health Organization and the Pan-European Command.

It is an offer. A proposal to establish a permanent international research institute, a global centre for pandemic prevention and response.

It outlines a purpose-built facility in a remote, secure location in Canada, under international jurisdiction.

It would be funded by a coalition of surviving governments, a shield for the future built from the wreckage of our present.

The final lines are what make my breath catch. They are asking us to lead it. To be its founding directors.

Erik gets up and begins to pace, a rare show of restless energy.

“Think of it, Felix. Everything we’ve learned.

We can do it right, from the ground up. The right containment protocols, the right research priorities.

A place built to stop this from ever happening again.

” His eyes are bright with a passion I recognize.

This is the ultimate, elegant solution to the problem that has consumed our lives.

It’s his love language, written on a global scale.

“We can build a future there. For us. A real home.”

I don’t move from the screen. I see the logic, the undeniable rightness of it. But my heart feels like it’s been packed in ice. I look around our small chalet, this temporary haven that has started to feel like a sanctuary.

“Erik, we just got here,” I say softly. “Emma… she’s finally stable. She has friends. Madame Dubois. She’s learning to ski, for God’s sake. We can’t just pull her away again.”

My gaze drifts as if I could see past the mountains, north toward the darkness on the map. “And Germany? We just... leave? We go to Canada and build this perfect new life while my country is erased and called a ‘Lost Zone’? It feels like we’re running away.”

He stops pacing and looks at me, his expression softening. He's learned to read my silences, the spaces between my words. “Then let’s walk,” he says.

The air outside is crisp and clean, tasting of pine and melting snow. We follow the path alongside the perimeter fence, its sharp, metallic lines a stark contrast to the majestic, indifferent peaks that tower above us. The first stars are beginning to prick the deep violet sky .

“She needs stability, Erik,” I say, breaking the silence. “More than she needs a new continent.”

“Stability isn’t a place, Felix,” he replies, his voice steady. “It’s us. You and me. The three of us are her home. That’s the only thing that’s been stable for her, and it won’t change whether we’re here or in Canada.”

He stops and turns to face me. “And you’re wrong about Germany. We’re not running away from it.” He takes my hand, his grip firm. “How do we best honour those people? The ones who didn’t make it? By staying here, standing guard over ashes? Or by building the future they died for?”

He looks me straight in the eye, and I see he’s not just making a logical argument; he’s reaching for the same memory that haunts me.

“Thomas Hartmann didn’t volunteer to stay behind in a dying city so we could feel guilty.

He stayed because we gave him hope. He stayed so his family, and families like his, could live.

He chose that so we could do this work. This institute in Canada…

that is how we honour him. By making sure his choice mattered for everyone.

By making sure we never need a Thomas Hartmann again. ”

His words hit me with the force of a physical blow, realigning everything.

I look up from his earnest face to the vast, star-dusted sky, and I think of that book of constellations I read to Emma in that cold room in Munich.

I think of that young soldier’s voice on the recording, his last desperate plea: Tell them we mattered .

Erik is right. Staying here isn’t remembrance; it’s stagnation. Moving forward, building something from this terrible knowledge, is the only true way to remember. It’s the only way to make any of it matter.

"Okay," I say, the single word feeling heavier and more freeing than any I have ever spoken. "Okay. Canada."

A slow smile breaks through the exhaustion on Erik’s face, the one that still makes my heart ache. He pulls me close, and his kiss under the Alpine stars is a promise. In that moment, we’re not the guardians of a terrible knowledge, but the architects of a new one.

Later that night, I stand in the doorway of Emma’s room, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest. The handsome German flag hangs on her wall, the black, red, and gold a stark slash of colour against the pale paint.

Before, it was a memorial to what we’d lost. Now, I see it differently.

It is our anchor. It is our a reason. It is the memory we will carry forward, not as a burden of grief, but as a foundation of purpose.

I make a silent promise to the sleeping child, and to the ghosts of a nation. We will remember. We will rebuild.

Not just for Germany. For Anna. For Thomas. For all of them.

For Emma, who deserves a world better than the one we nearly destroyed.

For the future, which remains possible, and which we will now go and build.