POV: General Hawthorne

The fever hit me during the emergency briefing. One moment I was coordinating disaster response with my officers, the next I was on my knees, fire burning through every vein in my body. My skin felt like it was being torn apart from the inside.

"General!" Colonel Chen grabbed my arm, but I barely felt his touch through the agony.

This was it. Mitchell's virus. The transformation. My heart hammered so fast it should have exploded. My bones creaked and shifted, not breaking but strengthening. My muscles seized and then expanded, fibers multiplying impossibly fast. And the pain, God, the pain was everywhere at once.

Then, as...