“Autopsies?”
“Yes. But we didn’t find anything wrong with them. They look and act, so… normal.”

The police station was engulfed in chaos, but the interrogation room was soundproofed. The men talked in hushed tones in the observation room. On the other side of a one-way mirror, a suspect was sitting in harsh lights. He was nervous, but otherwise unremarkable. And only a few hours before, he’d killed a young family. Butchered them. The station had cells filled with others, just like him.

“We noticed a spike in homocides two days ago – overnight we hit triple digits. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?”
“Yes, but not like this. It’s epidemiological. Look for protozoic activity in the brain stem.”
“You… You mean it’s a virus? It spreads?”
“No. It’s a parasite. Humans aren’t its natural host – we didn’t know it could spread.”
The stunned officer turned as the man walked out the door.
“I’m sorry, what branch of the FBI did you say you were from?”
Without answering, he vanished into the crowd.