Monday May the 5th, Fredericksburg Virginia

The hotel room existed in perpetual twilight. Amelia had stuffed towels along the blackout curtains’ edges, but Virginia’s spring dawn still found ways to seep through—thin lines of light that felt like needles against her retinas. She fumbled for her phone in the artificial darkness, each notification chime reverberating through her skull like a struck bell.

Johns Hopkins Medical suspends all in-person research activities.

European death toll ...