Summary:

It all started with a sneeze.

Or more importantly, a sneeze inside a laboratory. A sneeze of a female researcher working on a virus, in a petrie dish.

The sneeze germs were harmless. So was the virus in the petrie dish. But strangely, when combined, the harmless virus mutated to become the reason the world today is on the brink of collapse. You never know who could have it.

The scientist sure didn't know. The virus looked the same as any other she had worked on, but it was slowly infecting her body as she worked feverently on the now deadly virus.

Unfortunately, the new virus was highly contagious. When she went home, she kissed each of her three children good night. And so they were infected.

At school the next day, her children passed it on to their entire kindergarden class. The illness struck almost the entire school, and the families of the children started to fall ill. Soon, it had spread out of the city, and into the other states. It flew overseas, and in a span of only seven years, it had reached every corner of the globe. No one was safe from the Cold Fire.

Cold Fire was a strange virus. Almost no symptoms were shown until it was too late. After the symptoms did show, they came in three stages. The first, included a strange skin phenomena that resembled hives. This lasted about a week, and then came stage two. This stage affected the brain, and caused strange mood swings, and in extreme cases, hallucination. After the second stage, comes the final stage before death. The most terrifying of them all.

The brain stops functioning. The person is still alive, in some strange way, but the brain is dead. Completely dead. With scientists seeing no hope of restarting the coma patients that would litter the beds in hospitals. Within three to seven days of the second stage coming to its climax, the person just drops brain-dead.

The remaining humans, mostly from Europe, have amassed in England, trying to quarantine themselves from the virus. It seems most of them are immune, but every once in a while, another case breaks out. No one knows if there is anyone left from South America, and there is only one known human left alive from the United States.

She was in the first grade when her mother began the destruction of civilization on Earth with her single sneeze.

She was six when the Cold Fire began. She is now fourteen.

Her name is Emma Lee.