The Outbreak

The train screeched into the station as if in a hurry. A man in a black suit with a briefcase got up and went to the door as it lurched to a halt. He disappeared as soon as the doors opened.
—
A small town in the middle of nowhere. The semester just ended and amid the swarm of college students leaving for vacation stood one girl, noticing. The sound of glass crashing caught her ear, she jumped, turned around and saw a small cracked case in the wake of a speeding unmarked car. None of the other students heard the sound above their own chatter, or noticed anything beyond their excitement.
Curious, she left the mass and went to look at the object on the side of the road – It was removed from the crowd so the chance of the case being planted or intentionally thrown toward the students, she deduced, was unlikely.
She picked up the case – the shell was cracked but nothing seemed to have fallen out, broken, or leaked. The rest of the students were gone now;  she stood up and surveyed the campus from a distance.
Amy was never a normal girl – she noticed the things others missed. Details, sounds, she could tune out of the chatter and see what was really happening in a scenario that no one else noticed. This was both a curse and a gift. A heightened sense of awareness and the propensity to pause and intensely focus on particular details made her a bit of a loner. It’s no wonder then, that she found refuge in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and solace in the Chem Lab. To wander beyond the campus to investigate a case that fell out of a car really wasn’t unusual for someone like her.
She walked slowly back towards campus with the case. At a cursory glance it didn’t look like anything dangerous was inside.
—
The man in the suit flashed his badge at the security in the CDC building and walked swiftly into a room with no windows. A panicked expression on the faces around the table greeted him as he shut the door.