Months later, a researcher in a BSL-4 lab looked at a screen. She saw a sequence of his genome—a particular letter where an “A” had changed to a “G.”
“It’s changed again,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Exactly,” Sketchy smiled, drifting deeper into the lung. “I’m the blur in the photo. The noise in the signal. I am sketchy .”
Sketchy floated in the middle of the inferno, his shaggy corona glowing orange in the heat. He watched the grandmother’s own body burn down its own lung tissue trying to find him.