It started on a hot, humid day somewhere in the country once known as Zaire. It started as a small, too small to be seen by the naked eye, droplet of saliva hurled through the air. A current picked it up, flung it through the air and the passing boy sucked it into his nasal passages as he took a simple breath.

A simple breath is all it took.

Within minutes it was already in his blood stream. Within hours it had replicated itself enough to spread throughout his body. The symptoms were already present - high fever, muscle aches, stomach pain, diarrhea. His parents didn't understand what this thing was, what it was doing. So, they waited. Within a week, his tongue was swelling up, his crotch having become swollen and black, leaking blood. Sores were beginning to break out all over his body. Frantic, his parents rushed him to the only doctor in the area - in a town over twenty miles away.

But by then, it was really too late. Critical mass would be reached within hours, and then the body would go into critical failure, the child's internal organs literally reduced to thick, vicious blood. He would hemmorage, bleeding out of every orifice, and then...then he would die.

If you were to look at a slide of his blood, you would see black flecks everywhere - they're called "bricks" by the scientists who know them as a cardinal sign of one of the most dreaded viruses in the world. We call it Ebola Zaire. For the people it affects, no fancy name is needed - they just call it death. With a fatality rate over ninety percent, it is one of the most deadly viruses known to man. And that's just one strain - he has siblings, and we're still discovering new ones.

There is no cure for Ebola or his brothers and sisters, and there is no real viable treatment. The most caretakers can do is attempt to alleviate the pain of the victim and pray. Scientists are still puzzled as to why some people survive - they have no real explanation. And we still do not know how the infection is spread.

In another time this might not be a serious problem for those of us here in the United States, given the distance between North America and Africa, the home of the virus. But these are modern times, and one of the great marvels of the twentieth century is the speed and convienence of our transport systems. It was calculated recently that a person carrying Ebola could conceivably make it from The Congo to the U.S. in less than a day.

You may be thinking, well, that's only one person. But the fact of the matter is that research has shown that it is possible for certain strains of Ebola to be transmitted through aerosol droplets from a sneeze, or a simple cough. So now you have not one carrier, but a possible plane load of them.

It's not a pretty thought.

But you're not the first one to think it. In fact, the worry (carefully kept from the public, of course) has been circulating among the scientific and military communities for years now. A Biosafety lvl 4 lab is buried deep in the earth, contains its own ventilation system designed to keep pathogens inside, and boasts numerous safeguards. Because of its nature, Ebola and his brothers and sisters - collectively known as Filoviridae - can only be handled safely in such a lab. Only two exist in the continental United States. One is at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, and the other is in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID for short, located in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Only in these two labs can research be done safely in a desperate attempt to discover a cure, or at the least, a vaccine.

To this date, neither goal has been accomplished.

Kumiko Fujiwara was born December 29th, 1973 in San Francisco, California to Kiyomori and Aki Fujiwara, both second-generation Japanese-Americans. Kiyomori Fujiwara held a doctorate in Chemistry from UCLA and his wife, Aki, also had a doctorate - in Geology, of all things. They welcomed their six pound, nine ounce daughter into their world with enthusiasm. She was their firstborn, and while she was not the son they hoped for, Kumiko immediately began displaying a high level of intelligence for one so young. She was not a quiet little girl, and from the beginning seemed to be trying to communicate. By the time she was six months old, she was sitting up in the living room, trying to string words together. She was walking by eight months old, and could communicate in short, but clear sentences by the time she was a year old. Her first language, like that of her parents, was Japanese, but by the age of two she was speaking in mixed bits of both languages. She started reading at age three, and was proficient in both Japanese and English by age five, as well as able to play the piano and violin quite well.

Many parents would have been overwhelmed by such a quick mind in one so young, but not the Fujiwaras. Both had been active, intelligent youngsters, and though Kumiko was advancing much faster than they ever had, they were not overly worried. To them, this was normal. To others, well - she was labeled a child prodigy, and the Fujiwaras were encouraged to enroll her in classes ahead of her age. Kiyomori and Aki, however, persisted in sending their daughter to a public kindergarten, and kept her at the school until she was in the third grade. By that time, Kumiko was so bored that she was becoming a distraction to the class, fidgeting and even causing trouble. Recognizing that their daughter was not a natural troublemaker, but simply bored beyond words, the Fujiwaras spoke to some colleagues about having their daughter enrolled in special classes at the University of California in San Francisco. The campus was (and is) completely dedicated to graduate and professional studies in health sciences, but several of the professors offered to teach the incredibly intelligent young girl. They were surprised (and pleased) by her maturity beyond her years, and, of course, her incredibly logical mind.

She was ten when she met her uncle, Takatoshi Fujiwara, also known as ~Honor's Accord~, a Fostern Galliard Glasswalker. It was the first time she was shown the secret of her family, of their relatives and their fight. Takatoshi was impressed with his little niece, who seemed to understand far more than a child her age usually did. In addition, Kumiko was possessed of an incredibly strong will and determination. When he questioned her on what she wanted to do when she was older, she pulled out a folder she kept hidden beneath her bed and showed him. Inside were news clippings, and articles from dozens of scientific journals. As intelligent as Takatoshi was, even he couldn't decipher some of the things in those articles. The overall subject, though, seemed to be about a small family of viruses known as Filoviridae - the family Ebola belongs to. She pointed at the articles, the pictures of victims, and said in quiet Japanese, "I want to make this go away forever."

Her uncle was surprised - how many ten-year-olds do you know that would understand the meanings of the many articles she had compiled, let alone say they want to stop it? Some of the pictures were downright gruesome. Takatoshi, however, was not one to discourage such dedication, and he was the one who told her what she's held as her motto ever since, "Remember, Kumiko, that when you set your mind to it, you can do anything. But, always do it with honor and integrity." Before her uncle left, he told her parents that their daughter would go far. In the back of his mind, he always hoped she would change. He said she had the heart of a warrior.

But Kumiko never changed. It was not destined to be, or so said her grandmother, an ancient woman by the name of Miyako. By the age of thirteen, Kumiko had taken the test to get her GED and passed - with flying colors. It was decided that she would attend UCLA, like her parents before her. The family pulled up roots and headed to Los Angeles, where Kumiko enrolled for college, choosing to major in Microbiology and Immunology. It took her less than three years to graduate. In fact, she was chafing on the bit after two. She couldn't seem to find anything that was a real challenge for her. It was all so very easy. She was accepted to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine at the unprecidented age of sixteen. This time she was sent to live with her uncle Takatoshi, who lived in Baltimore, where the school was located.

It took Kumiko four long years to finish both her schooling and the residences required for her specialty of Virology. While at first she stood out due to her age, small stature, and race, by the time she left she was known as an incredibly compassionate, caring physician. Patients asked about her, and the heads of departments enjoyed having her on staff. This was due in part to her humble nature, and her incredible honesty. It is difficult, these days, to find people who are willing to be completely honest with you, even when they've made a mistake. Kumiko was such, and coupled with her drive for perfection in whatever she did, this caused patients to trust her. They knew she wasn't going to lie to them, and that she'd give them the best care it was in her power to provide. But she didn't want to go into patient care.

That little folder from her childhood still haunted her, and she knew that she had two options if she wanted to get involved in the race for a cure - the CDC or USAMRIID. Despite her qualifications, the CDC had no openings for her. She was too young, too female, too...dare we say it...Asian? The Army, on the other hand, had been trying to get a hold of her since she was old enough to join - about three years by this time. When they offered to have her join as a 1st Lieutenant, which is officer rank, she began to give it serious thought. She consulted her uncle, whom she respected greatly for the wisdom she saw in him. Takatoshi, who had by now reached the rank of Adren, wasn't so sure about his little niece joining the army, but she explained her position to him, and the fact that she would have access to the most advanced equipment available. Assured that she wasn't actually going to be a "grunt" and be involved in any sort of fighting (hey, uncles are protective, after all), he finally told her that, in his opinion, she probably wouldn't get a better offer for what she wanted to do.

Kumiko went into basic training in June of 1994 and didn't see her family again for almost three months. During this time she went through, and graduated from Basic Training, and then went on to Officer Training School. In both cases her keen, logical mind set her apart from the others. Despite her small stature (she's around 5'2" tall), she gritted her teeth and used her strength of will and intelligence to make up for her physical weaknesses during basic. Officer Training School saw her gaining the attention of several higher ups, who saw the potential in the young Lieutenant. She, however, was destined (and told them so) for the lab in Maryland.

With training over, Kumiko headed to Fort Detrick in Maryland and began her tenure with USAMRIID. She was immediately intrigued, enticed by the complexity of the facility, and challenged by the field of work. During her eight years in the military, she was involved in five outbreaks of Ebola and Ebola-related viruses in Africa, Asia, South America, and even in the U.S. Most people don't know about these outbreaks, and that's exactly the way the Army likes it. Mind you, during this entire time, she funneled information to her uncle in Baltimore, doing her duty as kin to her people. She loved her work, loved her life, loved the discipline the army gave her, and had managed to reach the rank of Major.

But in early 2001 she began to get suspicious about what her research was being used for. There were rumors of several new biological agents being developed, and one of them came suspiciously close to the effects that Ebola had on the body. Her worries grew as she heard reports of horrible epidemics breaking out in "hostile" countries. In desperation, she finally went to her uncle and asked him if any of her "cousins" might possibly be able to help her discover what was going on. She herself had no talent for hacking, but she was kin to the Glasswalkers. There had to be someone who did.

Someone turned out to one of her literal cousins who managed to break into one of the mainframes for the NBC division of the Army Research Lab. Using several Gifts and a few Fetishes, he managed to go undetected. What he found confirmed Kumiko's worst fears. Her research into the transmission of the viruses in Filoviridae, as well as her data on the effects was being used to design a "superbug," if you will. That night the Army lost almost all of its data on their newest biological agent in an inexplicable power outage that completely fried the mainframe. They lost a lot of other data, but at the time it really didn't seem that important in comparison.

Four months later, Kumiko turned in her letter resigning her commission. At first her superiors were reluctant to grant it, but when they looked over her performance reports, they came to the conclusion that she was burnt out from the rigors of the last eight years. She'd gained the favor of enough people that the request was granted, and she left the military in January of 2002.

In reality, she was faking it. Kumiko deliberately botched her performance evaluations, giving the appearance of burnout in the hopes it would help her case to resign. It was her uncle's idea - she probably wouldn't have considered it otherwise. Once she was officially out of the military, she went to live with her uncle for a few months, honestly needing the rest. She began to look into joining another research institution - hopefully this one wouldn't be trying to make some sort of insane weapon.

She got many offers, including an incredibly tempting one from the CDC. In the end, though she accepted a less-intriguing offer at the Harborview Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. She's rented a two-bedroom apartment in the Harbor District of Charleston. The two-bedroom was her uncle's idea - Takatoshi said you never know when you might need to help family. And unless you want them sleeping in your bed, you'd best have another bedroom for 'em. In addition, her uncle is making sure that what "family" there is in town knows that his little niece is coming to town...after all these years of having her close where he can protect her, it's hard for her second father to let her go.