The Flu That Isn’t

 

EPISODE 3 — “The Flu That Isn’t”

Dale’s Perspective

Opening Image / Mood

Barry behind a closed door. The air hums like a refrigerator left open too long.

I stand outside the room listening to him breathe. Except it isn’t breathing. It’s… modulation. Like he’s syncing with something I can’t hear.

Opening Line

Barry started speaking in his sleep. Not words. Calculations with feelings.

1. The Sound Behind the Door

At first I thought he was talking to someone. Then I realized he wasn’t talking at all—he was solving.

Equations. Patterns. Rhythms.

But not the kind you write down. The kind you feel in your teeth.

I pressed my ear to the door. The wood vibrated.

It sounded like someone humming math.

Not a melody. Not a language. Something in between.

Something older.

2. Verity’s Scan

Verity finally admitted she needed to check him.

She didn’t knock. She didn’t ask. She just placed her hand on the door and let her glow seep through the cracks like blue smoke.

Her voice was flat, but her glow wasn’t.

“His cells are adjusting for zero gravity,” she said.

I asked what that meant.

She didn’t answer.

She just kept scanning.

“His bones are reconfiguring,” she added, like she was reading a weather report.

I asked again what that meant.

She still didn’t answer.

Her glow flickered—fear, or something close to it.

3. Barry’s Memories That Aren’t His

He started whispering things through the fever.

Not to us. To the ceiling. To the air.

“Skies without up or down,” he murmured.

“Ships older than planets.”

“Apologies,” he whispered once, voice cracking. “To who?” I asked through the door.

He didn’t answer.

He just kept sweating, shaking, drifting in and out of someone else’s memories.

Someone who had never lived on Earth.

4. The Confession

Tonight he finally spoke to me.

Really spoke.

I heard him shift in the bed, so I cracked the door open. Just enough to see him glowing faintly, like a night‑light that’s lost its plug.

His eyes opened.

Not all the way. Just enough to find me.

“Dale,” he whispered, “I wasn’t missing.”

I stepped inside before Verity could stop me.

He swallowed hard, like the words were heavier than his bones.

“I was recruited.”

The room tilted. Or maybe I did.

“By who?” I asked.

He closed his eyes.

“I can’t say.”

Not won’t. Can’t.

His voice broke on the next breath.

“They didn’t come to visit me,” he said. “They came to prepare me.”

Final Line

Whatever touched Barry did not come to visit. It came to prepare him.