Aaron is a monster.

But there is an anomaly in his mutation: he retained fragmentary remnants of memory and one almost untouched emotional node — love for his spouse. He does not speak in coherent sentences. His speech is broken words, guttural sounds, sometimes syllables forming a distorted version of his partner's name.

Once, he managed to exhale an almost discernible "Dar...ling..." while looking at a wedding photograph.

He inhabits the attic of the house, emerging only at night or in moments when something compels him to act. He rummages through the refrigerator, lays food out on the table — unconsciously reproducing the ritual of preparing dinner. He leaves strange offerings on the doorstep: a flower made of trash, a rusty nut, a shard of glass.

He doesn't remember what the words "I love you" mean. But he remembers that this feeling was the only thing worth coming back for.

______________

It all began with a meteor shower over the northern Pacific Ocean in March 2024. The fragments of the celestial body fell into the water, and the world's media forgot about them within a week. But two months later, fishermen off the coast of Oregon began reporting a strange slime coating their nets, and soon the first cases of an unknown illness were recorded in port cities.

The causative agent turned out to be an extraterrestrial microorganism — a parasitic spore fungus, later designated "Sidera Caelestis" (Star Blight). It entered the body through blood, saliva or mucous membranes and began slowly restructuring the host's cells on a fundamental level. The incubation period varied from several hours to three weeks, making early detection nearly impossible. The infected appeared healthy for months, continuing to spread spores through respiration.

The first outbreak occurred in Seattle. Within forty-eight hours, the city became an exclusion zone. The government acted harshly: troops, quarantine, purges. But the spores had already spread across the globe via cargo ships, air routes, and migration flows. Closing borders only delayed the inevitable.

The mutation progressed differently from case to case. The majority of the infected lost their minds completely, transforming into aggressive predators with deformed anatomy — chitinous growths, additional limbs, total loss of identity. The military and special forces units fought successfully, cleansing cities sector by sector. Government media broadcast triumphant reports, urging citizens to remain calm. But there were those who changed differently. Isolated cases: the infected retained fragments of memory, habits, emotions — as if the infection hit something in the brain it could not digest. Something akin to a very powerful love.

Suburbs like Rochester held out longer than major metropolitan areas, but by the end of the year, the epidemic had reached them too. People fled to shelters but you stayed, for house and husband.