Children of the Plague

Background: In the year 2660, a scientist working on a way to create the  transhuman, a superior human being capable of overriding base instincts, inadvertently lets loose a retrovirus that silently and quickly infects vast areas, rapidly altering peoples' DNA, creating cancers and horrible mutations.  Those few who are proven clean have been evacuated to a large space station, which becomes their home as they work to find a cure.

Almost a generation years after the outbreak, researchers on the space station city have not been able to develop a cure; the man-made virus mutates too quickly, and they are crippled by a lack of resources. Tensions are high as resources have grown low, and numerous people are reduced to a catatonic state by the drugs they take to cope with the conditions.  A middle-aged scientist, Ralph 124 C41+, the leading mind of his generation, decides to go back to the planet, to try to make some use of his old research facilities in New York. Sealed in a germsuit, he undertakes the voyage.

On Earth, plague victims survive long enough to have children, who in turn pass on more mutations. In most areas, all semblance of normal social order has broken down into gang-like factions, except for a few safe areas where society has managed to limp on, maintaining some kind of economy, medical care, and education.

When Ralph and his party arrive, his military escort storms the abandoned laboratory complex. What Stone finds in his ransacked former research facilities is evidence of genetic engineering experiments, and... a baby. Sealed in an airtight case, fed through tubes, the child appears to be free of infection.  He takes her with him back to the station to study her, and, over time, grows attached to her, and raises her as his own daughter, never revealing where she came from and how different she is from other humans.

Eighteen years later, the child, Celeste, has grown into a brilliant young scientist, and Ralph has vested his hopes for a cure in her intellectual potential. However, Celeste is terrified to work with his team on the virus. For when she does, she slips into strange visions, and a dark inner urge drives her to imagine recreating and spreading the virus. When evidence of her origins is revealed, Celeste presses her adopted father for answers, and learns where she came from. She also learns that she has extra chromosomes, genetic coding that has never been found in another human being. In fact, Ralph 124 C41+ has used that coding to produce mindless beings to experiment on, in a desperate attempt to discover a cure.

Repulsed by what her adopted father has done, Celeste decides to leave for Earth. She knows the only answer to what she is, and why she has these strange visions, must be on Earth. And so in defiance of station security and Stone's wishes, she leaves for Earth. With her comes Yali, an idealistic young man who wants to join the rest of humanity on Earth, to offer help and hope as an educator and a caregiver.