Rapid Infection

Chapter 1
Rapid Infection

Chapter Description: Could You Be Next?

Could you be next?

I sit here in quarantine as people hustle and bustle around me going from patient to patient as more are brought in, just as they did for me. I've to wait here for the time being as it's all quite busy. I'm scared as I've been infected with what's believed to be a new virus, not lethal thankfully but definitely fast acting once it kicks in.

This morning I was a grown woman in my forties, I had a day off from work so I thought why not go out for a walk and enjoy the crisp near winter air. Then I felt odd, like part of me wasn't working correctly and it wasn't, I was wetting myself and as I was my clothing started to feel loose, bigger.

I reacted by screaming and crying while someone who had seen me called for an ambulance. I had been infected just like that through no one's fault, not even my own, it just happened.

I was quickly seen to by clearly tired paramedics who took me to a quarantine centre close by, these had been built quickly in the past few weeks since this unusual new illness had began to appear around the world.

No one knows where it had come from, if it was natural or artificial. The only theory was that it may have been connected to a very strange series of atmospheric lights that had appeared during a recent meteor shower. They hadn't been like the Aurora Borealis, it had happened all over the world at the same time and after they had faded the first cases were reported.

The illness isn't a fatal one, thankfully, unlike the still ongoing pandemic from another much more lethal virus. It's effects are definitely surprising though for those who are infected all become younger at a rapid rate, usually within minutes of infection and often to around two or three years of physical age, this is followed hours later by their neurological development reverting back to a near infantile state of development.
Just hours ago I was an adult and now I'm little more than a toddler of maybe two or three years old, I'm sitting here in a thick nappy and comfortable toddler sized clothing with some toys for a toddler close by and a cute plushie of a pony from that cartoon remake that came out a while back that was popular for a while. I feel so small and helpless as all I can do is wait to be seen by someone, I'll likely be discharged to the care of one of my surviving family members, who hadn't died from the still rampaging virus that's been going for two years now, who hopefully hasn't been infected and hopefully won't be.

The way this virus works is even stranger than just regression, it also affects other kinds of humans differently. Transgender people for example who have been infected find their bodies changing to adjust to their gender identity, this means that trans women become the girls they truly are while trans men become the boys they truly are, intersex people become the gender identity they strongly identify as while non-binary and gender fluid people become more androgynous physically with no set physical characteristic.

It is fascinating but it's also so scary because of how quickly it works and no one is even sure how it's spreading as no matter the precautions taken it still infects. I was only out for a walk, I was fine before, and it infected me with the only person being meters away and they're not infected.

As you can imagine many of the rich and powerful are starting to panic as the new virus doesn't care about their lust for more money and power, it does it's thing with nary a care and works so fast that you don't even know you're infected until your muscle control is reduced barely a minute later.

Of course blame is flying around with people blaming other countries, anyone of a non-heterosexual sexuality, anyone of a non-cisgender identity, anyone of a different skin colour. But it's no one's fault, there is no blame, it is simply a virus that has appeared from nowhere after an unusual atmospheric light show.

A virus doesn't discriminate, it doesn't pick and choose, it does it's thing regardless of who you are, how much money you have, whatever your diversity is. So many could be infected right now just like that with no root cause to their infection.

So I sit here and wait, I feel so small and helpless, my mind is starting to feel fuzzy and it's becoming hard to concentrate as an adult. Who I was is disappearing by the second and I'm being replaced with the young child I was.
I sit...I...I want to play! Hello pony, want to play with me?

'Case file update, patient is now emotionally and mentally a young child of around two years old. Physically regression has completed in it's entirety.'

Could you be next?