Born 1963 in Leningrad to two minor academics. Father, Dmitri, was a chemical engineer. Mother, Larisa, was a biology teacher. The family lived in a communal apartment with two other families. Typical of standard Soviet life.

Tatiana Dmitrievna Belova (Tanya) grew up with modest means, shared spaces, and the constant background noise of communal living. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing terrible.

As a decent student, Tanya studied hard and earned admission to Leningrad State University in 1981, where she majored in microbiology because it seemed like something she could use in real life. The coursework was demanding but manageable. She wasn't outstanding, just dedicated enough.

By 1985, she finished her undergraduate degree and began working as a lab technician at a research institute in Leningrad, doing routine work with bacterial cultures. Not glamorous, but steady work.

When her father, Dmitri, began attending informal meetings with fellow reform-minded academics in late 1989, he cautioned his daughter that it was time for her to leave the country. Tanya did not protest.

A colleague helped arrange for Tanya to give a presentation on some of her research at a conference in Vienna in December 1989. The paper she prepared wasn't particularly exciting, but it secured a travel visa. Tanya departed three weeks after the Berlin Wall came down, watching her parents fade into the snow at Moscow station.

The Vienna conference was poorly attended. She spoke to approximately 15 half-asleep attendees and then proceeded directly to the U.S. Embassy and requested asylum. The process lasted eight months. During this time, she resided in a cramped room at a Catholic charity house, worked washing dishes at a local café, and simply waited.

In September 1990, her asylum request was granted.

Upon arriving in New York City with only one small suitcase and a couple of translated transcripts, she found a room in a boarding house in Queens through a Russian émigré network. She quickly found employment in a warehouse and began the lengthy process of having her Soviet academic credentials evaluated and translated.

Everything cost too much, was too foreign, too loud. The shame crept in waves. As she wandered through the aisles of large American grocery stores staring at thirty different cereals, she imagined her parents back in their collapsing country with no idea of what lay ahead while she struggled to learn how to say "a quarter" correctly.

At six months in, Tanya made two major decisions.

First, she officially changed her name from Tatiana Dmitrievna Belova to Tanya Belova. Dropping the patronymic associated with her father made her nickname official.

Second, she incinerated everything related to her past from Leningrad. Pictures, letters, mementos. She did this in a metal trash can behind her boarding house and continued to watch until there was only ash left.

If she was going to make it in America, Tatiana Dmitrievna had to be gone.

Over the course of two years, Tanya worked multiple jobs while taking night classes to improve her English and prepare for graduate school applications. Her Soviet credentials were eventually recognized as equivalent to a U.S. bachelor's degree.

In 1992, she was accepted into University of Wisconsin-Madison's microbiology graduate program with a teaching assistantship that barely paid for her rent and instant coffee.

Graduate school was lonely. American students formed groups she was never invited to join. Her academic advisor was polite, but clearly uninterested. Most of the time, she spent in the lab, running samples, keeping herself invisible.

Her dissertation addressed the mutation rates of RNA viruses. Good solid unexceptional work. She presented at one conference where three people attended. She was scheduled to defend in May 1995.

Then people started getting sick.

News called it flu. Then it wasn't. Classes cancelled. Her academic advisor rushed her defense to completion before the university shut down entirely. Three committee members by telephone, one from home. She graduated.

By June 1995, the CDC was desperately recruiting anyone with training in microbiology to help respond to the outbreak. Tanya had a recently completed PhD in microbiology and said yes.

She was assigned to a makeshift laboratory in Madison to work as a lab technician: sampling, labeling tubes, testing, maintenance of equipment. She tried not to think about the screams coming from the quarantine ward above.

By late 1995, CDC operations were being absorbed into the newly formed ARC, and facilities were consolidated. Union City was determined to be a defensible location with adequate infrastructure. Tanya was transferred along with the equipment and remaining staff.

Dr. Joseph Conrad led the research department of Union City. Brilliant, demanding, and surrounded by long-time colleagues. Tanya was employed as a junior lab technician.

She tested infected tissue, maintained equipment, logged data, ran basic tests. Dr. Conrad rarely referred to her by name.

Her coworkers were generally polite but kept a distance from her. She was "the Russian" with the thick accent. She was never invited to attend meetings where the group made decisions. That was okay with her. She would show up, work, and leave.

The work was relentless: infected tissue, mutation cataloging, failed tests. Day after day, week after week, month after month. Each day the same. Each day hoping specimens wouldn't escape containment glass.

She started smoking. Cheap cigarettes from either ARC supply or black market. Smoking provided her with five minutes of relief from dead tissue in microscopes.

She also started speaking more often, filling the empty space in the lab with whatever came to mind. Complaints about equipment. Weather reports. Unprompted questions. People got annoyed with her, but silence was worse.

She also volunteered for scavenging runs. Curiosity more than courage. She wanted to see what remained outside, what had changed. She was not aggressive, and stuck with her group, focused on finding useful items: medical equipment, chemicals, medicine. Her microbiology background allowed her to identify things that other scavengers might miss.

She has had close calls. Almost bites when she became distracted rifling through abandoned pharmacies or labs. Other scavengers pulled her back from danger several times. She panicked when faced with hordes of infected, but could remain calm if there were only a few.

In March 1999, she was out on a scavenging run when it happened. She returned to find the lab in lockdown and ARC guards everywhere. Conrad was dead. Three other staff members too. Several others had been infected and put down. The official report was vague. A containment breach. A specimen that reacted badly to Helix-09. Nobody wanted to talk about the details.

Tanya returned to work the next day. There was nothing else to do.

Dr. Elena Vasquez took over and the division was reorganized. Procedures changed. Tanya continued to sample, maintain equipment, record data.

The mutation changed everything. Sector by sector, Union City started falling to infection and civil unrest. Hidden bites from away teams. Panic spreading faster than the virus. Skirmishes between ARC security and desperate civilians created more opportunities for infection to spread.

By mid-2000, ARC began a full withdrawal from the outer sectors. The walls that had protected the entire city were abandoned. Now only the Quarantine Zone and Sector 4 remained under ARC control. A fortress within a fortress.

Then the crops failed. A fungal blight the farmers called "Black Spore Rot" decimated over 75% of the projected yield. Food that was desperately needed for winter simply didn't exist.

Tanya watched people get thinner. Rations were cut. Then cut again. The winter of 2000-2001 was brutal. Not just because of the cold, but because of the hunger.