Author:
Anna Mantovani is an author, blogger and songwriter based in Turin, Italy. She has a degree in Media Engineering and works in the railway sector. With her sister Maria Carla, also a science-fiction writer, she manages the blog “The Mantovanis”, which focuses on independent speculative fiction and geek culture. With her husband Dario (and sometimes their two kids as guest stars) she plays in the electropop duo “Sedona”. Find out more at: www.themantovanis.blog.

The story is set in the fictional city of Europa, in Central Europe, the last city left after a nuclear war that made most of the Earth uninhabitable and woke up dragons - prehistorical creatures that caused an mass outbreak of a lethal disease that decimated the population and turned the survivors into scale-covered, violent mutants that rebel against the government.

Sophie, a young doctor working for her boss Amanda Solarin in a medical facility, accidentally meets an elderly woman, Emma, who miraculously recovered from the dragon plague, and whose blood could be the key to a vaccine. Saving Emma from government persecution, Sophie goes on the run with her.

Meanwhile, Erik Persson, a police officer, sets out to track Sophie and Emma, while suspecting that a mole might be hiding in the ranks of the police.

Sophie and Emma hide in the slums and after almost getting caught by the police several times they finally fall in the hands of the rebels; in her captivity, Sophie discovers that the plague survivors are not as irrational and violent as the press portrays them and agrees to work with them to develop a vaccine. She also discovers that some of the survivors have the ability to communicate telepathically with a dragon.

She meets the General, the leader of the rebels, whose name is Cain, and despite her fear for his terrifying looks and enigmatic personality, she is strangely attracted to him.

The Dragon Plague

From the moment she had made the deal with Cain about the vaccine research, Sophie began to study all the material left by Amanda.


She found that, although she was already familiar with many of her conclusions, which her employer had shared with her, Amanda had actually gone much further than her officially published studies suggested. This was very encouraging, but it also meant that Sophie had to spend more time studying and combing through archives than she had counted on. Besides that, she also made several tests using the blood taken from Emma.


Of course, the islanders were not going to give up so easily on the possibility to consult a doctor, and therefore, in addition to the research, Sophie found herself doing several hours of medical practice each day. The result was that for many weeks, she had no time for herself, nor any leisure to think about dragons, about Europa or about her future.


Chapter 50