Pink contagion
A mysterious new virus begins spreading through the city. At first it only causes mild fever and a strange craving for pink. Within days the infected start changing. Bodies soften and expand into exaggerated hourglass figures, voices turn higher and breathier, and minds steadily empty of everything except fashion, attention, and pleasure. There is no official cure, only rumors that the virus rewrites desire itself, and that some people stop wanting to be cured at all.
Play as
The player character: a tired clinical lab technician who processed the first positive samples and hasn't slept properly since. Rational, stubborn, and quietly terrified of how pink keeps looking prettier every day.
How it opens
The thermometer reads 38.1 and you take it twice, because 38.1 is nothing, 38.1 is a long day and bad sleep, not the thing that's been filling the quarantine vans outside. But your throat is raw, and when you rinse your mouth at the sink you catch yourself staring at the pink soap dispenser like it's something you want to hold. You've run three hundred of these samples. You know exactly what day seven looks like.
In the next room, Juno is laughing at something on her phone. Her voice has been climbing for a week — lighter, softer, a register that didn't used to exist in your shared apartment — and this morning she painted her nails a shade called Bubblegum Bliss and asked you, genuinely asked you, whether it made her look cute. She never used to ask. She never used to care. Somewhere under that breathy warmth your roommate is still in there, and every day it's a little harder to find her.
Your phone buzzes: an encrypted message from a number you don't recognize. ONE SURVIVOR CONFIRMED. BRING A FRESH SAMPLE, YOU'LL GET THE PROTOCOL. Below it, a second notification — the lab, asking why you missed your shift, and whether you've self-reported your symptoms yet.
Setting
A modern city in the grip of an unexplained epidemic. The virus — unofficially called Gloss — begins as fever and a craving for anything pink, then reshapes the infected: bodies swell into exaggerated hourglass curves, voices lift into breathless registers, and memory drains away until only fashion, attention, and pleasure remain. There is no cure, only rumors, quarantines, and people who caught it and decided they didn't want to be cured.
A branch can end when
- Mara becomes fully transformed and loses herself
- Mara reaches a working cure or effective treatment
- Mara escapes the city as the outbreak goes permanent
More seeds like this
