The job felt wrong from the start.The sheriff of Jericho offered Flint the bounty, but the contract originated from a murkier source—the Duskfinders, a secret society with ties to the Occult. Still, Flint accepted. Hunting bounties defined him. His reputation distracted bigots from the unique shape of his good eye and gawkers from the ocular implant that replaced the other. Most everyone figured Flint was just another badass in the sheriff's posse of dubious freaks...

In 2005, a highly contagious, lethal disease swept through the virtual world of Azeroth, slaughtering millions of player characters in a matter of hours. What began as a simple programming glitch accidentally became one of the most important sociological events in modern epidemiology. Public health officials have always struggled to model how real humans react during a pandemic, as mathematical simulations cannot account for irrational panic, altruism, or intentional griefing. The "Corrupt...