Character back story

Heres a little back story on Ellis from After the Fall.

Hope you enjoy.

Ellis had built his career around one principle.

Containment.

Before the outbreak, he specialised in disease control. Outbreak modelling. Risk assessment. He believed that any threat, no matter how severe, could be managed with the right data and the right response.

When the infection spread beyond prediction, Ellis did not panic.

He stayed home with his wife and children. Followed the guidance. Boarded windows. Counted supplies. He told them it would pass, or at least slow, if people stayed where they were.

For a time, he was right.

Then the food ran out.

Ellis made the decision to leave their home when staying became more dangerous than moving. He took them to the university where he worked, to the laboratories he knew better than any shelter or church.

They were not alone.

Other scientists had already gathered there. Researchers, technicians, lecturers. People who understood what was happening and why it mattered. Together, they fortified the buildings and turned lecture halls into dormitories, storage rooms, treatment areas.

They weren’t just surviving.

They were studying the disease.

They documented infection progression.

Recorded neurological decay.

Tracked behavioural changes after exposure.

Ellis believed understanding the infection was the key to stopping it.

.A small community formed around the labs. A handful of families. Guards. Survivors willing to follow rules in exchange for safety. His wife organised food distribution. His children played in the courtyards between barricades.

For a brief time, it worked.

Then the perimeter failed.

Ellis never spoke about how.

Only that it happened fast.

The infected flooded the campus. Corridors became killing grounds. Laboratories became tombs. The community collapsed in minutes.

By the time the noise stopped, only Ellis and a handful of scientists remained.

His wife was gone.

His children were gone.

The survivors were gone.

They stood in silence among the bodies and the shattered equipment, surrounded by everything they had failed to protect.

Ellis did not scream.

He did not collapse.

He assessed.

The data they had gathered had changed nothing. Observation had not saved anyone. Knowledge without enforcement had been meaningless.

Understanding the disease had not been enough.

That was the moment Ellis abandoned prevention.

Containment was no longer the goal.

Control was.

The questions changed.

The experiments hardened.

Ethics became obstacles rather than safeguards.

Ellis stopped asking how the infection worked.

He began asking how it could be directed.

The scientists noticed the shift but said nothing. They needed him. He made decisions when others froze. He provided structure when fear threatened to tear them apart.

When they left the university, they did so under Ellis’s command.

The man who had once tried to save the world through understanding now believed only one thing mattered:

Loss was unacceptable.

If the dead could not be stopped, then they would be mastered.

And if people had to be used to achieve that control, then so be it.

Ellis did not promise safety anymore.

He promised order.