Three accounts, spanning the outbreak's first months. Arranged here by what happened first — not by what reached me first. Each was recovered separately, years apart, from different sources; only afterward did it become clear they were describing the same chain of events.

• Katya — The Sterile Air
  Reconstructed from the testimony of an anonymous Chinese national employed at the Sino-Zavodsk facility, recorded 2021.

• Kolya - Five Bars
  Recovered from Kolya's own phone — voice notes and video — closed out by P. Bortnik's filed incident report.

• Pavel — Off the Clock
  Opening incident sourced from Pavel Bortnik's own filed incident report; remainder from Sergei Antonov's 2020 interview.

• Sergei — The Signalman of Bekershtrit
  Interview transcript, recorded 2020.

Sergei was interviewed a full year before the testimony that opens this record surfaced. Pavel's account sits somewhere between the two — his own filed incident report, closed out by what Sergei saw. None of that changes the order things happened in — so that's the order they're presented here.

— R. Patel