The Quarantine Verge is where New Hope City truly died.
Before the outbreak, this district was the city’s medical heart: a dense cluster of hospitals, research centers, emergency clinics, pharmaceutical warehouses, and temporary response facilities hastily erected as the crisis escalated. When the infection surged beyond containment, this area became the final choke point—where the sick were brought, the wounded triaged, and the dying isolated. It was sealed too late.
Twenty years later, the Verge is a rotting medical graveyard, choked with vegetation and thick with infected. Massive hospital towers loom over streets swallowed by moss, ivy, and fungal growth. Ambulances lie rusted where they were abandoned mid-response, their interiors still lined with cracked bio-containment panels. Triage tents have collapsed into tangled canopies of vines, while plastic barriers and quarantine fencing are half-buried beneath soil and roots.
The infected density here is the highest in the city. Many never left their beds. Others were restrained, sedated, or exposed to experimental treatments before turning. As a result, movement inside buildings is slow, unpredictable, and horrifyingly intimate—echoing footsteps, dragging bodies, and sudden surges from sealed wards. Streets may appear deceptively quiet, but nearly every structure is alive with the dead.
Overgrowth in the Quarantine Verge feels unnatural. Medicinal plants, invasive species, and mutated flora thrive in soil soaked with chemicals and decay. Trees burst through operating theaters. Moss carpets entire floors. Water leaks endlessly through cracked ceilings, feeding mold blooms that glow faintly under emergency lighting still powered by failing backup grids.
Salvage here is rare but priceless. Medical supplies, functioning generators, pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, and sealed data vaults still exist—but every expedition is a gamble. Crews move in silence, mark routes carefully, and rarely stay longer than a few hours. Fires are forbidden; noise is a death sentence. Many who enter never return, and those who do often carry scars—physical or otherwise.
No faction claims the Quarantine Verge. It is too dangerous to control, too cursed to cleanse. Even the most brutal groups treat it with wary respect, skirting its edges rather than pushing inward. The Verge stands as a reminder of failure—not just of medicine or order, but of hope itself.
People say the city’s heartbeat stopped here.
And if you listen closely, they swear they can still hear it—slow, wet, and wrong—deep inside the ruins.