Fiction. A girl faints in the Toronto subway. Her friends are taken to the hospital with unexplained rashes; they complain about a funny smell in the subway. Swarms of police arrive, and then the hazmat team. Panic ripples through the city, and words like poisoning and terrorism become airborne. Soon, people are collapsing all over the city in subways and streetcars and malls, always prompted, they say, by some unidentifiable odour. Alex was witness to this first episode. He's a photographer: of injuries and deaths, for his job at the hospital, and of life, in his evening explorations of every nook and cranny of the city. Alex is a diabetic, now facing the very real possibility of losing his sight, and he's determined to create a permanent vision of his city through his camera lens. As he rushes to take advantage of his dying sight, he encounters an old girlfriend. But now Susie-Paul is fighting her own crisis: her schizophrenic brother has been missing for months, and the streets of Toronto are more hostile than ever.

Maggie Helwig has published six books of poetry (most recently, One Building in the Earth), two books of essays, a collection of short stories and two previous novels, Where She Was Standing and Between Mountains. She is the associate director of the Scream Literary Festival. She also works for the Social Justice and Advocacy Board of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto.