by skyorrichegg
Just so you know the title of your question is very spoiler-y as the patient zero is not something that is introduced until well in the game... you should have probably titled your post with the month of the spoiler.As far as I can tell you are not understanding rules in some way, but I'm not sure which way that is, or possibly I am not understanding your problem. Yes you have to discard 2 cards to enter a fallen city but if you really wanted to you could then stay there and gain cards you could then discard to find the patient zero... as far as I remember you don't need every card of that color to find them. But even disregarding that, there are multiple ways to get around your predicament... you could put a military base in that city to allow military teammates to get in for free from another military base (you should do this anyway as it allows your searches for patient zero to be much more efficient) and then when you have someone in there you can use the dispatcher to get others in there. Also if you still have the soldier you could use him to discard cards to get in that have equipment on them and then re-pick them up to use them to find patient zero. The soldier is really, REALLY good at doing searches if you use him well.
I think military bases will be the key to helping you getting in there effectively... if I recall there is an event card that lets you play one down for free, or you might have to take the operations expert. But I don't think you should be allowed to ignore the rule; there are options for you guys.