Chapter 0: Two Twins Two Patient Zeros

  Novaterra

  2:47 am, It was a stormy night with thunder and lightning, a crimson full moon watched, waiting.

  DeLuca Military Research and Development Site: Delta 9, Underground Facility

  DeLuca was contracted by the world government to create a new line of

  soldier to end the civil conflicts taking place.

  They called it the Contagion: Neuro Dominant Reconstructive Agent, CNDRA for short.

  A new reality.

  The kind of atrocity designed in the dark. Created not to destroy life, but to rewrite it.

  Two test subjects. Two twins.

  They kept the twins in separate containment rooms. The blood that bound them couldn't be separated.

  The infection made sure of that.

  Matthias’s transformation was not a scream—it was a symphony of tendons splitting and skin unraveling.

  His bones cracked open, like pressure-sealed steel bursting from within.

  Alyks screamed "Matthias"! His throught sore from the pressure.

  His spine didn’t just break—it rewrote its purpose.

  Matthias was the first to change.

  A memory flickered through Alyksanders mind.

  A fishing trip he and his brother shared when they were little.

  The world froze and Alyks relived the memory in triple time.

  Fade to Black

  The sun was beginning its descent, casting a warm, golden glow across the tranquil lake.

  Ripples stretched outward as Alyksander cast his line into the water,

  the gentle plunking sound mixing with the rustle of the trees around them.

  Matthias sat beside him, his knees tucked up, staring at the fading light with a wistful look on his face.

  “This place feels like it’s frozen in time, doesn’t it?”

  Matthias mused, fiddling with the old fishing reel in his hand.

  Alyksander didn’t reply immediately, his focus on the soft tug of the line.

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist here. No rules, no chaos—just us.”

  Matthias grinned, nudging Alyksander’s arm. “No chaos? You remember last time?

  You nearly fell into the lake trying to pull that monster fish in.”

  Alyksander scoffed but a faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

  “If I didn’t fall in, it wasn’t chaos.” He glanced at his twin and added, “You’re the one who ended up soaked.”

  “That fish cheated,” Matthias laughed, shaking his head.

  “No way something that big was getting caught without a fight.”

  They both fell silent for a moment, watching the sun dip lower.

  Alyksander’s line bobbed, the faint sign of movement below the water. He stayed steady, patient.

  Matthias broke the silence, his voice softer now. “You know... no matter what happens, we’ll always have this.”

  Alyksander glanced at him, eyebrows raised slightly. “The lake?”

  “No, idiot,” Matthias said with a chuckle. “Us. Being twins."

  "That means no matter how messed up life gets, we’ll always be brothers." "Nothing can change that.”

  Alyksander turned his gaze back to the water, as though he was considering the weight of Matthias’s words.

  Then he nodded, his voice even.

  “Yeah. You’re right. Twins means brothers. Always.”

  The bobber dipped hard, the fish taking the bait.

  Alyksander reacted instantly, tightening his grip and bracing against the pull.

  Matthias scrambled to his feet, cheering him on.

  “Don’t let it win, big guy!” Matthias yelled, laughing as Alyksander’s jaw clenched,

  his muscles straining against the weight of the fish.

  After a tense struggle, Alyksander hauled the fish onto the shore, the creature flopping wildly.

  “Got it,” Alyksander said, satisfaction in his tone. Matthias crouched beside him to admire the catch.

  “That’s gotta be the biggest one yet,” Matthias said, his grin wide. “See, this lake really does belong to us.”

  Alyksander glanced at him, then clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, it does.” There was a pause, and then he added, “I love you, Matthias.”

  Matthias hesitated for only a heartbeat before responding. “Love you too, brother.”

  Ribs popped out of alignment, splintered into growths that clawed through skin.

  They reached out like grasping fingers.

  Two skulls fought for dominance. One male. One female.

  They twisted out of a single neck, fused and screaming. Their mouths opened in unison, shrieking in stereo.

  Eyes like boiling pitch glared in every direction—sightless, yet somehow still watching.

  The Twins.

  Security flooded the facility. Scientists screamed through intercoms. Soldiers opened fire.

  Matthias moved through it like a storm through leaves. He heard every heartbeat, every shallow breath.

  Though blind, he saw in ways that flesh had forgotten.

  He turned, suddenly, across cracked bulletproof glass, Alyks watched.

  Their eyes locked—though Matthias’s were eyeless pits, blind and black, something behind them still found Alyks.

  Matthias stepped forward, the two mouths moving in perfect, haunting synchronicity.

  The male and female voices overlapped, resonant and hollow.

  “We were twins,” they whispered.

  A truth. A dirge.

  Alyks froze, paralyzing his body, his heart. Time stood still.

  "Matthias"! His throat sore from the pressure of the scream.

  The breach began with a sound.

  Alarms wailed. Red lights bled across white walls. The Twins exploded through steel doors like paper.

  Flesh met bullets, and bullets met flesh. Neither won.

  The infection poured outward. It had spread too quickly, and engulfed the city in it's grasp.

  One minute, containment. The next—chaos.

  Soldiers turned on one another, flesh sloughing from bones.

  People screamed into phones that stopped working.

  And the plants? Still. Untouched.

  They stood silent, unbothered by the blood that soaked their roots.

  Trees didn’t decay. Leaves didn’t curl. Flowers bloomed bright against the carnage, defiant.

  Vines draped down apartment balconies and wrapped around lampposts with a calm, almost indifferent poise.

  The infection skipped them as if programmed not to touch them.

  Almost as if the oldest life on Earth had already survived worse and earned its immunity.

  Green surged across collapsed ruins, weaving beauty through horror.

  Blossoms would soon bloom from corpses mocking the dead with color.

  Alyks knew something was wrong.

  He felt it the moment they put it in him. But it didn’t break him like Matthias.

  It waited. Studying.

  His body didn’t convulse—not yet. But inside, something moved. Something watched.

  His skin prickled even though though there was no breeze. His breath shortened, quickened.

  All the while needing more oxygen, he felt like he would pass out.

  His pupils dilated in darkness that no longer felt dark.

  Mathias stood over the ruins of the lab, wind tearing through firestorms of ash.

  The parasite had been patient.

  No more.

  It began very slowly, delicately. A twitch in his left arm. A flutter behind the eyes.

  Then came the pain. His brain lit up with static.

  The moment the parasite entered, it didn’t announce itself.

  It unpacked like a virus with a blueprint.

  An invasion at the molecular level.

  His neurons flared, signals crashing into each other like stars. Thoughts tangled, then snapped into clarity.

  Synapses burned hot with alien awareness. Heat blistered his spine.

  As the infection threaded through his central nervous system.

  Mitochondria—those quiet engines of his cells—were hijacked, rewritten. New instructions. New blueprints.

  A reprogramming at the foundation of who he was. Every cell in his body became a war zone.

  Proteins were torn apart and restitched. DNA strands unraveled, re-coded by something older than science.

  Cellular scaffolds collapsed and rebuilt themselves with stronger walls, faster communication.

  His red blood cells morphed, adapted to deliver more oxygen at exponential speed.

  White cells evolved to become hunters, not defenders.

  Muscles convulsed violently as fibers tore and regrew in layered webs, spiraling like helix's.

  They wrapped around his bones tighter, more compact, like steel cables under tension.

  His skeleton reformed itself. Compact fractures splintered then healed seconds later with calcified reinforcements.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Joints realigned, rotating on newly formed axis. Tendons stitched into precision machinery.

  His heart stuttered once. Stopped. Brain-death, total. Then—boom. Each beat was thunder.

  A shock-wave rippled through his chest cavity.

  It became the metronome of something reborn.

  The skin followed, sloughing off like ash as new dermis spread over his frame—fibrous, armored, reactive.

  Veins turned obsidian, crackling faintly with latent energy.

  And then—his eyes. They boiled in their sockets. Melting color and memory.

  Blue-hazel collapsed inward into a darkness so dense it seemed to pull light into it.

  Twin black hole suns burned with golden rings that spiraled with slow, sentient hunger.

  His pupils were no longer human. They were voids. Windows to a supernova waiting to happen.

  He collapsed, panting. Head dizzy, the room spinning. He felt incredibly sick to his stomach. He looked around the room.

  He couldn't hear much outside of his containment but it was time to find out. He gather himself together when suddenly there was a tickle inside his skull.

  "What, is this? Who are you? What are you?" Alyks said angry and confused. He could feel something just under his skin.

  The pathogen said "Um, This is new is what this is, did they not clue you in? That's great. Leave it all to me, I mean I've only been alive....what.....30 min.?"

  "Look kid, They injected you with me. Good news your not an incredible monstrosity that even your mother couldn't recognize. Bad news, were gonna have to probably fight our way out of here."

  Alyksander said "Your combined with me? My bodies entirely different. What should I call you? Not gonna lie you a heck of a Buzzkill."

  The pathogen pulsed in his skull, curious, testing its new consciousness.

  Buzzkill responds “Magnificent. I like the name. Buzzkill.”

  "I was being sarcastic."

  "I do not know what that means."

  Alyks sighed. “Sarcasm is when you say something seriously, but it’s actually a joke.”

  "Why wouldn't you make the joke funny?"

  "Because that's what separates sarcasm from a joke."

  "Well, I like 'Buzzkill'. I’m keeping it."

  The city fell.

  Buzzkill whispered rapid-fire in his head—calculations, trajectories, blood pressure spikes, heartbeat rhythms.

  “Thirty-seven hostiles within 82-meter radius. Entry point: 2 o'clock."

  "Steel door—1.6 meters wide, standard hinge resistance 240 newtons."

  "Target One: 12 meters. Gun: Modified AR-15. Weak points: clavicle notch, left knee—slightly favoring a limp."

  "Your odds of surviving without me: roughly adorable. Let's go.”

  Alyksander stretched his muscles feeling the range. "

  Alyks launched forward. He moved faster than the world could register.

  He didn't move. He exploded. Bodies blurred around him. Shots rang out but he was already past them.

  “Incoming right—no, your other right. Duck, twist, spin, elbow to the face. Wow, you actually caved in

  a face with that. Noice."

  He grabbed a broken piece of rebar, drove it through a soldier’s armor.

  “Distance from next target: 7.3 meters. Weapon: flamethrower. Suggestion: disarm or become BBQ.”

  He hurled the corpse forward, using it as cover, dove low, grabbed the flamethrower’s fuel line and ripped.

  “Flammable. I like your thinking.”

  Explosions tore through the hallway. Alyks burst out of the fireball, charred but grinning.

  Buzzkill’s tone wavered—trying to process.

  “That… felt good? Is this satisfaction? Sadism? Wait—are those mutually exclusive?”

  "Let’s dissect that later. Preferably with actual dissection.”

  More enemies. Shotguns. Grenades. Blades.

  Alyks danced through them like a conductor in a symphony of violence.

  “Four hostiles at 3 o'clock. Dual-wielding machetes. Cute."

  "Target at 15 meters on rooftop—sniper. Wind resistance 6 kph west. Jump angle 38 degrees."

  "Air time: 0.82 seconds. Land like you meant it.”

  Right then, as Alyks positions himself to leap. Then—amid the flames and fractured steel—Alyks saw her.

  Utterly broken, sitting amidst the ruins. Her sobs carrying a desperate plea for his return.

  She cradles the severed half destroyed head of someone important to her.

  It was hard to based upon the destruction and distance what gender the head was.

  Alyks momentarily halts.

  Caught by the raw grief unfolding before him.

  Buzzkill, his tone laced with concern and just a touch of humanity.

  "Whoa, hold on--what do you make of that Alyks? That woman's not just another casualty;

  She's drowning in sorrow. I mean, I've seen plenty of carnage, but not like this.

  Explain it to me could you?"

  Alyks, softly, wearily and with great care explained the best he could.

  "This isn't a glitch in the system, Buzzkill. It's unadulterated grief--heartache at its rawest.

  She's mourning everything that was, every memory, every promise made that is now shattered.

  It's not data you can file away, it's a soul being ripped apart."

  A brief pause followed as Buzzkill tried to process all this information and the weight of the statement.

  Buzzkill, curious, but puzzled asked as gently as he could.

  "Hold on--“Wait… a soul. You said soul. What is that?”

  "How can something like a soul shatter? Is it fragile like glass?"

  Alyks, taking a steady breath, was trying to choose his words carefully.

  "A soul isn't something you measure with numbers or can reduce down to a formula."

  It's the very essence of who we are-our memories, our emotions, the bonds that define us.

  When it breaks, it's like losing a part of yourself that can never be put back together."

  Buzzkill absorbed the explanation for a moment, his tone softening further.

  Buzzkill, finally starting to understand.

  "So when I see that, it's not just a tragic moment in the chaos.

  It's the rupture of everything that makes a person whole. I can sense the loss.

  Even if I can't fully grasp its intricacies."

  Alyks nodded slowly, refocusing on the woman.

  "Exactly. Look at her-she's not becoming part of some statistic.

  Shes living through the collapse of a life that had meant everything to her."

  There's a moment of shared silence between the two as they both regard the grieving woman.

  Buzzkill was touched, but returned to his earlier tone.

  "but how does one move forward after witnessing a loss like this? How do you, or anyone"

  keep going when your heart feels so shattered?"

  Alyks voice lowered, becoming more resolute."

  "Moving forward isn't about erasing the pain, Buzzkill. It's about carrying it with you."

  "A constant reminder of what mattered, of what was lost."

  Every step you take isn't a denial of that loss but a defiant act,

  a commitment to rebuilding a future where that love isn't forgotten."

  Buzzkill asking softly but full of wonder. "So, the grief isn't just a weight dragging

  us down--it also becomes the spark that drives us onward?"

  Alyks met Buzzkills tone with a fierce tenderness.

  "Exactly. It's messy, unpredictable, and it nearly breaks you sometimes.

  But every scar, every tear, tells a story of survival and hope. It reminds us why we fight.

  Why we refuse to give in and surrender to despair."

  Buzzkill, etching this lesson into it's memory said warmly.

  "I understand. I'll hold onto that--a reminder that what we feel, even in all it's chaos.

  It gives us strength. Now, let's keep moving. We carry their memory and our owns resolve

  with us as we go forward.:

  Alyks, preparing himself to leap.

  "Right, Onward--we honor every loss by fighting for a future we'll build anew."

  Alyks hurled himself into the air, flipped over the ledge, landed in a crouch behind the sniper.

  “Boom. Assassin landing. Ten out of ten. No notes.”

  A machine gun turret opened fire from a wrecked Humvee. Buzzkill hummed in his brain, slightly off-key.

  “Turret velocity: 950 rounds per minute."

  "Suggested route: left flank, leap 2.1 meters onto burned-out sedan, springboard over top."

  "Midair grab for pipe—swing. Classic action-hero move. Impressively cliché.”

  Alyks did exactly that. Crashed into the turret. Ripping it from its mount and stabbed it through the gunner.

  “You're basically a blender with legs. A violent, sarcastic blender.”

  “Keep talking,” Alyks muttered, “and I’ll unplug you.”

  “Now that’s just rude. And technically impossible. I am your brain.”

  “Target approaching from behind. Machete again. Ugh, what is this, 1984?"

  "Spin, knee, dislocate jaw. Done. Beautiful. Brutal.”

  They moved into the open city. Fires burned. Smoke curled into the air.

  And still, the plants—untouched. Vines curled peacefully along alley walls, brushing against blood-soaked cement.

  Trees swayed, green against ash.

  Even in carnage, nature held its ground.

  Unchanged.

  Eternal.

  Watching.

  “Three more rooftops occupied. One rocket launcher. How fun. Evade in 3… 2… now."

  "Caught it with telekinetic instincts. Kidding. You’re not that special. Yet.”

  Alyks spun letting the rocket go and it exploded destroying the rooftop it came from.

  Alyks ducked into shadow, grabbed a fallen shotgun, and went to work.

  Shells barked. Limbs flew. buzzkill laughed in his skull like static wrapped in sarcasm.

  A grenade clatters along the ground coming to a stop at his feet. He kicks it into an upstairs window.

  BOOM! Shattered glass and debris fly in every direction.

  “Thirty-one more hostiles incoming. That's a target-rich environment. You lucky bastard."

  "Let’s paint the town red. Very, very red. Let's Go."

  "Yeah. No matter what happens… we’re still brothers.

  The city burned.

  And the war had just begun.