"The mission was simple: die well."
---
The rotors screamed overhead, their blades slicing smoke-streaked air. Beneath them, in the ruin of what had once been a city, 001 stood alone — seven feet of engineered muscle wrapped in tactical armor that was rapidly melting from the plasma fire.
His visor was cracked. His pulse was steady. His orders were clear.
> "Warbreed Unit 001: Final Objective—Viral Core Detonation. Success condition: Mutual destruction."
A hundred meters ahead, a spire of biomechanical flesh twisted into the sky, twitching like a severed nerve. The Parasite Seed had bloomed. It pulsed like a heart, black tendrils writhing, birthing infected abominations from its womb-like hollows. Each one a former human.
001 flexed his fists. The neural inhibitors in his brain buzzed softly as he activated the kill-switch built into his chest. The voice of Mission Control filtered into his left ear.
> "You're the only one left, 001. No backup. No evac. You know what to do."
"Copy," he said. Calm. Almost bored.
He sprinted forward — faster than any human should move — slamming into the first wave of corrupted. Bones shattered under his fists. His reinforced knee cracked an infected's skull. Bullets bounced off his skin. His blood was a cocktail of regeneration, chemicals, and fire.
They overwhelmed him anyway.
But he reached the spire.
And as their claws dug into his neck, he looked upward at the horror he'd come to kill and pressed the detonator inside his chest.
> BOOM.
---
Darkness.
But something lingered.
A voice. Not human. Not machine.
> "Recalibrating host… transferring core."
001 should have died.
Instead, he fell.
---
Somewhere else…
Pain was the first thing he felt. Then cold.
Then the wet crunch of a broken tree branch beneath his back.
He gasped — not from pain, but surprise.
His lungs worked. His heart beat. But this wasn't his body.
He sat up slowly, scanning the environment. Thick, dark trees surrounded him. Black leaves. Purple mist. No signs of infrastructure, no satellites, no signal. The air reeked of metal and fungus.
He looked at his hands — bare, calloused, younger.
Muscles shifted beneath skin that wasn't augmented, yet stronger than any baseline human.
No armor. No HUD. But then:
> [SYSTEM ONLINE]
[CORRUPTION CORE INTERFACE BOOTING…]
[SYNC RATIO: 4%]
What the hell?
He stood, breathing deep, taking stock. He was naked. Vulnerable. Unarmed.
He didn't panic.
There was movement.
Growls in the mist.
Predators.
001 moved. Instinct kicked in. He leapt sideways as something lunged from the shadows — a massive wolf-shaped creature, its fur rotting, eyes glowing with magenta rot. Its flesh twitched unnaturally.
The thing wasn't alive. Not truly.
Another came from behind.
001 grabbed a branch, snapped it, ducked, rolled — jammed the wood through one's throat, then turned and crushed the other's head with a well-timed heel kick. Blood splattered his face. It burned. Not acid — something deeper.
The first wolf thrashed, convulsed — then its core pulsed in its chest. A black orb. Glowing.
001 stared at it. Then without hesitation, he reached in and tore it free.
> [CORRUPTED BEAST CORE DETECTED]
[ABSORB?]
"…Yes."
> [Core absorption begun… Initiating mutation...]
[Trait Acquired: Feral Instinct]
[Trait Acquired: Kinetic Tendons]
[Warning: Mutation Index 1%]
He staggered. For a moment, he felt the wolf's blood in his veins — its hunger. Its rage.
Then it passed.
He stood taller. Stronger. He could hear better now. Smell more. A tree 20 meters away had a dead bird in it — he could smell the rot.
This wasn't Earth.
This wasn't Hell either.
It was something else.
A brutal new world.
He grinned, just slightly.
"I died in one jungle… and woke up in another."
He turned toward the mist.
More howls echoed in the distance.
001 welcomed them.
---
End of Chapter 1