Zai
Wednesday, Undecember 7th, 2016
The stench of rotting bodies was becoming unbearable. I couldn’t cremate them all, and burying strangers was out of the question. The city was a mass grave, and I wasn’t about to play undertaker. My focus was on clearing my immediate surroundings—dragging bodies and abandoned vehicles out of the way to carve out some semblance of order.
I didn’t handle the bodies with care. Why would I? They were just obstacles now. Legs dangled, arms flopped, and heads lolled as I hauled them like overstuffed trash bags. One girl, though… she caught my eye. Even in death, she was stunning. Long hair that shimmered even in the dull, apocalyptic light. For a moment, I wondered what her life had been like. Would she have liked someone like me? It’s pathetic, I know, but that’s where my thoughts went. Fantasizing about a dead girl. What’s my life become?
By the end of the day, I’d cleared a decent radius around the lab. I even dragged in a generator I found in the back of a construction truck. The building I’d chosen for my lab was phenomenal—solid walls, high ceilings, and plenty of space. There were apartments upstairs, which I also cleared out. I knew the electricity wouldn’t last forever, so solar panels were next on my list.
When I finally stopped to rest, hunger hit me like a freight train. Out of nowhere, I craved crab. Why? Maybe it was the scarcity. The world had ended, and fresh seafood wasn’t exactly going to be on the menu anymore. I decided to indulge while I still could.
I’d looted some cooking gear earlier, along with a cookbook, so I set up a makeshift kitchen. The city still had electricity for now, so I used it while I could. A crab feast in the middle of the apocalypse felt absurd, but hey, life was absurd. Might as well lean into it.
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Thursday, Undecember 8th, 2016
The next morning, the lab was up and running. I’d scored a fridge, a stove, and—because why not?—an ice-cream machine. Comfort in chaos, I guess. The solar panels and batteries took effort to haul back and set up, but they were essential. Without power, my lab would be useless, and I needed it fully operational if I was going to figure out what caused this catastrophe.
After hours of tinkering and setting everything up, I sat down to eat some leftovers from the night before. The crab was just as delicious cold, but something about it… tasted different now. My appetite was insatiable, like I couldn’t get enough of it. By the time I finished, my eyelids felt heavy, and a strange warmth spread through my body. I chalked it up to exhaustion and crashed on a cot in the corner of the lab.
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When I woke up, something was wrong. My arm… it felt off. Heavy, stiff, and… armored?
I sat up and stared in fascination. My right arm had… changed. It wasn’t human anymore. Instead, a massive crab claw had replaced my forearm, its sharp edges gleaming in the dim light. A wave of awe gripped me. I flexed my fingers—or tried to. The claw snapped shut with a loud clack.
I scrambled to my feet, knocking over the cot. My breath hitched as I stumbled to the mirror on the wall. The rest of me seemed normal, but this… this was amazing. My mind raced. Was it the crab I’d eaten? Had it… done something to me?
The logical part of my brain surged forward, taking control. Calm down, Zai. Think. Analyze. I moved my new limb, testing its range of motion. It felt natural, almost instinctive, as if I’d always had it. The claw was strong, too. I crushed a metal pipe with ease, the steel crumpling like paper.
My initial awe deepened into an obsession. This was everything I’d ever dreamed of—a transformation, evolution in its rawest form. If this was a mutation, had it been triggered by the apocalypse, or had I… adapted? Survived and thrived? My mind raced with endless possibilities, my obsession ignited. The answers I craved could only come from one place: my lab.
I spent the rest of the day running tests. Blood samples, tissue analysis, anything I could think of. The results were… confusing. My DNA had changed, integrating some kind of foreign material. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
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The crab’s DNA… had merged with mine.
The implications were staggering. Was this a fluke, or could I control it? Could I… choose what I became? My mind raced with possibilities, but one thing was certain: I wasn’t entirely human anymore.
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Elias
The rain began as a gentle drizzle, then intensified into a steady downpour, washing away the dust and debris. But it couldn't wash away the image burned into my mind: Kara, still and silent in our bed. I stared at the gaping hole in the roof, rain cascading through, a shiver tracing its path down my spine. I did that. The raw, destructive power… it thrummed within me now, a constant, unsettling presence.
I left the house, the rain quickly soaking through my clothes. Answers. I desperately needed answers. What had happened? What had I become?
A deep weariness settled over me. I longed for rest, a long, dreamless sleep. But Kara… she would want me to keep going. For her sake, I can. I took a shaky breath, and a pulse resonated within me, a subtle vibration deep in my chest. It felt like a call, a beckoning. I followed it. Taking my neighbor’s car—mine was a wreck, a testament to my grief—I drove towards the source of the pull. The nuclear power plant. A grim understanding settled over me. I knew what I had to do.
Returning to the plant felt like returning to the scene of a crime, my crime. With each step closer to the reactor, the pulse in my chest intensified, a growing pressure. The rain ceased to be a bother; it evaporated before it could touch me, the air around me shimmering with heat. All I could see were flashes of Kara: her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she was truly happy. Each memory was a fresh stab of pain, tears welling up only to instantly vanish as they met the heated air.
I entered the plant, the control room beckoning like a macabre altar. I bypassed the emergency systems, overriding the automated shutdowns. With a heavy hand, I manually rerouted the cooling systems, diverting the water flow. Then, with a final, deliberate action, I forced the control rods to retract completely. The reactor groaned, a low, ominous rumble that echoed through the empty plant.
The red emergency lights began to flash, casting long, distorted shadows across the ruined control room. Memories of Kara flickered through my mind, vivid and painful. Her silly little dance, the one she did when she was happy… my body, almost unconsciously, began to mimic the movements, a grotesque parody of joy in the face of impending doom. At least I’ll see her again. The thought was a hollow comfort, a desperate plea to escape the unbearable reality.
Everything turns white. I can't even describe the sound. It was beyond any noise I'd ever heard, a deafening roar that seemed to vibrate through my very bones, tearing at the fabric of reality itself. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone, replaced by an oppressive silence.
But I wasn't gone.
I felt it first as a searing heat, an inferno raging within me, consuming me from the inside out. But instead of burning, I felt… stronger. The energy that had been a faint hum before was now a raging torrent, coursing through my veins like molten metal. The reactor’s energy, the raw, untamed power of a nuclear explosion, was flowing into me, becoming a part of me.
My vision cleared, and I saw the devastation around me. The control room was gone, reduced to a crater of twisted metal and smoldering concrete. But where the reactor core should have been, there was only a swirling vortex of energy, a miniature sun contained within the earth. And I was at its center, absorbing it all.
The heat intensified, becoming almost unbearable. My skin glowed with an intense blue light, radiating outwards in waves. The air around me shimmered and distorted, the rain instantly vaporizing as it fell within my radius. I felt my body changing, adapting to the immense energy I was absorbing. My muscles tightened, my bones strengthened, and a sense of invulnerability washed over me.
The memories of Kara, which had been flashing through my mind, began to fade, replaced by a sense of overwhelming power. The pain of her loss was still there, a dull ache in my heart, but it was now overshadowed by this new, all-consuming force within me.
As the last vestiges of the reactor's energy flowed into me, the swirling vortex disappeared, leaving behind only a blackened scar on the earth. The intense heat subsided, replaced by a steady thrum of power that resonated through my entire being. The blue glow around me dimmed, but it didn't vanish. It lingered, a faint aura tied to my every heartbeat.
I looked at the crater where the reactor had been, its edges jagged and raw, and felt no remorse. This wasn’t just destruction; it was transformation. The old Elias, the one who clung to grief and pain, was gone. Whatever I was now, it was forged in the fires of loss and born anew in the energy I had claimed.
I stepped forward, testing my strength with each movement. The ground beneath me cracked under my weight, a reminder of the raw power I now carried. The rain, or what remained of it, never reached me, evaporating in the heat that radiated from my body.
The silence that followed the explosion was deafening. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had parted, revealing a sky filled with stars. The world was still broken, scarred by whatever hit the planet and the nuclear blast, but I was different. I was no longer just Elias. I was something else, a monster. I was a vessel of unimaginable power, a force of nature. And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would use this power to find those responsible for Kara's death, and for the destruction of the world I knew. I would use it to make them pay.