“In the early days, everyone was scared. Or angry. Or just plain old crazy. I think those were the days we really got to take the measure of each other when the dust settled we kinda had no other choice.”
Excerpt from ‘The Aftermath: Consequences of the Breaking’ by Hamilton Jones
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Max woke feeling better than he ever had before, which was wrong. He should feel terrible, his dad had died, the news had been fed a bunch of lies about it and he was knocked out by the planet vibrating harder than a crappy massage chair, but he felt phenomenal. Groaning he pulled himself out of the chair he passed out in, noting the lack of an aching neck despite the angle it was at. Standing up resulted in a predictable outcome, a rush of black as the blood drained out of his skull that quickly reverted, replaced instead with a heady rush of confidence. The world was his for the taking, he could do anything he wanted and no one could stop him, he could even kill someon-- WHAM!
Now normally WHAM is not how someone ends a psychotic fantasy, but Max was a little freaked out by where his thoughts had gone and found comfort in the grasp of the concrete wall conveniently located about half a meter away. The confusion set in almost instantly. What had he been thinking? Why did he think he could stop it by smashing his head into a wall, and what on EARTH made him think it was a good idea even if it DID work, and why was there a head-sized hole in a wall of 8-inch thick concrete? The realization hit him only moments later. He felt great, better than ever, and he had just smashed his head through 8 inches of concrete, not into, but through, and it didn't hurt at all. Max quickly activated his lense, flicking to his news app as fast as he could.
“BLEEEP BOOOP BLEEEP… This is the Emergency Broadcast System. A Major Catastrophy has struck your area. Please remain in a safe location until more information is available. More details will come through shortly. BLEEEP BOOOP BLEEEP… This is the Emergency Broadcast System-” The audio cut off as he switched away, flicking to his social hub to see if anyone else knew what was up. He was met with an error code, he hadn’t seen one since he was a kid, it was a little esoteric, and the code didn’t seem to say much, just 3 numbers. 404.
He shrugged, it must have been a holdover from an earlier period of the net, not unusual, but notable. This did, however, leave him with a problem, he had no information, no real way to get information, and it kinda sounded like there was screaming outside. Max pondered on his next move as the screaming continued, under normal circumstances, he would be charging out to help with whatever was going on, but he felt no need to at the moment, which in and of itself should have worried him. It did not.
Finally deciding on calling his cousin, who was a marine stationed nearby, he pulled up his dialer app and then yelped as his lense sparked and cracked, falling out of his eye in the process. Which sucked, it was a model that cost nearly $1000, and yet he was not overly bothered. It was at this moment he saw the light, particles of every color of the rainbow and some that were mind-bending in their variations swirled freely through the air, tiny currents drifting to and fro seemingly without rhyme or reason. He reached out to touch one and it drifted closer, following his hand before seeping into the skin and vanishing.
With the strange swirly energy came a rush of heady emotions, causing Max to seize up as he realized what he was missing. Since he woke up a few minutes ago he had not felt a single shred of any true emotion, none besides arrogance anyway. Somehow he had ignored the fact his dad was dead, he had ignored the screaming people outside, and he had ignored the fact that his REALLY expensive lens had nearly blinded him. There was gonna be hell to pay for that one, that lense had been 4 months of savings. He needed to figure out why people were screaming, and why it was getting louder. With a little hesitation, he glanced out the window and saw a scene out of a nightmare. People were twisting in the street like they were made of taffy and slowly being pulled into the wrong shape. An older lady by the street was crying as her arms grew longer and hairier, her face pulled into a misshapen muzzle.
Max ran to the bathroom, checking himself in the mirror carefully. He was still normal. Still human. Something was VERY wrong, and the glowing energy stuff had to have something to do with it. Reaching out, he mimed pulling a strand towards him, and to his astonishment, it worked. The energy seemed to react to gestures, or was it his thoughts? He concentrated on the energy moving towards him and it acted the same as it had before, slowly drifting over to him before settling on his skin and being absorbed. With every bit of glowy stuff, he absorbed he felt himself return to normal a little more, with a tingling rush running up his spine.
Sprinting out of the apartment he ran to the woman, now collapsed on the ground, barely recognizable as the person she was. To his relief, he wasn't affected by the stretching horror thing, so it was probably related to something about her. Thinking quickly, he mentally pulled on some energy, envisioning it floating into her. To his delight, his idea worked and her twisted shape became a little more human, not a lot, but a little. It took him almost an hour to pull the energy to her, and when she was fully human again she looked very different. Where before she had been a woman who appeared to be in her late fifties, she now appeared to be barely older than him, if he didn’t know better he would have said she was in her mid-twenties.
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Mind boggled, he poked her a few times, trying to wake her. With a snort and a wild flap of her arms, she awoke, jumping up as she saw Max.
“What happened?!” she practically screamed the question at him, eyes wild with panic.
“You, like, mutated into a creepy werewolf thing!” Max’s reply was swift and almost as panicky. “If you have a lense in, pull it out and tell me if you see the glow stuff.” It couldn’t hurt to try right? The woman looked at him cautiously before pulling out her lense and gasping loudly.
“It’s everywhere!” Her voice was filled with awe, the sight truly must have been something special to her.
“As far as I can tell,” Max began, figuring a rundown would be appreciated, “the stuff responds to thoughts or intent, if you want it to come closer it’ll get absorbed into your skin. That’s what turned you back into a human I think.” He paused for a moment. “This may be rude ma’am, but how old are you?”
“Highly rude yes, but if you must know I’m 62. though I don’t look a day over 40 it's true.” She joked sounding amused and scolding at the same time.
“Ma’am,” Max began, “I don’t know if you’ll appreciate this, but I think the glowy stuff made you younger. Like, the early to mid-twenties younger.” The woman’s hand went to her face, probably feeling for the wrinkles that no longer existed.
“Fantastic. Now my husband’s going to be grumpy and thrilled at the same time. Thank you for your help young man. I’ll be off now. If you ever need help, come to the bicycle shop on Havardo street. I owe you one for this.”
Max watched as the woman walked off, stunned and astonished at what he had witnessed. She had turned into a werewolf. There wasn’t really much else it could have been called, and the strange glowy energy had fixed her. Was that what the energy did? Turned people into monsters if they didn’t have it, then back to normal when they did? That made no sense! Why had no one seen this energy before, and why had no one turned into a monster before? Why didn’t he turn into a monster… Oh, he finally realized, he had turned into a monster. He became ridiculously strong and lost all his emotional capacity. In a way, that would have made him far worse than a werewolf. A werewolf people can see coming, but a normal looking person with the strength to crush concrete and a total lack of emotion? No, he was extremely lucky his lens broke on him, otherwise, he might have killed people.
Max withdrew into his apartment, concentrating on figuring out what was going on with this energy and himself before going anywhere else.
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Across the Atlantic ocean, the world was in chaos. Everyone saw the massive pillar of energy rising into the sky. Initial flybys showed it reached the edge of the atmosphere before spreading out, creating a shell of energy that was rapidly covering the globe. People had started to shift into horrible, mutated monsters of myth and legend, and Johann Halle had no idea how to fix it. Electronics had died quickly, sparking and in some cases igniting and self-immolating. Any vehicle made in the past hundred years was inoperable, their electronics destroyed and motors useless. There were assorted staff members sobbing in the other room as their transformations slowly reverted, the energy absorbed into their skin. He was president of the Greater European Union. He was in charge of nearly 20% of the population of the world and he was frozen. Unable to do anything as the world crumbled around him.
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In Tokyo, the streets were in chaos, millions of people sprinting around without any idea what was going on. If Hideo looked closely he could make out monsters from every mythos, every legend. Every region of the world and ancient religion dashing about and huddled in alleys. He had a job to do though. If no one else would help these people he would. He walked around handing people the leaflets he had printed, he had perhaps 200 left, his printer had started smoking after that, the cheap piece of crap. It was a simple piece of paper telling them to pull out their lense and pull the glowy stuff to them to reverse the change, then give the page to someone else. His life of being just another cog in the machine was over, this change meant something, and Hideo Naginta would capitalize on it.
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In San Diego, it was like the second coming of Comic-Con. People were streaming about like they had put on fursuits. It was a terrible thing to behold. Sandra Peterson didn’t mind, however. It was chaos, and chaos was when she got her best work done. While everyone else was busy freaking out about the end of the world, she was putting her new… Gifts, to use by relieving them of their wallets. The world was ending, what were they gonna use them for anyway?
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These scenes and more played out across the world. In the chaos that would eventually become known as the Breaking. The day the Seal had been shattered by the most ambitious project mankind had ever conceived.