Quite the opening, no?
It would seem Prometheus has no direct hatred of humanity, they’re just in the way of his conquest.
But how logical is it to wish for something so impossible, the complete order of everything?
When the virus infects the entire planet, will he look up at the randomness of the stars in disgust? Will he try to extend his order into the expanse of space?
----
Having already sifted through the memories of his host, Prometheus shifted his attention to the motor cortex, and observed how the human body functioned.
Finding it unnecessarily contrived, Prometheus simply opted to operate the body by telling the muscles how to move himself.
He began clunkily crawling across the floor, horribly deforming his host’s body. The purple patches glowed with intensity and purpose.
Prometheus went from crawling to grasping at objects and pulling himself, before he finally adopted a hunched-over walk, and then straightened his back.
Remembering a certain human invention, Prometheus whipped his head towards the scientist’s bathroom and looked in the full-body mirror.
Mutated patches of skin pulsating rhythmically across his body.
Currents of blood cells frantically supplied oxygen to parts of the body.
The pale scientist was practically transparent, now glowing with a faint purple light.
Prometheus’s expression switched from enrapturement to disgust as his eyes came across patches of the body that were still red and blotchy.
He deliberately infected those areas first, and now his skin was an even, deep purple, swirling with clouds of black.
He shed his hair and smoothed over his face, for he didn’t use those pitiful balls of nerves and vulnerabilities to sense his surroundings, his cells told him everything he needed to know about the space around him.
Organs, shattered from Prometheus’s attempts to walk, looked hideous with all of their irregularity and lumpiness.
Beyond that, they were completely obsolete now that a superior lifeform had taken control of this body.
And so, with a wave of his hand, and a pulse of his will, he contracted all of the muscles in the body, evacuating all of those pesky lumps of function and flesh.
And now, he sensed his reflection in the mirror.
A figure standing exactly 180 centimeters tall, completely devoid of skin and organs. The surface of his body was a pristine system of muscles, telegraphing their movement as it was willed.
This figure had no face or identifying features, he appeared as the template which all of humanity was built off.
The figure was enchanted by the perfect order of it all, before he noticed himself getting tired for the first time. His cells had been working overtime, and he had been too distracted by making the perfect body to notice they were rapidly losing their supplies of energy.
He clumsily stumbled to the windowsill, his body slowly losing form.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
His journey couldn’t possibly end here, could it? There was so much left to do!
He grasped onto the plants by the windowsill and propped himself up, gazing as the city outside of his window. Soon, all of it would be his to level, and then rebuild with perfect efficiency.
Unfortunately, that day would have to wait, as for now he needed to figure out a way to survive this immediate crisis.
He looked at the plant in his hand.
Each of its cells seemed to breathe in a way like the human body.
He grasped at this saving grace and tried to implement the structure of the plants into his own cells.
It worked, but far too slowly for him to regain enough energy to stay awake.
And kept trying, rapidly depleting his already-waning energy supply.
Finally, he screamed in rage, each of his cells vibrating crazily, before Prometheus stopped moving entirely, each of his cells dimming.
And there he laid, reached out to the sky.
***
It was already a hectic day at the police station.
A major gang had been busted at their headquarters, and all of the members dispersed throughout the city, wreaking havoc in their path, trying to escape.
It was in this environment that an operator got a call from 4 individual people surrounding a certain room in an apartment complex.
They all recounted the same story.
Shrieking.
Vibrations.
Squishing.
A scream.
Silence.
The smell of a blood, as well as some strange chemical.
Due to the biohazardous nature of the call, forensic chemists as well as police, both in hazard suits, were dispatched to the scene.
They, as is part of any chemist’s toolbelt, brought an air pollution sensor.
The entourage walked into the room of the deceased scientist; no part of their skin exposed to the atmosphere. The air pollution in the room was unthinkable. If they didn’t have their hazmat suits on, it would be as if they were in a room at 100% humidity.
One of the chemists felt their suit press against them gently. Noticing the draft, the chemist looked in towards the direction it came from.
It led to a room with a couch, a plant, and a window.
The window had been opened.
Not noticing anything strange about the open window, the chemist elected to close it to not allow any of the chemicals in the room to escape.
If he had looked closer, perhaps he would’ve noticed the purple fog on the window, or the condensation droplets on the windowsill.
The team collected samples of everything from the splattered organs all over the bathroom, noticing that there wasn’t nearly enough blood for it to have been a whole person, to the air, and sealed the apartment from public access, before heading back to the precinct.
----
As the chemists and police came back from their expedition, so did another couple agents responsible for tracking down the scattered Arista gang.
The thug they had brought in was covered in purple patches, and a brand of the Arista crime gang.
He lethargically stumbled into the station, without even the energy to resist arrest or yell.
The thug was taken to the interrogation room and shoved into a chair.
The police noted that they picked him up while he was distracted by growing patches of purple skin on his body.
It was near an apartment with something that looked like smoke coming out of it.
Normally, the police would quarantine a guest with a foreign virus, but the man responsible for interrogating was far too proud for those measures.
He simply covered his nose and mouth before walking into the interrogation room.
“What the hell is covering your skin, kid? Is this Arista’s doing?”
“I don’t know, pig.”
“Some never-before-seen virus came from the sky? And then what, it started talking about your lord and savior?”
“Do you think I would lie in this state?” The thug spat. “I can barely fucking walk and the family has scattered to the wind.”
“When did you notice the patches appear?”
“Arista has been hectic; I don’t have time to check out every inch of my skin. It could’ve been any time in the last month. Perhaps the Aris-“ The latter end of the thug’s sentence was interrupted by the ceased movement of his mouth.
His mouth simply stopped moving, and he lost control over it. Unbeknownst to the police officers, the still-dormant Prometheus had infected the thug’s cerebellum, responsible for muscle movements.
The only sounds he could emit were the ones generated by vibrating his larynx, which also calcified shortly afterwards.
It’s strange for a virus to announce its presence so obviously, as it’s so easy for the host to notice.
The police, with their experience, immediately connected what he was about to say with something that Arista gang would rather not be said.
Could they have already invented remote nanobots that lobotomize and gang members if they let something slip?
The only explanation they had was this one.
They threw the practically lobotomized thug in a cell at the precinct.
As the police turned their back on him, his eyes glazed over, the pupils turning into swirling clouds of black and purple.
They shuttered.
***
Sorry to interrupt your story, friend.
I suppose at this point I should explain the fundamentals of consciousness.