Chapter 1, Manhattan State Jail

I had woken up not too long ago to a loud metallic banging noise just outside my confines. Ah, yes, I was in jail. I took a glance over to my left arm, sighing in thought as it morphed a sickly green, molding into a crimson blade, and then back to my regular hand.

Before the whole "apocalypse" happened, I was a demographic laboratory theorist. Eight long years of schooling, all in order to study the behavior in Homo sapiens, both by themselves and in populations of all sizes. I was analyzing the studies done by urban professors regarding the crime to economy relationship when what I believed to be a marvelous idea occurred to me. In areas where violent crime was next-to-none, the economy flourished, even with high rates of non-violent crimes. Even more-so than other areas where non-violent crimes exceeded the standard for that population and location.

It struck me like a ton of bricks, a fortress of insight careening upon me. Humans were the only noticeable species on the planet known to express wild, random, and unexpected outburst of vile anger and blood thirst. If this trait, this corrupt gene were to somehow be "removed" from our DNA... It was the breakthrough of the millennium, as simple as it was. Modifying the human RNA sequence to enforce evolutionary change into our species was thought to be impossible. Improbable. Asinine. Wasn't landing on extraterrestrial bodies such as the moon once thought of in this manner? If I had only knew how idiotic I sounded then when I see what I know now...

It worked. Worked like a charm. The genetically engineered virus I made, the Subdued Insidious Virus, or the S.I.V., was meant to change humanity, for the better. It changed humanity alright... It completely fucked the code over, if you could call it that. The virus was designed to target, minimize and or eliminate the Chaos Gene, the section of genetic code responsible for our outbursts of unsightly behavior. Due to moral dilemmas and conflicts, I was forced to be Patient Zero.

The virus, in aqueous form, was injected on January 1, 2025 as a memorial to the beloved "New Age", as well as the 75th anniversary of the founding of Astorus, the company in which I developed my Pandora's concoction. Others would have called it "research", but those people are dead now. In any case, the shot showed no signs in the beginning. No dramatic changes, no behavioral altercations. I was never a violent person to begin with, so how they were going to observe a change was beyond me...

It wasn't until three months later until something occurred. A colleague of mine and a favored lab associate came down with a terrible sickness. Immobile, he was the pale of insanity itself in his deathbed. No one could have linked this to the S.I.V., so it was blown off as an unfortunate happening. It wasn't until five nurses and two other patients in the hospital where he was staying at were mauled during the night did someone take notice that something was off.

It was all over the news. "Deranged patient assaults local residents of a hospital." The victims started showing similar signs, each beginning at different rates. With twenty-four hours, 119 individuals had been attacked by these psychotic and mindless assailants, resulting in a full-blown quarantine lockdown and an investigation conducted by the FBI itself. Ooh, case closed, right? Hell, I bet half of the globe wished that right about now...

I digress; I'm getting ahead of myself. No, due to the three month delay in the virus activation, it had time to mutate, become not what it was meant to be. It became airborne, and all the areas I had visited within the initial time period had been infected with the virus by me, just by simply being alive. The S.I.V. underwent a metamorphosis in not only transportation, but also in purpose. It didn't destroy the Chaos Gene. It nourished it, encouraged it. By the time the military realized it was a problem worth their attention, it was too late. The infection spread like wildfire, infecting town after town, city after city until in a mere two weeks America and half of Asia were lost to the "Green Flu".

It turns out that before it took over half the globe, my fellow scientists managed to place the blame upon my virus, and thusly myself. Placed on death row accused of genocide, 'cause I totally planned the damn thing to screw up, I was left to rot away until sentenced to death. Ha, that would have been funny had not the infection completely wiped out the town, including all judges, police, and any individual who wished my demise. Which was a lot of individuals, considering my accusation was deemed as national knowledge that the entire public needed to know.

So here I am, sitting in this jail cell, unable to voice my displeasure at the incessant banging noise coming from outside my confines. There's no one to talk to after all. In any case, I decided that sitting on my butt would solve nothing, and that looking outside might lead to something interesting. I was hungry after all...