"This world is filled with the greedy and the selfish, the dirty and the corrupt, the crook and the unclean. But it must not remain this way. Together, we shall make the world anew! We shall recreate humankind to be more powerful beyond your imagination! We shall liberate the you from your own darkness! But first, first we must start with the past. First we shall burn the old world to its ashes. And then, then we shall build a great monument to the future!"

- Anonymous

ooo

Boom!

The whole city shook as the beast of destruction raged through the buildings, knocking them whenever like towers of childish blocks. Shells bombed at it from dozens of different directions, their only affect to put blackened marks on its skin that healed within seconds. When it roared, all were on their knees to hear the mighty speak. Powerful blows blew apart military gates like paper, letting through mobs of other strange creatures. The city was falling apart.

"The giant has yet to slow down in its rampage across the city. Additional military assets have been called in to help with the situation." The screen flashed of a squad of high altitude planes. Bombs fell from their bellies like black raindrops. Then the reporter's face was back, a human welcome to the horrors of warfare. "In other news, the military has stopped the spread of the infection in central downtown, but much of the city lie in ruins. The northeastern sector of the city is rated safe from high risk infections."

And then the reporter went on to other matters, such as the standard precautionary warnings given by the government in this very special emergency and the rising infection levels in New York, Houston, Las Vegas, and honestly quite a lot of cities on both the east and the west coast. There was rumor that the virus had already spread beyond the border, though no one knew for certain.

Grunting, I clicked the TV shut.

In one of the most poor houses I have ever seen was the hideout for special people, like me. I did not fit in, however, as the biggest difference between me and these people was that they were here for a purpose. They claimed to work for a certain Order of Evolution organization, based somewhere in New York. Seeing how Ethan and I were like them, they took us in, and promised a safe trip to the City that Never Sleeps so we could meet the leaders of this group. But to be honest I thought they were a bunch of hooligans, following in the vain work to control the wild outbreak while on the constant run from the military. When asked, they refused to say why there was such hostilities between two factions working for the same goal.

I sighed, in both frustration and boredom, and walked to the sliver of a window that peeked out of this horrible basement.

Not only was I forced to be cooped up in a basement in fear of the day the soldiers came knocking, but I had to share it when a bunch of religious fools. From their talks I heard of an "archbishop" and a "creator." Both of them appeared to be influential figures in the society of the infected, and were indicated to be in a sort of high conflict.

"The creator has abandoned us, and now he just comes back with a complete wipeout of the human race?! This isn't how it works! I'll be damned if I ever saw him!" one had said.

"Yeah, but don't you think we should be at least respect the maker?" another had suggested, though rather weakly.

"He be a cursed bastard! We will pay no homage to a wild monster intent on destroying the world," the third one yelled. The resentment against the whatever creator was high. On the other hand, the archbishop was more liked.

"Blessed be his holiness. I only wish he found all of us sooner, or else we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Yeah. These Loyalists are getting bolder and bolder. Did you hear last week they freed the second god from a military facility in Houston? No small matter either. Infection rate hit 10% in a day and a half."

What a bunch of blind idiots.

My musings were cut short as a loud engine cranked to a stop near the front of the house. Uh-oh.

"We are leaving!" I yelled out in the general direction of the house. I was sure they heard me, as one of them hurried out with a piece of paper in his hand.

"You better," the man said as he took in the bare room of a basement. In his eyes I thought I saw something like horror. Then it was gone, and red filled the white spots. "And here," he stuffed in my hand the paper. His skin was burning hot, enough to bake a sixteen inch pizza to 425ᵒ without preheat. "Take this. We were originally going to smuggle you aboard one of those military transports they use to evacuate the injured, but now it looks like you'll have to find your own way there. This is the time and location of the departure. We look forward to your presence in New York." And with that he took off, towards the sudden yells and screams erupting from somewhere on the other side of the house. I looked at Ethan.

He shrugged. "We should probably listen to that guy. He looks like he knows what he is doing."

And we were hurrying, towards the front entrance.

The front door was a bad location to start our journey; because as soon as we poked our heads around a wall, a rain of bullets greeted us, followed by a "Grenade!" and a wild explosion which took out a chunk of the living room. We retreated back.

"Search the house! Leave no survivors!"

We had gone to the back of the house. Through the windows I saw more soldiers, lying quietly in the bushes, waiting for anyone foolish enough to escape through the back. When I pointed it out to Ethan, his face tightened. Another series of gunshots broke out in the front of house, followed by a terrible and inhuman screech.

We locked ourselves in a tight room and squished the door handle into a clump of dead metal. I stared at Ethan.

"Alright, alright, let me think." He rubbed his temples. The heavy footsteps, though however cautious, grew closer and closer with each passing second. I glanced worriedly towards the door and debated whether to put my ear against it. "Ok!" he suddenly exclaimed, making me jump, "here's what we need to do: we must make them think we're them." That bit confused me, which must have been evident on my face, for he exclaimed again: "it's a gift from the virus. It allows us to take on another's form!" He started pacing, agitated and excited. "Here, I'll show you!"

And then, with a spectacular magic trick, in front of my eyes his form blurred into a red mass. It writhed like coils of fleshly snakes, intertwining between each other in a big knot. When the red faded away, standing in his place was another man, different height, different skin, different eyes. I stared.

"If we can convince them we are actually them, then we not only get out of here alive, but also a free ticket out of the city! We can even go to New York and see what the fuss is all about!"

"But I don't–"

"You have to! I can't even imagine–"

The door crashed open.

I moved, faster than I ever have, in fear of my life and in the high of frustration. Closing the gap of fifteen feet in the blink of an eye, the soldier did not even have time to lower his gun before I grabbed his arm and jerked him heavily to the side. He would have let out a yell of pain, but already his head was deforming into a slurp of red goo, along with the rest of him. I felt a good night's rest with a slight case of visual sickness.

"Change!"

There were more footsteps coming, so quickly we could never escape them. In a panic, I held onto the drowning image of the dead soldier, and heaved, fusing him into me. He joined me, angrily demanding to be let into the peace of death, but I silenced him, and put on his form, his armor, his training. My body felt unnatural, and when I looked down, I saw myself in military gear, and the dead man's gun in my hand. Bloodtox.

"You find anything here?"

I snapped my head up. Standing there was the staff sergeant, peering at me from a trio of blue lenses. Behind him were more busy men, like ants skittering through the void house.

"No, sir," I steadily replied, remembering to act like a rock statue incapable of complex thoughts. He stared for a second, as if he could somehow see past my guise. We held this glass position for a full five seconds. Finally he just grunted, anticlimactically. However, before he could leave, he flew straight to the ceiling with a startled exclaim. I looked up to find a stream of red, which lazily dropped to the ground in a lump and rebuilt itself into Ethan, who grinned at me.

"Not bad, but we work on your acting skills. Now repeat after me: when a officer stares you down, don't stare back."

I ignored his comment. "Now what?"

"And now," he winked, "we use this new suit I stole and get us out of here." Once again before me he was gone, replaced by a dead man's decaying skin, so freshly preserved it will never be let go. Just like all the voices in my head.

ooo

We found the perfect spot overlooking the compound, a fortified ring of concrete walls and a metal gate, complete with high tower turrets which whirred in circles, scanning the surrounding streets for infected. Besides the ridiculous defenses, it was no less than an armory. Tanks were parked in neat rows, next to the green military trucks for transportation. Soldiers milled around in ordered formation and tight gait, carrying weapons from standard rifles to anti-armor rocket launchers. Two helicopters were parked on ground, along with another on a helipad on a low roof. Shells were being loaded into one of the tanks' barrels.

"This looks easy," I commented. Of course it was in no way easy. Three strange machines had been set up around the perimeter of the base. They resembled sorts of a stereotypical, mishap solar system simulator used by physicists, except for there were no planets, just a gigantic ring which rotated in circles and glowing a green light. I knew what they were. I saw them on TV, too. Viral detectors sounds safe when you are human, but rather a pain in the ass when you're not.

"Very easy," agreed Ethan. "We just need to take apart those detectors, and boom, we're free to go anywhere." I thought it was a rather wild gamble, until something far away caught my attention.

"If so, then isn't that our stroke of luck?" I nodded past the base. There a mass of red eyes slowly converged onto the base, which was in a frantic movement as every soldier ran to the assigned position. High pitched alarms rung loudly. The three tanks started with notable speeds, the blinking lights showering away in the orderly chaos as they rolled out of the iron gate. One let off a wild shot, which veered into the side of a building, doing nothing.

The infected hit the fort like a hammer.

"Brawlers," I heard Ethan curse under his breath.

The brawlers are terrible creatures. Somehow, the virus mutates a normal human being into a giant lizard-dog hybrid, and gives it claws and a mouth full of sharks' teeth. Their skin shared the leathery look, tight over bulging muscles and eyes were all gloweringly red with murderous intent.

The machine turrets blazed into the crowd with their automatic guns. The lead brawler tumbled into the dirt in a rain of crimson, though the one behind it quickly took its place. One leaped onto a tank and was blasted away by a mounted machine gun. The gunner swung around only to find another on the other side. His screams were eerie as he was dragged away.

"Now is the opportunity." I nodded and we jumped.

The ground-shattering impact of our landing from a full twelve story building was lost in the chaos of tank shells and monstrous howls. As we ran into the base, no one stopped us for identification. We were only another two soldiers, going to grab weapons to face the tide of apocalypse outside. The first viral detector was already going full on crazy from the mass of the virus outside, and we easily smashed it to pieces when no one was looking. The second was too confused. Its green light was yellow from the presence of distant infection. I shot it with a rifle before it could register our own marks. There was only one left.

"Fire at will!" The first creature that breached the iron gate was not a brawler, but rather a huge human, fifteen feet tall at least, its skin hanging by drapes on the exposed muscles and plates of bone covering it head to toe like an armor. Its blood-red eyes were terrible as its sharp blades for hands pulled it through the ruined gate. The thing was fast, too, so fast it blurred when it charged, but bullets were faster, pinning it back and throwing it out the door in a shower of blood. An earthquake roar was heard from far away. A tremor shook the earth.

I looked at Ethan's masked face. "That's not good."

"This whole thing is not good! The transport would be leaving right now if the base wasn't under siege!" he yelled over the noise. A rocket sizzled across the compound and landed amongst the viral creatures, blasting a hole in the wall of flesh, revealing for a brief second the tanks that still roamed before being blocked out by more bodies and bullets.

"Then why don't we just take the transport," I yelled back, making myself heard over the small war. He stared like I was crazy, and then looked at the helicopter parked on the roof, then back at me.

I thought he might tell me I finally lost my mind. Instead he grinned. "Then what are we waiting for?"

The fighting had progressed worse and worse. A big, fat, slug of an infected was pounding away at a tank, which in turn was blowing a hole through a pack of brawlers. Juggernaut, the thing was called, for its high density meat and its powerful blows. Amidst the army of flesh another one of the tall things climbed through the iron gate after a great wave of zombies, its height allowing it to tower over its viral brethren. A few bullets grazed its bone plates, and instead of roaring back as per standard infected procedure, the thing was absolutely silent as it almost flew at its target: a squad of marines still holding their position relatively well against a pair of brawlers. They were decimated.

"Quickly!" The helicopter was two floors up, which we climbed, for something had landed heavily on the metal ladder up and bent it out of shape. And that was when a soldier thought people shouldn't be scaling concrete walls like monkeys on vine plants.

"Hey!" Bullets blew dust from the walls into my eyes. Even as I flipped over the top, one struck my shoulder. The pain was instantaneous.

Bloodtox was a very powerful substance, developed in response to the first outbreak in Manhattan. Although a few months ago the chemical only caused extreme discomfort to infected creatures, it has since been improvised to not only set nerves on fire, rather burn away viral tissue. My left shoulder was on fire from the wound. As I slowed a fraction of speed in agony, another bullet burst through my knee, and I almost dropped.

"Hold on!" I might have screamed as someone threw me haphazardly into the open bay of the helicopter. Another stream of bullets pounded the metal walls, dinging like a loud and angry drum. And then the engine was up, the doors closing. I felt the heaviness of rising motion, and then a terrible roar, this time so close I thought we were going to be eaten. The radio transmission buzzed.

"Los Angeles high command, we have a hijacked–" Whatever was the later part of the message was lost as something heavy smashed into the ground, the shockwave was felt like an explosion, even so far up in the sky. Perhaps this was the end, because there was no escape now, not between the military and the giant monster. The burning did not go away on my shoulder or right knee, so instead I made them, by sinking into the eternal well with the others. Darkness closed over the world.

A/N

I would like more reviews than the pitiful few I am getting. It's hard to know what you guys want if you don't tell me! So tell me! So far, the plot is very flexible to fit in some random stuff. If you post suggestions, I will most likely not respond to them in case I give away possible spoilers (other than a "thank you"). However, you should know that every suggestion is being carefully analyzed by me and my editor to see if I can somehow incorporate it into the story.

Infected juggernaut and bloodtox introduced! Now you know why a few simple soldiers can beat the evolved with infantry rifles. Juggernaut is fat (I think we all know that one).

The tall thing, so far without a name (because I want reviews for suggestions on what to name it), is a new infected breed. It has blades for hands, and very fast. However, it is not as durable or as strong as the fatty juggernaut. Inspired by X-Men and Metro.

Shout out to ZeroAcception for his famed story When Bioweapons Collide! (And also for his continued support!)

To Kane: wanna guess what happened to Alex? There are hints in every chapter. Other nations are not the primary focus of this story. There will be little notes every here and there about their status (currently: low level infection around borders), but they can do nothing about what is currently happening in the States. As for Dana, she will play a minor role in this story. However, she is definitely NOT the same Dana from [Prototype 2]. Here's a sneak peek at my own notes for the story: "Affiliation: self, Alex Mercer." Bye to you too, but hopefully I will see you again.