The bright street lights above flickered and fizzled out, as the man convulsed on the hot pavement below. His hands twitched and his feet kicked up and down in sporadic rhythm. The sickly black gloop that spilled out of his mouth and ear steamed and solidified as it hit the ground, pooling up around his broken and naked body.

People screamed out, and panicked footsteps went fleeing away from the man. He tried to move his eyes, but they were fixed in place, staring into the sky. He could not move his arms or hands with any precision, nor could he exactly feel his limbs or face, and he knew instantly without any doubt that he was dead. At least, he was supposed to be dead. Of course, that made sense now, of course he couldn't move his eyes around. The mortician must have glued his eyes in place somehow before… before that man with the needle woke him up again.

He called out, trying to form words, but instead just let out an animalistic howl. More unseen people shrieked out and he could hear their footsteps retreating into the night. There he lay, staring at those glowing flickering orange halos above. His body writhed and jerked on it's accord, his teeth chattering and his hands clenching up and cracking, slowly he began to lift his head from the black pool of gore underneath him. His neck snapped and crunched as he looked to the streets in front of him.

Red and blue lights glimmered in the distance, getting closer as he watched on. The old abandoned and burnt out brick buildings on the block in front of him were familiar, with the rusted broken chain link fence, and the remnants of an overturned automobile. The man shakily turned his head to see further down the road, opening his mouth as the car with it's rotating lights rushed toward him. He knew this place, he knew that car, if only he could remember who he was.

The man lifted his broken and twitching hand up to the car as it screeched to a halt. The headlights from the car blinded the man, and he groaned out, producing a sound from his lungs that sounded like an out of tune bagpipe. He sputtered out and let more of the horrible black gloop out of his mouth, shivering and crying as the car door opened.

Heavy mechanical footsteps marched on the pavement, and a tall shining mechanical man came to a stop in front of the headlights, looking down at the broken dead man on the ground. The metal man looked him up and down, his human nose and mouth showed no fear or visible empathy, yet he slowly knelt down and placed a black plated hand to the man's shoulder.

"Who did this to you," asked the mechanical man, with a deep, almost monotone voice. "Where did you come from?"

The man squirmed and brought his hands up to the metal man, he tried speaking again, the black slime poured from his mouth and nose and he choked. The metal man pressed one of his plated hands down on the man's chest, and brought his other hand to his shining helmet. The dead man could almost see into the visor of the helmet, looking into human eyes that retained every bit of humanity that he himself no longer had.

"Murphy to dispatch. Send one hazmat to Belmont on my coordinates." The metal man patted the dead man on his forehead. "Contact Lazarus, code 10-54. Restraints are recommended."

"Vest!" The dead man spat out more foul black liquid and convulsed as he strained to speak again. "Vest! Vest!"

Murphy grabbed onto the man's twitching hand. "Stay calm, you have suffered a traumatic event. Medical professionals are en route to collect you." His monotone voice broke for a moment as he held the man's hand. "I will find who did this… I'm sorry."

The man gave Murphy a squeeze of his hand, and his entire arm cracked with the rigor mortis that spread throughout his body. "Vest," said the man, as he tried to motion with his other hand. "Doc… doc…"

"A doctor is on the way." Murphy looked down at the man, tracing the body with his eyes. "I will find out who you are, and contact your next of kin."

The man tried to give Murphy a gracious nod, but his neck cracked and his jaw stuck in place. "Vest," he said one last time. With that, the man shuddered and stopped moving. The black fluid stopped flowing from his mouth, and a glowing green sludge began dripping from the back of his head.

Detective Alex Murphy raised the man's head up, inspecting the small puncture hole. The iridescent green goo gathered at the man's neck, and hissed as it hit the black puddle that surrounded the corpse. Murphy zoomed in on the unknown compound, and archived it's image to his files. He let go of the reanimated corpse's head and stood up, scanning the area for any clues to the man's identity or to the method of his murder.

A shadow fell over old Detroit. Echoes of his own past crept around him, like haunting specters and old skeletons that no living man would ever want to recall. The screaming of dead men had once been confined to OCP's experimental labs. Now however, the morbid sound drowned out the usual roar of the nighttime world.

Even the criminals were staying in doors, and most other police officers were grateful for this, happy even. Old Detroit was quiet, the devil had come to town, that was the word on the street. The devil was here, and he was bringing the dead back to life. The screaming dead, the screamers right out of hell.

It was enough to chill the blood of the most vile and feared crime lords of the city. Even they felt the need to hide sometimes. The day belonged to the citizens, the night was the dominion of the criminals, but the entire city was now the gruesome playground of the Reanimator.

The city would need to depend on Robocop once again, to fight a foe the likes of which had never be seen. Rumors spread through the old city about zombies and misshapen monsters. It seemed that those rumors and fears were true.

Alex Murphy had risen from the dead many years ago, encased in his robotic frame, living on with a computer brain. Was it mere coincidence that the Reanimator had come to Detroit, conducting his twisted experiments on the dead? Perhaps his aim was to replicate the process that OCP had perfected in Murphy. Or perhaps, there was something darker in his intention.

Maybe he was just a madman. Or worse. Maybe he was a genius.