I remember one day I was sitting in class, being bored and wanting to do anything but be there. I was around fourteen at the time, and the teacher was explaining some biology.

  "The theory of evolution states that a species is born after many generations of natural selection, by which the best-adapted individuals of a species get to carry their genes on to their offspring, and in turn, those who are less adapted have a higher chance of being removed from the genetic roster. In layman's terms, it's survival of the fittest and whatever kids they have." The teacher was making it very apparent that she didn't want to be there. "Knowing this, it is not wrong to say that you and a monkey share great-great-something grandparents."

  This, while true, doesn't really make you think much. I was just staring out the window, hoping the teacher got a hit of hypotension and let us off for the remainder of the hour. But when you're facing a problem that really applies Darwin's theory, all you can think is, "Where the actual fuck did that ten-meter abomination fucking come from!?"

  The beast was an absolute unit. Its forearms were my height and about three times as thick as I was. It was like the zombified version of George from Project Rampage with a little worse temper.

  It didn't appear to have eyes, or maybe I couldn't make them out from all the pustules and just pieces of rotting flesh on its head, but it did have a mouth.

  "Ayla! We need to guide it away from here! Its weight could collapse the substructure of the base!" Said Plague.

  He was right; the beast was slowly making its way to us. I had to think fast. I had an idea then.

  I ran to the side, unhooked the saw blade from my arm, and threw it at the beast. That got its attention. It slit part of its cheek open, revealing the grotesque row of decaying teeth it had, and it roared in anger.

  "Ayla! Throw these down its throat!" Plague tossed me two of his cure grenades. I hovered them and pulled the pins before throwing them. One of them didn't make it in as the monster swatted it out of the way, but the other one flew true. Smoke began pouring out of its mouth. It roared and began bucking wildly like a scared animal. It acted just like any other animal, even though it was a mutated monster. However, the grenades didn't do much. After the smoke cleared, down the beast was still standing. The grenade did nothing more than anger it, and it charged at us.

  It's hard to describe the feeling that a ten-ton monster charging at you causes, but it definitely isn't happiness. At every step the ground shook; it was making my head vibrate. I had to do something before it plowed over me and Plague. But my options were limited. I sure as hell couldn't lift the thing, and I couldn't move myself out of the way; it had been one of the first things Plague had tried to see if I could do. Time was running out, and quickly at that. My sawblade could have done a little, but a flimsy cutting disk couldn't stop a beast that big. That left only one option left: I had to stop it by blocking its path. The only things around were the big antenna dishes, which were right where I needed them to be.

  I focused hard; I did everything I had to do. I imagined exactly what I wanted to happen, and I heard metal screech and groan as the big dish began tearing itself from its massive hinge. The thing finally came off, and it struck its target beautifully. The sight was beautiful, but the noise wasn't. It sounded like a ship colliding with a building. It felt like the world was ending, and it was then I realized just how strong I was. I had torn a thirty-meter satellite dish right out of its hinge, and I had killed the beast with it. I, I, I had done that. The beast was definitely dead; its head was almost completely crushed and sliced by the radio grates of the antenna.

  However, this victory still didn't explain where that thing had come from, or really anything about it.

  "That's what I could sense before; I'm glad I overestimated it." Said Plague.

  "Overestimated? You sensed a ten-ton monster and overestimated it?" I asked.

  "It felt like more," he answered.

  "So let me get this straight. You sensed an even bigger monster and still decided to go on with the mission?" I asked.

  "It was you who pushed me to keep on, and if I had only sensed this then I wouldn't have had a sliver of doubt you could take it on. There was something more, Ayla. Something that would have made you cry on sight." His eyes narrowed down, and then I realized that he had known I could take this thing on, but what did he really sense? What could have been so much worse than this? "Ayla, c'mon, let's go get the others." He said.

  And so we did. We traversed the entire substructure again, this time a little more warily, as I had blown holes through the floor and probably compromised some things, but it was mostly uneventful.

  The others were exactly where we had left them before, except for Tyrone, who was now managing three screens at once.

  "Tyrone, how long until we have connection?" Asked Plague.

  "About two minutes. Whatever you guys did up there messed up one of the relays, and I have to divert coms through the other ones, but none—I can handle it, cuz." He answered.

  Mary and my brother were relieved to see me. Mary threw her arms around me the moment she saw me.

  "I thought you were dead!" She shouted.

  "Why? You know I'm too stubborn to die."

  "Because we heard hell up there. What happened?" Asked my brother.

  I hesitated to tell them; perhaps it would be better for them to stay in the dark about this one. But they deserved to know.

  "It was a monster. Ten meters tall and absolutely terrifying. And the noise was me dropping a satellite dish on it."

  They were both speechless, either from my feat of strength or from the fact that there had been such a behemoth.

  "I'm glad you made it, though." Said Mary, and to prove a point, she put her lips on mine.

  "Woo!! We in this bitch!" Exclaimed Tyrone. "Plague, I found the files. I'm going to look for his face now. It shouldn't take long."

  I was intrigued to see how he would do this; he would have to manually look through hundreds of thousands of logs to find a match with the vague image we had. I guessed that Markus had somehow transferred my memory of the guy we were looking for to Tyrone. I scooted over to look at the screen, and to my surprise, Tyrone was typing furiously. He was typing what seemed to be gibberish. A combination of random numbers and letters. But then he put the text through an image maker, and out came a perfect recreation of the face we needed. He had somehow managed to transcribe his mental image to a computer-readable file and then typed the file in manually in a matter of moments. He really was gifted, holy shit.

  The computer began overlapping potential matches onto the screen until it found a perfect match.

  "Dr. Henry Slone! That's our guy!" Shouted Tyrone,.

  Plague was also watching the screen avidly. He had a genuine smile on his face now. "Everybody, good job." And that compliment felt like I was being congratulated on winning the Olympic Games.

  Donn came over to see.

  "Hey, isn't that the guy we saw at the café the day of the outbreak, Ayla?" He said. To all of our shock, he somehow remembered who that guy was.

  "Creepy guy; he gave you a weird look when he passed our table. I didn't like him. I remember he went into the kitchen after that."

  "You remember!?" I asked.

  "Yeah, what of it?"

  "Donn, this guy started the infection! It's because of him that the world ended!" I said. Donn shrugged, but Mary had a stone face on. She was looking into the soul of that man like she was trying to choke him with her mind. Her eyes were glued to the screen, and she had turned pale.

  "That guy killed my brother..." "Was" was the only thing she said.

  The mood shifted quickly. What had been a joyful success had now turned into a grim silence. That man was responsible for killing so many people, people who had the potential for greatness. The human race would probably never recover from this, and all because of him. It was at that moment that I realized the weight of his actions.

  I put my arm around Mary, trying my best to comfort her. She accepted my embrace and hugged me with teary eyes. She sobbed into my neck.

  Everybody stared sadly at her. To think moments ago she had been fearlessly disobeying orders and was now reduced to a crying mess.

  I held her tighter to me, scared to let go of her in case she disappeared.

  "Ayla, please." She muttered in between tears. "Please promise me you'll kill him! Promise me you'll give him the same mercy he gave my brother!" Her voice was now a raw cry. And then her floodgates opened. A steady stream flowed down both her eyes, flowing to my shirt. But I didn't mind; I couldn't be so selfish as to mind.

  "I promise I will, and if I can't, then I promise you will." I leaned my head on hers; I too was getting teary-eyed. I couldn't tell if I was crying for her or for the fact we had successfully completed the mission.

  It was still hard to believe that this guy had done such monstrosities; there must have been a really good reason, or maybe he was just a really talented psychopath who had managed to make the god virus in his garage, who knows. The only thing I knew at that moment was that I wouldn't stop at anything until that guy was suffering and begging for death.

  "C'mon guys, let's just go back home." Said Plague. When he passed beside us, he put his hand on my shoulder; it felt good. I was finally beginning to trust him; I now saw what a good guy he was.

  Everybody followed him immediately except for Mary and me; I needed some time alone with her.

  "Ayla, thank you so much for everything." She said. I didn't know where she was going with this.

  "Mary, I..." I was at a loss for words; that was where I was.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "I'm so sorry! I'm such a fucking failure of a person!" She started crying harder. She had a lot on her chest. "All I ever do is fuck up! I almost got us all killed before, not to mention how I let my brother die."

  I held her tighter. "Mary, let's just go. And you're not a failure; you're the most amazing person I have ever seen. You're also strong, pretty, smart, and witty. Look, I know you're sad; I would also be if I had gone through half of what you did, but that doesn't mean you're worthless. I love you as you are. But it hurts to see you like that. Please." I said. This was a matter that would have to be discussed further, but not there.

  I stopped hugging her and took her by the hand; I led her out of the place.

  Once on the surface, the others were far up the hill where the truck was, so we had to hurry. Once up the hill, we saw little of note. The truck was there, now slightly illuminated by the rising sun. That reminded me of how tired I was. It hadn't felt like it, but we had actually spent more than six hours in the base. We all slowly boarded the truck, now without Briggs's squad, as they had already left with the wanker core. The mood was bleak; we were all too tired to care about anything, and the only one who seemed fine was Plague, but it would be stranger if he wasn't.

  Mary sat next to me, her head resting on my shoulder. The truck roared to life, loud as always. But I didn't mind; I had more important things to think about.

  The trip was uneventful; we arrived safely to the town, and I had to bring Mary over to the flats, hovering her as she had fallen asleep. She was surprisingly light. All I wanted to do then was sleep. My brother opened the door to our house, and we both went to bed. I laid Mary on the bed, I took off her jacket, and she quietly snored. I got into bed next to her and immediately dozed off.

  I had a nightmare, but not the kind I was expecting. I found myself walking through a crowded white hall, with windows that showed an overly fake cityscape. I immediately knew I wasn't above ground, or at least I didn't think so.

  The hall was white, and there were people dressed mostly in lab coats; some were wearing safety suits and respirators, the kind you see in movies. I kept walking; it felt like I knew the layout of the place.

  "Morning, Dr. Tomb!" Said a bearded man as he passed me. Wait a minute, Dr. Tomb? That was my surname! But it couldn't be. Could it be that I was seeing the future? As I continued walking, I saw a receptionist using a CRT monitor, so it wasn't the future. Was I seeing the past? But if it was, then it must have been the far past. My mind was too cluttered to make assumptions then. I continued walking, guided by a gut feeling. The place felt like a maze.

  I eventually reached a small lab, where I found a woman there; that woman was my mother.

  "Morning, Richard," she said.

  "Morning, Lisa," I said.

  Richard and Lisa were my parents' names. I was officially watching one of my father's memories.

  "Have you started testing strand delta?" I asked while changing into the lab coat. There was also a mirror there, and I confirmed it was my dad whom I was watching.

  "Yeah, but it's not promising at all. I don't even know what Slone wants with this thing." She said. By the looks of her and her voice, she seemed to be in her late twenties, about five years before she had my brother.

  "I've been trying to wrap my head around what it could do, but it doesn't match up with anything." My father, or I, said.

  "And yet we still need to work on it when we could be using our time for actually useful things, like a cure for cancer. But no, we have to develop this weird strand instead." My mother answered. After my father changed, he went to look at a couple of glass cages with lab mice in them. All the mice were doing their thing, simply hanging out, probably bored half to death. They all had a label on the glass. My father stopped to look at the one with a big delta on the label.

  "Lisa, how long ago did you introduce the strand to the subject?" I asked.

  "About five minutes ago, why?" She answered.

  "And did you check up on it after?"

  "No, it was too short of a time for the strand to take effect."

  "Yeah, you might want to come take a look at this."

  Because what was inside the cage wasn't a mouse. It had stopped being one.

  White rotting eyes, red flesh instead of skin, and several times bigger than its mates. It was now a mutant, a freak of nature crafted by these people.

  My mother came over to take a look, her face turning pale when she saw it.

  "Oh god, so this is what the thing's for?"

  "Maybe it was a fluke. Do we still have some strand delta left?" I asked.

  "Yeah, but we don't have any spare mice; they've all been assigned a different compound." She answered.

  "I really don't care; this is the furthest we've ever come. I'm not letting this go by as a mistake. Which of these mice hasn't been exposed?" I asked.

  My mother went to a different mouse, this one labeled "gamma," and she tenderly picked it up and brought it over.

  "This one, this one is clean."

  "Put it in the fume hood." I said.

  "Are you sure that's wise? Can't we just use the cage it came in?" She said.

  My father stopped to ponder for a moment and nodded. While my mother held the helpless mouse, my dad went to get the polycarbonate cage.

  Once ready, they both got into position. I was holding a silver EpiPen-looking thing with a very small needle on the end, but it held compound Delta instead of adrenaline. My mother held the mouse, and my father injected the strand into it. They quickly placed the mouse back into the cage, and it seemed fine.

  "Hmm, maybe it was a fluke after all." I said.

  "Yeah, seems like it." My mother answered.

  But then, the mouse began screaming its high-pitched screech. It began convulsing, and its skin began to melt; it was turning. Watching the little thing turn into a hideous monster was really disturbing, even for my parents. Halfway through, the mouse froze up and turned over dead.

  My mother's face was pale, and I could clearly see she was in denial of what had happened.

  "What have we done? What have we made!?" She sounded panicked.

  But before either of the two could do anything, a man entered the lab. It was Slone.

  "Progress report..." He said before locking eyes with the two monsters, one seemingly dead. A smile crept up his face. "Optimal, it would seem."

  "Sir, what is the purpose of this thing?" I asked.

  "Complete genetic makeover. Observe." Slone came up to the cage and pointed at the dead animal. But it wasn't dead. Both my mother and my father saw as the rotten chest of the monster began rising and lowering, slowly but surely.

  "This 'thing,' as you call it, has the potential of doing anything. The sky's the limit here. Imagine, no more cancer, no more disease, no more death." He put his finger in the cage, and the mouse immediately tried to bite it. The man laughed.

  "You two, move on to testing this strand." Slone handed them a floppy disk.

  Dusk came around to wake me up. My sleeping schedule was fucked front and back. The sun was setting, and I felt rested. Mary wasn't there, though. I felt a heaviness in my chest; I was worried about her. I also needed to ask my brother some things. I went out of my room and found them both watching TV.

  "Good evening, Ayla." Said Donn. They were watching some old anime from the shelf; I couldn't recognize it off the top of my head, though.

  But I couldn't worry about that then; I had more pressing issues.

  "Donn, where did Mom and Dad work at?" I asked.

  "I think I once heard Dad mention something about some test results he had to analyze, but now that you mention it, I don't think they ever told us. Why the question?"

  "Just curious." I lied.

  But before I could ask any further questions, I was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  We were all startled; whoever had knocked did so hard. I went to open the door.

  It was Plague standing at the other side, with the most stressed expression I had ever seen on him.

  "Ayla, you need to come with me right now." He said, dead serious. I was still wearing the military pants from the night and my vest. But whatever this was, it couldn't wait a moment more.

  "Ok, what happened?" I asked as I passed in front of him. I was also barefoot, but I couldn't care less.

  "I can't tell you." He sped ahead, and my stomach fell to my feet. Did the internet go out? Did something break in the facility? We took the stairs, basically running down them. Once outside, he speed-walked straight for the community park, where the HQ was. Lots of thoughts were pouring into my head, most of them bad.

  We reached the door to the museum, and then I understood the issue. One of the glass doors had a hole in it right where the door handle was. Somebody had broken in.

  "Who?" I asked.

  "Wish I knew." He opened the doors, and I saw the carnage. All of the displays were overturned or ruined, every single drawer had been emptied, and there were hundreds of papers littering the floor. "Somebody broke in while we were gone and had a look around."

  "Look around for what?" I asked.

  "Information on you, I guess. Other than that, this place held info on the other towns along with a log of every idea or theory on the infection." He said.

  "Held?" I asked.

  "Yes, held, as in the past. All relevant papers are gone, and the hard drive on the computer was corrupted, but the log shows that someone extracted a lot of info off of it." He made his way to the room; he had debriefed us about the operation. I followed.

  "Ayla, I think you can understand what this means."

  "That we are back to square one?" I said.

  "Not only that. There's a mole among us. Don't ask me who; that's what I'm trying to figure out." He said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I found a small security camera. "What about the security footage?"

  "That's what I was going to touch upon now." He left to turn on the projector. What I saw was shocking.

  "Pay attention," said Plague. The footage was from the very camera I had noticed. Everything was fine, no cuts, nothing. I saw the seconds tick on the bottom as the camera displayed the time of the recording. Suddenly, like a faulty video game, everything appeared in the air like it had spawned out of thin air. Every single paper out of the drawers on the many tables used for displays appeared in the air at the same time, and then all fell and sprawled all around.

  But the most interesting thing was that the camera's footage was smooth, fluid, and uninterrupted. One second it was all fine; the next it was chaos. What? How? And who? But most importantly, why?

  "That's not all, though. Follow me." He said. I was confused by everything.

  Plague walked into the lab, which was also a mess. But it wasn't as bad as the rest.

  "Ayla, do you know what the universe exists for?" He asked.

  "Umm, it was chance, right? Why do you ask?" I said.

  "No, the universe as you know it was created as a test. An experiment." He said.

  "And why are you telling me this?" I asked.

  "Because I've discovered something very, very peculiar." He went to a corner where all of the machinery was plugged in; it was full of cables and completely inconspicuous. He reached somewhere I couldn't see, and I heard a click. Suddenly, the monitor of the spectrograph machine lit up and showed a computer interface, which wasn't what should have been there.

  "Remember when I explained to you and showed you your strand of the infection?" He asked.

  My heart was thrumming. "Yes, why?"

  "Remember how I couldn't tell what made it so special? Or rather, what composed that one genome of your strand that made it different?"

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "Ayla, as you may already know, I am a scientist. I've dedicated my life to understanding the material world and how to exploit it to create the deadliest diseases ever. It was always done by rearranging existing matter into different shapes, proportions, components... But I never contemplated the idea of making my own matter. Through countless repeated tests and analysis, I found that the primordial god responsible for creating everything in existence left repeating patterns in his creations. Basically, all matter can be predicted. Every single element on the periodic table and those that could theoretically exist all share a few key similarities, both in composition and behavior. For example, every single element on the periodic table will be annihilated by antimatter, but that's thanks to the protons and neutrons. What makes you special, that one little thing in a tiny protein, is different." He explained.

  "I'm sorry, but are you saying my strand holds antimatter?" I asked.

  "Don't be stupid; if it did, it would be annihilated instantly. What it's made of... is uncertain. It's a new particle, well, I don't even know if it can be considered a particle at this point. Basically, it doesn't belong in our universe. Ayla, imagine matter and antimatter as colors on the wheel. A proton would be red, and a positron would be blue or green, basically opposite on the wheel. Well whatever that thing is, it's not on the remaining opposite, and it's not green. If light is electromagnetic radiation, and as such colors too, then this would be gravitons, or basically a similar concept executed completely differently."

  Ok, wow. Holy shit.

  If you had told me that this guy was going to tell me that when I just met him, I would have believed you and simply walked away from him, but now that I know this guy doesn't fuck around, holy shit. It was true.

  The implications of this are infinite! My strand held matter that didn't belong in our universe? Or better yet, there could be matter that didn't exist in our universe?

  "Plague, then what is this?" I asked.

  "If the Higgs boson is the god particle, then this thing is Azathoth. This thing is so above anything it simply shouldn't exist. Ayla, this particle makes energy." He said. He was getting more excited by the moment. "Do you know what that means?" He asked.

  "That it breaks the laws of physics?" Because as we all know, energy can't be made or destroyed, just transformed. But it ticks off. If this thing shouldn't exist, then it stands to reason it should do impossible things.

  "No, Ayla, no. It transcends them. And you know what that means?"

  I shook my head.

  "So do you, my dear. So do you."