Apocalypse: The Savior with System

The world is not what it used to be. Barely twenty years ago, earthly life was all about the internet, the latest in technology, rabid Korean pop music enthusiasts, and, every now and then, the occasional war. But after a deadly virus called UCL escaped a bioweapons facility run by terrorists in Central Asia, not even its creators were able to stop it or find the vaccine and cure. In a matter of weeks, the airborne killer infected more than half of the human population on earth. Death by this virus, however, was not so simple or direct. It stayed inside you, burrowed deep, and then festered with time and age until you barely resemble the humanity that you once were. A young girl, ten years of age, was watching it unfold as it ate away at the older woman she knew as Mommy. Mommy had been feeling unwell for many years now, hot to the touch and coughing all the time. As for Daddy, she was told that he would come back soon; he just had a job to do up north. She had never seen her father for the last six years. Many days ago when Mommy could no longer move one of her arms and had vomited all her food, they went to the hospital. They took Mommy to a room and didn’t come out for a long time. When she did, Mommy looked very gray. The two of them waited in another white room that only had a white table and white chairs. There were no windows, just a glass door. The doctor, a tall man in a white coat, came in and said something to Mommy. She could not understand what it was but Mommy started to cry. When they went home, Mommy cooked for dinner as best as she could and tucked her into bed, singing her to sleep. Such a voice Mommy had until she started coughing. Pretending to be asleep so Mommy would stop and just rest, she closed her eyes tight and imagined Mommy’s voice as it once was. Not like now, with Mommy screaming and rolling in bed for hours every day, her voice hoarse and painful to listen to. When Mommy gets tired, the screaming stops. But when she touches Mommy, Mommy starts screaming again. Yesterday, Mommy was so hot, her skin burned. Today, Mommy was so cold. And her skin did not look right. Neither did her eyes, which looked so pale and white. Mommy smelled really, really bad and she wondered if Mommy maybe had wet herself. Slowly she approached and laid a hand on Mommy’s head. Suddenly, Mommy opened her milky white eyes and grabbed her hands painfully tight. “Mommy! You’re hurting me!” she cried, looking every which way to run. She was alone in that house and she knew, there was no one else left in the village. Everyone had gotten sick or moved away: all their friends and all their family. It was just Mommy and her for many years now. Still, Mommy would not let go no matter how hard she pulled away. Then, the grip eased and she heard Mommy say, “My little queen. Run…away…run…don’t come back!” “But, Mommy! I don’t want to leave you!” she argued and when she tried to give her Mommy a hug, Mommy pushed her away hard. “No! Go away!” screamed Mommy as she scratched at her face and her skin came away with her bloody, dirty nails. “Mommy!” But nothing she said could make her Mommy listen anymore. With tears running down her face, she grabbed the small bag her Mommy always prepared for her, and ran away from the house and from Mommy, down the dark, empty streets and out into the wilderness that grew in the wake of the plague. The plague that someone made. And she vowed, as she scrambled up a tree to avoid becoming prey for the wild dogs of the south, that she will find every last bit of the smelly virus and whoever made it and kill it. Kill all of them. For Mommy.    ~~~~~     21 Years Later Los Angeles, USA   “Passenger Number 325 bound for Dallas, proceed to Gate 22! Passenger Number 325 bound for Dallas, proceed to Gate 22!” While the train terminal’s speakers boomed out his number, Paul Justinos blinked at his haggard reflection on the public restroom’s mirror where he’d been trying to wash away the headache that’s been bothering him for years now. Thankfully, the pain had gotten duller in recent months. Still, it was annoying, and dousing himself with cold water usually helped. He wondered not for the first time if it was because of whatever it was they gave him back in Pakistan. At the time he’d been cooped up in a holding facility for UCL virus sufferers and gladly offered himself as a test subject. Getting booted out of the military for getting infected and for other reasons besides made him rethink his purpose in life. Agreeing to the doctors putting in something in his body they only called “the system” seemed like a good idea, then. Only they never really explained what it does and why he was given it. Paul had to learn most of it on his own. It was like something out of a role-playing online game, a POV-sort of thing he last played when he was in his teens, with a panel full of controls only he could see. None of the other sufferers involved in the project had the system. He tried them all out, some done in grayscale which he could not access early in the project. The colored ones, like the navigation and map console, were readily available for him. Some elements were not for manipulation but were for information, like thermal levels and conversion levels. He supposed he should upgrade or get some stuff to increase them to maximize the full array of weaponry allowed him. That much he was told by Doctor Judith Merkel, the head researcher at the facility in Pakistan. During one of the demo sessions, he was placed in a skin-blistering sauna for two hours after which he was instructed to access his thermal and conversion level upgrades. They measured more than half of capacity. Then he was told to access the fire weapons in the panel, which had previously been in shades of gray, now all colored, though several more in the line-up remained colorless. He assumed it was because he had not yet reached full thermal and conversion levels. Nevertheless, he performed as told and managed to summon enough fireballs to turn anything from a cockroach to a full zombie into ash. But the sessions were always cut short because he fell tired easily. Dr. Merkel did say he would recover soon enough. How soon, she did not answer. He never saw her again after a year in that training or demo project. He only heard she was transferred back to America. Paul had just landed in Los Angeles two days ago from Pakistan. After those two days in a holding facility, he was sent to the terminal, to ride a train with 499 other passengers bound for the south, Texas to be exact, with him disembarking at Dallas. He hoped he could get there soon and finally, maybe, get some form of cure for the infection. Shaking his head at the navigation console and his very low thermal and conversion levels, he muttered, “Cooped up inside four walls for days, what do you expect, Paul?” With a shrug, he went out of the restroom and headed for Gate 22.