Smoke drifted between the broken buildings like fog rising from a burning sea.
In what was once the coastal city of Bayhurst, nothing remained untouched. Rooftops were torn apart. Streets were ruptured by claw marks and violent impacts. The air was thick with ash, silence, and the metallic smell of blood.
A low growl echoed through the remains of a supermarket drawn-out and slow, like something savoring the stillness.
A mutated elk its once graceful frame now bloated and armored with bone-like plating dragged its hind legs across shattered glass. Antlers had become jagged spears. Three yellow eyes blinked independently across its skull. It paused over a half eaten human corpse and continued chewing with mechanical indifference.
Across the city, these creatures moved freely climbing walls, burrowing through concrete, nesting in church bell towers and collapsed stadiums. They didn't communicate. They didn't infect. They just fed.
At an abandoned apartment complex, two siblings, no older than ten, huddled inside a crumbling laundry room. Outside, something massive breathed against the drywall sniffing, clicking.
A dog but not a dog its limbs were stretched like tendon wrapped stilts. Its jaws unhinged as it licked at the air with a long, fleshy tendril. From its ribcage protruded twisted bone ridges like insect wings. When it moved, it barely made a sound.
Across the globe, this was the new world.
In rural India, mutated boars with forward spiral tusks dug through refugee shelters.
In Alberta, Canada, herds of antlered beasts roamed abandoned logging towns, trampling fences and eating human remains like carrion.
In southern Italy, rooftops shook under the movement of bird like creatures with armored throats and jaws like cutting blades. They nested in cathedrals and stalked alleyways, eating anything slower than themselves.
From above, satellites showed empty roads, dark cities, fields torn by movement patterns that didn't match any known behavior. Surveillance drones returned only flickering footage: twisted shapes, erratic heat signatures, and the unsettling truth
These were no longer animals they were monsters born of a cellular lie.
Back at the research lab, Mariel sat alone in the comms center, fingers stained with ink and soil, eyes bloodshot. The others had gone quiet since the last evacuation order.
She stared at the screen in front of her. A new encrypted file had just arrived, marked urgent.
CDC INTERNAL: CLASSIFICATION UPDATE
She opened it.
RE: CRV-3 Reclassification
Based on field mutations, ecological destabilization, and inability to confirm a consistent infection vector, CRV-3 has been re-designated:
Biohazard Class Anomaly: HYPERION
Nature: Self-sustaining, regenerative, autonomous cellular evolution.
Behavior: Non-parasitic. Non-communicative.
Primary function: Consumption and replacement of existing ecosystems.
Status: Uncontainable
Notes:
– Mirror-Life countermeasures failed.
– Experimental injection of current-gen Mirror-Life (V. 3.4) into Hyperion tissue resulted in uncontrolled replication and complete loss of biological structure in both agents.
– Mirror-Life was consumed and altered within minutes. Resulting fusion exhibited greater instability and aggressive cellular autonomy.
Mariel scrolled down slowly. The last line was red.
Conclusion: Mirror-Life and Hyperion share foundational genetic structures. Mirror-Life is not a cure. It is kin.
She closed the report and leaned back in her chair. Outside, something howled not out of rage or pain, but hunger. Unrelenting, endless hunger.
This was not an infection.
Not a war.
It was succession.