Author's Note: If you want me to continue this work, I would appreciate encouragement. Let this novel become famous! I would like you to bring it to 200 power stones. If you have any advice for me, please comment so I can improve.
*****
The sound was wet and absolute.
The bone claws, harder than normal bone and honed by the System, met the soft tissue of her neck. There was zero resistance. Like a hot knife through butter, the three blades sheared through skin, muscle, trachea, and the spinal column.
Thud.
Her head spun through the air, face frozen in a snarl, before hitting the floor. Her body took one more step, blood fountaining from the stump in a black geyser, before collapsing.
'Too easy,' Atlas noted, sidestepping the spraying gore.
A security guard zombie rushed him from the flank, reaching out with grasping hands to bite.
Atlas didn't turn to look. He utilized his Perception (15) and his Neural Control. He spun on his heel, channeling the unnatural torque of his undead muscles into a devastating roundhouse kick.
CRACK!
His boot connected square with the guard's sternum.
The physics of the impact were brutal. The zombie's chest cavity didn't just break; it caved in. Ribs shattered into powder, puncturing the lungs and heart. The force lifted the 180-pound corpse off its feet and launched it backward like a ragdoll.
The body flew five meters, crashing into a row of metal lockers with a deafening metallic clang, crumbling into a heap of broken bones.
'Strength 12. Agility 12. Infinite Stamina,' Atlas analyzed in the heat of battle. 'I am not just strong. I am an engine.'
A rotting arm lunged for his throat—he caught the wrist, twisted sharply, and drove his elbow into the creature's chest. The sternum collapsed inward with a sickening crunch, ribs snapping like dry twigs.
He released it with a shove.
The zombie flew backward nearly five meters, slamming into a metal cabinet hard enough to dent it, its chest cavity caved in and organs spilling through ruptured skin.
Another came from behind.
Atlas sensed it before it touched him.
He spun, claws flashing.
Slash.
The creature's jaw vanished, tongue and teeth scattering across the floor as it collapsed, still twitching, hands clawing uselessly at nothing.
He stepped on its skull.
Crack.
Movement never stopped.
The rest of the horde swarmed. Five of them at once.
Atlas dove into the fray.
This wasn't a fight; it was an execution. It was a masterclass in violence. Where the zombies flailed wildly, Atlas flowed. He parried a biting mouth with his armored forearm, the zombie's teeth shattering against his bone density, then drove his left claws up under its chin, piercing the brain.
SQUELCH.
He ripped the claws out in a spray of grey matter and spun, decapitating two more in a wide, sweeping dual-slash that painted the walls in dark ichor.
He moved like a phantom—dodging grasping hands by millimeters, ducking under clumsy swings, and countering with lethal efficiency. He severed arms. He split skulls. He opened torsos from groin to throat, spilling rotten intestines onto the pristine floor.
The System notifications cascaded in the corner of his vision, a waterfall of rewards.
He flowed through them—ducking, striking, tearing. His claws carved through necks, shoulders, spines. Limbs fell away. Heads burst. Bodies piled at his feet in pieces rather than corpses.
One zombie managed to latch onto his arm, teeth sinking into dead flesh.
Atlas looked down at it.
Expressionless.
He drove his claws straight through its skull, pinning it to the floor, then tore his arm free, ripping the creature's head in half as he stood.
Blood soaked the lab floor, splashing up his legs, painting his coat and hands a deep, glossy red.
The last zombie stumbled toward him, missing an eye, intestines dragging behind it like a trail.
Atlas advanced.
One step.
Then another.
A single horizontal swing.
The upper half of the corpse slid off the lower, collapsing in a heap.
Silence followed.
Only the sound of blood dripping from claws to tile remained.
Atlas stood amid the carnage, chest rising slowly—not from need, but habit. Around him lay shredded bodies, limbs strewn like debris after an explosion.
He glanced down at his hands.
He flicked his wrists, shaking off the gore.
'Sheep,' he thought, looking at the devastation. 'A wolf among sheep.'
---
The Hive Entrance – Underground Train Platform.
My head felt like it was trapped in a vice.
Every heartbeat sent a dull, throbbing ache through my temples, a rhythmic reminder of the missing pieces of my life. I hugged my arms around my chest, trying to ward off the subterranean chill that clung to this place. The red dress I was wearing felt alien on my skin—too thin, too exposed, totally unsuited for... whatever this was.
We were standing on a massive steel grating, suspended over an abyss of darkness. Industrial lights hummed overhead, casting long, cage-like shadows against the rusted metal walls.
The soldiers—the "team," as they called themselves—moved with terrifying efficiency. They were faceless in their gas masks and tactical goggles, a unit of black-clad reapers checking corners and sweeping sectors with laser sights that cut through the gloom like red veins.
I looked at the man beside me, Matt. He was handcuffed, his face pale and beaded with sweat. He looked at me, and I saw my own fear reflected in his eyes.
"Clear," a voice crackled over the radio.
One, the leader of this group, signaled towards the stationary train car sitting on the tracks. It was a sleek, silver bullet of a machine, marked with the Umbrella logo. It looked less like a transport and more like a coffin.
"Kaplan, get the power running. Rain, check the perimeter," One ordered. His voice was deep, authoritative, the kind of voice that didn't ask questions—it only expected answers.
Rain, the intense woman with the dark hair and the heavy machine gun, moved toward the train car. She yanked the sliding door open with a grunt.
CLANG.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
"Contact!" Rain screamed, her weapon snapping up instantly.
My heart leaped into my throat. I stumbled back, grabbing Matt's arm instinctively.
A body tumbled out of the train's storage closet, crashing onto the metal grating face-first. A man. He was wearing a grey security uniform, a duffel bag tangled around his legs. He groaned, a low, pained sound that echoed the pounding in my own skull.
"Hold fire!" One commanded, stepping forward.
The man on the floor rolled over, clutching his head. He blinked up at the tactical lights blinding him, his face twisted in confusion. He looked young, handsome in a rugged way, but completely disoriented.
"Don't shoot him!" I shouted, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.
I didn't know why I defended him. I didn't know his name. But looking at him—the glazed look in his eyes, the trembling hands—I felt a spark of recognition. Not of him, exactly, but of his condition.
He was like me. Empty. Broken.
"Where..." The man stammered, squinting against the harsh light. "Where am I?"
One looked down at him with cold indifference. "Check him for bites. Get him up."
Rain hauled the man to his feet roughly. "Clean," she reported, patting him down. "Just another amnesiac."
"Great," One muttered, the frustration evident in his tone. "That makes three of you."
The man—Spence, I would later learn—looked at me. His eyes searched mine for answers, for some anchor in this storm of confusion. I had nothing to give him. I barely knew who I was, let alone who he was.
We were herded forward like cattle. The soldiers formed a protective ring around us as we moved toward the massive, blast-proof doors that marked the entrance to the facility.
I couldn't take it anymore. The silence, the guns, the not knowing—it was suffocating me.
I quickened my pace, stepping up beside the leader.
"I want to know who you are," I demanded, my voice shaking slightly but gaining strength.
"And I want to know what is going on here."
One didn't even look at me. He kept his eyes on the blast door panel that Kaplan was hacking into. "Walk," was all he said.
"No," I snapped. I stopped walking. "I'm not taking another step until you tell me what is happening. You break into my house, you drag me down here, you treat us like criminals... I have a right to know!"
Matt stepped up beside me. "She's right. You can't just keep us in the dark."
James stopped. He turned slowly, his tactical goggles reflecting my own angry face. He pulled the mask off, revealing a hard, chiseled face. He looked tired.
He sighed, realizing I wasn't going to back down.
"You and I are operatives employed by the Umbrella Corporation," James said, his voice flat and rehearsed. " The mansion above us is an emergency entrance to the Hive."
"The Hive?" I repeated. The word felt heavy, ominous.
James nodded to Kaplan. "Show them."
Kaplan tapped a command into the computer gauntlet strapped to his wrist. A holographic projector flared to life, casting a blue, 3D wireframe map into the air between us.
It was massive. A sprawling, inverted skyscraper buried deep beneath the earth.
"The Hive," One explained, pointing to the hologram. "A top-secret research facility owned and operated by Umbrella. It houses over five hundred scientists and support staff. They live and work underground."
I stared at the map. It went down for miles. "What do they do there?"
"They research viral weaponry," Matt interjected, his voice dripping with cynicism. "Biological experiments. The kind of stuff Umbrella doesn't want the public to know about."
One ignored him. "Five hours ago, the Red Queen went homicidal."
"The Red Queen?" I asked. "Who is that?"
"State-of-the-art artificial intelligence," One answered. "She controls the Hive. She is the central computer. She runs everything—security, climate control, research data."
He paused, looking at the massive steel doors looming in front of us.
"Five hours ago, she locked the Hive down. She sealed all the exits. She flooded the labs with Halon gas. She killed everyone down there."
The air left my lungs. "She... she killed them?"
"Everyone," One confirmed grimly. "We were sent in to isolate her. To shut her down."
"Why?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Why would she do that?"
"That's what we're here to find out." One turned his gaze to me, his eyes softening just a fraction. "And as for you... and him," he pointed to Spence, who was rubbing his temples. "Your memory loss is a side effect of the Hive's security system. When the Red Queen locked down, she released a nerve gas into the mansion ventilation. Primary side effect: acute amnesia. It's temporary."
"And the mansion?" I asked, glancing at the gold ring on my left finger. I had been staring at it for hours. "The wedding photo I found?"
James looked at the ring, then at Spence.
"The marriage is a fake," he said bluntly. "Just part of your cover to protect the secrecy of the Hive. You aren't civilians. You're security operatives placed at the mansion to guard the emergency entrance."
I looked down at the ring. It glittered in the industrial light—a lie made of gold.
I looked at Spence. He was staring at his own hand, looking just as lost as I felt. We weren't husband and wife. We were partners. Watchdogs.
"So," I whispered, the reality sinking in. "I work for Umbrella."
"We all do," James said.
"Sir!" Rain's voice cut through the heavy atmosphere. She was standing by the control panel of the blast door. "Codes are punched. We've bypassed the primary lock."
One turned back to the mission instantly, the moment of explanation over. He pulled his gas mask back on, becoming the faceless soldier once again.
"Alright, people. Look alive," One barked, racking the slide of his rifle. "We are entering the Hive. Tight formation. Civilians in the middle. If anything moves, you put it down."
HSSSSSSSS.
The hydraulic seals of the massive blast door hissed, releasing stale, pressurized air that smelled of copper and death. The heavy steel gears ground together, groaning as the doors slowly parted.
Darkness lay beyond. A darkness that felt alive.
I stood there, shivering in my red dress, staring into the abyss. I didn't know who I was an hour ago. Now, I knew I was an Umbrella operative, a fake wife, and a survivor of nerve gas.
But as I stepped across the threshold into the Hive, a primal instinct screamed in the back of my mind—a warning that had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with survival.
We shouldn't be here.
Beyond it lay the Hive.
A pristine corridor stretched forward, walls gleaming white under soft lighting, completely at odds with the tension hanging in the air. It looked untouched. Clean.
Too clean.
"Remember," James said, raising his weapon. "Primary objective: locate survivors. Secondary objective: shut down the Red Queen."
"Let's move," James ordered.
We walked into the dark.
---
System Log: The Apex Variable
Location: Central Processing Core // The Hive.
Observer: Red Queen
Subject: Apex-1 (Designation: Anomaly).
[Processing Speed: 150 Terahertz]
[Observation Mode: High-Speed Tactical Analysis]
Impossible.
The word does not exist in my programming code. I deal in probabilities, in statistical certainties. If an event has a 0.00001% chance of occurring, it is "improbable," not impossible.
Yet, as I allocated 80% of my visual processing power to the cameras in Sector 3, I was witnessing a violation of biological law.
The Subject—A-1—stood in the center of the laboratory. The audio sensors picked up the guttural, mindless snarls of the horde approaching him. By all metrics, he should have been devoured. His muscle mass has not increased significantly. His skin is necrotic.
But then, the blades appeared.
I zoomed in, freezing the frame for a nanosecond.
[Analysis: Osteogenesis]
Three distinct, serrated spikes of hyper-calcified bone had erupted from his knuckles. This was not a random mutation. It was symmetrical. It was functional. It was weaponized.
"Uhghsbs hshyxe jsisks."
He did not speak the words aloud—his vocal cords were rotted—but his body language screamed the intent.
*****
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So around the ending of the second movie, I am thinking of him traveling to a different world and coming back before the third movie. This world will be used as his home base, like him building a small safe city (kingdom building) for himself and women. The worlds I am considering are either Parasyte, Demon Slayer, or Tokyo Ghoul or any low-level world movie or TV show that is ending but is different from a zombie apocalypse, like High School of the Dead.