So, the next thing is, from now on, I will start with volume 1.5. The novel will be separated into several arcs for everyone, following many chapters for Atlas and his experiences and experiments, then shifting to Umbrella, the US Government, the rival companies, the mercenaries, the G-virus, the little girl, and many more, with some normal people before we officially begin volume 2 with Zombie everywhere.
*****
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cold mountain air. It smelled of pine, damp earth, and the distinct, metallic iron rust..
'Messy,' Atlas critiqued, looking down at his own attire.
His white lab coat and security uniform was shredded, hanging off his frame in bloody tatters. He looked like a feral animal, not a sentient being. If he walked into Raccoon City looking like this, he wouldn't even make it to the suburbs before the R.P.D. or the National Guard opened fire.
He needed camouflage. He needed tactical gear. And he needed it now.
Atlas swept his gaze over the graveyard he had created, scanning the twisted remains until his eyes locked onto the Squad Leader. The man—or what was left of him—lay in two distinct pieces: a desiccated torso, and a shriveled head resting three feet away in the dirt.
Before the life force had been violently siphoned from his veins, the captain had been a mountain of a man—broad-shouldered and heavy-set. Now, he was just a husk inside a uniform that would fit Atlas's evolved physique perfectly.
Atlas knelt beside the dry, leathery corpse. There was no hesitation in his hands, no flicker of revulsion in his gut.
He felt nothing. No nausea. No guilt.
The memories of his past life surfaced, cold and sharp. In the valleys of Kandahar, he had seen men turned inside out by IEDs. He had scavenged ammunition from the cooling bodies of squadmates because the mission demanded it. He had eaten MREs with hands stained by things that would make a priest vomit.
Wearing a dead man's clothes? That didn't even register on his moral compass. In war, the dead don't need boots. The living do.
Under the scorching sun of Afghanistan, he had done far worse than strip the dead. He had crawled through mud mixed with the blood of his friends. He had slept in trenches that smelled of rotting meat. Compared to the wet, chaotic butchery of war, peeling a dry uniform off a mummified enemy was nothing. It wasn't desecration; it was just a supply run.
With efficient, practiced movements, he stripped the dead mercenary. He discarded the shattered plate carrier and the heavy, blood-soaked outer webbing. Instead, he salvaged the inner tactical uniform: reinforced grey cargo pants, a fitted black combat shirt made of moisture-wicking compression fabric, and a pair of heavy-duty tactical boots.
He dressed quickly. The clothes fit almost perfectly, the compression shirt stretching tight over his defined muscles, the pants offering freedom of movement his old uniform lacked.
He tightened the belt, feeling the familiar weight of tactical gear. It felt right. It felt like... before.
'Muscle memory,' Atlas noted as he instinctively checked the laces of the boots. 'In my past life, I lived in gear like this for more than three years. It's good to know the T-Virus didn't eat my training.'
He turned his attention to the weaponry.
Lying in the dirt near the leader's hand was a sidearm. Atlas picked it up. It was a customized SIG Sauer P226, standard issue for high-ranking U.B.C.S. operatives.
He ejected the magazine. Full. He pulled the slide back, checking the chamber. Clean action. He felt the weight of the polymer grip in his palm, the cold steel of the barrel.
He raised the weapon, aiming at a pine cone fifty meters away.
BANG! BANG!
Two shots rang out in rapid succession. The pine cone exploded into splinters.
Atlas nodded, satisfied. The recoil, which would have at least something for a normal human, felt like nothing against his Strength.
"Good," he muttered. "Even though I don't need the gun to kill, it's always better to have it than not."
He grabbed six spare magazines from the dead man's belt and threw them into the black tactical backpack containing the virus samples.
"For humans," Atlas mused aloud, holstering the weapon, "the psychological threat of a gun is often more useful than the reality of a superhuman. If I point a fist at a civilian, they might try to be a hero. If I point a gun? They listen. Fear is a universal language."
He turned his gaze to the rest of the loot.
Scattered across the clearing were SIG 556 assault rifles, combat knives, rations, water canteens, and first aid kits. It was a treasure trove of survival gear.
Atlas reached for a rifle, his fingers twitching with greed.
'I want it. I want all of it.'
But then, he stopped. He looked at his backpack. It was already full with the heavy silver briefcase.
He sighed, a sound of deep, gamer-induced frustration.
"If only the System had an Inventory," he complained to the empty forest. "It would be so much help in this post-apocalyptic world. I could store the rifles, the food, the water... hell, I could strip the armor plates."
He kicked a rifle aside.
"Even one of those Xianxia or Wuxia space storage rings would have worked. Just a 10x10 pocket space. Is that too much to ask?"
He paused, looking up at the sky.
'Then again... the System Shop unlocks at Level 5. I'm Level 6. I just need the V-Gold. The Shop connects to the Multiverse. Surely, somewhere in the catalog of items, there is a Bag of Holding or a Spatial Ring.'
The thought comforted him. He shook his head, clearing the desire. He couldn't stay here.
Umbrella had lost a squad; they would send another. Or worse, they would send a gunship.
'Time to go. But first... CSI.'
Atlas walked over to a tree trunk where one of the soldiers had managed to graze him with a bullet before dying. There was a small splash of blood on the bark—his blood.
It wasn't bright red like a human's. It was a dark, viscous crimson with shimmering streaks of silver, heavy with the T-Virus and his own unique mutations.
Atlas leaned in, sniffing the air. His enhanced olfactory senses picked up the scent instantly—it smelled of iron, ozone, and raw energy.
"I can't leave this," he whispered.
He used his combat knife to pry the chunk of bark off the tree. He threw it into a plastic bio-bag he found in a medic's kit.
He moved to the spot where a grenade had exploded near him, sending shrapnel into his arms—shrapnel his body had already pushed out and healed over. He found the bloody metal fragments in the dirt. He managed to obtain that as well, considering there were only seven fragments with his blood due to his quick reaction.
"I do not want Umbrella getting their hands on my DNA," Atlas muttered, his voice low and intense as he scoured the ground with the obsessive precision of a forensic cleaner erasing a murder scene.
He knew the lore. He knew the depths of their depravity.
He knew the lore. He knew about the Wesker Project. He knew about the Tyrant cloning program. Umbrella's scientists—Dr. Isaacs, Dr. White—were obsessed with genetics. If they found a sample of his blood—blood that may have successfully harmonized with the lethal T-Virus while retaining human intellect and gaining supernatural power?
They wouldn't just hunt him. They would clone him. They would make an army of Atlases, but lobotomized and obedient.
'I don't even know what I am anymore,' he thought, sealing the bag tight, his mind racing.
'My evolution is driven by the System and the Soul Matrix. The energy that rebuilds my bones and fuels my evolution is metaphysical and mostly comes from the soul. But the biological catalyst? The architecture? That is still the T-Virus.'
He stared at the dark, viscous fluid in the bag.
'I doubt I even have a blood type anymore. I am likely walking around with liquid mutagen in my veins.'
The T-Virus was an aggressive re-writer of reality. In the games, it tore apart the DNA double-helix and forced rapid, violent evolution. But inside him? It may have stabilized. It may have adapted.
And it may be a unique strain.
That was the terrifying variable. Had the System replaced the virus, or had it supercharged it?
His mind began to spiral, running through a gauntlet of wild, terrifying theories:
The Contagion Vector: Is his blood infectious? If a normal human touched it, would they turn into a standard zombie? Or would his "Superior Strain" turn them into a Tyrant instantly? Or worse... would it kill them because their Soul Matrix couldn't handle the energy density?
Genetic Memory: The T-Virus is known to carry instinctual data. If Umbrella cloned him, would the clone inherit his memories? Would a lab-grown copy of Atlas know about his past life? About the System?
The Progenitor Trait: Was he becoming something akin to the Progenitor Virus host? A source code for a new species entirely?
He had a bunch of theories pop into his head.
'My mind is a mess,' Atlas realized, shaking his head to clear the static. He was hyper-analyzing, his cultured cursed knowledge working against him, spinning doomsday scenarios.
'I need to relax. The high-stakes situation is getting into my head, making me see ghosts in the machinery.
He took a deep breath, grounding himself in the present. The science didn't matter right now. The security did.
Maybe none of these are possible, and they might not even be able to create his clone, or he may not be able to convert others into zombies. It was highly unlikely but still possible.
"Better safe than sorry," he whispered, pocketing the sample to be incinerated later. "Deny the enemy everything."
He picked up chunks of wet red sand from the places where his blood had dripped out. He also stuffed the old clothes in his backpack.. Then he shoved the bio-bag deep into his pocket.
He would flush it down a toilet in the city, or better yet, burn it in an incinerator.
With the cleanup done, he did one last sweep of the bodies.
"Grenades," Atlas said, his eyes lighting up.
He knelt by a fallen grenadier, unclipping the round, olive-drab spheres from the tactical vest.
"M67 Fragmentation Grenades. Lethal radius of five meters, casualty radius of fifteen."
He weighed one in his hand.
"These things pack a punch. If five are thrown point-blank, they would even kill me, or at least seriously injure me. My regeneration is 'Low'. I can't regrow a head if it gets blown off."
He clipped four of them to the agent's belt and took three more from the bag. He also grabbed a bunch more from the other agents and stuffed them in his backpack.
"I am a duelist," Atlas analyzed his own combat style. "I excel in 1v1. Speed. Precision. But I lack AOE. If I get swarmed by thousands of zombies, or if I have to fight a massive multi mutited B.O.W. like a Tyrant T-103 or a Hunter Alpha, my claws might not be enough to stagger them."
"In those moments, I'm stuck grinding away like a tortoise with a heavy backpack!"
He imagined fighting Mr. X—the towering, relentless pursuer. Claws would cut him, sure, but if "Limiter" was destroyed, which was developed by Umbrella to keep the Tyrants, Hunters and many B.O.W from mutating beyond a controllable level, and their second or third form of uncontrollable mutation takes place, then let's just say a grenade down the body? That would buy only time.
For the time being, these are necessary for him.
"This is just the beginning," Atlas said, standing up and adjusting his gear. "I woke up a few hours ago. I'm already superhuman. But I'm not Superman. Not yet."
He checked the sun. It was slowly climbing up, casting long shadows through the trees. The city was south.
He gave the massacre one last look. Fifteen mummified bodies, dead in seconds. It was a grim testament to his power, and a warning of the escalation to come.
"Raccoon City is waiting," Atlas said to the wind.
He turned south. His legs coiled with explosive power.
Zap.
He broke into a run, as if the earth was playing hopscotch beneath his new boots, leaving the crows to feast on the chaos of the impending apocalypse.