Gentek.
As a global titan in the fields of biology and genetics, the corporation was desperate for a breakthrough. Their research into the viral strains had hit a wall; with only two viable samples, progress was glacial. One of those samples remained frustratingly inert, showing no viral reactivity whatsoever. The stagnation was absolute.
There was only one logical conclusion: they had to synthesize more samples.
Today, the fruits of that cold, clinical ambition were about to manifest.
"I'm told her labor is imminent," a voice echoed through the sterile corridors.
"...Is that so?"
Inside a high-security office within the Gentek laboratory complex, a middle-aged man with thick spectacles delivered the news to a colleague draped in a clinical white coat.
The man in the white coat was shorter than his superior, but his presence was arresting. Shock-white hair framed a face punctuated by eyes as red as fresh arterial spray. He possessed a gaze that felt like a surgical incision.
The two men locked eyes for several seconds—perhaps minutes—shrouded in an oppressive silence. Finally, the white-haired man spoke.
"Director."
"What is it, Minazuki?" Raymond McMullen asked.
"May I grant it a name?"
"...A designation? It will be assigned a formal codename regardless. I suppose what you call it in your own time is of no consequence."
Dr. Minazuki Kir‘s expression was a turbulent slurry of unidentifiable emotions. There was joy, certainly, but it was curdled with a manic expectation and something far more visceral.
"No. I mean a real name." He offered a thin, unsettling smile. "For the child about to be born... I wish to give him a name."
Kir‘s voice carried a faint, rhythmic tremor, as if his heart were hammering against his ribs in a frantic cadence.
"If it is a boy, Kiria. If a girl, Kiriko."
Raymond McMullen, the CEO of Gentek and the lead architect of the DX-1118 Project—better known as the Redlight virus—regarded Kir with a flicker of genuine concern.
"...Have you developed a personal attachment to the Subject and her offspring, Dr. Minazuki?" McMullen‘s voice dropped into a low, warning register. "If so, I suggest you excise it. 'Those things' are not human."
Kir had been granted contact with the Subject for days; his own genetic material had been used to facilitate the pregnancy. It was all a calculated procedure—a biological manufacturing process to yield a 'superior sample.'
Yet, seeing the unconcealed delight on Kir‘s face, McMullen felt the need to reiterate the cold reality, pointedly referring to the mother and child as mere objects.
Kir‘s smile did not waver.
"Do not fret, Director. I am acutely aware that the research takes precedence over all else."
"Good. See that it stays that way." McMullen nodded, seemingly satisfied, and exited the office. The sharp, rhythmic clicking of his heels against the linoleum faded into the distance.
Silence reclaimed the room for nearly a minute before Kir whispered to the empty air.
"...But if the data requires it, I am more than capable of falling in love, Director."
His face twisted into a mask of rapturous lunacy, a hideous fusion of ecstasy and madness that defied any definition of 'human.'
*
Glub... glub...
Darkness. Fluid. An unknown abyss.
My consciousness flickered to life, like a spark in a tomb.
'Where... where am I?'
The surroundings were pitch black, yet I could sense them. Dimly, through a veil of sensory static, I saw them: walls made of meat, rhythmic and pulsating with a sickening, wet elasticity.
I tried to scream, to open my mouth, but instead of oxygen, a warm, viscous slurry flooded my throat. It was thick, tasting of copper and salt.
'No... wait...'
Was I in a test tube? An incubation vat? No, this wasn't the cold, rigid touch of glass. This was soft, yielding, and horrifyingly organic. Why was I here?
'I remember... I collapsed...'
The memories were hazy. A survey. A series of strange questions. And then a final, haunting message before the world dissolved into a sickening vertigo.
[Thank you for the valuable data. Now, please become a Sample yourself.]
'...What?'
It clicked. The message. The 'Sample.' If that was the case, then...
'I've been reincarnated into that character?'
Thwip—shluk!
'...Ugh!?'
Suddenly, my world was thrown into a violent upheaval. The fleshy walls began to constrict with terrifying force. The space, once vast and buoyant, was rapidly shrinking, crushing the fluid out of my lungs.
'Is this it?'
A narrow passage opened ahead. A sliver of blinding, artificial light pierced the gloom.
I thrashed instinctively, driving my head toward the aperture. The organic walls seemed to secrete a lubricating sludge, dragging me forward, suctioning me toward the exit.
And then—
The world exploded into white.
Splat!
My head and torso slipped through the threshold with a wet, heavy suction. Coming from the absolute void of the womb, the light was agonizing. I squinted, blinking rapidly until the blurry shapes of reality sharpened into focus.
The environment was caustic and sterile. A high-security containment cell built of reinforced steel and cold concrete, designed for one purpose: to strip away any hope of escape. Above me, behind thick layers of plexiglass, researchers in hazmat suits and Blackwatch soldiers in tactical gear peered down like gods observing a new specimen.
I turned my head.
A woman sat there, draped in a tattered, hospital-like gown that resembled a straitjacket. But calling her a 'woman' felt like a biological inaccuracy. There was something fundamentally predatory about her existence.
Brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. Her piercing green eyes locked onto mine—her newborn child. Within that gaze was a storm of conflicting, tortured instincts.
I knew who she was. I recognized her from the lore I had consumed.
'Elizabeth Greene?'
The Mother of the Virus. The Hive Mind Queen of the Infected.
And, by the laws of this hellish biology—the mother who had just birthed me.
Greene was panting, her breath coming in ragged, labored hitches. She reached out and gathered me into her arms. I could feel the violent trembling in her hands. She looked down at me, her expression a shifting kaleidoscope of confusion and maternal instinct.
Finally, she seemed to reach a silent verdict. She pulled me close, pressing my fragile, slime-coated body against her chest.
She was warm.
In that moment, the titles of 'Monster' and 'Bio-hazard' vanished. There was only the raw, primal heat of a mother protecting her young.
Creak—shhh.
The heavy containment door hissed open. A squad of Blackwatch soldiers filed in, their boots thudding rhythmically against the metal floor. Greene‘s grip tightened instantly, pulling me deeper into her embrace, shielding me from their sight.
"Move it. Get that thing into the transport unit. Now!" a voice barked through a respirator.
"Hey, shouldn't we neutralize the bitch first?"
The soldiers approached, weapons leveled. To them, we weren't people; we were bio-mass to be categorized or culled. One soldier reached out—not for the woman, but for me.
"■■■■■————!!"
Greene didn't scream; she unleashed a multi-tonal, discordant shriek that sounded like a choir of the damned. Her arm blurred in a sickening arc toward the approaching soldier.
SHLICE—!
"...Ah?"
The sound of shearing meat was clinical. The soldier froze, staring in dull incomprehension at the stump where his arm had been moments ago. His limb lay several feet away, severed cleanly through bone and armor. His face drained of color as the agony finally bypassed his shock.
"AAAAAAAAAUGH!"
I looked at Greene's arm. It had undergone a horrific transformation. A writhing mass of black and red viral sinew—biomass—had overwritten her skin, elongating into a jagged, chitinous claw. At the tips, obsidian blades sharp enough to split atoms gleamed in the lab lights.
'That... that's...'
Viral Biomass. Greene had reflexively mutated her limb into a Claw weapon.
"Shit! Open fire!"
Another soldier leveled his rifle, finger tensing on the trigger. In a flash, Greene‘s arm shifted again, elongating like a whip—a Whipfist. The barbed tip tore through the air and impaled the soldier through his tactical vest, erupting from his spine in a spray of gore.
SHICK—!
"Gah—!"
Two men were neutralized in heartbeats. Behind the observation glass, the scientists erupted into frantic shouting.
I watched the carnage from within the safety of her arms, my infant mind reeling. 'What the hell... is happening?'
*
"Dammit, send in a second squad—"
"That won't be necessary." I cut off the commander‘s frantic order. My voice was tight with a mixture of annoyance and absolute authority. These tactical grunts were useless—simpletons trying to solve a biological masterpiece with lead. Sending more men would only result in more shredded corpses for the cleaning crew.
I had to intervene personally. This child was, after all, a bearer of my own genetic sequence. I had a proprietary interest in its well-being.
I raised a hand to halt the Blackwatch team.
"I‘m going in. There's no need for further waste of life."
"Sir!? But Doctor—"
I could easily imagine the expressions behind their masks—confusion, fear, and a dog-like adherence to protocol. They couldn't understand. They were trapped by their human limitations. They couldn't take the leap required for true evolution.
"I won't die. Just watch."
I triggered the seal and walked into the corridor leading to Elizabeth Greene‘s containment cell. I felt a slight thrum of tension, a prickle of curiosity, and... a swell of something I couldn't quite name.
*
The door hissed open once more. I saw the silhouette of someone new. It wasn't a soldier; there was no armor, no rifle.
A man in a white lab coat entered. He was small—almost juvenile in stature, with a youthful face that belied the darkness in his eyes. Albinism? His hair was white, his eyes a predatory crimson. My instincts screamed: Different. Dangerous.
'He‘s not normal.'
He walked toward Elizabeth Greene with an absence of fear that was chilling.
"Hello there."
His voice was light, almost cheerful, but his expression was disturbingly bright. He looked like a man who had just found a winning lottery ticket or a long-lost treasure. He smiled at me—a look of twisted fatherly pride.
"So... you are my child..."
He approached Greene with deliberate, slow steps. She tracked him with the eyes of a cornered wolf, but curiously, she didn't manifest the lethal killing intent she had shown the soldiers.
"I doubt you can understand me yet, but I am your father, Minazuki Kir."
He spoke to me as if I were a normal infant, oblivious to the fact that the consciousness residing in this viral body was that of a grown man. It was surreal. Strangely, I understood every word of English he spoke despite never having learned it. Perhaps it was a gift of the 'Sample' status—a linguistic instinct hardcoded into my neurons.
"I hope you yield magnificent results for our research," he continued.
My 'father' gazed at me with a duality that made my skin crawl: he looked at me like a cherished son and a perfect specimen simultaneously.
He reached out. My 'mother'—Elizabeth Greene—hesitated, her arms tensing as she decided whether to slice him or submit. Ultimately, she surrendered me into his grasp.
"Thank you," he whispered, his smile deepening until it looked like a tear in his face.
"Kiria. That is your name."
Kiria. He repeated it, savoring the syllables.
Kiria... The name I had chosen for my character in that survey. It was now my name, the identity of the monster I had become in this visceral, dying world.
*