Smoke rose in black spirals from the broken carcasses of cities once proud. The sky, a perpetual blend of crimson and ash, wept dust instead of rain. Silence ruled where laughter had once lived. The world was dead—or as close to dead as one could imagine. And yet, in the heart of this decaying Earth, something stirred. Something old. Something new.
Kairos opened his eyes.
The air burned his lungs, thick with soot and radiation, yet he felt no pain. He was twelve years old—again. His fingers curled against the cracked asphalt beneath him, bones humming with strange energy. Where memories should have been foggy, they surged like a tidal wave. Earth's fall. The war of nanites. The extinction of nearly everything. And then... the rebirth.
"I'm alive," he whispered, more out of curiosity than relief.
His body, reborn in the wasteland, was not ordinary. Nanites flowed beneath his skin like molten silver. Unlike the unstable nanites that turned humans into monsters—EVOs—his were calm, coordinated, and intelligent. They obeyed him not out of programming, but out of instinct. Out of design.
He stood up slowly, surveying what remained of the skyline. Hollow towers leaned into each other like dying trees. Flames flickered in the distance. Somewhere out there, EVOs still roamed, feral and hungry. He could sense them.
But none would come near him.
His nanites emitted a frequency—a pulse—more primal than fear. Other EVOs could feel it. A command hidden in its resonance: stay away.
Kairos moved toward the collapsed remnants of a school. Rusted playground equipment lay twisted and half-melted. A charred teddy bear stared up at him, its plastic eyes melted into something grotesque. He remembered being here. Not in this life—but in the one before. Before the Event.
That was when he'd been human. Ordinary. Powerless.
And then came the White Flash. The explosion of science and arrogance. Humanity's gamble with nanotechnology had backfired, unleashing the EVO plague across the globe. Entire cities mutated overnight. Heroes rose, villains thrived, and organizations like Providence were born to control the chaos. He had lived through it. Died in it.
Now, he had returned—before it all began.
Or had it already begun?
He crouched, placing his hand on the ground. The nanites inside him synced with the dead city around him. They told him stories in code—burned data, fragmented transmissions, dying signals.
"...Providence outpost lost... unknown EVO class detected..."
A flicker in his vision. A shadow darted across a rooftop.
Kairos didn't flinch. "You're not very good at hiding," he said, his voice quiet, even.
The figure leapt down from the crumbling building. A humanoid EVO, about seven feet tall, skin like cracked obsidian, eyes glowing a sickly yellow. Its body pulsed with wild nanite corruption, muscles twitching unnaturally.
It growled. "You're... different."
Kairos nodded. "I know."
The EVO lunged. It moved fast, with the fury of a hundred infected minds driving one monstrous form. Kairos didn't dodge. His right arm shifted, the nanites stretching and spinning. In a heartbeat, it morphed into a blade—not metallic, but living. The weapon pulsed with circuitry and veins.
One clean slash.
The EVO fell apart midair, crumbling into ash before it hit the ground. His nanites buzzed, harvesting what little data remained. He had learned something. This wasn't the early days of the infection. EVOs were too far gone. Which meant... he was later than he thought.
"I'm not before Rex," he said aloud, looking at the ruins. "I'm... parallel."
A chill traced his spine, not from cold, but from fate. If this was the world where Rex existed, then Kairos had work to do. Because if he was here—early or not—then Ben Tennyson would be, too. And somewhere, forces far greater than the EVO plague were stirring.
He turned toward the horizon. Far in the distance, a green flare blinked once, then disappeared. It was brief, but unmistakable. The Omnitrix.
Kairos smirked. "Found you."
But before he could move, a new voice echoed from the sky—a crackling, distorted frequency riding the airwaves.
"Unidentified EVO anomaly detected. Classification unknown. Broadcasting coordinates to all Providence units."
Kairos raised an eyebrow. "Already so interested in me?"
He extended both arms. The nanites surged outward, weaving around his frame like armor. He lifted into the air on wings made of morphing machines—sleek, efficient, and quiet.
Time to introduce himself to the world.