The alarm clock buzzed with its usual shrill, grating noise, rattling against the chipped wooden surface of the nightstand. Elias Cross opened his eyes slowly, dragging himself out of the heavy, dreamless fog of sleep. For a moment, he lay there, staring up at the cracked ceiling of his one-room apartment. The plaster was peeling, faint water stains spreading across it like bruises, reminders of a landlord who didn't care and a world that hadn't cared for him much longer than that.
Elias was tall, broad-shouldered, and built like someone who had worked with his hands for most of his life. His body carried the evidence of it—firm muscles honed from lifting, hauling, sweating through endless hours on construction sites. He looked like a man sculpted by labor, rather than luxury. His hair was dark, a thick mess that tended to fall untidily over his forehead when he didn't bother to brush it, and his eyes were a striking shade of blue that seemed almost out of place on a man so used to fading into the background. They carried a quiet gentleness, a kind of stillness that made people underestimate him.
He had what could only be called kind features—defined jawline, even nose, lips that so often settled into the neutral calm of someone who didn't speak unless spoken to. Handsome, in a subtle way. Not the sort of man who drew attention across a crowded room, but the kind who, when noticed, made people linger for reasons they couldn't quite name. Yet despite this, Elias had always lived as if he were invisible.
He swung his legs out of bed, feet touching the cold, scuffed linoleum floor. The apartment was small, more a box than a home. One window, half-blocked by a rusted AC unit that barely worked. A kitchenette shoved into the corner, its counter cluttered with cheap instant food packages. The single chair sagged under the weight of clothes draped over it. A desk stacked with old textbooks and notes gathered dust against the far wall—relics from his college years that felt like they belonged to someone else's life.
It was a miserable place, but Elias never complained. He had grown up knowing worse.
Abandoned at six years old, his parents had left him behind with nothing but a halfhearted pat on the head and the hollow promise of letters that never came. They had chosen their lives abroad over him, and in their absence, Elias was raised by cold institutions and thin government checks. He grew up learning the value of every coin, of every meal scraped together from handouts. He grew up alone.
The world assumed children in those conditions hardened—turned bitter, angry, even cruel. Elias had turned out differently. The pain of abandonment didn't make him sharper; it made him softer. It carved into him the kind of empathy that could only be born from loneliness. He knew what it was to feel unwanted, to starve not just for food but for kindness. And so, rather than become the kind of man who pushed others down to climb higher, Elias became the kind who quietly reached out a hand, even when no one reached back.
People often mistook his quietness for coldness. They saw his tall, strong frame, the callouses on his hands, the quiet way he carried himself, and assumed distance. But Elias was not cold. He was simply reserved, careful with his words, careful with his heart. Deep down, he longed for real connections. For someone to look at him and see him—not as a tool, not as a shadow, not as a man who was simply there.
But longing was all it ever was.
He dressed quickly: work boots with fraying laces, gray pants stained from concrete dust, a plain black shirt stretched across his chest. He brushed his hair back in a rough motion and glanced at his reflection in the cracked mirror nailed to the wall. The man staring back at him looked tired, older than twenty-two. His blue eyes had always been striking, but even they seemed dulled from lack of sleep.
Another day. Another shift. Another stretch of hours spent invisible among men who shouted, laughed, and lived loudly in ways Elias never quite could.
He left the apartment, locking the door out of habit even though there was little inside worth stealing. The stairwell reeked faintly of mold, walls smeared with graffiti, old cigarette burns scarring the railing. Outside, the city was already awake.
Morning traffic painted the streets with sound—honking cars, buses coughing black fumes, the hurried footsteps of strangers. Billboards loomed overhead, neon signs promising a life no one really lived. And woven between all of it was an unease Elias couldn't shake.
It was in the way birds no longer perched on power lines, the way stray animals had vanished from alleys where they once fought for scraps. It was in the newsfeeds that flashed across giant screens on the sides of buildings: headlines about sudden outbreaks, about people collapsing in the streets, their bodies twitching and their eyes turning pale. Authorities blamed a virus. Scientists dismissed it as hysteria. Social media turned it into a joke, a meme for late-night comedians.
But Elias had seen it. With his own eyes.
Last week, walking home, he had found a man convulsing on the pavement. At first, Elias had rushed forward, instincts screaming to help, to call someone. The man's skin was pallid, his veins bulging black, his jaw trembling. Elias had knelt beside him, reaching out.
The man's head had snapped sideways. His eyes, once brown, were a lifeless white, as if his soul had been washed away. His mouth opened and Elias caught a glimpse of teeth—jagged, sharper than they should have been. And then the man lunged, snapping at him like a rabid dog.
Elias had stumbled back, terror freezing his veins, before he turned and ran, leaving the man writhing in the street. He told no one. Not the police, not his coworkers. Some things were too strange to share. Too unbelievable.
But the memory lingered. Every night, when he tried to sleep, he saw those white eyes.
At the construction site, the same uneasy feeling followed him.
"Careful there, Cross!"
The shout came from above as Elias helped guide a length of rebar into place. His coworker, a grizzled man in his fifties named Henry Vance, barked the warning as if Elias were some rookie about to screw up. Henry was a thickset man, balding with tufts of gray hair clinging to the sides of his head, his face weathered from years of hard work and harder drinking. His arms were still thick with muscle, his gut straining against the reflective vest he wore.
Elias adjusted his grip, muscles flexing as he steadied the rod, his jaw tightening. "Got it," he muttered, his voice low, steady.
Henry grunted and went back to his own work, already forgetting Elias.
That was the way it always was. Elias wasn't disliked, exactly—just overlooked. The younger workers gravitated toward each other, loud and brash, trading stories of women and bars. The older ones like Henry treated Elias as an extra pair of hands, nothing more. He was tall, broad, handsome in a way that might have made him stand out in another life, but here, among sweat and steel, he was invisible.
The hours blurred together, broken only by the occasional shout, the crack of tools, the metallic ring of iron striking iron. Sweat ran down Elias' back, plastering his shirt to his skin, the sun glaring down without mercy.
Lunch was the same as always: Elias sitting alone on a stack of bricks, unwrapping a stale sandwich from a crumpled bag. Around him, the others clustered together in groups. Derek, a wiry young man with sandy hair and a face still too boyish for the rough work, laughed at a crude joke. Miguel, a broad-shouldered worker with dark skin and a shaved head, gestured animatedly with his hands as he told a story that had his group roaring with laughter. Joey, small and rat-faced with greasy black hair, lounged against a pile of timber, smirking at every chance to mock someone else.
They existed in a world Elias wasn't part of. He watched them sometimes, wishing he could join, but the wall between them and him was invisible and unyielding. He ate in silence, staring down at his hands—hands rough with callouses, built for work, built for holding tools, for holding weight. Not for holding people.
---
I chewed the bread mechanically, each bite turning dry in my mouth, but at least it was something to fill the emptiness gnawing in my gut. Around me, laughter spilled from the groups of men. Crude jokes, easy camaraderie, voices raised without fear of judgment. I sat apart, as I always did. Not because I wanted to, but because I never quite knew how to step across that invisible gap that separated me from them.
They didn't mean to exclude me, not really. I was just… different. Quieter. Slower to laugh. More watchful than talkative.
Still, it hurt sometimes. That invisible wall.
Henry Vance shuffled past, wiping his bald head with a ragged cloth. "You should eat faster, kid. Foreman'll have us back on the steel in ten."
"Yeah," I murmured.
Henry didn't stop. He never did. None of them did.
---
The rest of the day blurred into sweat and steel. My arms burned from strain, my shirt clung to my body, and when the foreman finally called the end of shift, I felt the ache deep in my bones.
Walking home was always the same—crowds that never noticed me, lights flickering in cracked shop windows, the stink of trash in narrow alleys. The city was alive, but in a way that felt hollow.
And lately, it felt wrong.
On the way back, I passed a convenience store. The television inside blared news headlines to a handful of tired customers.
"—experts are urging calm. The outbreak of unexplained seizures is being investigated. Officials have confirmed—"
The footage cut to shaky phone video of a man convulsing in the street. His eyes rolled back white. He clawed at his own face before slamming his head against the pavement, over and over, until the screen cut away.
I froze at the doorway, watching, until someone bumped my shoulder.
"Move it," a man grunted, brushing past.
I blinked, tearing my eyes from the screen, and kept walking.
---
By the time I reached my apartment, the sky was deep orange, shadows stretching long across cracked sidewalks. My building was a decaying skeleton of concrete and peeling paint, the stairwell reeking faintly of mold. I climbed the steps two at a time, my boots echoing in the narrow corridor.
Inside, the apartment greeted me with silence. Always silence.
I set down my bag, peeled off my shirt, and sat heavily by the window. Outside, neon lights buzzed alive as the city settled into its night rhythm. Car horns blared. Voices drifted up from the street below.
I ate instant noodles from a cheap styrofoam cup, staring out at the world that carried on as though nothing was wrong. But I could feel it. The heaviness in the air. The silence between sounds. The way every shadow felt a little too deep.
My thoughts drifted, as they often did, to my parents. I tried not to think about them, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Did they ever wonder how I was doing? Did they ever regret leaving me? Or had I been forgotten entirely, just another loose end cut clean from their lives?
A part of me wanted to hate them. But mostly, I just… couldn't. Hate required passion. All I had was emptiness.
---
I must have dozed, because when I blinked, the noodles had gone cold in my hands. The room was dark now, lit only by the faint neon glow through the window.
And then it happened.
The glass rattled in the frame, a low vibration humming through the air. At first I thought it was thunder, but the sound was wrong—too deep, too steady. The very air seemed to thrum, like the world itself was groaning.
Then the voice came.
It wasn't outside. It wasn't something I heard with my ears. It was inside my skull, cold and absolute.
> "The old world has been judged unworthy."
"Seventy percent shall be culled."
"Thirty percent shall fight."
"The New Order begins now."
I dropped the cup. Broth splashed across the floor, noodles scattering. My hands trembled, breath caught in my throat.
From the street below, screams erupted.
I lurched to the window, pressing my palms against the glass.
People ran, scattering like ants. Cars crashed, horns blaring. A man fell to the pavement, convulsing, his body twisting unnaturally before he rose again with movements that weren't human. His eyes were milky white, his jaw opening in an inhuman shriek. He lunged at the nearest person, teeth sinking into flesh.
Blood sprayed across the concrete.
A woman shrieked, stumbling backward, clutching her torn arm. The thing that had once been a man fell on her, gnashing, tearing.
More collapsed. More rose again. Their skin warped, veins blackened, jaws distended.
It wasn't just a sickness. It wasn't just an outbreak.
It was the end.
The System's voice whispered again, calm and merciless:
> "Survive. Evolve. Or perish."
And the world shattered.
---
The screams below multiplied. What began as a single voice of terror became dozens, then hundreds, a rising chorus of panic that made my chest seize. I pressed harder against the glass, my breath fogging it as I stared down at the chaos.
The street was an ocean of people—men, women, children—running in every direction, slamming into one another, tripping, falling. Some never got up.
I saw a man in a business suit stagger mid-sprint, his body convulsing violently as if struck by lightning. His briefcase clattered across the asphalt, spilling papers that fluttered uselessly in the wind. He dropped to his knees, clawing at his throat, his veins bulging black beneath his skin. His head jerked back with a sickening crack, his mouth opening in a ragged scream that wasn't human. And then—just like that—he was on his feet again, sprinting not away from danger, but toward it. His eyes were pure white, his jaw unhinged wider than it should have been.
He tackled a woman, his teeth tearing into her neck with animalistic ferocity. She screamed, high and piercing, before gurgling into silence. Blood gushed, splattering her clothes, staining the pavement in dark rivers.
Another person collapsed near the crosswalk—a teenage boy in a hoodie. He twitched, spasmed, then rose with the same hollow gaze, lunging at the panicked crowd.
The infection spread like wildfire. People collapsed in waves, some screaming for help as their bodies betrayed them, others fleeing only to be dragged down by those they once called neighbors, coworkers, friends.
Car alarms wailed as vehicles slammed into each other. A bus mounted the curb, crushing two bodies beneath its wheels before it jackknifed into a storefront. Flames erupted, black smoke curling into the darkening sky.
I couldn't breathe. My hands trembled as I pressed them to the glass. My heart hammered so loud it drowned out even the screams.
"No," I whispered to myself, though no one could hear. "This… this isn't real. This can't be real."
But it was.
The System's words echoed inside my skull again, clear, cold, unfeeling.
> "Seventy percent shall be culled. Thirty percent shall fight. Survive. Evolve. Or perish."
I staggered back from the window, my foot knocking over the styrofoam cup. Cold broth seeped into the floor, soaking into my boots, but I barely noticed. My knees hit the edge of the bed as I sank down, burying my face in my hands.
This wasn't a sickness. This wasn't panic. This was something greater. Something deliberate.
A reset.
The air itself vibrated, like the city was holding its breath. The neon signs outside flickered violently, stuttering between colors before sputtering out entirely. For a brief, horrifying moment, the world was swallowed by darkness.
Then came the sound.
Not thunder. Not engines. Not anything human.
A low, bone-rattling hum that resonated in my chest, in my bones, in my very teeth. It wasn't sound. It was vibration. The kind that made the windows tremble, the kind that made your stomach churn. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
I stumbled back to the window, staring out at the skyline. The horizon glowed faintly red, a haze spreading across the city like blood blooming through water. Shapes moved within it—shadows too vast, too alien to belong in this world. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw wings blotting out the stars, teeth the size of towers gnashing in silence, before the haze thickened and swallowed them.
The people below screamed louder.
One by one, bodies jerked unnaturally, then fell still before rising again—changed, corrupted, inhuman. Their movements were jerky, animalistic, but their hunger was clear. They swarmed like insects, falling upon the living in a frenzy of tearing teeth and gnashing jaws.
And above it all, that voice again. Calm. Absolute.
> "The New Order begins now."
The glass beneath my palms spiderwebbed with cracks from the sheer force of my grip. My breath came ragged, chest heaving as I fought to steady myself.
I was strong. I had always been strong. But in this moment, staring down at the end of the world, I felt small. Smaller than I had ever felt in my life.
The cup on the floor leaked broth into a spreading stain, the only reminder that mere minutes ago, I had been eating dinner, thinking about work, about loneliness, about a life that seemed dull but safe.
That life was gone.
The world I knew was gone.
And all that remained was the promise etched into my skull:
> Survive. Evolve. Or perish.
I closed my eyes as the city howled.
And the old world collapsed.
---
#3007 words (Long first chapter)