A Future Forged in Fury

Aris

The creature’s shriek echoes off the rusted husks of cars. It’s a sound like tearing metal and breaking bone, a symphony I know better than my own name. I press my back harder against the crumbling concrete wall, the rough surface snagging on the tattered remains of my jacket. My breath comes in shallow, useless little puffs. My leg is a mess of torn muscle and shattered bone, a hot, wet weight I can no longer feel. Five years. Five years of running, of fighting, of watching everyone I ever knew get torn apart by things that shouldn't exist.

The locket digs into my palm. It’s cold, smooth silver against my grimy skin. I don’t need to open it. I know the face inside. Patrick Croft. His perfect smile, the arrogant glint in his eyes. The man I loved. The man whose ambition burned the world to ash.

Another one of them, a Chimera with slick, oily skin and too many joints in its legs, scrambles over the hood of a dead taxi. Its head twitches, sniffing the air. It smells the blood. My blood.

“You did this,” I whisper, the words a ragged prayer to the ghost in the locket. My voice is a stranger’s, cracked with dehydration and disuse. “It was all you.”

There’s no escape. The alley is a dead end. My rifle is empty, its weight a useless burden slung over my shoulder. The last bullet went into the thing that took my leg. It wasn’t enough.

It’s never enough.

The first Chimera lunges. I don’t scream. I’ve forgotten how. There is only the flash of hooked claws, the stench of rotting meat and ozone, and the final, crushing weight of failure. My fingers tighten on the locket, a final act of defiance. My world goes dark.

I gasp.

The air is clean. It fills my lungs without a trace of smoke or decay. It smells of lavender. My eyes fly open. A smooth, white ceiling greets me. Sunlight, pure and warm, streams through a window, painting a golden rectangle on a pale gray wall.

I’m lying on my back. In a bed. The sheets are soft, impossibly soft, and they smell clean. I sit up with a jolt, a motion that should send agony shooting through my leg. But there’s no pain. I look down, expecting to see the mangled ruin of my limb. Instead, my legs are whole, unscarred, resting under a soft blue comforter.

My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, wild drumbeat. Panic claws at my throat. This isn’t right. This is a dream. A hallucination from blood loss. Any second now, I’ll wake up in the alley, in the teeth of that thing.

I throw the covers back and scramble out of bed. My feet hit a plush rug. I’m wearing silk pajamas. I run a hand through my hair; it’s clean, falling softly around my shoulders, not matted with filth and blood.

My gaze sweeps the room. My old apartment. My old life. Everything is exactly as I remember it from before. The stack of medical journals on the nightstand. The framed print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the wall. The half-empty mug of tea I left from… when?

A phone buzzes on the bedside table. My phone. Not a cracked, scavenged burner, but a sleek, top-of-the-line smartphone. The screen lights up with a name that makes my blood run cold.

Patrick Croft.

I stare at it, frozen. My hand trembles as I reach for it. The screen is perfect, unbroken. A miracle. I swipe to unlock it, my fingers clumsy. The date is displayed at the top of the screen. October 17th. Six months. I’m six months before Day Zero. Six months before Aethel Corp’s ‘miracle vaccine’ was released, rewriting human DNA and turning millions into monsters.

A choked sob escapes my lips. It’s not a dream. This is real. The lavender scent, the soft rug, the impossible date on my phone. I stumble into the attached bathroom and stare at my reflection in the mirror. My face is younger. Unlined by terror, unscarred by shrapnel. There are no hollows under my eyes, no haunted, feral look in their depths. I look… soft. Weak.

I turn on the tap and splash cold water on my face, the sensation a shock to my system. I drink straight from the faucet, gulping down clean, untainted water until I’m choking.

It’s real. It’s all real. I died. And now I’m back.

The phone buzzes again, this time with a text message from Patrick.

*Patrick: You alive over there? Pick up.*

I walk back into the bedroom on unsteady legs and pick up the phone. My thumb hovers over the call button. I can hear his voice in my head, the smooth, confident cadence that used to make my heart flutter. The voice that charmed governments and investors, the voice that lied to the entire world.

I press the button.

“There she is,” his voice purrs through the speaker, a sound I haven’t heard in five years. It’s exactly as I remember. Polished. Condescending. “I was starting to think you were ignoring me, Ari.”

I can’t speak. My throat is tight, my tongue a lead weight in my mouth.

“Ari? You there, sweetheart?” he asks, a hint of impatience creeping in. “Don’t tell me you’re still stewing over our talk yesterday.”

Our talk yesterday. My mind scrambles, trying to piece together the memories of a life I haven’t lived in years. I was his lead researcher. His girlfriend. I had raised concerns about the regenerative agent in Project Chimera. I told him the cellular replication was unstable, unpredictable. He’d dismissed me. Smiled that perfect smile and told me not to worry my pretty little head about it.

“No,” I manage to say. My voice is thin, reedy.

“Good,” he says, his tone brightening. “Because we’re on the verge of something monumental. The final simulations are running. My data is flawless. We’re about to save the world, Ari. Can you feel it?”

I feel a cold, bitter bile rise in my throat. Save the world? He was about to end it. For profit. For fame. For the sheer, narcissistic thrill of being hailed as a god.

“I need you to finish those supplemental reports today,” he continues, his voice all business now. “The board wants to see final projections by tomorrow morning. I know you had some… minor reservations, but I’ve ironed them out. Leave the big picture to me.”

Minor reservations. I had shown him data predicting catastrophic mutations in sixty percent of test subjects. He’d buried it. He’d told me my models were flawed, that I was being overly cautious. He said my work was good, for an assistant, but his intuition was better.

“Okay, Patrick,” I say, and the sound of his name on my own lips feels like poison.

“That’s my girl,” he says, the condescending warmth returning. “Oh, and don’t forget the Aethel Corp Innovation Gala is next week. I’ve already had your dress sent over. It’s blue. The one I like. I need my brilliant number two looking her best when I accept my award.”

My brilliant number two. The woman whose research he stole, repackaged, and presented as his own.

“I’ll be there,” I say, my voice flat, devoid of the emotion he expects.

He pauses. For a second, I think he hears it. The change in me. The five years of apocalyptic hell simmering just beneath the surface.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks. “You sound… off.”

“Just tired,” I lie. “Worked late.”

“Of course you did,” he says, and I can almost hear him smiling. “My dedicated little scientist. Get some rest, but get those reports to me by five. Ciao.”

He hangs up. The line goes dead.

I stand in the silence of my pristine, sunlit apartment, the phone clutched in my hand. My body feels alien. Too soft, too clean, too weak. But the mind inside it is a weapon forged in five years of fire and blood and loss.

He doesn’t know. He sees the quiet, compliant Dr. Aris Thorne, the girl he could manipulate with a charming word and a handsome smile. He has no idea who he was just talking to. He’s talking to a ghost. A survivor who knows every mistake he’s about to make. A woman who remembers the names and faces of everyone who will die because of him.

I open my hand and look down at my palm. The faint outline of the locket is still imprinted on my skin, a phantom from a future that I will not allow to happen again.

I walk back to the mirror. I look at the woman staring back at me. Her eyes are not the eyes of a lovestruck assistant. They are the eyes of a soldier. A predator.

Patrick Croft thinks he’s on the verge of his greatest triumph. He thinks he’s about to become the savior of humanity.

He has no idea he’s already a dead man.

He just unleashed hell on earth. This time, I’m not just going to survive it. I’m going to expose him. I’m going to dismantle his empire, piece by piece. And then I’m going to make him pay for every single life he destroyed.

This isn’t a second chance. It’s a hunt.