I woke beneath collapsed steel and shattered glass, my mind thick with fog and my body a ruined shell. My name is Raw—a fragment of a man forgotten by time and mercy. The world ended months ago when an asteroid tore the sky open and poured death over all. Australia vanished in fire, the ozone cracked and bled poison, and the earth became a graveyard for all life. Everyone else died. I did not. I lay in a coma when the sky broke, machines holding me in limbo, and a drug—the Elixir of Life—chained me to endless suffering. VitaCore Pharmaceuticals, deep in Mexico City, birthed the poison they called a cure. I helped build it. And now, it builds my prison.
My skin is charred leather stretched over bone. My legs have melted into useless sacks of flesh, heavy with decay. My right eye is empty darkness; my left sees only blurred shadows, flickers of a world that no longer exists. My ears catch whispers through static, voices drowned by time. Every breath is sand choking a throat raw and burning. Every movement tears skin peeling like dead leaves. Pain is no longer pain. It is the steady rhythm of a body rotting from the inside out. I should have died when the world died, but the Elixir devours decay, recycling death to force life to crawl onward. It consumes me—first the dead cells, then the living. I do not resist. Resistance is a dead habit.
From somewhere deep beneath the rubble came the faint, broken voice of a radio, crackling and distorted:
"…impact… complete loss of continental mass… ozone layer destabilized… eastern seaboard submerged… all comms… repeat… total biosphere failure…"
The voice skipped, warped, then fizzled into static. No more broadcasts came. No more world remained.
Somewhere in that silence, something clicked inside me. Not a memory. Just an emotion. Something I had buried long ago beneath the pain and rot. A conversation—four, maybe five years ago—echoed back into the dead air of my skull.
"Hey Mr. Raw, I hope you're going to accept the project."
"I don't think so, David. It doesn't feel right to me." My voice back then was calm, tired. "Humans are meant to live, then die. We don't interfere with that. You cheat nature, nature eats back."
"Why worry? Just imagine making a man close to immortality. Just imagine the breakthroughs. The money."
I looked at him. I should've said no and walked away.
But I didn't.
"Fine. I'll think about it."
I should've known then. I should've listened to my own disgust.
But I ignored it. I always ignored it.
I remembered more now. The day I went into the coma.
The way the tea tasted bitter.
The way my eyes dimmed too fast.
The way David smiled.
The way everything went silent.
They drugged me. My own people. My own lab.
They used me to test the Elixir of Life. They used me because they couldn't risk themselves. Because I was available. Disposable.
The rage came suddenly. A whisper turned scream.
I will kill you. I will kill all of you.
But they're already dead. Burned to nothing in the same fire they unleashed. Their names don't even matter now. My scream echoed inside a body too ruined to stand.
One day I felt a twitch—not from will or strength, just raw nerve sparks in a carcass. I dragged myself through the ruins. Hours or days passed—I lost track long ago. I found the bioengineering lab in the wreckage. Machines still flickered. A dying console sparked faint light.
The screen displayed a file labeled:
FILE LOG #164 – ELIXIR CONTAINMENT & REDIRECTION PROTOCOL
"Core stabilizer unstable when paired with compound X-23. Localized regenerative prioritization possible. Side effects: neural overload, flesh-shearing pain. Proceed with caution."
— Dr. Raw Mendez, VitaCore Pharmaceuticals
I mixed what I could from shattered vials—compound X-23, stabilizer B, burn inhibitor C-9—and injected the makeshift serum into my veins. Fire tore through me. Nerves shredded like wire in a storm. My arms clenched and locked. My lungs spasmed. But the Elixir shifted its focus.
I moved. Not enough to stand. Not enough to live. Just enough to feel the ceaseless, grinding agony sharpened to a blade's edge. The pain became constant white noise, a furnace inside my flesh. Every breath, every heartbeat, every flicker of my blurry eye was torture refined.
I do not hope. I do not fight. I do not begin. I exist—only that. A hollow shell dragging itself through the ruins of a world that forgot me. There is no future. No mercy. No end. There is only this: endless, numb, unforgiving.
I am Raw, and I am broken beyond repair.