Underscape - Zone W-11
87 Years, 43 Days Post-Singularity
The construction crew's screams echoed in Zero's mind as he walked past their frozen corpses. Ice crystals had burst through their skin like glass shards, faces locked in terror. One worker's eyes exploded from the temperature drop, frozen jelly coating his cheeks. Another's ribs cracked open as lungs flash-froze, bone shrapnel spraying through his chest cavity.
Zero's five-year-old body felt odd—rigid yet fluid, muscles moving with newfound awareness after thirty-seven years in cryo-stasis. The extreme cold had transformed him on a natural level, turning lethal temperatures into background noise. His skin tingled pleasantly, remembering the workers shattering like glass when touched.
He found an emergency exit and began ascending. Ninety-seven floors of abandoned laboratories loomed above, Genesis Corporation's remnants decaying in silence. He squeezed through ventilation shafts too narrow for adults, emergency lights casting eerie shadows on rusted walls. The air tasted of rust and rotting flesh.
The security drone found him at Sub-Level 3.
"Stop. Unauthorized personnel detected," it announced, its scanner sweeping Zero's small frame. "No identification found. Initiating containment protocol."
Electromagnetic nets ensnared him. 50,000 volts surged through his body. Pain exploded behind his eyes, muscles contracting until tendons nearly snapped. He bit through his tongue, blood filling his mouth and spilling down his chin in thick rivulets.
'Come on, that's just a tickle.'
Zero gripped the net, electricity burning his hands. Flesh bubbled and blackened, cooking from within. He pulled with all his might, metal digging into fingers, tendons snapping wetly. The net ripped apart like paper, electromagnetic mesh clinging to his ruined hands.
The drone whirred, recalibrating. Kinetic rounds hurtled toward him.
Zero moved with unsettling speed for a child, maneuvering around projectiles. One round nicked his shoulder, exposing bone in a spray of crimson. Another shattered his left leg, bone fragments bursting through skin like white shrapnel. The impact spun him sideways, but he kept moving.
'That's more like it. Keep it coming.'
The drone fired again, hitting his chest. Three ribs shattered outward, fragments piercing a lung with wet pops. Blood filled his throat, spilling from his lips in dark ropes.
'Almost there. Just need a little more.'
Zero reached the drone and slammed his fist into its central processor. Metal crumpled, sparks flying, leaving burns on his face. The drone shuddered and fell, hydraulic fluid leaking like black blood.
He collapsed beside it, struggling to breathe through his damaged lung. Blood pooled around him, mixing with oil and hydraulic fluid. His shoulder wound sealed instantly with sickening wet sounds. His leg bone reformed with audible crunches, three ribs realigning to seal his punctured lung within minutes.
His body healed quickly.
Zero climbed, leaving a trail of blood that dried to rust-colored flakes.
The surface access was blocked by a magnetic lock untouched for twenty years. Zero pressed his hand against the scanner. Metal groaned, strained, then shattered with a booming crack.
Sunlight hit his face for the first time in forty years. Where Genesis Corporation's campus once stood, ruins stretched toward towering complexes. The air buzzed with Spark suppression grids regulating superhuman powers.
Zero needed to go down, not up.
Three blocks away, he found maintenance access to the old transit system. The tunnel entrance was sealed with warning signs: HAZARDOUS AREA. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED. MUTATION RISK.
'This'll do.'
He forced the locking mechanism and stepped into darkness.
---
Zone W-11 - Seven Hours Later
The Underscape breathed around him—a toxic, living entity. Zero moved through collapsed tunnels that once carried millions. Bioluminescent moss casts eerie green light on walls stained with grime and dried blood. The air stung his lungs with chemicals that would kill normal humans within minutes—ammonia, formaldehyde, radioactive isotopes making his skin tingle pleasantly.
His body processed the toxins automatically, his cells adapting to the hostile environment—a remnant of thirty-seven years in cryo-stasis. Each breath converted poisons into energy that warmed his muscles.
He found a section of tunnel with recent seismic damage. Support beams had collapsed, creating a maze of jagged metal and shattered concrete. Radiation warnings flickered on corroded screens. Even scavengers avoided this place. Walls seemed to melt, dripping toxic sludge that sizzled on the ground.
Zero selected a chamber forty meters below the main tunnel level—dark, no airflow. Radiation levels are lethal to humans within hours. His skin tingled as cells recalibrated, converting harmful energy into something beneficial. Radiation made his skin bubble and blister, then heal in cycles, each time leaving tissue tougher and denser.
He leaned against the wall, eyes closed—not to sleep, but to think.
Thirty-seven years frozen while the world transformed. Genesis files mentioned other subjects. Forty-seven died during his containment. But there were more experiments. Other children.
Some might still be alive.
Some might have escaped.
The thought offered no comfort. If others like him existed, they'd be weapons. Tools. Everything he'd vowed not to become.
'Unless they're like me. Unless they're smart enough'
Footsteps echoed—multiple figures moving in formation. Combat boots. Military precision. Equipment humming with electromagnetic energy.
Zero moved deeper into the radiation zone. His body absorbed the escalating exposure as enhanced hearing tracked the search pattern above. Radiation levels here would kill normal humans in seconds, but Zero felt only mild tingling as his cells adapted.
"Sector 7-W clear. No containment breach signs."
"Copy. Expanding search. Whatever escaped from the laboratory of Genesis is still down here."
"Can you use thermal scans?"
"Negative. There's too much interference from old reactor cores, we can't search from here it's too dangerous, our suits will melt farther from the radiation here."
Zero listened until footsteps faded.
Zone W-11 stretched for miles. Collapsed laboratories held pre-Singularity equipment. Broken containment units suggested hazardous experiments. Some walls were covered in strange growths—fungal colonies pulsing with weak bioluminescence, tendrils reaching toward him as he passed.
In one chamber, Zero discovered small bones—child-sized. The skeleton was curled, the rib cage fractured outward, suggesting something burst free—something that outgrew its confines. Bone fragments scattered.
He studied the remains without flinching. Test subjects that didn't survive Genesis's attempts. The bones were brittle and blackened, burned from within.
Zero was the successful one who survived.
The realization should have disturbed him, but it clarified everything.
'This is what happens when you fail. It won't happen to me'
He selected the deepest chamber. Radiation levels were lethal on any scale, but his body processed it like background noise. Skin blistered and healed cyclically, cells mutating to withstand the onslaught. The process was excruciating—flesh bubbling and melting, then regrowing tougher. Bones ached as they were densified, settling into stronger configurations.
This would be his sanctuary. His laboratory.
Zero gathered materials—scrap metal, broken electronics, organic matter mutated by decades of exposure. His intelligence lets him understand chemical interactions, predict radiation effects, and calculate optimal mutation moments.
The Underscape evolved not by design, but necessity. Survival selecting traits that endured what the surface world abandoned.
He would learn from it.
He would grow stronger.
When death found him, he'd return as stronger than he was.
Zero settled into meditation, monitoring his body's response. Each breath filtered toxins. Each heartbeat circulated adapted blood. He sensed cells mutating, evolving in response to radiation, chemicals, darkness.
The process was agonizing—skin bubbling and healing, bones aching and densifying, blood vessels rupturing and reforming in unnatural patterns. Radiation made organs feel simultaneously burned and frozen, a sensation both excruciating and exhilarating.
Through everything, Zero remained aware, analyzing every sensation. A small smile played on his lips as intense radiation washed over him, skin bubbling and reforming in seconds.
'Yes. More. Keep it coming.'
Above, life continued its regulated path. Below, in forgotten depths where evolution happened without permission, Zero began his true education.
The lesson was simple: survive until you die.