**Location:** College Station Outskirts, Texas.**Date:** November 2022.
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The Texas sun hammered down on the corrugated metal roof of the tractor shed, heating the air inside to a stifling 105 degrees. But Jake Reynolds didn't mind. He wiped the grease from his hands onto his worn-out Wranglers and took a swig of warm Lone Star beer.
"There you go, you old bastard," he muttered, patting the engine block of the 1988 John Deere 4450.
It was a beast of a machine. Jake had spent the last three weeks retrofitting it. Not just fixing the transmission, but *improving* it. He'd welded reinforced steel plating over the cabin, swapped the standard tires for heavy-duty military-grade rubber he'd scavenged from a surplus auction, and even rigged a makeshift hydraulic lift on the front loader.
Most folks in town thought he was crazy. "Why put armor on a tractor, Jake? Expecting a war?" they'd laugh at the feed store.
Jake just shrugged. He didn't know why. It was just a feeling. A gut instinct he'd had since he was a kid.
He was 24, a grad student in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M, but his heart belonged to the dirt and the diesel. He'd turned down a cushy internship at BioCorp to come back here and keep his granddad's farm running.
*BioCorp.* The name left a bitter taste in his mouth.
His phone buzzed on the workbench, vibrating against a wrench.
*Dr. Reynolds (Dad)*
Jake frowned. His father, the esteemed VP of Research at BioCorp, hadn't called in three years. Not since their last fight. Not since Jake accused him of treating his own son like a lab rat.
He tapped the screen. It was a text. Short. Urgent.
*Dad: "Jake. Don't go into town. Lock the gate. Get the guns. I'm sorry."*
Jake stared at the words. His dad never apologized. For anything. Especially not for the weird "vitamin shots" he forced on Jake every summer as a kid. The ones that made his bones ache and his fever spike for days. The ones that made him faster, stronger, and never get sick—not even a cold.
"What the hell..."
He looked towards the horizon. A plume of black smoke was rising from the direction of the A&M campus, miles away. The wind carried a faint sound—not sirens, but screams. And something else... gunfire?
Jake didn't panic. Panic gets you killed in a rodeo, and it sure as hell doesn't fix a busted tractor.
He walked to his truck, a beat-up F-150 with a "Come and Take It" sticker on the bumper. He pulled his AR-15 from the rack and checked the magazine. Full. He had plenty of ammo in the gun safe. This was Texas, after all.
"Guess the rodeo starts early this year."
Suddenly, his vision blurred. A strange heat surged through his veins—the same sensation he felt during those childhood summers, but amplified a thousand times. His muscles spasmed, and he dropped to his knees, gasping for air.
It felt like his blood was boiling. Like every cell in his body was being rewritten.
**[System Initializing...]**
Blue text floated in his vision, overlaid on reality like a heads-up display in a video game.
**[Subject: Jake Reynolds. DNA Match: 99.9%.]****[Status: Immunized. Bio-Enhancement Protocol: Active.]****[Objective: Survive.]**
"What... what is this?"
He blinked, but the text remained. He looked at his hands. The calluses seemed tougher. The veins throbbed with a faint, blueish glow under his skin.
He felt stronger. Faster. His senses were sharper. He could hear the rustle of a mouse in the barn fifty feet away.
**[Stats Updated]****[Strength: 15 (Human Max: 10)]****[Agility: 12 (Human Max: 10)]****[Immunity: 100% (Viral Resistance Active)]**
A rustling sound came from the cornfield. Louder than a mouse.
"Hey! Who's there?" Jake shouted, raising the rifle. The weight of the gun felt like nothing now. It was as light as a toy.
A shambling figure emerged from the stalks. It was Old Man Miller, his nearest neighbor. Miller was a good man, a deacon at the church, always waved when Jake drove by.
But this wasn't Miller.
Half of Miller's face was missing, exposing raw muscle and bone. His jaw hung loose, unhinged. His eyes were glowing a sickly green, and black veins pulsed under his pale skin. He let out a gurgling roar and charged.
The speed was terrifying. Not a slow, movie zombie. This was a predator. A feral beast.
Jake's body moved on its own. His reflexes, enhanced by whatever his father had put in him, took over. Time seemed to slow down. He could see the individual drops of saliva flying from Miller's mouth.
He didn't think. He didn't hesitate.
"Sorry, Mr. Miller. You're trespassing."
*Bang.*
The shot echoed across the empty fields. A perfect headshot from fifty yards. The 5.56 round punched through the creature's skull, exiting in a spray of black ichor.
The thing that used to be Miller dropped instantly.
**[Target Eliminated: Level 1 Infected.]****[Experience Gained: 10.]****[System Unlock: Basic Fabrication Blueprint - Barbed Wire Fence (Reinforced).]**
Jake lowered the rifle, his breath steady despite the adrenaline. He looked at the notification floating in the air, then at the smoking campus in the distance.
So that's what the "vitamins" were for.
He wasn't just immune. He was built for this.
He walked back to the shed, his mind racing. He had food. He had water from the well. He had guns. And now, he had a System.
"Alright then," Jake racked the slide on his AR-15. "Let's see what else you can do, Dad."
(End of Chapter)