A Heli-carrier was flying across the water, heading towards one of the affected cities. It was not the only helicopter, other helicopters were heading towards other affected cities

The heli-carrier shook, rotors thrumming like a god's heartbeat as it tore across the morning sky.

The interior was dim, red-lit and humming. A cold metal bench under him. Restraint straps digging into his armorless arms. Andrew sat still, spine straight, gaze fixed on the far end of the cargo bay, where a flickering monitor played live drone footage.

Paleview City was not a city anymore.

Smoke coiled upward like dark fingers. Buildings collapsed inward in slow motion, glass raining like shattered starlight. On the streets, people ran like insects—screaming, stumbling, trampled—while things not meant to exist stalked behind them.

One of the beasts—massive, spine-armoured, four arms twitching unnaturally—tore a sedan in half like it was paper.

Andrew's lips didn't move.

But his eyes—a muted amber glow pulsing beneath the irises—did not blink.

The hum of the aircraft grew louder. Beneath the rotors, Andrew could still hear the static whispers of the monitor, broken voices feeding in from ground-level teams.

"Civilians breached—zone red! I repeat, zone!"

"It's chewing through the—!"

"We're falling back—falling ba—"

—static—

The footage was cut.

The drone had been lost.

He let out a slow breath.

The air inside the carrier was cold, sterile, but not clean—it stank faintly of disinfectant, sweat, and blood that had dried long ago into the floor panels.

They had cleaned the bodies, sure.

But you couldn't wash out that scent of purpose.

Andrew looked down at his own hands. Fingers long, callused. Too steady. He didn't remember what his real hands looked like before the treatments, before the injections that made his bones ache at night and his dreams flutter with static.

Sometimes he tried to recall his life before the Facility.

But the earliest thing he remembered was a scalpel glinting beneath white lights.

"I was eleven when they put me under," he thought.

Not allowed. He didn't speak much. Not unless ordered.

He remembered the feeling of cold clamps on his limbs. The whisper of doctors saying, "He's one of the viable ones."

He remembered pain.

Then he remembered strength.

Strength that didn't belong to children.

Now, seventeen years old, Andrew was ready. Or so they said.

The man across from him shifted—Subject 011, Malik. His knuckles were bleeding again from punching the steel wall earlier. His bones were denser than titanium now. Still get bored easily.

Next to Malik sat Inez—013—humming softly to herself, tapping a rhythm with her boot. Her pupils were shaped like a wolf's.

They all had one thing in common: they were designed.

They were the Genesis Unit, whispered in classified briefings, forgotten in war budgets, shaped in darkness by people who believed that one day, humanity might lose control of the planet.

And today?

That day had arrived.

Andrew shifted slightly as the carrier banked.

The view outside tilted. Now he could see Paleview more clearly—the black smoke spiralling higher. Somewhere in the east quarter, something detonated, and the glow of fire painted the clouds orange.

Andrew stood slowly, his boots pressing down with a faint metallic click against the cold interior floor of the heli-carrier. The aircraft trembled slightly beneath his feet, the motion subtle yet ever-present, like the heartbeat of something alive, straining to carry its deadly cargo toward a dying city.

Around him, the others followed suit—rising not in unison, not with practised synchronisation, but with the heavy, instinctive awareness of those who had waited their entire lives for this moment. There were no shouted commands. No heroic speeches. Not even a whispered prayer.

Andrew's gaze shifted toward the thick blast doors at the rear of the carrier, where the red warning lights had begun to blink in a slow, steady rhythm. A countdown was nearing its end. The time was almost here.

Paleview City – Eleven Minutes Before the First Breach

The morning unfolded like any other in Paleview City, humming with the synchronised rhythm of urban life. The sun hung low but bright behind a veil of clouded haze, casting a pale gold over the jagged silhouettes of glass towers and rising apartment blocks. Cars moved in slow, honking chains through congested intersections while electric trams hummed along steel tracks, their interior lights flickering softly like digital heartbeats. Street vendors stirred hot oil in battered pans, filling the air with the mingled scent of spice, grilled meat, and fried dough. A child's laughter echoed from a nearby sidewalk, where pigeons scattered with the flapping urgency of wings startled mid-meal.

Elena Morales stepped off a crowded city bus and adjusted the strap of her handbag while juggling a coffee cup in one hand and her phone in the other. The city's pulse was already in full swing, a cacophony of tires screeching, distant sirens whining, and voices layered in frustration, urgency, and purpose. She was midway through a terse conversation with her department head when her phone screen glitched. For a moment, the display went black, then flashed red with sudden brightness, forcing her to squint.

Before she could react, every billboard in sight—across the towering buildings, on the side of buses, even the digital sign outside the laundromat—froze mid-advertisement and flickered violently. The bright neon tones of consumerism bled away, replaced with solid crimson. Lines of massive black text scrolled across the displays in a rapid, unreadable torrent that looked more like corrupted code than human language. Sparks burst from a nearby screen as if it had been overloaded.

At the same time, a sharp, shrill tone pierced the air. The noise blared from every speaker in a several-block radius—traffic lights, phones, store intercoms—emitting a unified, pulsing emergency alert stabbing into the skull like a dentist's drill. Pedestrians staggered and clutched their ears. Coffee cups spilt. Car horns ceased, replaced by startled screams and confused shouts.

Elena's phone slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the pavement, the call long forgotten.

Then, without warning, every screen froze again, and silence fell.

It was not the silence of relief. It was the silence before the scream.

Then the voice came.

It did not emanate from any single source. It bypassed the rules of sound entirely, vibrating directly into the minds of every living person. It was deep and mechanical, crackling with static at the edges, but perfectly comprehensible.

"People of Planet #1556, your free period is over. It's time for the real test to begin."

All across Paleview, thousands of people froze mid-step. Conversations ended in half-formed syllables. The voice left a chill that seemed to sink into the marrow, bypassing comprehension and sinking straight into instinct.

Some people looked around in disbelief. Others began to cry. A few dropped to their knees, thinking it was God. But most stood there, utterly confused, eyes wide and bodies frozen with a primal understanding that something terrible had just begun.

Overhead, the clouds began to ripple unnaturally, as if something massive pressed against the other side of the sky, distorting it like a plastic sheet pulled taut. Without warning, a sound cracked across the heavens—sharp and otherworldly, like the shattering of a continent-sized glass mirror. The sky split open.

A vertical rift, jagged and glowing with red-black energy, tore across the skyline above the Riverfront District. Its edges pulsated with an organic, writhing motion, sending waves of visible heat distortion through the air. Lightning forked within the wound, illuminating the inside of the tear, where only swirling void and alien colours existed.

From the breach, a shape emerged.

It came slowly at first—an appendage, clicking and jointed, covered in dull, dark chitin that reflected light like oiled stone. Then came the rest of it. A creature the size of a delivery truck, insectoid in form but wrong in too many ways to describe. Its limbs moved with twitching, unnatural speed, its eyes were compound but glowing, and its mandibles dripped a translucent green fluid that hissed upon contact with metal.

The creature landed hard on the roof of a city bus, collapsing it instantly. Metal shrieked as it tore through the structure, grabbing a passenger trying to escape through the shattered windshield and ripping him in half in a blur of movement. Blood sprayed in arcs across the street, followed by a moment of stunned stillness.

Then came the screaming.

People fled in every direction, trampling over each other in blind panic. Mothers dragged children. Office workers dropped laptops and ran with the desperate, mindless energy of prey. Drivers swerved onto sidewalks. Cars collided, metal folding with the crunch of twisted steel, engines bursting into flame. The creature shrieked—a high, ear-piercing signal that echoed off the buildings like a sonar pulse—and began to chase.

Then another rift opened. And another. Across the city, portals bloomed like infected wounds in the air—tearing themselves open on the sides of buildings, above intersections, in alleyways, and even underground. From each one emerged more creatures. Some crawled. Some flew. Some slithered or pounced, but all of them shared one trait: they were built for extermination.

The city descended into chaos in under a minute.

Sirens wailed, this time real ones, as first responders attempted to make sense of the disaster. But even as armoured police vehicles rolled out from district HQ, more monsters appeared. The air was filled with smoke, fire, and the screams of the dying. Shattered glass rained from above like silver confetti.

Somewhere in the sky, satellites recorded it all.

From the surface, the city of Paleview collapsed into madness.

From above, the test had only just begun.

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