The World Reborn Ch. 01

Chapter 1 - Genesis

- Year: 2110 AD

My name is Nick and I am a member of the Human Genesis group. Well, more like a 'volunteer?;' during my senior year of high school, they set up a flier detailing how they'd pay people 230 Credits just to check my DNA! No brainer, right? Then after they check my DNA, they offered me a job just to stand around and literally do nothing, but stay relatively healthy and alive? Hell yeah! So after graduating, I accepted the offer.

Apparently, Human Genesis (a subsidiary of JNX Corp.) is an 'extinction prevention eco-group' dedicated to preserving the human race from total obliteration, like an astronomic disaster or if someone really fucks up and instigates a third Corporate War that somehow becomes apocalyptic. Cheery. They were searching for individuals with good, stable genes that have low chances of mutations to provide DNA to make Genetiplasm Clones and maybe help repopulate if things really get dicey and I, apparently, fit the bill.

Don't get fooled, though, I'm no jock. I'm what I like to call, an 'average Joe with a bit of nerdy tendencies.'

When I first began, it was super easy; it was kinda like a vacation in a really extravagant hotel, but I got paid to stay there! I wasn't the only one in Facility 13, though. There were twelve of us. Six guys and six girls, excluding the people and researchers running the place. We got along well enough, even though we couldn't 'fraternize' with our fellow Thirteeners, so we wouldn't have kids too early (though Nano Anti-Contraception was all the rage at the time...). That was a shame since there was a Mexican girl named Rosa who I felt like I had a connection with... Oh well...

After several months at Facility 13, the science guys call us all in to perform a test run to see if the Cellular Stasis Pods worked or not. I found it all suspicious since everyone but us seemed more nerve-wracked than usual, but then again, they probably didn't want to accidentally kill one of us in this test.

As I went under, I thought of the likelihood of the world actually going to shit. I chuckled to myself, Not likely...

---

- Year:???? AD

I woke up way groggier than I thought I would be.

"Ugh, my aching everything..."

I walked for a few seconds before I vomited. That's not normal. The whole place seemed deserted for some reason. I checked the other pods, but they were far too opaque to actually see anything.

Something is definitely not right... I thought.

I went through the hallway that lead to the Central Q-Com for the whole facility, but as I walked, something felt off. It was my left arm; it seemed to be slightly heavier and looks like I was wearing a metal gauntlet.

I don't remember putting this on before...

I got nervous and started to speed walk down the hall to the Q-Com room. Once there I attempted to log in, which took a couple of tries for some reason. I tried to search through the files but they all seemed corrupted.

I typed in where the HG subjects were located (we all had GPS chips), but all I got was ERROR. I searched through the files for the Cellular Stasis Pod files, which finally got me somewhere. I checked for the other Thirteeners; but all I got was DECEASED. That wasn't right. I checked Lee, S: DECEASED. Martinez, R.: DECEASED. I checked them all again. Again and again. DECEASED. I vomited again. The pods' opaqueness...

I checked my name and I got a MALFUNCTION. I went through the resulting report. Apparently the pod only slightly fucked up; my left arm atrophied while under, but the Q-Com saw fit to amputate the arm and give me a cybernetic prosthetic. I understandably fainted.

---

Time must've passed by, because when I came to several of the room's lights had been turned off, either to save electricity or from the place going to hell. I got up from the chair and wandered the halls aimlessly for a while. But I refused to go into that room. It was a tomb of the friends that I lost, so I promptly locked it.

I got angry. I mean really ANGRY. I began to yell, "WHAT THE FUCK!! They think they can get away with killing my friends? Of leaving us behind? To hell with that and them!" I stormed around the facility, gathering supplies. I needed to leave this place. I know it sounds stupid, but I needed answers and despite how big Facility 13 actually was, I just couldn't stay there. I gathered several Vac-Packed food packs, a few bottles of water, a few pairs of clean clothes, a couple of Medi-Packs into a shoulder bag after I got into some proper clothes (JNX Corp. brand Breezy Shirt and Pants, a track suit over that, an extra large jacket over that and a pair of shoes). I dug around the Security Wing and got a stun baton, a survival knife, and one Shock Rifle.

I never had to use a pseudo-firearm before, let alone an actual gun, but I thought, How hard could it be?

---

I finally got outside to see the weirdest shit: a forest. What the actual fuck was a forest doing here? Where a city used to sit? Where did all the buildings go? The people? I had another bad feeling in my gut, but I ignored it in favor of moving forward. As I walked through the forest, I could see the skeletons of the city from under the overgrowth: moss-covered manhole covers, trees sprouted from nigh-destroyed buildings, and a statue of a mounted cavalryman stood slightly leaning backwards.

I stood and listened to the birds. At least I'm not on another planet... But how long have I been out?

My thoughts were interrupted by a horrid squeal and from the underbrush came a huge, deathly pale, three-tusked pig-thing barreling right for me. I bolted. It chased me though the woods, determined to gut me or die trying. Luckily, I found a tree to climb, and climb I did. When I stopped and looked down, the boar glared up at me, huffing. I raspberried the asshole. Bad Idea because it then headbutted the tree to try to dislodge me. Nice try, but I was practically balls deep in that tree I was hugging it so intensely. An apple conked me in the head, so a picked another one and chucked it. Jackpot! Right in the eye. The pale pig didn't like that and shrieked at me before lumbering away into some brush.

I didn't want to use the Shock Rifle because I didn't want to accidentally slip off into the thing's hungry jaws...

I waited two hours and ten minutes passed (my new arm had a watch built in) before I dared contemplate whether or not to get down from the tree. Finally, mustering a lot of courage, I got down and swiftly got the fuck away, asap.

I found a large cliff with a waterfall coming down from the left that fed into a pond while the right had a cave. I thought this would be a good spot as any to stay for the night. Maybe I can make a base camp or something. I entered the cave, turning my arm's built in flashlight, and walked several steps before I heard some skitering behind me. Turning my head, I saw weird, cycloptic spider-crab-things slowly scuttling toward me. Again, I bolted. The chased me intil I fell down a hole, like an idiot.

I sat on my ass for a few minutes, groaning in pain. I heard more movement, but it was coming from in front of me, not behind and it sounded much larger. Then I saw the yellow-green eyes that literally glowed in the dark. I quickly leaned against the right wall with all my strength. This new thing was bioluminescent; not only did the eyes glow, but the sides of it's head (presumably) glowed in a zigzag pattern, a pair of bioluminescent areas glowed closer to the head and another pair below that. It hissed at me twice.

Before it could eat me, one of the crab-things accidentally fell down into the hole with us and tried to crawl back up in vain. Yellow Eyes hissed loudly at the crab-thing and seemed to have chucked a rock, killing it instantly. Shit.

A couple of minutes after that, nothing happened. I did not die via thrown projectile. Yellow Eyes just starred at me and I to it. Then I heard hissing, so I showed my light to where the crab-thing died to find an eyeless snake slithering to the dead creature. Yellow Eyes grabbed the blind snake's tail like lightning and whipped it's head onto the floor with a sickening crack and retreated into a crevasse in the back of the cave with the newly killed prize. I tried to show my light into the crevasse, but was met with more hissing from Yellow Eyes, so I quit doing that immediately.

I tried to fight off my tiredness, but eventually it won in the end. I was woken up by some rustling and figured out that Yellow Eyes had ventured out to inspect and maybe kill/eat me. It was sniffing my crotch area and, while I'm not proud of saying this, I got a real fear-boner. Hey, don't judge me. I'm not the only one who has ever had a fear-boner before... I tensed my body, but Yellow Eyes sensed this and quickly retreated back into it's crevasse. It is safe to say I did not sleep after that.

A little while later, my stomach growled and I checked my arm-watch, which said it was twenty past eight in the morning. I rummaged through my supplies and I saw Yellow Eyes peek from it's hiding place to investigate the noise. As I chewed on some beef jerky, an idea came into my head. I grabbed another piece of jerky and gingerly tossed it towards my onlooker. Yellow Eyes looked towards the offending meat and sniffed it. I readied my flashlight, but I lowered the brightness before I shined the light at it.

I gasped in surprise; Yellow Eyes was a girl?!

She looked back at me, hissed, grabbed the jerky, and began to chew on it intensely. Yellow Eyes looked human enough, but with several obvious differences. Her irises were yellow-green, along with her bioluminescent skin patches, and her pupils are somewhat diamond-shaped, but slightly rounder. Her skin was dark and smokey colored, with the first pair of bioluminescent patches coming from her collarbone, over her shoulder, and down her upper arm, and the second pair started from her lower waist and went down her upper legs. Her teeth (from what I could see when she hissed at me) were sharp and pointed. Her ears looked like if you took four really large bat ears, each, and stuck them together. The edges of her ears were bioluminescent, too, making the zigzag pattern I had seen before. Her hands and feet were slightly webbed and had small claws. Her toes were the weirdest of all; the middle toe was the longest while the closest toes were smaller and the toes next to those were smaller still.

Her hair was pitch black and short. It looked like someone had tried to cut it with a knife or something.

Did I also mention she was, like, 95% naked? Yup, all Yellow Eyes had on was a flimsy loincloth covering the front of her pelvic area. I had thought the loincloth had a back, but to my surprise, it was in fact a tail, a small, flat, and wide tail that was just enough to cover her cheeks. Like a fleshy spade attached to her. She involuntarily flipped her tail upwards for a quick second, giving me a good look at her ass and larger lips.

She turned towards me after she was done chewing that jerky. Try as I might, I couldn't help myself from looking at her chest, which held a pair of nicely rounded and perky B-cup breasts that went up and down from her heavy breathing. Her nipples were smokey like her skin, but much paler in comparison. Suffice it to say, but I got another fear-boner.

She slinked back to her crevasse.

I said, "Shit," aloud.

---

I felt a breeze, but didn't feel like it came from behind me, though. It felt like it came from the crevasse. I thought enough was enough, I didn't want to die in some dumb cave! So I took another chance. I picked my stuff up, got up, and then slowly walked toward the crevasse. I saw Yellow Eyes there, she had laid down, probably fell asleep from watching me and I had stirred her from her slumber. She woke up cranky. She kept hissing at me each and every step until I was at the entrance and looked ready to pounce.

She stopped hissing after I took out two more pieces of jerky. She sniffed toward them as I offered the food to her. There was just enough room for me to slip past her as she grabbed the jerky, letting me through without getting bitten. As I walked through the tunnel, she followed me, glaring at me with both suspicion and curiosity. I checked behind me once and awhile, to see if she was there, and she sure was.

Finally, I saw a light, but it looked like it came from the ceiling. It did came from the ceiling, though an inch wide crack.

"Shit," I said to myself, "I'm not going to crawl out through there." I turned to Yellow Eyes, but she didn't say anything. I continued to walk down the tunnel until I encountered a door.

An actual door. I knocked on it, but nobody answered. There was a plaque that, after wiping away the grime, said JNX EMPLOYES ONLY. I nearly cried in joy. I presented my robo-arm to the scanner, which slid the door open for me almost immediately. I was about to close the door when I remembered Yellow Eyes. She was still behind me, but she wore a face of wonderment. She probably tried to open the door but couldn't. I felt bad for her, really. I stuck my robo-hand out for her to take it. She looked at my hand, then me a couple of times before she slowly began to take it.

The moment was almost ruined when the light in the room behind me turned red and I knew exactly what it meant. I quickly said, "Override protocols, grant guest access," which the building's computer accepted by turning the light normal again. Slowly, Yellow Eyes retook my hand and I gently led her inside.

I took off my shoes at some cubbies (JNX really didn't like anyone tracking mud inside of their buildings...) and Yellow let go of my hand to check out the shoes I was leaving behind. Her curiosity was quite adorable. I continued up a set of stairs higher into the building and I heard pitter-patter from Yellow trying to catch up. We searched throughout the building, but found nobody living there.

"Well," I said to Yellow, "I guess we can call dibs on this place, huh?" She looked at me questionly, but didn't answer.

I then promptly headed towards the Q-Com room to see if this network was running, which actually was.

Thank God for JNX Corp. construction...

I entered my login and immediately scoured through whatever I could to find out what happened. The truth was so much worse than I imagined: apparently, a third Corporation War did get underway, the same day that the other Thirteeners and I went to sleep. The war turned really ugly. I don't want to make you squeamish from the details, but lets say a huge chunk of the West Coast was frozen over from a malfunctioning weather controlling weapon and leave it at that. Then a terrorist group/death cult called HADES unleashed a bacterial plague that targeted people's (and sometimes other animal's) genetic structure, causing cellular degenerative breakdown. A think tank of the smartest people around tried to come up with a solution, but that's all I got before the Q-Com broke down and kept saying BUT-BUT-BUT-BUT-BUT-BUT-BUT-BUT-BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT. GLUTEUS MAXIMUS. ERROR-ERROR-ERROR-ERROR-ERROR... Until I finally shut it down.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes in frustrated. So there really was an apocalypse, but JNX and Human Genesis was caught off guard? So much for protecting humanity's future... Yellow had walked up to the control panel and looked between it and the screen, back and forth. She then looked at me quizzically (or was it worry?) and pushed a couple of buttons, but nothing happened because she was designated as a 'guest' that couldn't interact with anything that only employees were allowed access to. She went back to pushing buttons anyway.

All the while, I was staring at her in contemplation. What the hell was she? She looks human enough, but... Was she a mutant? It couldn't be from the bacteria, that causes painful death via cellular degeneration. Maybe the think tank's solution had some side effects?

Huh, if I didn't know any better, I'd think she's around my age...

I noticed she had noticed that I was staring at her and then she turned her head...in embarrassment? Did she know she was naked?

I decided to find some clothes for her. She followed me to a clothing supply room and I picked out a white t and a pair of black, baggy, silk shorts. Getting her to wear the shirt was easy enough, but the shorts on the other hand were another story. Her tail kept getting in the way, so I had to cut a hole in the shorts, which made things a lot easier. Me trying to get her to wear the shorts while trying not to seem like a perv was the hardest part of all. In the end, she figured it out, though I thought the loincloth would would make it uncomfortable, but she didn't seem to care.

I gave her a thumbs up to reassure her. She looked at it, then tried to imitate it. Her attempt was somewhat off, but A for effort.

Sitting down, I thought that I would try my hand at diplomacy. I pointed to myself and said, "My name is Nick. NI-CK. Nick."

Yellows brows scrunched together before she tried, "Neeck?"

"N-i-ck."

"Neeck."

Close enough.

I gestured to myself, "Nick." Then I gestured to her, "And you are...?"

It took her a bit longer, but she understood eventually. Apparently her name's Kheeta.

With that settled, we went to scrounge food for dinner. Luckily the building was a supply depot for JNX employees. Maybe it held supplies for Facility 13? We found plenty of food to munch on, which consisted of Vac-Packed food that was then put into Stasis storage: BBQ ribs, apples, some berries, a couple of cans of corn, and finally bottled water. She scarfed the ribs down, but left the apples and corn alone, though some berries were missing. Kheeta didn't bother to use any utensils which I provided, instead using her hands and licking her fingers of sauce. Her tongue is also bioluminescent. She caught me staring again so I went back to eating. Kheeta stared back before she resumed licking.

I helped Kheeta clean up, which was easier than anticipated. I tried to teach her how to use the toilet; she used it, but she still hated it

I then decided it would be best to go to bed early so we could start the journey to Kheeta's village bright eyed and bushy tailed. I didn't know why I wanted to do that, but I felt like I had to.

There was an emergency bunk of six separate rooms, all side by side. I pointed at Kheeta, then to Kheeta's room. I pointed to my room, then to myself.

"Kheeta will sleep in there. I will sleep in here." I went into my self-designated room, but Kheeta latched onto my arm like it was for life or death. She looked legitimately afraid. All Kheeta needed to trust someone was to be given food, clothes, and a healthy amount of fearful respect. I led here to her room and got her situated in bed. When I tried to leave, she protested by making a slightly high toned grunting noise.

"It'll be fine," I reassured her, "I will be close nearby." I pointed to the wall. "I will be just beyond the wall here. There is literally nothing to be worried about." I gave her a smile, which seemed to calm her down, so I turned off the light and closed the door after I left. I promptly went into my room, got into some PJ bottoms (minus shirt) and soon went to sleep.

---

I heard my door slide open, then close again, but since it was deep in sleep I really wanted to ignore it. There was a soft glow in the room. What got my attention was someone sliding into bed with me, with her chest to my back and her arms attempting to wrap around my torso under my arms.

I grumbled, "Kheeta, what are you doing?"

A grunt was her answer. I could feel her nose try to get into the crook of my neck while her legs wrapped around mine. Her body was extremely warm.

I looked at the time. "It's eleven-forty..."

Another grunt.

I attempted to get up while I said, "Alright, enough of this. It's time that you went-" That was all I said before she flipped me around hard, pinning me to my back while she straddled my pelvis while holding my arms down.