NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1: When Day Breaks
The day started off innocuous enough.
The door to my residency rang, making me wonder just who was at the door. I was in the middle of eating my lunch, a simple sandwich.
I wasn't expecting anyone.
Looking through the peeking hole, I found a smiling man of caucasian descent standing right in front of my door.
"Can I help you?" I asked as I opened the door.
"Yes, you can actually." The man's reply was immediate, and his tone was eerily cheerful while his smile felt forced.
His eyes weren't smiling.
"You see, we of The Company have an opening for a contractor. Normally, you would never have been our first, second, or even millionth pick, but we have an emergency on our hands. Our client wants to see a morally upstanding person being given this. You were our closest pick."
I felt wary. Now I might have enjoyed a waifu catalog story or two but those were fiction to me. Slavery in practice is horrific. I only enjoyed those stories because they weren't real. They're a fantasy where all the problems of the real world are gone.
Now that layer of protection is gone.
Beyond that, every horrifying story that's ever been told, from 1984 to I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, they're all real.
"Do you accept this Waifu Catalog?"
Normally I would say hell no, but just like how cracking the atom gave humanity the ability to destroy themselves, it also gave them the potential of nuclear energy, the densest form of energy short of antimatter.
While this Waifu Catalog can perform endless evil, it can also be for great good as well.
With this, I'd have access to endless worlds, and endless people that can be saved. Stories that ended in a bad ending can be changed to a good one by my interference.
"Yes."
"Good." The man then reached into his suit and took out a tablet, "The scenario has already been chosen for you, as well as the intensity. Please, make the most of your available points, and most importantly; do be entertaining."
Grasping the tablet, I looked over all the options.
SCP - When Day Breaks. My eyes narrowed, that was the scenario where the sun turned hostile and mutated all who bathed under its light into flesh monsters. What a frightening concept. The very sun itself became the source of all humanity's woes. Its status as a life-giver turned death-bringer.
Half an hour later, it was done.
"Happy doing business with you. You shall be transported momentarily."
That surprised me, "Momentarily? I don't get to say goodbyes?!"
The man's creepy smile grew even larger before I started seeing black spots in my vision.
Panic overtook my mind. My every cognitive capacity going overdrive in trying to do something to stop this.
I ran at him with all my might. My mind was unable to form any coherent thoughts other than 'If I tackle this man in front of me, surely that'll stop me from blacking out'.
The distance between the two of us closed. Like a car about to collide with a wall, I can practically count the number of nose hairs jutting out before I blacked out fully.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Mhmmm..."
"Hey lady, you sure you wanna lie there?"
Stirring, I lazily opened my eyes to the sight of multiple skyscrapers filling up the edge of my sight with the beautiful blue sky filling the center.
Ah... I'm lying down.
With a single motion, I pushed myself up to a sitting position and—
Whoa.
My mouth hung ajar as I found myself being able to see things in such great detail. I could count the number of faint scratches that come with improper cleaning of a panel of glass on a skyscraper...
Kilometers away.
Looking at the street cleaner who woke me up, I found out that I could see the tiny worm-like microbes that lived on his face.
It was overwhelming... yet it felt normal to me. All of it felt normal to me. I was able to fully take in so much information all at once.
My staring must've weirded him out since the street cleaner slowly backed out of there.
My eyes then focused back on the tiny details I never noticed before. I could see the uncountable number of dust particles in the air.
When have things been so dirty? Has the air I breathed always been this dirty? The amount of fungal spores, microbes, and dust within a single cubic meter of space was an utter travesty!
Ugh! I cringed in discomfort and held my breath. I felt disgusted with the many, many thousands of tiny lifeforms that occupy the same air as me, constantly entering and exiting my body.
Was this how germophobes felt?
I moved to swipe the air in front of me to get rid of this one spore that's been orbiting around me for the past few seconds. As my right hand passed over my vision, I suddenly realized that my nails were painted.
Halting suddenly, I stared at my right hand. My five nails are painted a shade of blue and green.
The fuck?
It suddenly dawned on me that I had signed a contract with The Company.
Oh fuck, I'm in the SCP - When Day Breaks scenario!
I suddenly shot up in a panic. A coldness runs down my back as I realize the people that are around me are all going to mutate under the rays of the sun unless I do something.
6.8 billion to be exact.
My head whipped around me to try and find that street cleaner before I quickly abandoned that notion. Running up to the closest person around— a pair of couples— I immediately asked as I bumped into the boyfriend, "What's today's date?"
Just as the girlfriend was about to presumably say something mean and push me away if the scowl on her face is any indication, her hand started melting.
"..."
"Get awaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuu—" Her speech slurred as her hand began dripping. Like a wax sculpture placed inside an active oven, the girlfriend's hands— her limbs— began to melt and fall to the ground with a wet 'slop' sound.
Instinctively, I tried to get away from the duo, only to find out that I'd accidentally taken the boyfriend's left hand with me in my frantic attempt at getting away.
I threw it as far away from me as possible. The thing splattered itself across the surface of a nearby skyscraper.
I watched in morbid fascination as the pair gurgled. I could feel raw, primal terror running through their body.
There were screams all around me. I don't pay attention to it.
I could only focus on the pair melting on the ground. They were screaming. For help. For anything.
It was horrific. I can't turn away. I can't turn away. I can't turn away no matter how much I want to.
Those screams were haunting. Even though my ears could pick up screaming all over the city, I found my focus to be on the ones in front of me.
I froze completely still. I couldn't move at all. I was frightened by the sight before me;
The duo now became masses of molten flesh, unrecognizable from their former identities. Their texture was smooth, almost waxy-like. They sloshed around. I could see what was perhaps them trying to regain their former shape but failing horribly.
Whatever it was, the moment they started crawling towards me, I snapped to action.
Using the common language known to life itself, I ran towards them. Just as I was half a meter away, I drew my left leg back and kicked them away as though they were a soccer ball.
*BOOOM*
The result was intense. The organism disintegrated into a fine mist. The shockwave from my kick blew away the mist and all nearby flesh monsters in my direct line of sight.
The wind caused my... silvery-bluish-green hair to flutter like a flag in a hurricane.
So this is the strength of Kukulkan.
I flexed my fingers before looking at everything around me. Only now did I realize I was in Times Square, and it was absolutely packed to the brim with these flesh monsters.
They crawled like slugs or snakes as they tried to amalgamate at the center of this square. Plenty already have.
They're afraid of something. Something is causing them to amalgamate instead of spreading out and infecting more people like they should.
It was me.
They all saw how I easily took down those things, and how I'm not being transformed despite being under the sun's mutating rays all this time.
They're trying to bunch up and then defeat me.
I don't let them.
I felt gravity release its hold on me. I was steadily rising in the air— before a sudden burst of force later and I found myself higher than any of New York's skyscrapers.
For a brief moment, I enjoyed the specious calm. It was easy to pretend that the world hadn't just gone to hell. The cloudless sky was blue. The city looked so peaceful from up here... if one were to ignore the multiple fires raging across it.
Creating a disk of energy behind me, I squatted on it. Despite being upside down, I had no problem squatting on it like it was the ground instead.
Then, once the mass below me had gathered enough, I leaped.
Accelerating through the air towards the ground everything appeared in slow motion.
I could see how the air around me started to burn. I could see how the last of those flesh monsters were hastily trying to clump together more and more in hopes of defeating me.
Once I was 100 meters away, I pulled my fists back.
50 meters. I aimed at the very center of this mass of molten meat. It was now filling up half of the square.
10 meters. I could almost touch it. The peak of this mountain of molten meat.
In less than a tenth of a second, I moved a distance of half a mile. I threw my fist at the giant mass.
I could see how everything was just disintegrating before me. I was like a missile except my 'fiery explosion' was the explosion of force that radiated out from my descension. Like a wave of oblivion, I could see without any issue how waves of air pressure that came forth from my collision with the streets were steadily shredding those things that used to be human into dust finer than even volcanic ash.
It was like looking at a slow-motion video.
The street itself then finally came up. Chunks of concrete and dirt were all disintegrating, all forming a veil that blocked my vision.
Then finally, a pillar of green light covered me as they shot up straight into the sky from where my fist made contact with the ground.
________
AN: I haven't abandoned my other fic yet. As of the 85th Move, there are less than 10 chapters left before the epilogue.
You can see this as me giving out a heads-up that this will be my next fic after the Inspired Inventor one finishes.