It began with a serum that artificially hardened a soldier's flesh against harm, made their bodies absorb nutrients more efficiently, and raised their oxygen intake. These basic benevolent augments were every soldier's dream, as it brought a safe and reliable advantage over enemy fighters.
Over time, as the serum became more complex and the treatment periods longer, their bodies began to change... Some would later call it degeneration but others might call it... Evolution.
With their new found power they served as super-powered frontline warriors, taking hits that would cripple a man for life while marching through gunfire as if it were confetti.
That was just the beginning.
As the body changes, so does the mind. As their power and superhuman abilities became woefully apparent, humans became afraid of their brethren; taller, stronger, and seemingly more intelligent than most humans could ever wish to be. While all humans lusted to become more powerful, more intelligent, more influential, it is in the nature of the human mind to fear that which it does not understand. No longer on equal ground, humanity as a whole harbored a deeply-held and seething disdain for their genetically-engineered cousins.
But oh, they had no idea just how much things were about to change.
With the rapid cerebral expansion and corporeal augmentation offered by controlled genetic modification, the Forced Evolution - Variant Expansion and Regeneration project, just about every soldier wished to be experimented upon. Codenamed F.E.V.E.R. for the near-lethal incubation period in which a subject's bodily functions exploded into overdrive, Project FEVER was deemed to the public and both private and government investors as widely successful. Success was achieved at an inexplicably high cost during this parody of genetic experimentation rivaling the fringe experiments of the Nazi creed. After losing thousands of lives during 'volunteer testing' in prisons and asylums involved in the 'unrecorded' failures, branching projects, and genetic horrors born from the FEVER process, a delicate balance was finally achieved.
To investors and the general populace it was called E.V.E. - Experimental Variant Evolution, a faint glimmer of hope that masked the grand truth behind the looming horror of forced human evolution. In little over a year after their tell-tale success in the field of genetics, the creators of FEVER commenced Project Proliferation. E.V.E. 'stabilizer' injections became mandatory in hospitals across the planet, while the rich and famous became as attached to E.V.E. 'beautification' augments as they once were to plastic surgery. Farmer's Unions across the nation rallied behind the spread of E.V.E., as its most beloved effect was heightened metabolism; vastly increasing the amount of food necessary to gain and maintain weight. The menagerie of risky weight-loss treatments were cast aside for the vastly superior effect of E.V.E. 'metabolism' supplements rendered into a civilian-friendly pill form. On and on the list went as we descended further down the rungs of the evolutionary ladder with each pill, each injection, each 'user-friendly application of safe and efficient genetic supplements'.
A dark storm was approaching the metropolis of man, just beyond our sight. In the distant future of humanity, Project EVE would tear from their willing hands the only thing that linked them to their dwindling humanity... A DNA sequence who's structure holds the key to thousands of years of natural evolution, compressed into an quick injection of oddly-glowing fluid into their spine, heart, and brain. This material would tear the very bonds that hold their DNA together, fusing it with something wholly alien to our kind. altering the structure and makeup of our genes. Through the recombination of pairs into fresh new strands, imbued with bits of spliced alien DNA, they would become a new breed of super-soldier; the new masters of a volatile world where those with raw power and spreading influence held the reigns of society.
Basically, my story is about a race of genetically-modified super-soldiers that breed into Humanity, eventually take over aspects of world-government, and when humanity shuns them; strive to enslave their weaker counterparts.
As they begin to degenerate and fall into madness, humanity strikes back - and in the ensuing chaos - nuclear holocaust.
As civilization turned to ash and most technology became useless, the alien hybrids knew that their augmented bodies would protect them.
Fortunately for us, they're nowhere as strong as they once thought. Blasted across the nation like dead leaves in Autumn winds, many of them were destroyed, but many more remained.
Being the roach-like bastards we are, humanity banded together, fought back, procreated, spread out, and persevered while they hammered at us and took us one by one in the dead of night.
The higher-caste leaders retained enough of their sanity to use their seemingly-uncontrollable drones to hunt humans down, combing the wastes for any signs of life.
Why do they hunt humans, you ask? For a very simple case of aftersight. When the war broke up, the lack of readily-available rations drove the hybrids into a weakened state. Their heightened reflexes, brain patterns, bone structure, and fortitude was driven by their vastly-increased metabolism. For this reason they must feed less frequently yet in much higher quantities than their human counterparts.
Before the war, it was as easy as purchasing a big meal at specified EDEN rest-spots, which serviced hybrids with a especially-tailored diet that far-surpassed the simplicity of pork, potatoes and rice. After the war, there were no restocking EDEN locations, supermarkets, or fresh cattle to milk and cull... Only legions of ravenous mutated beasts, harvesting humans so that they could survive.
My story, once you delve deeper into the darkness that binds its pages, is about the rise of the super society of the seven scientists (Seven Scientists, jokingly called the SS, were the developers of the FEVER mutation process), the fall of civilization, the ensuing chaotic hell we were left in, and the story of humanity thereafter.
To break it down,
Human's make mutants, mutants grow strong. Humans fear mutants, create sanctions against them. Mutants feel their, hehe, 'humanity' is being threatened, and resent humans. They grow to hate each other...
And when the mutation spirals out of control, the culmination of this rivalry ends in a nuclear apocalypse, as every nation is annihilated in the flames of war.
Humans survive, and regrow. Mutants resurface, and realizing they are starving and dying off quickly, begin to feed on humans...
What comes next is anyone's guess. Will we fall to the bestial hunters of the night like cattle to the slaughter, or will we beat back our oppressors and re-establish the rudiments of human civilization within the burned-out husks of our former glory?
Stay tuned for more.