Patient Zero: Messiah of Thorns

Chapter 5

Nico slammed onto the cracked asphalt of a highway on the outskirts of Chicago. His fingers gripped his neck as if barbed wire were wrapped around it, the heat burning his skin. Crimson veins crept aggressively past his jawline and began to form a gruesome crown of thorns pattern beneath the skin of his temples.

Nico felt his self-awareness shatter. He saw the veins on his arm, which had now reached 35% of his entire body. Every one percent of this mutation's progress gave him brutal strength, but snatched away a childhood memory, eroding his identity. He could feel the memory of skateboarding in a city park vanishing, replaced by an alien plant-growth algorithm.

To the north, a strange golden light from the Appalachian Mountains seemed to call to him with a low frequency that made his brain vibrate. A whisper that wasn't a voice, but a resonance trying to pull him in.

“Nico! Look at me! Stay conscious, Nico!” Elena slapped Nico’s cheeks hard, repeatedly, trying to pull him back from the abyss of mutant consciousness. “Don’t listen to that voice in your head! That’s not your thought!”

“That voice... Sovereign... he’s calling me home, Elena,” Nico groaned, his teeth clattering. His eyes were completely red again, with no visible pupils. “It feels like my brain is being pulled by a giant magnet. I... I can’t hold it anymore! My head is going to explode!”

"The monitor shows abnormal resonance!" Elena shouted, staring at the waves on her data tablet. "You’re directly connected to the spore core, Nico! Fight it! You’re not one of them!" Elena dragged Nico’s heavy body toward an old, seemingly abandoned distribution warehouse by the side of the highway. “Where’s the vehicle you mentioned? We have to get out of the Chicago radius now!”

Nico pointed with a trembling finger toward a pile of large military tarps in the corner of the warehouse. As soon as Elena pulled the tarp away, a metal monster emerged from the darkness. A heavy-duty truck with 5-inch thick steel plating across the entire body, polycarbonate glass with bulletproof iron grates, and a massive, sharp steel plow at the front. On the roof, an unloaded .50 caliber machine gun turret was mounted.

“The Thorn-Breaker,” Nico whispered, his voice hoarse, a hint of pride remaining amidst his suffering. “I modified the engine to a supercharged V8; it can run on gasoline, alcohol, or fermented rose nectar if we run out of fuel. It has six backup tanks. Equipped with a military-grade air filtration system and steel run-flat tires. My doomsday project.”

“You really are a crazy mechanical genius, Nico,” Elena marveled for a moment before she helped Nico into the driver’s seat.

Nico worked like a man possessed. With hands shaking violently and drenched in red sweat, he locked the final bolt on the auxiliary control panel on the dashboard. His brain worked instinctively, even though he felt his consciousness being pulled apart. Elena monitored the biometric sensors she had connected to Nico’s arm.

Elena stared at the biometric monitor. Her eyes widened in horror. "Your heart rate is 52 beats per minute, Nico. That’s too slow for a panicked human." She pointed to the wave graph on the screen. "This... this is the same frequency as the spore pulse in central Chicago. You’re permanently connected to their network. We have to hurry."

“That’s why we have to get to the Greenhouse as soon as possible, before this frequency takes me over completely,” Nico started the V8 engine.

VROOOM!

The engine's roar thundered inside the empty warehouse, giving Nico a bitter sense of confidence. The truck sped out, smashing the highway guardrail into pieces. Ahead of them, a ten-meter-high wall of thorny plants—known by locals as The Briar Patch—blocked the only exit from the city.

“Hold on tight, Elena!” Nico shouted as he floored the gas pedal.

The Thorn-Breaker’s steel plow hit the wall of thorns with a deafening metallic impact. Thick red fluid sprayed onto the windshield, blocking their view. Nico screamed in pain, clutching his chest. He felt every vine he hit, every thorn he broke, as if it were his own skin being flayed alive. The sensation of losing memories flashed by, as if a part of him were being forcibly ripped away.

“One more meter! Nico, hold on! Don’t let off the gas!” Elena screamed amidst the violent shaking that sent the truck's contents flying.

With one final surge of the engine, they broke through the wall. Chicago was left behind as a gruesome red mound under a perpetual fog. The air outside the wall felt slightly cleaner, though the sky remained gray.

Nico stepped on the brakes slowly, his body limp and powerless like a ragdoll with its strings cut. Fresh blood flowed from his ears, soaking the collar of his uniform. “We... we’re out of the city...”

Suddenly, Nico’s right hand moved on its own. With a movement that was incredibly fast and powerful, he gripped Elena’s wrist with a strength capable of breaking bone. Nico raised his head slowly, but his eyes at that moment were no longer crimson red.

His eyes were a pure golden yellow, glowing with an intelligence that was ancient and cold.

“He... he sees us, Elena,” Nico’s voice sounded very distant, flat, and completely devoid of emotion, as if another entity were speaking through his vocal cords.

“Nico? You’re scaring me! Let go! You’re hurting my hand!” Elena screamed in terror, trying to break free from Nico’s vise-like grip.

“Sovereign,” Nico whispered softly, before his body finally slumped and he fell unconscious over the truck's steering wheel, leaving Elena in the silence of the dead highway. The presence of Sovereign in his mind felt like a weight crushing his entire consciousness, threatening to swallow him whole.