Patient Zero: Messiah of Thorns

Chapter 8

"Nico! Wake up! Don’t let him in!”

Elena’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a very deep well. The crimson mist inside the cabin of the Thorn-Breaker grew thicker, swallowing reality and replacing it with pulsating shadows. Nico felt it—a soul-freezing cold, followed by an exploding heat at the base of his brain. His hands, which had been gripping the steering wheel, slowly went limp, while his skin began to emit thin wisps of red steam.

“Run... Elena...” Nico whispered, his voice hoarse, nearly lost amidst the low-frequency hum filling the room. A memory of his father, faint and blurry, almost flashed by before being struck down by pain.

Nico’s vision went white. Suddenly, the smell of gasoline and death in Chicago vanished. It was replaced by the scent of ozone, pungent floor cleaner, and a fragrance of roses that was far too sweet to be natural.

Subject 01, can you hear me?

Nico opened his eyes. He was no longer inside the wrecked truck. He was lying on a cold metal operating table. The white LED lights on the ceiling blinded him, flickering with a painful rhythm. All around him, giant glass tubes filled with thick green liquid stood in rows, containing slowly pulsating lumps of flesh—the prototypes of the red roses.

“Where... am I?” Nico muttered. He tried to move his hands, but his wrists were locked by cold magnetic cuffs.

Footsteps approached, echoing on the laboratory floor that was far too clean. A man appeared in his line of sight. The man wore a dark gray lab coat, not white. His face was sharp, with silver-rimmed glasses and eyes that radiated no emotion whatsoever—like a pair of cold, observant camera lenses.

“Dr. Thorne?” Nico whispered. The name surfaced instinctively from the depths of his trauma-buried memories.

Dr. Aris Thorne gave a small smile, a movement of the lips that didn't reach his eyes. “Good morning, Nico. Or should I call you Subject 01 today? Your synchronization with The Seed reached eighty percent last night. You are the greatest medical miracle of this century.”

“Let me go... I’m begging you. My father... he’s waiting for me at home,” Nico whimpered. Pain began to crawl up from his spinal cord, as if thousands of tiny insects were chewing on his nerves, trying to erase everything he remembered.

Thorne leaned down, his face only inches from Nico’s. “Your father was the one who handed you over to me, boy. He knew that humanity was a dead end. He wanted you to be the bridge. He wanted you to be the Catalyst that would transform this world into an eternal garden.”

“Liar!” Nico screamed. His entire body shook against the lie.

Thorne didn't respond. He picked up a long syringe containing a glowing, dark crimson liquid. “This will hurt a little, Nico. But remember, pain is proof that you are evolving. You will forget your name, but you will remember every single petal that blooms in this world.”

As the needle pierced his neck, Nico felt an explosion of fire inside his veins. He screamed—a scream that tore through the reality of that laboratory.

“Nico! Wake up! I’m begging you, breathe!”

A cold touch jolted Nico back into the cabin of the Thorn-Breaker. He choked, his lungs searching for clean oxygen. Elena was pressing an emergency oxygen mask to his face, tears streaming down her cheeks. The red mist inside the cabin had thinned slightly due to the emergency filtration system Elena had manually activated.

“Elena...” Nico’s voice trembled.

“Thank God. You stopped breathing for a moment,” Elena held Nico’s face, ensuring the yellow glow in his eyes faded back into a weary brown. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

Nico turned toward the cracked windshield. Outside, the hallucination of the monster was gone, but a more real threat had arrived. A swarm of Bloomers—hundreds of them—began to crawl out from the shadows of the buildings. They were drawn by the sound of the truck’s impact and the scent of the thick spores released by the giant roses.

“The door on your side is jammed,” Elena said frantically. She yanked on the driver’s side door lever, which was bent from the impact with the power pole. “Those roots... they’re wrapping around the entire body of the truck!”

Nico tried to move his legs, but the pain from the flashback had left him momentarily paralyzed. The memory that had just surfaced felt like shards of glass in his brain. “My back... it feels like it’s burning.”

“That’s because the spores are trying to forcibly trigger your thorn growth. We have to go before they tear through the roof of the cabin!” Elena grabbed Nico’s large pipe wrench and smashed it against the side window repeatedly.

CRACK!

The polycarbonate glass finally shattered. Elena jumped out first, her feet landing on a pile of slippery vegetation. She immediately turned back and reached her hand into the cabin.

“Nico, take my hand! You have to drag yourself out!”

Nico groaned, using the last of his strength to crawl out through the broken window. As his body hit the heavy outside air, he smelled an incredibly sharp scent of nectar. The swarm of Bloomers was only a few dozen meters away, their movements jerky yet incredibly fast.

Elena threw Nico’s arm over her shoulder, supporting his weight. “Keep walking, Nico. Just a little further. We can hide behind the ruins of that train station.”

They moved haltingly past piles of destroyed cars. Behind them, the Bloomers began to swarm the Thorn-Breaker, tearing through the truck’s steel as if it were soft flesh. Nico glanced back and saw the monsters howling at the sky, emitting sound waves that made his bones vibrate.

“Thorne...” Nico whispered through his ragged breath; the name felt like a hot coal on his tongue.

“What?” Elena turned, her eyes full of anxiety.

“I saw him, Elena. Inside the gas. Dr. Aris Thorne. He’s the one who did this to me. He’s the one who put ‘The Seed’ inside my body five years ago.”

Elena froze for a moment, her pace slowing. Her face turned deathly pale, paler than when they were being chased by the mutant swarm. “Thorne? Are you sure it was him?”

“I’ll never forget those cold eyes. He said my father was the one who handed me over. Is it true, Elena? Was my entire life a planned experiment?”

Elena didn't answer. She continued to pull Nico into the darkness of the derelict subway station. They collapsed behind a large concrete pillar, hidden from the view of the swarm outside. The growls of the Bloomers echoed above them, searching for the prey that had just vanished.

Nico leaned against the pillar, clutching his still-throbbing head. “Answer me, Elena. Who is Dr. Thorne, really? And what is his connection to your father?”

Elena looked down, her hands fidgeting with the edge of her now-cracked data tablet. The silence between them felt heavier than the threat of the monsters outside. The sound of water dripping from a leaking pipe was the only thing filling the void.

“Dr. Aris Thorne was my father’s mentor,” Elena began, her voice very low. “He was the lead architect behind Project Catalyst. My father... he was originally just a biology assistant. But Thorne was the one who brought that technology from a place that shouldn't exist on Earth.”

Nico stared at Elena intensely. “A place that shouldn't exist on Earth?”

“Those crimson rose spores... they aren't the result of natural mutation or ordinary genetic engineering, Nico. They have an alien biological signature. Thorne found them inside a meteorite that crashed in Antarctica ten years ago. He called it ‘The Sovereign Essence’.”

Elena raised her head, looking into Nico’s eyes with a gaze full of guilt and sorrow. “Thorne didn't just want to heal the world. He wanted to replace it. And to do that, he needed the first human host who could survive with that alien DNA inside their cells. He needed Subject 01.”

Nico laughed bitterly, a sound that broke in his throat. “So, I’m the first lab rat for this plant invasion. And your father... he watched it all happen?” Rage burned through his memories.

“My father tried to stop him, Nico! That’s why he created the Greenhouse protocol! He wanted to create a serum to kill the Seed before Thorne could activate the global phase!” Elena gripped Nico’s arm. “But Thorne found out about his plan. He triggered the lab leak in Chicago early to get rid of the evidence of his failures. This entire city was sacrificed just so Thorne could see how his Catalyst survived in the wild.”

A wave of intense nausea hit Nico. Every death, every bit of suffering he had seen on the streets of Chicago for the past five years—it was all part of Thorne’s research. And he was the center of that research.

“I’m not human, Elena,” Nico whispered hollowly, a cheerful childhood memory drifting away, replaced by this horror. “I’m a walking biological weapon.”

“No, Nico! Don’t say that!” Elena shook his shoulders. “Thorne made a huge mistake. He thought he could control you through the Seed. But you escaped. You survived as a human for five years. That proves your will is stronger than their biological programming.”

Nico closed his eyes; the image of Thorne’s cold eyes returned. “Then why now? Why is the Sovereign calling me back?”

Elena fell silent for a moment, her eyes fixed on the crimson veins in Nico’s arm, which were now pulsating slowly with a very clear red color, almost like liquid ruby.

“Because you are blooming, Nico. Biologically, your body has reached the maturation stage. If we don't reach the Greenhouse soon, the Sovereign frequency will completely take over your consciousness. You won't become a monster... you’ll become part of their network. Your consciousness will be scattered across every petal in the world.”

Nico felt an incredible chill. He remembered how he could feel the heartbeat of the man under the bus earlier. He remembered how he “saw” the path through the vibrations of the plants. A memory of his mother, her warm smile, was slowly eroding from his mind.

“How much longer?” Nico asked flatly, his voice containing both a threat and fear.

“I don't know for sure. A few days, maybe a week. But there’s something you need to know, Nico. The reason why Thorne and Aegis Pharma are so desperate to catch you.”

Elena took a deep breath, staring straight into Nico’s red eyes.

“You aren't just the first variant. Inside your genetic code, Thorne hid a ‘backdoor key.’ He calls it The Golden Catalyst. If he manages to capture you and extract your blood at this maturation stage, he won't just be able to control the roses on Earth. He can call the original owners of these seeds from the stars.”

Nico froze. The scale of the threat suddenly jumped beyond the borders of Chicago, beyond the destruction of the world he knew. “You mean... there’s something else out there? Something that sent these roses?”

Elena nodded slowly. “The crimson roses are just terraforming, Nico. They are preparing this soil for something bigger. And you... you are the door they need to enter.”

Suddenly, a massive roar echoed from above the station. The concrete ceiling cracked, raining dust and gravel down on them. An incredibly strong red light pierced through the cracks, illuminating the underground station like a scene from hell.

Nico stood up, the thorns on his back automatically protruding, responding to the massive threat approaching. He could feel it. Not an ordinary Bloomer. Something much larger, more intelligent, and saturated with Thorne’s aura was standing right above them.

“They’re here,” Nico whispered.

“Nico, listen to me,” Elena held Nico’s hand, which now felt like crystal stone. “Whatever happens, don't let them take your blood. You are the only reason this world hasn't fully fallen yet.”

Nico looked at Elena, and for the first time, he saw a burden just as heavy in the woman’s eyes. They weren't just two survivors trying to escape. They were two people carrying the future of the Earth on their shoulders.

“If I start to change, Elena... if I start to lose myself...” Nico looked at the wrench in Elena’s hand. “You know what you have to do.”

Elena shook her head, her tears falling on Nico’s hand. “I won't kill you, Nico. I’m going to save you. That’s my promise.”

The sound of a loud boom destroyed the station entrance. Figures with golden-yellow eyes emerged from the darkness, led by something nearly three meters tall with arms made of intertwined hard black roots—an Apostle far larger and more terrifying than any before.

Nico took one step in front of Elena, his crystal thorns glowing with a thin Rainbow Spectrum light, an evolution of power that even he didn't yet understand, but was ready to unleash.

“Come on, Dr. Vance,” Nico growled, his voice now filled with pure determination. “Let’s show them that this lab rat has fangs.”

Above the ruins of Chicago, the crimson roses began to bloom en masse, as if welcoming the arrival of something descending from the burning sky, ready to reclaim Subject 01.