TWO YEARS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK...

Back in the surveillance room, Simon, Artemis, and the others continued to watch the chaos unfold. Their mouths were gaping open after they had witnessed a powerful test subject use what looked like explosives crafted from his own blood to obliterate an entire squad. The screens that used to display footage from the hallway where it happened were now engulfed in static.

"Who the hell is that?" Simon asked. "And why is he wearing one of our helmets?"

"Forget the helmet," Artemis replied. "What kind of power was that?" She looked over at Hera. "You don't think it was the Ambrosia that caused this, do you?"

Hera didn't respond. She and Helios were too busy watching Hypnos convulse on the floor as if he were having a seizure. His skin was as pale as the white floor he was laying on, and the veins around the bite on his neck appeared dark green. He kept pounding the ground with his fists to distract himself from the pain.

"Are you all right?" Helios asked.

"Do I look like I'm fu—" Hypnos tried to reply, but he collapsed back to the floor with a gasp. As he continued wincing in pain, most of the veins in his body kept popping out. Beads of sweat covered his brow, and he clenched his teeth like a hungry beast as a burning pain rippled throughout his body. Now he knew how the test subjects felt.

"What's the matter with him?" Simon asked.

Artemis gasped in realization. "The bite on his neck!"

She ran over to Hypnos and knelt down beside him. "My apologies," she said before quickly yanking the gauze off his neck. A crude, dark red bite mark was hidden underneath, the skin mangled yet the wound itself scabbed over. The veins around the wound were dark compared to his pale-green skin, and the closer Artemis got closer to the bite, the more aggressive he became. She also couldn't help but notice his eyes were constantly changing colors, rapidly transitioning between his normal brown eyes and irises so white they were practically nonexistent.

"What can we do for you, sir?" Artemis asked.

Hypnos convulsed a little while longer and violently choked until he finally went silent. His breaths grew quieter and shorter, and his eyes remained a milky white color. Yet he still attempted to speak. "I'll be...fine," he croaked in a raspy voice, pausing in between to exhale. "Once I...get...my hands...on your fff..."

"Her what?" Hera asked. She reached over the table for a gun.

"FLESH!" Hypnos lunged from the floor, mindlessly flailing his arms in all directions in a failed attempt to hit something. He hissed like a snake preparing to strike, and his skin was now almost yellowish in appearance. The lack of color in his eyes signaled his descent into madness.

"What the bloody hell?" Simon asked.

Hypnos charged into the group of scientists, screeching and clawing at them. Simon and Helios tried to throw him back by blocking him with a chair, thrusting at him legs-first like a lion tamer in a circus. However, Hypnos fought back and started ripping apart the chair's cushion with his nails.

"FLESH! FLESH!" Hypnos continued shrieking in a raspy voice. "GIVE ME IT! I'LL RIP YOU APART!"

"Hera!" Simon called out, slamming the chair into Hypnos's head. "Shoot him!"

Hera cocked the gun and raised it toward the ravenous Hypnos. "Head or heart?"

"Whatever makes him stop trying to kill us!"

"Shoot him in the bollocks if you need to!" Helios chimed in.

Hera fired twice, first at Hypnos's heart and then his left eye. He crashed to the floor. A dark red blot grew in size around his heart, and his eye dangled out of his socket by the optic nerve.

"I swear, if he gets up from that..." Helios said.

The four of them stared at Hypnos's body to detect movement. His corpse remained still for the next couple of seconds, but Simon and Artemis noticed his skin was quickly fading in color. He was pale before, but now his skin looked like if it was being overtaken by the color white. In contrast his veins darkened to the point they almost looked like tattoos.

But the moment of truth was when Hypnos's eye started growing back.

"Hera, get the gun ready," Artemis said, close to panicking. "I think the Ambrosia is still working."

Hypnos's old eye popped off and tumbled to the floor while the bullet that rendered his eye useless slid out of the socket, rolling off his face to the floor once it had exited his skull. A tiny white orb flourished out of the empty socket and continued to grow until it fit perfectly inside the hole. However, the wound he sustained to his heart remained unhealed.

"Try the brain this time," Simon said.

Hera pressed the barrel of the gun against Hypnos's head and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately for them, nothing fired out. Just the harmless click of the gun.

"It's out," Hera declared in horror. "We used it all on the other test subjects!"

The scientists jumped back as Hypnos snatched the gun out of Hera's hands with his teeth. He almost swallowed it but spat it to his side as he continued his mission to rip his old colleagues apart. He tried grabbing Hera first, but she stomped on his face multiple times until he finally lost his grip. The most damage he was able to do to her was rip the sleeve off her lab coat, but she left him with a broken nose that cracked back into place a few seconds later.

"Grab whatever the hell you can!" she shouted. "And bash his head in with it!"

While Hypnos was stumbling to get to his feet, Hera grabbed a microscope from the table, determined to smash her colleague's face in with it. Artemis grabbed a silver tray, Simon grabbed a hammer, and Helios continued using the chair, still aiming its legs out toward Hypnos.

Before getting shot in the heart, Hypnos could still manage to speak comprehensively, albeit in a crazed, feral manner. Now that his mind was gone and the corrupted Ambrosia was his only life support, any word that left his tongue was rendered inaudible to human ears, only coming out as screeches and hisses. The bite on his neck, originally a dark shade of red, now looked so black it almost appeared to be burned into his flesh.

Hypnos charged again, this time at Artemis. She swung the silver tray against his skull, knocking him to the side. If she was stuck in his position, she would've learned that none of this was hurting him. The Ambrosia had destroyed his pain receptors, so any impact to his skull would simply disorient him.

She swung again, colliding with his ear. Scratches marked his face with every hit and disappeared almost immediately. The only remnants of Hypnos's injuries were the tiny bits of blood dotting the scientists' so-called weapons. Then Hera and Simon started attacking, and more of their items slowly became caked in their ex-colleague's vitals. Thanks to Simon's hammer, Hypnos even lost some teeth.

Even with the chaos erupting around them, they still attempted to hold a conversation. "Where the hell is Schaefer?" Helios shouted.

"He's--" Simon paused to take another swing at Hypnos with his hammer, fracturing his jaw. "He's in the other room adding some quick modifications to the Ambrosia!"

"Isn't that why Hades was planning on killing him?" Artemis asked. "Because he thought he was gonna keep it for himself?" She paused to smack Hypnos with her tray. "And where is Hades? It's been twenty minutes!"

"I don't know!" Simon replied. "I'll go find Schaefer! And if I don't come back, I just want you guys to know that my full name is Simon Reid and I love you guys!"

"We already knew your full name, lad," Hera said. "And seriously? Love? We're just colleagues, mate."

Simon developed a somber expression. "Goddamn it. So much for that."

Still clutching the hammer, Simon made his way to the door and stepped outside, leaving his colleagues behind to fend for themselves.

* * *

"...and a helicopter will be here to pick me up soon," Schaefer spoke into a recorder. "At the time of this recording, the Ambrosia Project has failed horrifically. As far as anyone knows, this was a preexisting parasite that we were trying to stop but failed to do. Any epidemic or pandemic resulting from this will only be known as an accident."

Something began pounding on the door with all its might. "Schaefer!" Simon called out. "It's me, it's Simon! We need help!"

Schaefer glanced down at the syringe containing the modified Ambrosia. Unlike before, the bots were bright blue and serene in appearance, almost resembling bubbles. They floated around in the tube waiting to find a new host. And if everything went well, Schaefer would be the one putting those new nanites to good use. "As far as anyone knows," he continued talking into the recorder, "I'll be the one responsible for attempting to fix everything."

He clicked the recorder off and walked over to the door. With a shotgun strapped to his back, he quickly opened the door and pulled Simon in, slamming the door closed once they were both safe and sound. The loud screech that followed the sound of the door closing indicated that the door made impact with one of the undead test subjects.

"Hello, Simon," Schaefer greeted. "Are you all right?"

Simon was bent over and panting. "Absolutely not," he replied, still gasping for air. "Hypnos was bitten by one of those infected test subjects, and he attacked us. Hera tried killing him, but the corrupted Ambrosia brought him back to life. Now he's just a wild animal in a human's body."

"Where did you shoot him?"

"Hera shot him in the heart and his eye. I'm guessing she was trying to aim for his brain."

Schaefer raised his eyebrow. "It's not that hard to hit the head, y'know."

"What is that?" Simon asked, pointing at the blue syringe.

"The fixed Ambrosia," Schaefer replied with a grin. "The original Ambrosia we've pumped into the test subjects hardly affected pain tolerance and still left behind some weak points in the body that could lead to instant death, such as a bullet to the brain. With this modified version, nothing can take us down. A bullet to the brain won't do shit. Can't even feel it. You can just keep walking as the hole in your cranium patches itself up like nothing, with no pain whatsoever."

A smile formed on Simon's face. "That's brilliant, sir! How did you fix it, by the way?"

"There were a few bugs in the bots' programming. Their healing qualities needed to be regulated so they wouldn't go overboard or devolve into parasites like those ugly mindless bastards wandering the halls outside. However, I still need to work on a way to deactivate it just in case."

"Now we just gotta tell the others," Simon replied, making his way to the door. "Then we'll have to let the rest of England know.

Schaefer froze. "Let the rest of England know what?"

"We've endangered society. Like I said before, our colleague Hypnos found out the hard way that Ambrosia is parasitic and can be spread to other hosts with just a simple bite. Once one nanite gets in, it will replicate and spread throughout the host's body. In their blood, their sweat, their spit. And we're responsible for all of this."

Schaefer's smile disappeared, and he proceeded to slide the shotgun off his back. "Damn it, Simon," he said.

"What's the problem, sir?" Simon asked, his hand on the doorknob.

"That's one thing I like about you, lad. Most of the time, you own up to your mistakes. I wish I had that quality. And I'll carry the burden of guilt for this whole thing for the rest of my days, enough guilt to make up for all of us." He cocked his gun and aimed it at Simon's head. "But in all honesty, I think I'd feel less guilty with you and the others out of the picture."

Schaefer pulled the trigger before Simon could even respond. Chunks of his skull and brain matter splattered all over the wall, and the rest of his body slumped to the ground. Every part of his head above his mouth was missing.

"In fact," Schaefer continued, "I doubt I'll even feel guilty for any of this."

Schaefer slid the syringe of Ambrosia into his pocket and kicked the door open, quickly gunning down the undead test subjects awaiting him. He paused to reload before making his way to the room containing the rest of his colleagues.

So he could get rid of witnesses.

He kicked the next door open and blasted Hypnos's brains out of his skull. His headless corpse toppled over and collapsed to the floor, and Schaefer quickly locked the door behind him.

"Schaefer!" Helios shouted. "You've come to save us!"

Schaefer took aim at Helios and blasted his face off. Hera and Artemis shrieked in horror as Helios tumbled to the floor with pieces of his head dangling off the rest of his body by small strands of flesh.

"He wasn't infected, sir," Hera said, composing herself.

"I know," Schaefer replied, cocking his gun. "That's the problem. Someone could've made him talk." He aimed at Hera and fired again. Like Simon, Helios, and Hypnos, she collapsed to the floor with most of her head missing.

Artemis shrieked in horror again and backed into a corner. "Please, sir! I promise I won't tell anyone about this!"

Schaefer hesitated this time. "Oh, Artemis. You and Poseidon were my favorite colleagues in the entire facility. Your innocence and purity intrigued me. Almost made me regret my actions."

"Please, sir! I don't want to die!"

"I'm sorry, Artemis," Schaefer cocked his gun and aimed it at her head. "I killed the others so no news of what happened here would get out. I'd like to consider your death a mercy kill. It would kill me to see you become one of the many monsters I've created."

"Please, sir!"

"Goodbye...Abigail."

Schaefer pulled the trigger. Half of Artemis's head splattered the wall behind her, and the rest of her body slumped to the floor motionlessly. But it genuinely hurt Schaefer to see the frozen look of horror on what remained of her face.

"Now..." Schaefer said to himself as he turned away from Artemis's corpse. "Just gotta wait for the chopper to arrive."