Chapter Text
~PROLOGUE~
It started out as a virus, spreading wide and fast. World leaders and the health organizations scrambled to get a hold on the disease, promptly locking down international travel, limiting domestic travel, and ordering shut downs in the most populated areas.
People thought it was a hoax at first, a glimpse into the abilities of the hacks that cut into cyberspace and media controlled television. Then world leaders started taking more direct actions, showing up on television, daily normal broadcasting interrupted to make way for National Address Statements, and feeding just enough information for people to shut up and listen.
The SCH2187-MA15 had infected humans, a strain of pneumonia typically found in rodents, and was mutating quickly. No one knew how a human had contracted the disease; it was unprecedented.
Cities began reporting new cases everyday, dense populations turning over numbers like a flipping book. No one had a cure for a respiratory disease and the death toll was rising. Orders were released worldwide to lock down, businesses closing and people being forced out of livelihood in a blind attempt to curb the spread.
The initial panic was chaos, people that didn’t know how to react in a crisis were suddenly in need of survival items and no one had a list. Others stayed home to wait out the mess, avoiding the public at large and quietly accusing them of mindless stupidity in their haste to buy up all the goods that were left. Everyone waited for a chance to laugh it all off as an overreaction.
Slowly, as if taking a deep breath, the world began to shut down little by little. Orders to remain indoors and away from any social gatherings became law. Essential items, foods and paper goods among other things became scarce. The governments began implementing checks and temporary minor governing structures to manage the populaces poor response to being forced inside with no real information and no firm timeline.
Political promises were as good as candy coins, sweet to taste but fake all the same.
Cyberspace was inundated with the majority of the world crying in outrage, in accusation, in conspiracy. They were against them, the world leaders knew all along, someone was behind this. Everyone wanted out and they needed a fall person to take the blame for their suffering.
Five months after the first national broadcast by those very leaders, a new order came down. All social activities were closed, businesses shut down with minor government exception for essential needs with the bare minimum of persons needed to operate them, and any persons found outside their home without proper papers would be arrested immediately.
The world came to a screeching halt four days later. The silence that loomed over the earth was unnerving and many people that had already been locked down for several months had begun to lose their sense of humanity. For all the evolution they suffered, humans were pack creatures at their core.
Mental health took a turn into the dark when humans stopped interacting with each other and started becoming letters and images on a screen. Pixilated eyes replaced the faces they used to pass on the street, reminding them every long-dragged minute that they were in fact alone.
A week after the semi-military shut down, several hospitals reported an influx in death tolls. The outcry was unmatched by any other in history. People began flooding cyberspace with new accusations, new conspiracies, and now threats.
The freedoms and liberties of the humans of the world were being trampled by their leaders for the sake of stopping the spread of a virus that showed no signs in stopping. Someone was lying to them and they knew it but no one knew who or what to do about it. Speculation only got so far and the information chain was broken, so no one really knew what was happening anymore.
Two weeks after the initial rise in deaths, a ray of hope bloomed. The reports were coming in slower now, the deaths coming in less frequently, and finally someone that had survived the virus held a genome within them that held answers to a vaccine.
It took two months more for the leaders within the health organizations to properly formulate a synthetic vaccine based on the structures provided. A mass effort was released to supply a world vaccine order. Everyone was so happy at the prospect of freedom that no one questioned the initiative, running almost in a mad daze to receive the shot that would grant them the freedom to return to life. Well, almost no one at least.
When the world restarted, six and a half months after the first case, everyone buried and burned their loved one’s before getting to the daunting task of figuring out where to start in picking up the pieces.
The world population had taken a hit and hearts were heavy. Of the almost eight billion people in the world, over 11 million had lost their lives to the virus. It was difficult to process even if you didn’t know the people directly.
Trying to put together the pieces after such an incredible loss was disheartening at best, the monumental chore taking more effort than initially expected. So many lives had been lost and so many things had changed that no one knew quite where to start. It was a collective agreement that nothing would ever really be the same.
Small businesses began opening their doors, signs propped up with bright and inviting messages to garner attention. Larger businesses took initiative to order people back to work, some acting as if the world hadn’t just been handed it’s ass collectively. The whiplash was almost too much and some found themselves resigning, a pit of confusion warping their minds as they tried to grapple with the impending thoughts that they might not be okay anymore.
The New World News Network flashed on again three days later, a channel previously thought to shut down now that the world was turning back on. No one really thought to be so optimistic, but everyone quietly hoped. Hope seemed useless though when faced with the reality that they had all overlooked something important.
A new mutation of the virus was identified and taking the world by storm. SCH25187-MA15-A, an anomaly strain that attacked the red blood cells in the body while posing as white cells was currently ripping through humanity and moving faster than it’s previous mutations.
The people, afraid of isolation and wary of the words that were fed to them, rose up and stormed the offices of the most powerful leaders. They were done listening to the people that were killing them.
No one thought about the vaccines too much; they were vaccinated so they were safe. That’s the way they were all trained to think for so long and so they did.
As governments around the world suffered mass losses through rioting, martial law was enacted almost instantly globally. Severe public panic was threatening to upturn the foundations of humanity and it was all driven by fear of a virus that everyone thought they were now immune to catching.
Time grew cold alongside the bed of humanity, tempered and drawn in on itself as it waited for the masters to let it out again. But fear was dangerous both ways. Where civilians feared giving control to the people they perceived to have swindled them, the government feared giving up that control.
Time stretched on as the death toll grew. Within the first year after the first mutation had infected humans, nearly half of the population was lost. It was in the second year that the virus took on a new mutation, one that no one knew about until it had already been too late.
To anyone that was not infected by the new mutation, they looked as though they were dead. As time went on, the infected began losing their senses entirely and capable of very little cognizant recognition.
The infected didn’t sleep, they didn’t eat…they didn’t do anything that a normal human would do. If left alone, an infected person would roam around as if searching for something, eyes dull and sunken, skin shaded as though decaying. Eventually the rot and stink that became associated with them was so distinct that one could smell them long before they saw them coming.
No one knew what to do with these people. Hospitals strapped them to beds, locked them away as they wailed at the top of their lungs until they had nothing left. Their bodies rejected all sources of food and the attempts at restoration through intravenous method failed for the simple fact that the infected’s veins were collapsed.
Tests were run, theories were thrown out, and all manner of treatment was rejected. No one knew how these people were alive without any sustenance and decaying as they were. No one knew what to do about it.
The word zombie was thrown around several times and a few elitists that remained scoffed at the petty fantastical whims of a few doctors.
Patient 347 was held in a lower basement room at Hokkaido’s main hospital. She was believed to be infected for 86 days. There was a strangeness in her eyes for at least a week, a purple tint to the otherwise blackened pupils. And on the 87th day, the monitors that were tracking her progress toned out, dialing emergency responses to the room. Her heart and vital organs had given up the fight.
When the nurses confirmed the death, what remained of the health organizations around the world were contacted to notify them of the updated information. Irie Yamada was the highest ranking surviving doctor and so was responsible for the call that would ultimately alert the world to a new threat, not that he had known that at the time.
He had made his way down to the room to confirm the reports and run a few tests before he pulled out his cell phone and made the call. The Director General of the World Health Organization received his call and documented the incident, at which point two events occurred that changed the world at large.
Patient 347 broke out of her restraints, her monitors jerked when she leapt forward, several shouts and screams of surprise ringing out in the small room. The second and more dastardly event was the first bite.
As 347 bit down into the arm of the nurse in her grasp, she tasted food for the first time in almost six months. Screams of terror ricocheted within the small room, the call recording every terrifying moment. There had been no recognition in the eyes of 347, no remorse, and no stopping her once she started. If it weren’t for the quick actions of the doctor, she may well have eaten through the nurse alive.
The doctor dislodged the patient by bringing a pole down on her head quickly and forcefully. Black blood sprayed across his pants and coat, a sticky and sickly mess. There was nothing good about that smell either.
He helped the nurse to her feet and handed her over to the other nurse in the room to have her wound treated and to move her to surgery for emergency operation. A good chunk of her arm was missing and it sat at a strange angle, the bone snapped under the force of the wild patient.
The nurses left the room and Dr Irie returned to his call just in time to hear the screams down the hall and feel the cold fingers of Patient 347 before she bit down on his neck. The phone slipped from his hands and shattered into pieces, effectively ending his contact with the outside world.
***
The events that started the downfall of humanity seemed so far away these days. Six years had passed since the first virus, four since the world lost it’s damn mind. There were plenty of reasons to wish for those days to come back, for the simpler things and more familiar life.
As he sat straddling a hefty bough in a large tree, Bakugou Katsuki laid his head back and reminisced. There were times he missed being a hero in training, even missed the pathetic League of Villains and all their acquaintances. Training for that, fighting them and winning, those had been things he could do, goals he could set and firmly visualize. He hadn’t thought life was easy back then, but man what he wouldn’t give to go back.
He flexed his fingers into a fist and stared at it, his palms aching with the blisters of a survivor. This was not how he planned to spend his life.
“Almost here”
Bakugou sat up straighter as the words washed over him from somewhere behind his location. The group he was traveling with had been setting up for the night, weary and ready to fight for the chance to sleep if only for a few hours. A lookout caught sight of a hoard moving in their direction.
Typically they would monitor the hoard and move out of the pathway when they had this much notice, but moving from this location in any direction other than towards that hoard would cost them time. Time was precious these days; you never really knew how much of it you had left and it was rationed just the same as any other supply.
The other side of that hoard housed a river that fed into a lake, one he hoped to find some solace in soon. Not only did they need the water, but there was a potential for food sources there as well. They could not give up this position.
The pitching wails of the infected grew louder and more frenzied, indicating they were chasing something, or more likely someone. He hated that it was dusk because the setting sun always messed with his vision. It was a dangerous time to be out and about.
As the hoard crested the horizon, he caught sight of a small, dark mass running in front of the mob of infected. He couldn’t make out much of their features from this distance, but it was clear that the person was average in height, had strong legs for running, and understood how to dance around the hoard.
Bakugou could already tell this person had been on their own for a long time. Their movements indicated a lack of formation; they hadn’t relied on anyone else to watch their back in a scuffle. He hated the loners; they always had baggage.
“Oh my god Bakugou, are you seeing this?”
“Yeah, I got eyes dumb ass”
“No look!”
“What-”
“Holy shit it’s Midoriya!”
What the fuck?!
***