Howard’s Point of View

I examined the core through a microscope I had Danny bring back from the local college. It was interesting to see what it looked like, and it was clear that one of the components of the power activation liquid was these cores. I walked over to the chalkboard and wrote down ‘centrifuge needed’. 

I had never done experiments like this, but with my improved mental capacity, it felt effortless. It was only a matter of time before I figured out how the core worked and how to change the gas stored inside into a liquid to create the power activation liquid. I moved back over to a different microscope with the enhancement liquid inside.

The leader really only wanted one thing out of these tests. A safer method for people to gain powers, and his thought process on the matter was that if both syringes could be combined, then people could gain the baseline power plus the strength, plus be removed from those who would consume the cores to gain power that they could then use to betray us.

It effectively would make our ground troops far, far stronger than other factions while also baking in a limiter on how strong they could get and reducing the number of cores needed because fewer people would need them. I disagreed with the method myself. I thought it would be far easier to perfect both liquids separately; just reducing the casualty rate for the power activation liquid and increasing the parameters the enhancement liquid increased was worth figuring out.

Could the enhancement liquid be created without the virus immunity effects? How did both liquids function? What was the link the liquids had with the zombies and the cores? That was something I needed to figure out. Besides that, I had several other experiments I was told to start and had started myself. 

I was trying to learn more about the virus itself and had figured a few things out. First, the virus had two states. It had an activated state or a deactivated state. The powers people gained were from having an activated version of the virus. In the activated form, the virus worked more symbiotically with the person, strengthening them and sometimes giving them powers. 

The deactivated version worked like a normal virus that would try to make people sick and kill them unless their immunity worked to stop that from happening. Upon death, the virus would activate, taking control of the person's brain and puppeting them in an attempt to spread itself further. In the deactivated state, the virus would work with other problems inside the body to try and kill the person, while once it was activated, it would actively fight against those problems in the person's body. 

The biggest change appeared to be with mental illnesses, as the virus had cured someone's schizophrenia, but also helped the body heal faster from injuries and gave immunity to other diseases like the common cold or herpes. At least, that is what Danny had told me. I had yet to verify those claims through testing, but still believed them to be true.

Another experiment he had me do was attempting to create food that contained some of the attributes of the liquid. Right now, I was just soaking the seeds in the liquids to see if it made any noticeable changes to them, but I doubted it was going to be that easy. This was going to be another long, tedious process of test after test until something finally bore fruit. I shook up the seeds to see if there was any visible change to them, but nothing stood out to me yet.

I moved over to the little girl zombie in the corner and sliced off a tiny fragment of her skin. Another experiment that I wanted to test was the reinnervation of zombie tissue. One of the biggest things with these zombies is that they have lost a good portion of their motor function. If I could restore them to a previous level, they would retain their coordination and possibly, through a side effect, restore some of their missing intellect as well.

“Can you stop hacking at that poor little girl's fingers? You already took four patches of skin from her hand. Just wait until Danny comes back and ask him to bring back a live zombie.” Brandy was experimenting on her own. She was trying to suture up a wound she had made on a dead pig with only her powers. Over the past few days, she had made tremendous progress, but it wasn’t until I designed a needle that would work better with her powers that she was getting close to what she could already do with her bare hands. 

She was a surgeon, and I was a pediatrician, but I doubted either of us would use what we went to school for as much as the new powers we gained. She was learning how to suture with her powers, but it was far more realistic that she would use them for fighting than for mending wounds. Thankfully, my power was secondary, and I was brought in by someone who cared for his people.

It didn’t take a genius to see how bad our lives could have been if we had been recruited by someone other than Danny. It was clear that either we’d be killed to stop our growth or treated far worse and given far less freedom with what we could do… That went doubly for Brandy. She was an attractive woman, I had no doubt that if we had met someone other than our leader, her outcome would have been worse than mine.

“Can you move this piece of equipment for me?” My previous self would have been embarrassed to ask a girl for help with lifting something, but as she floated it over with a rug, I knew it wasn’t something I would care about anymore. The world was changing, and I knew my place in it: making products to help humanity survive.

She wasn’t skilled enough to float herself with a carpet yet, but soon she could. The more she learned to control her powers, the faster she could move more weight around. It was something I was also keeping track of. Many who gained their powers could use them to perfection the moment they did; some weren’t like that and would need to practice to get the most use out of them.

Coming up with a regimen, or just having her constantly use her powers in new ways, was how we began training it, so she got more use out of it. I smirked as I walked over and patted her on the behind, whispering in her ear. “Good job. I’ll reward you later for your help.” I don’t know how it happened, somehow we ended up as a couple at the end of the world.

She leaned into me as she whispered. “N-not in front of the little girl.” I looked at the little zombie girl our leader controlled again. It wasn’t the first time my experiments got in the way of us messing around. “Elsa, can you take this note up to the older asian lady? After that, I think the dogs need to be fed. That should take you about forty minutes.”

My hands were already unbuttoning Brandy’s top as I gave her more commands to buy us more time alone. “Walk a few laps around the perimeter to look for anything out of place as well. We need to make sure no one is trying to break in and steal our supplies.” As she left, a thread wrapped around the door lock turned into place, locking the door behind her. Clothing floated off both of us as I still couldn’t believe this was my life now. The coward who thought he’d die alone now had a girlfriend and she was always as horny as a bunny rabbit.