The bright light of the sun filtered through the blinds of the window and entered a small hospital ward. The soft hum of the machine resounded throughout the room, leaving a faint echo in the surroundings and a cool breeze entered the room through an open window.
On the only bed inside this ward, the body of a young man lay peacefully in this undisturbed environment.
The time was just past noon and the sun was at its highest during this time of day. But overhead, there was an ominous dark cloud hanging in the noon sky, casting a shade of darkness on the city below it. The air was suppressive and the once-bustling city of Boston was silent, like a ghost town without a single life in it.
Apart from the sound of the wind blowing through the city and the occasional ruckus caused by stray animals in the dark alleys, there was no other sound to be heard throughout the entire city.
Fortunately, there were still signs of human occupation all over the city. There was still a constant supply of electricity as could be seen through the closed doors and windows of the buildings and occasionally one would catch one or multiple pairs of eyes peeking through the closed windows at the streets outside.
Although everywhere was desolate, at least it still looked like the city was not abandoned. Only that its residents were hiding indoors... from what, it was still yet to be known.
In the hospital ward where the young boy was. The ward was neat and tidy, and there was a vase of fresh flowers by the open window. A testament that somebody had been here not very long ago to visit the boy.
The boy laying on the bed in the hospital ward was Constantine, and he had been admitted to this hospital ever since he had fallen into a coma after being struck by lightning.
At this moment, the door to the ward opened up and a nurse wearing a neat white uniform stepped into Constantine's ward with a trolley. There were a bunch of cleaning materials on the trolley meant to use Constantine's body.
This nurse looked very young-looking, no more than twenty-five years old, and it looked like she had just graduated from nursing school. She had recently taken up the job of taking care of Constantine ever since his previous caretaker had mysteriously disappeared a short while ago.
This was not a new occurrence anymore in the city, as people would suddenly vanish every once in a while. Nowadays, with everybody hiding inside their homes, and contact with the outside world being kept at a minimum, nobody would know what happened to their neighbors unless they specifically checked on them.
It had been a year since that fateful day and the whole world had gone crazy!
Mysterious things had been happening on earth since one year ago... unexplainable things and things that did not make sense.
People had started disappearing from their beds in the middle of the night and the mangled bodies of homeless people had turned up on the streets, looking like they had been attacked by a vicious beast.
Reports of monsters and evil red balloon demons became a constant thing, and the police had had a tough time dealing with the ensuing chaos that followed such mysterious incidents. This had gone on for a few months until finally, everything changed when the sky broke and a doorway to another world appeared in front of the whole world. Ever since that day, the world was no longer the same as it was again.
That doorway to another world was a spatial rift that led to a world that could have been hell itself. From that world, a horde of monsters, commonly known as dooms, invaded earth. From that day onwards, the structure of human civilization collapsed and pure chaos swallowed every human.
America, Africa, Europe, Asia... every continent was affected and governments fell. Murder, arson, and vandalism became the norm, and human life became a cheap commodity that could be sold or destroyed.
It was as if the apocalypse had arrived, and humans had welcomed their doomsday!
Fortunately, all was not lost for humanity. With the efforts of a few of the strongest nations on earth, they combined their armed forces together and mobilized them to fight against the invasion of the dooms as well as bring order to earth as a whole.
It had taken the united government of more than two hundred nations five months to finally bring order to the world again and push the dooms back to their own world and bar them from entering the earth.
But that was not the end of it...
As if by some domino effect, countless changes started happening on earth.
The world was invaded by a special kind of energy from the other world that caused a change to the earth's geological, ecological and biological structure. This energy brought about severe mutations to the life forms on earth.
Viruses and bacteria and other pathogens mutated and new diseases and sicknesses appeared on earth, leading to the death of a tenth of earth's total population.
Animals soon followed suit, and they became feral monsters that attacked and destroyed everything they saw. Vegetation and plant life were not spared, and they grew sporadically. All of these changes were almost impossible to contain and for a time, the united government found it much harder to maintain the peace.
Fortunately, again, humans also showed signs of going through mutations. Some of these mutations were malignant and dangerous, turning humans into grotesque monsters that harmed those around them. These monsters had to be put down. But there were also some mutations that were beneficial, causing humans to develop the power to fight against the invasion from the other world.
These mutations granted humans amazing and extraordinary powers and abilities like those superheroes in comics, anime, and manga. With the help of these extraordinary humans, the united government was finally able to restore order to earth once and for all.
Now, a year later and things were not as desperate as they were months ago and the humans had gotten used to the way things were. Although more changes continued to happen on earth, it was not necessarily a bad thing anymore.
These changes led to the rapid advancement of earth's technological standards and new breakthroughs were made in all aspects of science and technology. In a few short months, scientists had made one discovery after another that had eased the situation on earth. The only thing was that unlike before, humans had to give up a few things in order to continue living their current lives and new policies had been implemented to cope with the changes that still constantly took place.
One of these changes is the implementation of a worldwide curfew where every human was told to stay in their homes while having a few hours of the day to come outdoors.
Schools had closed down and, apart from essential facilities like hospitals, power stations, and water and sewage plants, other non-essential facilities had been forced to close.
In the end, humans had to adapt to their new reality and make a new and better civilization from the ashes of their old one that had gone up in flames with the arrival of doomsday.
This was the new world order!
The nurse entered Constantine's room and pushed the trolley towards his bed. Looking at the prone figure lying silently on the bed, the nurse made her way to his side and looked down at him from above. The nurse was admiring Constantine's handsome visage with misty eyes and there was an imperceptible glint of appreciation and pity in her eyes. Looking at Constantine, who had a peaceful expression on his face as he lay quietly on the hospital bed, the nurse sighed at his misfortune. Sigh! "How tragic that this had to happen to you... you're so young, so handsome, you should be full of life and out there chasing your dreams and being the dreams of other girls. Instead, you're here alone with nothing but the cold hospital walls to keep you company." "It is really such a pity." The nurse looked at Constantine with pity for a moment before she got to work and started cleaning him up. Getting her tools from the trolley, the nurse started undressing Constantine with well-practiced hand
As soon as the nurse left Constantine's room, a shadow slipped in through the open window. This shadow was in the form of a long and slender snake-like creature. Its skin was dark red and rusty like dried blood and it had a sinister face, along with comical features. I say comical because although this creature resembled a snake of some sort; it was quite bloated and swollen like a balloon, making it look like one of those balloon creatures children liked a lot. The creature floated in the air away from the ground, but it was unknown if it was because of some innate ability it had, or perhaps because it was so bloated. These were the general characteristics of the dooms that had invaded earth from another world. Dooms were a bunch of extraterrestrial creatures with dark red and rusty skin the color of dried blood overly bloated bodies and sinister faces. Apart from these three characteristics that all Dooms shared, there were no other unified similarities between different dooms, an
As soon as the Asian girl walked into Constantine's room, she immediately frowned... For some reason, as soon as she entered, the girl felt that something was wrong. A bad feeling was creeping through her heart, and it was as if some evil presence was looking at her through the shadows. Warning bells rang continuously in the girl's head and she quickly looked around to locate where the danger was. Immediately, the girl's sharp gaze swept through the room and he immediately caught sight of the open window... Making a beeline to the window without any thought to her safety, the girl quickly looked outside, hoping to catch anything suspicious afoot. But what greeted the girl's eyes were the empty streets of the city that were as quiet as a graveyard. There was nothing outside the window that caused the girl to be greatly surprised. After taking a few more looks outside the window, the girl finally retreated inside the room. She firmly locked the windows shut tightly to make sure tha
In a penthouse suite in one of the tallest buildings that overlooked the Boston skyline... Standing by the full-length window in one of the rooms that offered a full view of the city of Boston, Constantine looked down and the sleeping city that was completely unrecognizable to him. Constantine was shirtless, and he wore only slim shorts on his body. The room was dark and the air conditioner was turned on and blowing at full intensity, making the room very cold. But despite how cold it was in the room, Constantine, who was shirtless, did not feel the cold at all. Instead, he felt like his body was on fire. There was a steady flow of electricity running along Constantine's veins, providing him with constant heat and keeping his vitals active. It had been three days since Constantine had woken up in the hospital following the attack of the doom. In these three days, Constantine had gone through a number of tests to make sure he was okay. Through the tests, Constantine was found to be
Hearing the voice that sounded in his mind, Constantine was not surprised by it at all. This was not the first time he had heard this voice in his mind. In fact, if it weren't for this voice, Constantine would not have been able to wake up at all and he would still be sleeping peacefully. When Arran had first regained consciousness, it was because the owner of this voice had spoken to him at that moment when the doom had attacked him. Before Constantine had woken up, his consciousness was hazy, and it had been floating in a space filled with clouds. Those clouds flowed freely in the air, forming many bizarre shapes that looked were actually pieces of Constantine's and Ruger's memories. At that time, the voice had spoken to Constantine saying, "Hey kid, you've been sleeping for so long already, don't you think it's about time you woke up? If you don't, you will die, you know!" The voice had not been loud, but the words he had spoken had impacted Constantine's hazy consciousness, sen
"Heh!" Ruger Whitebrook scoffed when Constantine asked that question. Ruger looked at Constantine like he was looking at an idiot. In fact, he actually insulted Constantine straight to his face as he replied to him. "Idiot!" "What do you think this looks like?" "Obviously, when I was trying to destroy your soul in order to possess your body, something went wrong and I was the one who ended up with his soul almost destroyed and fused to yours. As for why this happened, don't ask me because I don't know. If I did, I would have definitely prevented it from happening and I wouldn't be in this mess." "Also, before you ask, I don't know how to resolve this issue. Like before, if I have a solution, I would have already resolved this issue, so I wouldn't have to put up with an ignorant mortal like you." Ruger's words were harsh and direct. He didn't feel guilty at all as he insulted Constantine and he even mentioned how he wanted to possess Constantine's body with a straight face. It wa
If Ruger was so powerful, why then did he not just strike Constantine dead instead of going through all this grandstanding? Constantine did not take Ruger as the kind of guy that would allow others to provoke him without retaliating at all. He got this much both from Ruger's memories that he had assimilated, and their current interaction. Through Ruger's memories, Constantine could be said to have gotten an impression of what Ruger was like and his character. Through this impression, Constantine knew that Ruger wasn't feigning his carefree attitude, as he really was carefree in reality. He also knew that although this was the case, Ruger was spiteful and can be petty at times... His previous words about how the weak should be beneath the strong were an honest representation of Ruger's views on this topic. But why then did someone like this not attack Constantine as soon as he offended him? Instead, he put on a grand display of power that, after further thought, was insubstantial and
Constantine stood on a patch of cloud in dumbfounded silence as he stared at Ruger, who had already assumed his carefree attitude once more. He could not recover in time from the sudden turn of events and before he came back to his senses, some time had already passed. Ruger watched Constantine make a fool of himself in silence and he did not say anything. When Constantine finally came to his senses, he quickly looked at Ruger warily, as if he could not believe what he was saying. "Is it really over just like that?" Constantine asked once more. "This is not a trick for me to let down my guard so that you can attack me unawares, right?" Constantine was still finding it hard to believe that Ruger was just going to let everything go like that without doing anything to him. Looking at Ruger right now, he had adopted his usual carefree expression, as if what had transpired before was nothing and he couldn't be bothered to care about it at all. Suddenly, Constantine felt like a clown..