Then, light; blinding and artificial.
Fluorescents flickering overhead. A ceiling? No, a cracked roof, panels swinging loose. Rust-stained metal. Cold.
A body crashed beside me.
My breath hitched. No, it's not me. Not anymore.
My mind drifts like vapor, ethereal and formless, and I'm watching it all happen through fogged glass.
A boy, me, no older than twenty. Gaunt, scrappy, layered in mismatched clothes stitched with wire and stubbornness.
He's cornered in an alley.
A broken drone hums overhead. A scavenger's knife in his hand, shaking. But his eyes, they're sharp. Calculating. Street-smart.
"You gonna stab me, Hunt?" A voice sneers, distorted like radio static.
The scene cracks, giving way to a new one.
Now it's a bunker. No, it's a train station. No, it's a cage. Can't tell. Faces blur together. One wears a badge, another a crown of wires. Someone screams. The sound is underwater, muffled.
Something explodes. Firelight dances off broken glass. Blood on concrete. Screams. Sirens. Then...
A red sky. No sun. Just a tower of light piercing the clouds.
A voice. Calm. Mechanical.
"Initiating Genesis Protocol".
"Participant: Clayton Hunt".
"Category: Alpha-Root".
"Entry Status: Non-consensual".
"Memory Seal: Active".
My vision turns green. Laced with vines. The air pulses like a heartbeat.
Roots. Soil. Sunlight.
But the wind tastes familiar now. Like burning cities and broken dreams.
It started again... the sound.
Rain on a rusted metal rooftop. Rhythmic. Like a lullaby written for the end of the world.
I didn't see it, I felt it.
That cold rain cutting into my bones, slicking down my skin as I crouched beneath a collapsed overpass, watching fire lick the horizon.
Then came the screams. Familiar voices warped by terror. A child's cry. A woman wailing. A man groaning in the throes of death. Gunfire. More rain.
A fighter jet sliced the clouds above, its sonic roar chasing the ash. I looked up; my eyes blurry, my body trembling. I was starving. Sick. Just another forgotten scavenger scraping scraps off a dying Earth.
I remember a mirror. Cracked. My own face reflected like a shattered jigsaw. Gaunt, hardened; blood on my jaw. Whose blood?
Then the world tilted.
A pulse... something thunderous, like a siren inside my skull.
I fell to my knees. The last thing I saw was the sky splitting apart.
When I came to, the scent of sap and damp soil replaced fire and iron.
My thoughts had been a swamp of disjointed instincts and alien senses. I was alive, but wrong. Reborn as something inhuman, rooted in a strange world of predatory plants, crawling bugs, and sentient soil.
The name the system whispered in fragments until it became a part of me.
But now... now I remember.
[COGNITIVE SIGNATURE CONFIRMED]
[CELLULAR PATHFINDING OPTIMAL]
[UNKNOWN BIOSPHERE LOADED]
I remember. Oh, I remember everything!
Everything came crashing back like a dam bursting.
The Genesis Protocols. The end of the world.
I still don't know what it truly was, what its origin was, but one thing was clear to me now... the system accelerated a dying world to its end.
I still don't know if it was a good or bad thing. Maybe by accelerating its death, it was giving us hope of a new life. Maybe it was an experimental salvation, maybe a desperate bet on survival.
Those who were chosen; scavengers, warriors, thinkers, survivors; we were encoded, copied, and sent into artificial crucibles. Trial worlds.
Artificial? Who knows if these trial worlds are even real?
But now, I understood.
I wasn't just reborn as a plant. I was put here.
To be tested. To evolve, to adapt, to suffer.
And if I survived this nightmare, this first trial, I could return.
Changed. Upgraded. Awakened.
But I also understood something deeper, crueler... the truth. And the truth is that Earth was already gone.
This wasn't preparation.
A billion lives blinked out like faulty circuitry, and I was dumped here like a seed in rotten soil to see if anything could sprout from humanity's ashes.
Was I the only one that was taken by the Genesis Protocols? Definitely not.
Did it take all the billions of lives in Earth? I honestly don't know, but till I know more, I'm obliged to believe that Earth is already gone.
My core quivered. My roots trembled.
The realization hit like a mountain dropped on my spine.
I wanted to scream; but I had no mouth. So I shook.
Leaves curled, tendrils spasmed, sap wept from my pores like sweat from a fever. Yes, I had died; theoretically. The world had died. And yet I lived.
I existed, and I remembered.
The despair that followed was monolithic. I was drowned in it, sinking into the dirt that birthed me. How was I supposed to carry this? What the hell could one plant do against extinction?
[OBJECTIVE: Survive and Expand]
[Trial One Completion Requirement: 100 square meters of Claimed Territory.]
[Current Progress: 7.8%]
["A seed that breaks through stone is no less worthy than one born in fertile soil."]
I stayed still for a long time. Not thinking, not moving, just letting the silence swallow and devour me.
But then... something else emerged.
Not grief, not fear. Spite.
They thought they could bury me.
They thought they could burn the world, cage the survivors, and run their experiments in silence.
But I'm still here. And I will return.
Let the Trial burn. Let the beasts hunt me, the rivals challenge me, the designers behind this... let them watch and wait.
I would carve my name into the soil of this world, mark every meter of territory with the hatred of a man turned into a rootbound weapon.
And no one buries me without consequence. Not even God himself.