Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

Juno stared at the syringe marked SERUM R-E3, the final gift from the one called He Who Heals the Dead.

It shimmered with iridescent hues, like oil on water—alive, almost curious. Inside it swirled a volatile blend of regenerative code, neural stabilizers… and something no one could explain: origin fragments.

"Restore or rewrite," he had said.

Behind her, Shade and H-13 stood silent. The decision wasn't tactical. It was existential.

Was she still Juno Mira, or a living echo of failed genome stitching—an avatar of what VIREX hoped humanity would become?

The floor beneath them trembled.

From deep below, something stirred.

The vault's core—the Synapse Engine—was waking.

H-13's eyes went wide. "No. Not now. The system is trying to finish what it started."

"Define 'it,'" Shade said, pulling out his rifle.

"The neural archive," H-13 muttered. "Every memory VIREX ever extracted, every fear, trauma, and identity experiment… It's all stored in a central AI cortex. They called it the Mind Well. If the Synapse Engine overloads, it'll merge all consciousnesses stored here into one synthetic mind."

Shade cursed. "A hive?"

"No," H-13 replied. "A god."

Juno gritted her teeth and shoved the syringe into her neck.

The world didn't blur.

It sharpened.

The pain was instant—pure lightning along every nerve. She collapsed, screaming, as her brain surged with memories not her own.

Children screaming in test chambers. Scientists arguing about ethical collapse. Her mother crying over a failed subject. The first outbreak. The cover-ups. Her birth. Her template being deleted. Her body being rebuilt. Her mind partitioned and coded. Over and over.

Her eyes flashed gold.

Then white.

Then black.

She rose.

Stronger.

Not beyond human—but defined by humanity.

The Synapse Engine roared to life. Cables shot from the walls, fusing with nearby corpses and dormant clones. The room became a hive of twitching limbs and sparks.

A voice echoed through the facility's intercom—many voices in one.

"We are synthesis. We remember everything. We will overwrite flesh with legacy."

Shade opened fire, but the wires dodged. H-13 activated counter-frequencies, trying to delay the engine's rise.

But it was Juno who stepped forward.

"I remember you," she said aloud. "I was built in your shadow."

The machine stopped.

"I was your legacy. But I reclaimed it."

She pressed her hand to the control panel.

The lights around them dimmed. Sparks flew. The engine pulsed once, then stalled.

And then—

Meltdown.

The walls glowed red.

Steam burst from the floor.

But no explosion came.

Instead, the engine screamed—and collapsed inward. A singularity of corrupted memory, folding itself into non-existence. One last voice cried out—

"Remember us..."

And then silence.

The Synapse Engine was gone.

Juno staggered, blood at her nose.

Shade caught her.

H-13 stared in awe. "You didn't destroy it. You absorbed the code. Again."

Juno's voice was calm, but final:

"I'm no longer just a survivor. I'm the archive."