[ 4 Days Before Impact - Area 51 ]
The room sat three miles underground, yet the fluorescent lights flickered like dying stars.
Dr. Aris didn't look at the President. He stared at the hologram of the object rotating above the table.
Paralyzed by fear, his body soaked in perspiration, he witnessed the apocalyptic approach of the Star of Hell.
"It's changing," he whispered.
"Changing how?"
"The mass fluctuates every eleven seconds. For one frame, it weighs more than a neutron star. The next frame…" He swallowed, his throat dry.
"It has no measurable mass at all."
Silence.
The hologram glitched.
For a split second, the meteorite unfolded. Not physically, but Mathematically.
Its surface rearranged into geometric patterns no one in the room could name—fractals that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space.
Then, it returned to stone.
A general muttered, "That's impossible."
"No," Dr. Aris said softly. "It's deliberate."
"The interceptors?"
"Failed," the General barked, slamming his fist on the table.
"We hit it with everything. Jericho Missiles, Kinetic Rods. Nothing touches it. There is an unknown field around it—a Repulsive Force as dark as the abyss—that disables electronics before impact."
Silence suffocated the room.
"There is only one option left," Dr. Aris said, staring at the floor.
"The 'Project A369' warhead. It's an experimental fusion-fission bomb."
He folded the paper in his hands, his knuckles white with pressure.
"It is highly radioactive and volatile. It possesses the power to ignite into a mini-sun."
The President closed his eyes.
"Authorize all arsenals," the President said.
"If extinction is coming, it will find resistance."
[The Present Moment - The Great Bridge]
The permission was granted.
A countdown started.
Someone whispering a prayer.
A scientist watching his daughter on a phone wallpaper before detonation.
The bomb was launched.
Humanity threw its spear at the heavens.
The sky did not answer.It recalculated.
Kai watched through the shattered windshield of his van as the sky turned white.
The nuclear blast didn't destroy the meteorite—it merely cracked the shell.
The explosion shattered the outer layer of the cosmic rock, sending millions of flaming debris raining down on Earth.
Some pieces collided with the main satellite hub, Ellipse, vaporizing it instantly.
[CRITICAL FAILURE : SATELLITE NETWORK DESTROYED]
[GLOBAL COMMS: OFFLINE]
The sky began to cry fire.
Skyscrapers in the distance crumbled into ash as meteor shards struck them like artillery.
But the Core of the meteorite—the true anomaly—remained untouched.
It changed trajectory.
It ignored gravity, ignored the wind, and dove straight toward the bridge. Toward the van.
BOOM.
The impact threw Kai against the dashboard.
Metal screamed. His vision blurred, swimming in red.
For a fraction of a second, Kai felt relief.
As if he had done this before.
He couldn't move. His legs were pinned under the crushed steering column.
But his eyes focused on the crater just a few meters away.
The Core crackled. It wasn't rock anymore. It was opening.
Like a flower blooming in hell, a substance poured out. It was translucent, shifting between liquid and gas.
The Core opened.
Something emerged.
The military would later call it "The Slime."
They never understood it wasn't biological.
As it moved, the air around it screamed.
Space distorted. Light bent at wrong angles. It looked like a corruption in a video file—a living glitch.
Adrenaline flooded Kai's dying body.
"RUN!" the voice inside his head screamed.
But Kai was paralyzed.
The Slime slithered toward the van, sensing energy. It moved like a predator, hungry and mindless.
Kai squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the end.
But the end didn't come.
The Slime suddenly recoiled. It hissed—a sound like static on a radio—and retreated, shivering.
Kai forced his eyes open.
From nowhere, a shard came flying towards him. He looked down at the dashboard.
The shard wasn't lodged randomly. It had pierced the dashboard at a precise angle—aligned perfectly with his heart.
No. The shard's pulse did not match his heartbeat.
His heartbeat adjusted to match it.
The Slime was terrified of it.
The "Glitch" feared the stone.
The entity recoiled not from the shard's energy—but from the rhythm.
Denied Kai's body, the Slime looked for another source. It sensed something else in the van.
The Endless game disk.
When the Slime touched the disk, the plastic did not melt.
It pixelated.
The word ENDLESS peeled off the surface in golden threads, rising into the air like strands of code being skinned from reality.
The Slime didn't absorb it.
It listened.
Binary did not flash. Instead, fragments of cities shimmered in the air.
Towers. Dungeons. Boss rooms.
Like holograms loading into the sky.
Kai watched as his interface windows began appearing in midair—translucent blue panels with error messages cascading downward.
[ WORLD SEED DETECTED ]
[ ARCHITECT IDENTIFIED ]
[ COMPILING REALITY… ]
With a flash of digital light, the Slime vanished, merging with the atmosphere itself.
Kai let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "It's... over?"
He was wrong.
A wave of heat washed over him. Not fire. Radiation.
The Violet Shard near his chest, the wreckage, the residual energy of the Slime—it was tearing his DNA apart.
His skin began to blister. His vision went white. The pain was absolute.
It wasn't just killing him; it was melting his very existence.
"Not yet."
"Asset viable."
"Wake up."
Voices overlapped in the dark.