The agents presented the chip to their Supreme Leader like a holy relic. "As you requested, my Lord," they murmured. The leader turned the cold glass over in his fingers. "Take this to the labs," he commanded, his voice like grinding stone. "I want my army evolved. I want them invincible."
Deep in the sterile white halls of the Lindron facility, the scientists didn't just find a way to upgrade the living—they found a way to bypass the grave. They developed NCFF-322, a serum derived from the chip's architecture that could jumpstart cellular life from a single scrap of DNA.
The first test was a nightmare in motion. A corpse was wheeled in, stripped and prepared, its brain the only part left untouched by the embalming fluids. When the serum hit the grey matter, the room filled with the smell of ozone and burning copper. Steam hissed off the table. Nerves began to knit together like weaving spiders; cells multiplied at a nauseating speed. A nine-foot frame of raw muscle and exposed sinew stood up, skinless and screaming in a voice with no vocal cords. They plated the horror in titanium and called it a success.
Soon, the factory was churning. One became a hundred. A hundred became a thousand. These weren't men anymore; they were meat-puppets with no memories and no mercy. They didn't fight; they harvested. They tore through Nacrosia, ripping bodies in half and crushing throats with mechanical indifference.
When the boy saw the footage, his breath hitched. "No... no, this is the end," he stammered to his uncle. "They've turned the chip into a plague. Nacrosia is falling."
"Calm down," his uncle said, though his hands were shaking. "We'll hack the control frequency. We'll hijack them."
"It would take a century and a half to crack that encryption!" the boy shouted. "By then, there won't be a blade of grass left on Earth. And what happens if someone even worse hacks them first? They're literal serial killers on a leash."
They sat in the dark for hours, the weight of the world pressing against the walls of their workshop. Then, a grainy broadcast of an old superhero movie flickered on the TV—a fight between two titans. The boy's eyes lit up. "We fight fire with fire. We build our own mutant, use it to wipe theirs out, and then we delete the source code so they all just... stop."
"We need a body," the uncle whispered. "We have to go to the military mortuary."
They started with a rat, watching it swell and mutate until it was nearly the size of a cat. Then, they turned to the man on the table: Jacob. They injected the serum directly into his heart.
The reaction was violent. Steam billowed, and the sound of cracking bone filled the room as Jacob's body stretched and rebuilt itself. His heart began a heavy, wet thud. Skin crawled over new muscle until a nine-foot giant stood before them. He looked at his hands, then at his creators.
"Why am I here?" he asked, his voice a low, vibrating rumble.
They didn't have time for philosophy. They loaded his mind with gigabytes of combat data—every martial art and tactical maneuver ever recorded. They encased him in Conesium, a specialized alloy of titanium and steel, and fused plasma cannons to his gauntlets.
A week later, the news was a bloodbath. "Nacrosia is being annexed," the reporter cried over the sound of explosions. "Millions are dead."
"We're out of time," the boy said, grabbing his gear. They sprinted for the last train heading toward the border. As the engine roared to life, Jacob leaped onto the roof, his massive armored fingers denting the steel as he held on tight, a silent guardian riding into the mouth of hell.