Pnir
Pnir wakes up in a dim room. In his surroundings, there are several corpses with a decrepit and aged appearance that suggested that a massacre had taken place there some time ago. The blood is scattered everywhere, making the stage look like a canvas painted with a dark red. On his right, he sees a console; it unfolds in a holographic projector that projects onto the surface of an adjacent wall.
"Hello Pnir, Welcome to Earth. This is your home by birthright. Earth is a planet located eight light minutes away from a star called “Sun”. Located in a galaxy called the Milky Way. Here your creators prospered for thousands of years in the fields of agriculture, medicine, architecture, engineering. Life prospered for thousands of years until beings who called themselves gods appeared, and they corroborated it with their technological superiority and broad advantage in genetic evolution.
"Humans were pressured to the point of being forced to develop, through reverse engineering, that uncovers the secrets behind their genome and due to the discoveries of a prominent researcher who managed to decipher the key to the evolution of every living being, your conception was possible. Pnir, you are the result of a direct link of a human fetus with the virus aptare, which that researcher cataloged as "catalyst of evolution".
"What... What does all this mean?" Pnir responds to the words of the machine "What does it mean that I am a creation? And if I am, why did they create me?"
"You were created to represent the pinnacle of humanity's hope. You are one of the many projects that were carried out to face the threat of extinction.
Pnir guided by its inherent nature destroys the console with a blow that leaves his hand so bloody, however, his hand begins to regenerate almost to immediacy.
Pnir walks out of the gloomy room guided by a dim star that sneaks through the structure through the hallway. When he reaches the other end of the bright spot, he finds himself with a discouraging scenario.
Buildings that rise above the clouds, they are crumbling, they’re only vestiges of their former glory. Pnir before such hecatomb only shows indifference mixed with a little-infused curiosity. He walks through the dusty streets, looking around the surroundings. He peers at a small figure in the shadows of a pharmacy, the form looks at him warily as he recoils. Pnir approaches with vivid curiosity, as one who sees the light of day for the very first time. When he gets close enough, he manages to notice that it was a child in the age of playing marbles.
"Who are you?" The boy says while releasing some soft moans. Pnir does not respond his questions, he just observes him from head to toe.
In a matter of a blink, the earth begins to shake. The exalted child takes Pnir's hand and pulls it out.
"We have to hide. Quick, come on," The boy mutters as he starts to run. Pnir before the curiosity that produces the attitude of the child, he just let go.
They reach the hatch of a sewer. The child quickly removes the lid and begins to descend.
"Run faster, faster! It will come for us," The boy says while showing a lot of concern in his eyes.
"Who will come for us? I don’t understand what you're afraid of," Pnir replies while looking him out of the corner of his eye.
"I'm afraid of the thing that makes everything disappear. Just obey and run faster, you have to get off or it’ll catch you!" The child says with a trembling voice.
Pnir begins to feel how his heart begins to accelerate. His eyesight begins to sharpen to the point that he’s even able to see the tiny dust particles in the air. His hearing is also sharpened, now he can hear the flutter of a fly a few meters to his right. All his senses have been optimized. Refined like those of a famished predator in the middle of hunting.
"Now I know what you’re afraid of," Pnir pronounces as he begins to notice certain anomalies in his surrounding space.
His refined auditory ability warns him of an object that approaches vertiginously. He places his gaze towards the sound and with his sight as sharper as an eagle’s sight, he manages to see, a kilometer away, a humanoid figure.
"Run and hide!" Pnir orders him. “I figured it out my life's purpose. Now I know why I was conceived.
His skin begins to darken and look more robust. The nails of his feet and hands begin to grow at an accelerated rate; those of their feet are so long that they manage to stare at the road. His instinct tells him that he’s preparing himself to receive a great impact.
The blurred shape reaches him with a sonic speed. It attacks him with a nudge that pushes Pnir back a few meters. Pnir still being out of a range outside of what’s humanly possible, for the first time he experiences the sensation of fear. His arm that resists the blow is now broken, however, he can see how his tissue and broken bones begin to regenerate.
He quickly responds to its attack, charging at high speed. Sink his nails like swords in his flesh, splashing some transparent and colorless blood. Vertiginously the albino colossus takes Pnir by the neck and raises him on the ground. Pnir throws a kick that destroys part of his arm and body. In this way he frees his neck and lets it fall.
"Now I can see you crystal clear. A normal human… No, you’re clearly not. After all, your ability similar to mine is, but my superiority notable is,” The red-eyed albino says while Pnir's body regenerates instantly.
Pnir already with his two arms in good condition, rammed fiercely. Quickly the albino dodges the attack and launches a blow, which Pnir blocks with his right forearm and counterattacks with a kick that when blocked by the albino generates an expansive wave that erect a great cloud of dust.
Pnir manages to sneak from behind and takes its neck with his two arms, his legs widen, denoting great strength in them. He jumps with it, reaching almost twenty meters, then moves his feet at a speed that manages to lean on the air as if it were firm ground, continues in that way to reach more than one kilometer in height. At this point, the humanoid strikes the body of Pnir with its left elbow, the force of the blow causes Pnir to spit some blood and ends up releasing the albino, but not before Pnir stick his claws into the chest of the humanoid, sliding them down the width of the thorax and leaving deep wounds.
They’re both falling in free fall. Falling crashingly, the white creature unfolds what seems to be a bony extension that it kept hidden, of this extension, it spreads winglike membranes. The creature flutters and rises in the air. It places its hands on his head and emits a wave from its skull. The wave distorts the light as if it were a very dense point of energy. It impacts the body of Pnir by instantly disintegrating a third of his body and then he continues his fall like a fireball. Then Pnir mutters what could be his few last words:
“I don’t understand it, if I was created to combat and destroy those monstrosities, then how’s it possible that, when it comes to power, there’s a massive difference between us yet? I can’t believe that this is all that mankind could have created… Have I failed them? Or perhaps my real power hasn’t been awaken yet. If I fall to the ground at this velocity, I guess I wouldn’t survive. I must do something!
Pnir dismays but not before saying: “What’s this sensation?”
And some few seconds before falling to the Earth’s surface, Pnir wakes up and turns around, he adds a strong impulse to his feet once again, becoming that fast that in the distance it can be seen how he breaks the sonic barrier multiple times, so that way he approaches to the creature.
His punch crosses the body of the albino very easily, as if it were a human bullet. He kicks the air in front of him in order to push himself and lash back against his wounded opponent, but in its precarious situation, the creature stretches its hand forward and unfolds a spatial vortex in front of it.
Pnir hits the creature from behind and pushes both towards the portal. Pnir experienced the trip like a blink: he closed his eyes a second before being swallowed by the funnel, and when he barely opens them a little, he finds himself facing a reality completely different from the one he knew. Dominated by the commotion, he opens his eyes as much as he can, Pnir’s so overwhelmed by the perplexity that image causes him, and he could even palpate that horrid scenario if only he sets out to do it. A ship that’s extended for miles in a dark outer space. Behind it, there’s a conglomeration of ships of different proportions in the shadow of their mother ship.
I created all the images shown in this publication.