[ Earth 24##@70 ]
The wind gently caressed his face, making his clothes dance to its rhythm. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was standing on the roof of that enormous mansion, at the highest point, where no one could reach him. He didn't even understand how he had managed to climb up there, but even so, he adjusted his glasses, and a long, tired sigh escaped his lips.
He gazed at the sun in the sky as a few tears rolled down his cheeks. He whispered a few words that would have been unintelligible to anyone else. The desperate screams of the mansion's servants could also be heard, but it was as if the child's mind had blocked everything out.
A gentle smile formed on his face. He closed his eyes and threw himself into the void. At that very moment, a feminine voice echoed.
"Fine. Then it'll be your emotions."
—15 Years Later—
The sound of his elegant leather shoes echoed throughout the grand hallway. He adjusted his glasses and slipped his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. He looked ahead with his strange silver eyes, taking in the white walls that surrounded the entire facility.
His name was Alek Gusev, a Russian scientist of the highest caliber and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He had been credited with several discoveries that had been vital to the world.
Until recently, this world had been slowly withering away because of fossil fuels and pollution from factories in general. However, someone had emerged from the shadows to put an end to it. Of course, that someone was Alek Gusev. The 27-year-old man walked casually with his hands in his pockets. Around him, his fellow scientists watched him uneasily, but Alek didn't care in the slightest.
He preferred to ignore that fact and continue with his work.
"Good evening, Dr. Gusev."
A tall woman with brown hair greeted him, but Alek walked right past her, ignoring her as he did with everyone else.
She didn't take his attitude well. Alek might have heard the word "asshole" leave the woman's mouth, but it didn't affect him in the slightest, and he simply continued walking.
His face didn't have a normal expression. It was as if every muscle in his face had frozen into the same emotionless expression, with dull eyes and a strange, solitary aura.
Suddenly, he stopped in the middle of the hallway. He touched his jaw with his right hand and narrowed his eyes. Strange murmurs began to escape his lips. Most of them had something to do with scientific concepts that few people could understand at a glance. But this was something Alek always did. He shut himself away in his own world and talked to himself. He didn't care about other people's lives, which meant he could always immerse himself completely in his work without worrying about anything else.
"Hm..."
A small grunt escaped his mouth. He realized he was wasting time standing there in the middle of the hallway, so he got to work and walked faster toward his laboratory.
A few seconds later, the laboratory doors opened, revealing the white walls that made up the room.
"She should have already replaced the containers for 'The Light of Humanity,' so I should set the timer for exactly one week."
His voice was monotonous, as if he were bored and tired. As for 'The Light of Humanity,' it was actually an artificial star designed and manufactured by Alek Gusev himself. At the age of 23, four years ago, this star had brought light to humanity.
It provided clean, non-polluting energy to the European continent. That was the reason Alek had won the Nobel Prize.
Certain that his colleague had replaced the containers that supplied the star with its fuel, he entered another room in his laboratory. He put on his gloves and protective goggles, not before passing through the decontamination chamber, and picked up a scalpel between his fingers.
"Just a little."
He used the blade to cut off a small piece of the strange compound that had been carefully placed on the table. He observed it with his dull eyes for a few seconds before placing it back on the table.
He approached a nearby whiteboard and began writing various chemical formulas in terrible handwriting. There was a great deal of enthusiasm in the way he moved his hand as he wrote. If an ordinary person saw him at that moment, they might have thought the man was an artist in his own workspace. He moved around the room quickly and confidently. He picked up chemical compounds, mixed them, constantly checked the time on his watch, and went back to work. He did this for two straight hours.
Even though it was 2:00 a.m., he felt full of energy. However, all of this was interrupted by an alert on his watch.
[Unstable.
Hydrogen Levels: 0.021%]
Alek's eyes widened when he saw it. He immediately sprinted through the facility's hallways until he reached a massive reinforced door. He pressed the button, and the door opened.
He continued forward at a hurried pace, opening nearly six doors that protected the star.
When he opened the final door, a brilliant blue light washed over his face. In front of him was a gigantic, glowing sphere of plasma, isolated within a powerful glass chamber. Near the glass chamber, where the activity of the artificial sun could be observed safely, red alerts flashed across the screens as frightened researchers desperately tried to fix the problem.
"What happened here?"
Without changing the expression on his face, Alek approached one of the researchers. But the only answer he received was, "We don't know." This left him disappointed, so without any body protection, he entered the chamber where the sun was located.
The radiation wasn't particularly dangerous. He would only come out with a few burns, but there was no time.
He removed the containers from the nearby panel and realized that the Hydrogen container was empty. That was when he remembered the woman who had called him an asshole earlier. He fell to his knees and let out a tired sigh.
"So it was sabotage, huh... I never expected things to end this way."
His watch displayed the following: [Hydrogen Levels: 0%] And then, a question arose in his mind. What happens when a star consumes all of its hydrogen? Simple...
It explodes.
Right there, in front of his creation, Alek shook his head. The star expanded and began devouring him. A brilliant light illuminated all of Europe, and as the star began swallowing the continent and, consequently, the planet, the scientist heard a voice scream at him moments before his death:
"You damn traitor!"
And that was when everything ended.
With a faint crimson-red light...
***
He opened his eyes and felt surprised. He remembered being devoured by his own creation, but at the moment of his death, he had heard a voice. There was something beneath his feet as well. It seemed like water, but it had a different density.
"Where am I?"
Everything was dark. There didn't seem to be anything there.
The entire place suddenly lit up in crimson red. The ground was made of blood, and strange voices, whispers, screams, and wails began to echo around him.
He looked at his hands, and they were covered in blood. So much blood that it dripped from his fingers, each drop making a small dripping sound.
Something grabbed his leg and dragged him to the bottom of the ocean of blood. He tried to escape, lifting his head back toward the surface, but he frowned when he saw hundreds, thousands, millions of hands made of blood rising from the bloody ocean. The screams and wails grew louder, and then all those hands began dragging him downward.
He felt himself drowning and tried to scream, but it was impossible. His scream was swallowed by the ocean of blood...
And was replaced by the cry of a baby.