Morgan woke up at 3:47 AM, and his body was frozen in bed. Every nerve ending screamed a warning that his conscious mind took a moment to understand.
The air felt wrong, as if it were full of something that made his teeth hurt and also made his vision blurry at the edges. He had felt this way before, in another life, right before the world ended.
The Syndrome outbreak has come. He threw off his blankets and stumbled to the window, where he pressed his hands against the cold glass.
The street in the suburbs looked calm from the outside. Houses were dark, sidewalks were empty, and a few streetlights cast pools of yellow light. Everything is in its right place, there's no sign of someone getting affected by The Syndrome.
But then...
Morgan could feel it in his bones, a vibration that was somewhere between sound and touch. The air was shaking, and reality was shaking as something deep in the fabric of existence changed.
In his original timeline, he was too stupid to see what was going on until it was too late. He now understood what that feeling meant, as his young body had retained muscle memory from decades of survival instincts that it had nearly forgotten.
The first person who's known as the Patient Zero in the world started to get affected. His phone rang on the nightstand. Morgan took it, knowing what he would see.
There were a lot of news alerts, with reports coming in from all over the place. Delhi. São Paulo. Lagos. Tokyo. Melbourne. All of it is happening in the same hour. People falling down in the streets, screaming about pressure in their heads, and clawing at their skulls as if they were trying to dig something out.
The Syndrome didn't spread by touching or being close to someone. It just showed up, with outbreaks happening all over the world at the same time in a way that scientists would spend weeks trying to figure out before most of them died or changed.
Morgan recognized the pattern, having witnessed the results and traversed cities where the disease had altered every living organism at the cellular level. But the date was wrong.
He looked at his phone again, which confirmed what he already knew. February 11. The Syndrome was supposed to start in three days. He was sure it was Valentine's Day.
But something had changed that he hadn't thought about. Or maybe the change was in his regression itself.
Morgan was halfway through putting on his jeans when someone broke down his door. Murphy stood in the doorway, still in his pajamas but wide awake, holding his phone in one hand. It was difficult to tell what he was feeling because it was somewhere between worry and something that looked very much like excitement.
Murphy said, "You felt it too." It wasn't a question.
Morgan stopped moving, with his shirt halfway over his head. "Felt what?"
"Don't mess around, Morgan." Murphy walked into the room and shut the door behind him. "Something is going on, something important. I can feel it in the air, like static before a storm."
Lying didn't make sense. Murphy was more aware than Morgan thought, and the tremor in reality was apparently strong enough for anyone, even someone who wasn't trained in combat, to feel it. Morgan put on his shirt the right way and looked his father in the eye.
"Yeah, I did. What do you think it is?"
Murphy went to the window and looked out at the quiet street with such intensity that Morgan's skin crawled. "A sign. Morgan, the world is changing. I knew it for months. It felt like pressure building up behind a dam."
"And that dam broke tonight."
"You sound like you're excited for it."
"Shouldn't I be?" Murphy turned around, and his smile was so bright that it looked like he was going crazy. "Change is on the way."
"Not the empty promises politicians make or the slow changes in culture, but real change. Something important is changing, and we have a choice."
"We can hide from it, or we can accept it."
Morgan wanted to punch that smile in the face and shake his father until he understood that the change he was celebrating would kill billions. But that would give away too much and make Murphy suspicious in ways that Morgan couldn't afford. So instead, he made himself look plain, unsure, and confused.
"I don't get what you mean."
"You will." Murphy put his hand on Morgan's shoulder and held it tightly. "Put on the right clothes. We're going to church. People will need help if they're scared. They'll need to believe."
...
Twenty minutes later, they were on their way to the biggest church, driving through empty streets. Morgan watched the city go by and saw things his dad missed. There were lights on in houses that should have been dark.
People stood in their yards, either talking in small groups or staring at their phones. A police car sped by with its sirens blaring. People all over the world were starting to realize that something was wrong, even if they didn't know what it was yet.
Morgan's hands were shaking. Not because he was scared, but because it was challenging for him to hold back. He was weak and untrained, but something was stirring deep inside his cells.
The changes that had made him more than human and the effects of his previous life with the Syndrome were bleeding through the time barrier. He felt like his reflexes were sharper, and he could see better.
When Murphy turned too quickly, Morgan's body automatically adjusted, shifting weight in ways he shouldn't have known how to do. He saw Murphy look at him in the rearview mirror again, that calculating look.
When they got to the church, the parking lot was empty, but Murphy didn't seem surprised. He opened the front doors and went straight to the small office in the back, where he took out his laptop and a notebook full of handwritten notes. Morgan followed and watched his father work with the skill of someone who had been preparing for this moment.
"What are you up to?"
"Getting ready." Murphy didn't look up from his computer. "When the sun comes up, people will be scared. They'll want answers, explanations, and someone to tell them what's going on and what it means. I want to be that voice."
"You don't even know what's going on yet."
"I know enough." Murphy's fingers moved quickly over the keyboard. "I know that the world as we know it is changing in a big way. I know that some people will see the present as the end and others will see it as the start. I want to be in charge of the second group."
Morgan's blood turned cold. This is how it all began. Not with the Syndrome itself, but with how Murphy reacted to it. In the original timeline, his father was one of the first to say that the outbreak was a sign from God and that the disease that was changing people's biology was actually a gift. Murphy was already getting ready to tell his story before the first transformation was even finished.
There was a scream in the night that was far away but clear. Then one more, and another keeps on coming. Morgan went to the window, and his better senses picked up on things that normal hearing would miss. The screams weren't just random, they were coming from downtown, from many places, and they all sounded like they were in pain.
"It's starting," Morgan said in a low voice.
Murphy came to the window with him, and his face lit up with joy. "Yes, the change."
Morgan wanted to know how his father knew to call it that, but he already had a clever idea of it. Murphy had been getting ready for this longer than Morgan thought. His father had been excited for this moment for years, even if he didn't fully understand it.
This time, a stronger pulse of energy moved through the air. Morgan gasped as pain shot through his head, making him feel like needles were going into his brain.
His vision went white for a moment, and when it cleared, he could see things he shouldn't have been able to. Invisible currents of energy flow through the air, like blood through veins. The Syndrome was more than just a sickness. It was changing the laws of physics themselves, making new ways for power to move.
He saw the same energy starting to coil around Murphy when he looked at him. This was because of something in the man's mind. Murphy was going to change early on. Not right now nor tonight, but soon.
Faster than he had been in the first timeline. Morgan's presence had changed the situation more significantly than he had anticipated.
Morgan suddenly said, "I have to go. Some people out there need help."
Murphy grabbed his arm before he could get to the door. "You're not going anywhere. It's not safe."
"That's precisely why I have to go."
They looked at each other, their wills locked in a silent battle. Murphy let him go in the end, but he looked worried. "You're not the same as you were yesterday. I don't know what has changed, but you are different."
"It felt like you've grown older in just one night."
"Maybe I have." Morgan got his arm free. "Maybe we all have. Don't forget that the world is changing, maybe that's the reason why we have to change with it."
He didn't wait for Murphy to answer, he just pushed past him and out into the night. The screams were louder and more frequent now, and Morgan found himself running toward them even though his body wasn't used to it.
His lungs hurt. His legs hurt. But there was something else going on beneath the pain. Old instincts were coming back to life, survival patterns so deeply ingrained in his mind that they had survived even regression.
He turned a corner and almost ran into a girl who was stumbling down the street. She looked like she was about sixteen, and her face was pale and streaked with tears. Her eyes were wide with fear when she looked up at Morgan.
"Please," she said, gasping. "My brother. There is something wrong with him. He won't stop screaming in our house."
Morgan knew her right away. Her name was Claire Ashford, in the original timeline, she was one of the few people who were completely human and survived the first outbreak.
Three years later, Murphy's purges killed her. She had spoken out too much against the faith and refused to bow down to the false god. Morgan had found her body in a mass grave with a clean cut on her throat.
But now, here, she was alive. And, at least for now, Morgan can save her.
"Show me," Morgan said.
Claire took him two blocks to a small house with all of its lights on. Morgan could hear the screaming even from outside. They were not words, only sounds of pain that did not resemble human voices at all. Claire's hand shook as she reached for the handle on the door.
"Don't," Morgan said, holding her wrist. "Stay out here. I'll take care of it."
"That's my brother in there!"
"I get it. And if you go in not knowing what you're up against, you'll die with him. Believe me."
Claire stepped back and wrapped her arms around herself, so something in his voice must have convinced her. Morgan took a deep breath and pushed open the door, just like he had learned to do in battle.
The living room was ruined. Furniture was knocked over, walls had deep scratches in them, and blood was splattered on the carpet in patterns that looked like violence but not wounds.
A young man was curled up on the floor in the middle of the chaos, holding his head in his hands. He was shaking, and his muscles were spasming in ways that didn't match any normal seizure.
Morgan got closer and looked for signs of change. The boy's skin looked normal, and there were no signs of mutations yet. But the Syndrome worked from the inside out.
It started in the brain and spread through the nervous system before it showed up in the body. It was usually too late to stop the changes by the time you could see them.
The boy's eyes flew open and locked onto Morgan with a look that was too intense for a human. When he spoke, his voice was full of harmonics that made Morgan's ears ring.
He said, "It hurts," and tears streamed down his face. "It's eating my brain!!!"
"I can feel it taking over my mind and changing who I am... please...!!! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!"
Morgan knelt next to him, not caring about the blood or the danger. "I can't stop it. No one can. But you can choose what you want to be when it's over. Fight it, and keep being who you are."
"I can't!" The boy's back bent in ways that should have broken his spine. "It's too powerful!!!"
"It's showing me things I don't even understand... the real god... is mad... mad at another god who won't own up to what they've done...!"
"This isn't holy. This is a punishment. This is war...!!!"
Morgan's blood ran cold when he heard those words. This wasn't meant to happen.
In the original timeline, the first transformed people couldn't talk to each other because their minds were too broken by the changes. But this boy spoke clearly, and what he said fit too well with what Morgan already knew about the machine.
The Syndrome was doing more than just changing people. It made them aware of the cosmic conflict and forced them to pick a side in a war between fake gods.
Murphy was going to use that knowledge to grow his church. The boy let out one last scream of pain, and then his body went still.
Morgan couldn't do anything but watch as the change finished. The boy's eyes shone with a light that had nothing to do with people when he opened them again.
"Everything went on differently..."