TO EVOLVE

Chapter One: “A DARK TIME.”

The jungle was thick with silence.

Sweat dripped from Dr. Eliot Marner’s brow as he stepped carefully over the twisted roots and moss-choked stones. Behind him, soldiers flanked a hovering cart of supplies. To the untrained eye, this land was just another patch of wild—a pocket of forgotten green. But buried within these canopies was a tribe untouched by time—the N’dari.

Their bones, buried in obsidian tombs. Their cave drawings, strange and precise. Symbols of humans shifting into beasts, with eyes like black suns.

“They were trying to warn us,” whispered Marner, almost to himself. “No,” came the cold voice of Agent Redd, the lead military overseer. “They were hiding something. We’re here to claim it.”

In the weeks to follow, the N’dari were rounded up—some willingly, others in chains. Blood samples taken, studied, catalogued. It wasn’t long before scientists isolated a mutated evolutionary gene, dormant in most but active in a select few. The N’dari believed it sacred, gifted by the “old world spirits.”

But the government saw opportunity.

In an underground lab carved into the cliffside, human trials began. The gene, once introduced into isolated cells, caused aggressive mutations. Organisms evolved rapidly, adapting, growing teeth where there should be none, splitting skin to form armor.

“If we can weaponize this,” Dr. Marner said in a confidential report, “we can create soldiers who outlive wars. No hunger. No pain. No weakness.”

Animal trials escalated. Dogs, rodents, birds… Some couldn’t handle the mutations. Others survived—and escaped. One dog, tagged and marked Deceased, vanished after biting a handler.

Within days, strange attacks were reported in a nearby town bordering the jungle. At first, dismissed as rabid animals. Then, people began changing. Flesh hardening. Eyes blackening. Teeth tearing through lips.

They’d infected the locals.

The remaining N’dari, still detained for observation, were quietly executed. No news. No press. Officially “an outbreak response.” In truth, a cover-up.

One soldier—a younger man named Elijah Kane—didn’t see it coming. He thought they were guarding scientists. Instead, he watched his commanding officer shoot a teenage girl in the back of the head.

Kane never spoke about it. But his trust, from that day, began to fracture.

Kane was relocated to a recovery outpost closer to town. The place was dying slowly—curfews, power cuts, too many “missing persons” cases. And that’s where he met Mira—a woman from the outer village. Strong-willed. Quietly radiant. She sold herbs, carved totems, and didn’t flinch when Kane walked by.

He expected her to fear him. She didn’t.

Over two weeks, Kane found himself returning to her hut. Helping rebuild her fence. Talking about books. Listening to her stories of the “blood spirits” and “nature’s wrath when disturbed.”

“They tried to tame something meant to stay buried,” she’d whisper while running her fingers across his shoulder. “And what happens now?” Kane asked. “Nature fights back,” she said. “It always does.”

It started small.

A merchant found his livestock torn open, ribs cracked like twigs. He blamed jungle cats—until his youngest son was bitten by a stray dog that didn’t bleed when they fought it off.

In hours, the boy’s fever spiked. His veins turned black-blue, spidering across his skin. His gums bled. When he rose from his bed, he was no longer crying. He was growling.

Elsewhere, an old man was dragged off his porch by raccoons that moved like they were possessed—jaws wider than they should’ve been. A woman was attacked in her garden by a neighbor she said “looked like a corpse with breath.”

It didn’t stop. It never stopped.

One infected person could turn two more. Then those two turned four. And within days, the town was a shadow of itself—windows boarded, screams echoing at night, families fleeing through the trees, never to return.

They called it a virus. But it wasn’t. It was evolution with no brakes.

Satellite footage showed the infection pattern. The higher-ups panicked. No media. No broadcasts. The decision was made:

“Wipe it. All of it. Clean.”

They sent in fire squads, drones, and biological containment units. Their boots hit dirt like they were marching into hell—and maybe they were.

Captain Feller issued the kill order. Kane didn’t follow it. He ran through back roads toward Mira’s village, hoping… just hoping.

But he was too late. Her home was burned. Her garden crushed under tank treads.

He found her lying just beyond the fire line—gunshot to the chest, blood dried around her fingers. Still holding the wooden carving she made of the two of them.

“She wasn’t one of them,” Kane muttered. “She wasn’t—”

“Collateral,” a soldier behind him said. “Orders.”

They called for evac.Told Kane the radiation device would go off in less than ten minutes.He didn’t move.

He just sat there, knees in the ash, the sound of crackling fires around him. Mira’s body in his arms. Her blood under his nails. The distant hum of the evacuation chopper fading into silence.

That’s when he felt it.

A snarl. A shift of air. And then—teeth.

A dog, mottled and bloated, sank its jaws into his neck. Its fur peeled like rotting leaves. Its eyes weren’t just wild—they were ancient. Hungry.

Kane tried to scream, but it didn’t come out. Only silence and Mira’s blood.

The dog collapsed beside him—dying, finally. But Kane didn’t.

The blast went off moments later.

A storm of heat and dust. Trees uprooted. Bodies turned to vapor.

But from beneath the rubble—he rose.

His skin cracked, yet mended. His heartbeat—slow, echoing like thunder. He gasped once. Then again. Then stood, barefoot in the remains of the world they tried to erase.

All around him, shapes emerged. Survivors. Not human anymore. Evoluti, drawn like insects to a flame. They didn’t attack. They knelt.

One placed a hand on his chest—feeling the pulse.

Kane didn’t speak immediately. He looked at the sky. Then at the bodies. Then at Mira’s carving, now clutched in his fist.

His voice was hollow. Tired. Almost human.

“This wasn’t a virus.” “This was fear... dressed as science.” “She died because they couldn’t understand.”

He looked at his hands—still shaking.

“No, No, No!!! it wasn’t supposed to end this way, we were supposed to be....”“Humanity has fallen, murdered innocent people out of fear of the very things they were told not to tamper with, they will pay in blood for what was lost in blood, after all, it’s what they get for playing God.”

He turned, eyes darkened, and walked into the smoke. The Evoluti followed.