While Alex was sleeping Laura got her own message from the app. A user named mutantslayer had messaged her
"Please, Help us. My wife is dead and I will be dead too soon, my childre. My children are too young"
Laura took a while to think but decided to take out a few eggs and send them, perhaps out of pity. He brother came back as a mess so maybe she didnt want others to go through that at the moment, or maybe it was just kindness.
In an alternate world the apocalypse had come, not through an act of God, perhaps even God was gone. Zombies were the least of ones worries either, instead giant towering goliaths were moving about with no David to slay them. Humans now the minority on earth, no one would believe that the human civilization would end up like this. They lived in an underground city with their technology which helped them survive.
Their colonies on other planets had abandoned them. The only saving grace that only few predators considered humans prey, those which did were small enough to derive nutrition from tiny humans.
Some ghastly creatures enjoyed making sport out of them but thankfully it wasn't too common, revenge for how they were treated by humans before maybe. Pets, experminental subjects. Monkeys especially had a very twisted sexual preference when it came to humans, perhaps the fact that humans used them to test experimental products plus their sexual drive agitated by mutation led them to treat humans as such
No man or woman wished to even meet these 8-10 meter beasts. Whenever a human ran into a primate they would pray that it was a gorilla or any form of primate that was far away from human civilizations. Atleast that way even if they weren't ignored they would die quickly. Still sky scraper sized beasts moving about never bode well for anyone living near their paths, Not being prey just meant they wouldnt be hunted actively.
Their technology could easily combat the few predators they had but because of falling to the bottom of the food chain human settlements were rare. No matter how intelligent they were, even if the mutation enhanced that what use was it when a few hundred godzillas rampaged around.
How did it come to this? An intergalactic human war had caused the origin of humans, earth, to be the main battlefield and like all wars new improved technology and weapons were developed.
It may have happened like this. Perhaps some sicko desired world peace through threats and created a biological weapon. Perhaps a group of sickos wished to use that weapon to rule the world. Perhaps another side of sickos wished to destroy it, Everyone has desires and reasons for their desires but the outcome was the uncontrolled usage of the weapon. Earth quickly changed. Plants mutated and grew to enormous sizes, then they spread their mutated pollens infecting the animals as well.
They became living, moving, beast shaped buildings, A man joked about how they could hollow out a giraffes neck and make a giant apartment out of it when drunk. The mutation didnt only affect size.
If it did then you could just consider them overgrown animals but what truly made them monsters was not only that their size or appearance changed but so did their nature. Creatures like ants grew to the size of human children but still acted as a colony while rats grew to the size of mini-vans and turned their fear of light and humans into predatory rage humans, too mutated but perhaps due to the long passage of time their animalistic nature was curbed.
They gained strength no human normally could and intelligence far surpassing their ancestors but in the end all they amounted to was being able to kill the now overgrown rats, maybe somewhere out there a group of humans took out monkeys but anything larger required a large force, a very very large and armed force that only the last city could provide and that too only within its perimeter . Atleast this meant the stronghold had enough defenses.
The saving grace might be that bugs no longer targetted humans, mosquitos quickly learnt that stabbing humans not only killed them but provided meagre blood for the efforts. Flies hideous as always still buzzed around. Moths. Well lets just say no one turns on lights. Atleast never above ground.
They grew large and frightening. Imagine a moth almost your size just flapping towards you, to make it worse their faces always looked like they had a evil grin and latched onto you like some sort of glue, your choice? Either rip it off or die, most die not because they are weak but because they couldnt react properly or think due to the fear.
Finally lets talk about bats, those little critters who have a small habit of clinging to faces and objects, cant see anything further than a few cm away and have terrible sense of direction. They can see up to a meter now but thanks to their size which is roughly 1.3 times larger than an adult male they are basically the flying equivalent of Rats.
A flying rat the size of a mini-van is bad enough but thanks to their mutation, their echo location sound is sharp enough to break windows and glasses from far away and kill any creatures nearby with just the sound. An ancient game would call it Fus ru da but omnidirectional and hurt like a hammer to the head.
Humans have a tough time surviving. Their underground city was often invaded by worms thankfully these were easily killed by the defense mechanism, Yes humans have a hard time surviving but inside the city was relatively safe. Protected by the latest weaponry enough to kill any worm of bat who dares come close and shields tough enough to survive being stomped on by a goliath. Humans make do by farming or hunting rats for meat thanks to their enhanced strengths.
Hunting meaning just ganging up on a single rat hoping its friends dont come, or small creatures. For some reason chicken and pigs never mutated, they taste better and chickens can now spit fire but that is all that changed. There were rumors of pheonixes but rumors always exist. The cockroaches went extinct, pehaps a blessing in disguise for the humans which now took that title for themselves because they survived even when the so called tenacious cockroaches didnt and to an extent now live in a similar manner.
Outside the city, savage unforgiving lands molded the humans that occupy it. The humans living here have obviously proven their mettle by surviving. The cowardly live, the scheming live, the weak live, the strong die.
Not because the world is against the strong or some sort of strong human killing mutation but because strong amongst the humans still means slightly stronger prey, infact the predators love them because they think they are strong they dont run. They dont hide, they dont crawl, they dont scheme.
Now money, power, women and good food are luxuries best left to the fantasies. Fantasies are best left for sleeping and sleeping is best left for when you are dead. Rest with an eye open. Pay attention to every detail, you are weak and you must know that so you dont end up giving some beast a lucky meal.
In such a land a man ran with his two children while a monster ate his wife, he hid with his children and clicked on the band on his wrist, Technology now made phones and computers literally thin arm bands.
He wasnt trying to watch some movie before dying or call for help if there is such a thing. The display opened and he click on an app.
This app which helped him survive all this time in such a land. It provided him with amazing abilities, magical ones in exchange for technological scraps everywhere or monster meat but being a man constantly on the run what could he even afford to sell? Debris dont sell for much and corpses of monsters are rare to come by, techonology? If he had such a thing he wouldnt be struggling this hard, the technology all around him was already scrap metal with minimal value. These scraps helped him survive till now but thats all.
The city horded all technological items and the few which slipped by were too valuable to sell, like his wrist computer. He opened the app and asked for help from the first person which caught his eye
He was lucky, a few eggs were sent over and he quickly split them with his children. Raw eggs taste alright when you are hungry and stomach problems aren't even a concern anymore. He quickly thanked his savior but was then sent a weird book, it described how to raise his perception. He read it never imagining he would feel so grateful to someone he didnt even know. This would help him survive even if just a bit longer.
Coming back to Laura she saw his thank you message and thought he was over acting a bit. It was just a few eggs and a copy of a cheap manual
but she decided to send him a few eggs every other day.
A day had passed, Alex woke up to be his normal cheery self and his parents got tired of asking him what happened. He had told them that he just fell but, no one really believe him. Laura later on went up to him and hugged him out of the blue, he accepted the hug but didnt say anything for a while until he finally spoke.
"I killed someone"
"Then good riddance, they deserved it."
"Wont you ask why?"
"All I know is, if I had done it you would be on this side of the hug brother."
"You really are the best sister"
They stayed like that for a bit but Alex didnt feel like college either. He also didnt feel like touching the app for a bit but he knew he couldnt be selfish. People were after him and Laura and the only thing that could truly protect them was themselves and the app cutting one of those off would mean a bad end.
Surprisingly he got a message from a user named TrueImmortal. It had a picture of him with a young chinese looking guy hung upside down behind him. The man looked like he had been beaten up and the follow up message explained why
"Are you the idiot puppet this idiot set up? ha ha idiot, want help?"