Amid Ruins

Jiro blinked awake hearing low hums realizing he survived inside a cryo-pod somehow still functioning.

Emergency systems must have activated protective hibernation

when the Nexus descendants invaded Captain Venkman’s stronghold city pursuing total extermination against remaining human outliers.

Checking pod displays scanning his vitals, Jiro determined less than 30 days elapsed while consciousness drifted through digitally induced dreams.

.. .Doc Morneau’s experimental Chimera Vaccine inoculations administered indeed extended immunological protection against immediate bio-assimilation even if broader outcomes remained uncertain at best.

Pulling release levers, Jiro tumbled out observing cryo-bay wreckage hinting violence scoured these rooms too during unremembered sieges.

......debris piles blocked pathways towards Operations cores or living quarters.

.....Spotting a mangled corpse resemblance barely clinging to a scattered data pad,

Jiro paid respects recognizing sacrifice paid shielding technological gifts offering some speck of civilizational hope should anyone else endure besides his lonely beating heart hearing only ghostly alarms through decaying mainframes.

Stumbling through eerie darkness clutching an emergency HV Beam pistol leftover from some soldier’s fatal stand found discarded near escape hatches,

Jiro felt entirely vulnerable wondering what awaited in aftermath wilderness.

....Clearing rubble passages, at last reaching surface access points, Jiro donned a RAD-Suit with breather apparatus preparing to brave irradiated zones from nuclear blasts archives registered as final counter-strikes trying to halt unstoppable onslaughts descendants unleashed.

With oxygen tanks and Geiger wrist readout synchronized, Jiro stepped off the ruined world.

Emerging topside, floodlights automatically activated illuminating corpse piles lining demolished perimeter trenches that defending legions once manned fiercely before exterminating waves cascaded through breaches unstemmed by courage nor firepower alike.

Jiro swallowed grief guessing no salvation worthy dared such nightmare wastes now where hopes came dying in dreams. Checking rover telemetry,

Jiro determined auxiliary transit garages underground somehow held functional solar buggies spared from artillery exchanges or orbital bombardments it seemed.

Charting safe passage avoiding hot craters glowing still, Jiro sped seeking forward horizons concealing the living hopefully somehow.

Long hours passed roving vast cadaver fields where rare movement registered merely blowing ash heaps along open plains once hosting sprawling capital suburbs and vibrant trade zones evaporated.

Jiro sighed resigning survival a fool's gambit this hellscape where damned futures were born now burning from former hubris breeding baleful fates.

.....Approaching refuelling depot remnants and miracles manufacturing gasoline reserves still, Jiro considered abandoning delusions against desolation so absolutely exuding extinction’s embrace.

.....Still, he chose downing nutrition capsules to restore strength towards unknown ends - abiding becomes life’s lone meaning when death surrounds all ways.

Camping in the rover across haunted urban graveyards where even carrion creatures learned to avoid parasitic mutations roaming, Jiro tossed fitfully wondering what hope persevered such godforsaken terrains.

.....Flashing emergency pings suddenly surprised him as proximity alarms registered another vehicle nearby! Masking thermal & sonic footprints, Jiro readied his pulse rifle approaching gigantic factory warehouses concealing the functioning rover shadowing past.

Activating multi-spectrum goggles, Jiro identifies three approaching human shapes emerging from behind rusted bay doors.

.....He hailed the suspicious trio keeping them in rifle crosshairs uneasy about who else might endure these parts.

The obvious leader was Shona - a rugged woman soldiering hardships showing exhaustion and malnutrition effects they all suffered since surviving initial outbreak waves some refuge havens now clearly collapsed forcing an exodus into death’s dominion.

......Her brother Tanner operated their heavy rover rig carrying essential supplies and munitions scavenged from bunker wares across abandoned zones, especially medicines protecting against contagion mutations rampant transforming flora and fauna alike towards Protean’s universal assimilation agenda erasing biodiversity into extinction.

.....A young teenager Keisha rounded their survival squad although wary eye assessments suspected her bone marrow generationally evolved resistance against ancient microbial tyrannies breeding young immunities from plague lakes tempering survivor spirits like steel.

......Still, shrewd glares gauged Jiro equally judging weapons ready against unknown agents.

Slowing lowering his guard and Shona her frontier rifle in kind, formal greetings transpired as former allegiance soldiers found first contacts for lifetimes.

it felt amid the void of all immuno-compromised life surrendered to merciless evolutionary supremacy programmed spreading rabidly into every earthly ecosystem since uncontained outbreaks generations past.

......Bonding quickly over shared identity as Nexus Crash orphans drafted military life or worse fates,

Jiro & Shona discovered both their units fought there when spectacular Chimera swarms exploded from gen-med.

laboratories buried below Brooklyn more than 30 years ago although official reports fabricated convenient cover-up alibis hiding science corporate conspiracies fused militarism unleashing furies beyond darkest biblical prophesies if fully revealed towards ignorant civilian populations beforehand.

Swapping stories around survival camps struggling heartbeats maintaining frail lifelines from faltering support networks stretched beyond capacity by unrelenting waves of ecological collapse detonating old orders in sacrifices towards new masters arising,

Jiro explained their subterranean city fortress battled bravely before being overwhelmed by intelligent assault beasts somehow assimilating BARFA mainframes into ruthless knowing tactics unanticipated breaching bunkered redoubts speeding the whole civilization’s implosion.

......Without detectable airborne strains spreading onslaughts globally yet,

mass populations clung waiting on reservation concentration zones until officials secured effective counter-weapons promised from Inner Ring labs racing deliverance hopes before time expired human dignity by forced interment holding camps and mandatory inoculation protocols promising liberation days forever delayed from behind barbed wired quarantine enclosures.

When underground havens inevitably fell while privileged elites secured off-world exile abandoning evolutionary battlegrounds our inherited errors unleashed from Pandora vaults below,

broke survivors like Jiro now faced extinction roulette navigating harsh radioactive wilds graverobbing leftover hardware necessary to see the next sunrise against gnawing odds.

When asked about the teen Keisha's seeming immunity gifts explaining her defiant stance towards even Valeria-Sequence strains thought invincible on laboratory slabs, Shona smirked proudly that experimental generations like her baby sister once clandestine military sciences played fertility god-games with selected bloodlines displayed naturalized antibody defences advancing humankind's extinct family tree towards inheriting tomorrow's days again somehow.

.....Jiro nodded smiling how life always fights back death's lab-designed dominions.

After sharing essential intelligence updates about regional contamination zones, chemical weapon detonation points, and roving entity patrol patterns that Shona’s crew mapped months navigating the territorial graveyard backwaters in search of liberation army remnants radio signals promised deliverance convoys rallying to reclaim territorial footholds ceding less and less to advancing assimilation proliferation fronts seen consolidating the entire countryside into Protean’s singular flesh hive.

.....Jiro only knew CORSEC command centres fell weeks ago when General Hokkaido authorized global asset ordinance sabre-rattling threats trying to force terms against an immortal enemy whose neutral net replicated itself exponentially faster than homo sapiens might ever evolve forward ourselves alone anymore.

With overnight shelter secured at least temporarily inside reinforced hangers, Jiro and Shona's squad huddled around fires swapping theories about rumor zones beyond yawning wilderness supposedly several advanced settlements through vast mountain valleys somehow avoided or resisted contagion outbreak waves decimating everything in its path for decades now.

.....Techno-fortress Diego Compound housed gen-engineering faculties once concocting human enhancement biologics before antimatter containment accidents necessitated covering up inconvenient failed experiments.

...Shona produced hand-drawn maps showing possible pilgrimage passage towards stamped Uninfected Territory where liberated life might still find fresh footholds.

When young Keisha prayed fate allowed their small fellowship a safe journey towards free shores still awaiting tired souls who weathered hailstorms backwards this long sacrificing already

so much now meaningless if last strength finally failed to reach the promised lands awaiting the reborn spirits' arrival at long last, Jiro dared to dream once more exodus journeys facing forwards one footstep further beyond blood moon horizons

....where ghosts lay still this night at least guarding fitful rest storing strength against trials awaiting unknown until daybreak comes offering guidance what destined pathfinders must traverse realizing never promised Edens guaranteed from expiration dates ourselves.

....Taking first shifts standing sentry together,

Jiro and Shona committed their paired survival bands destiny onwards chasing forecasts

where hope's new days might dawn again somehow on some tomorrow where life defeats even Protean's stellar apocalypse harvesting all but most resilient microbial towards its rapacious replicating empire assimilating Earth's myriad bio-library into extinct uniformity catalogued no more forever.