Glitch ...

Sunk beyond the plane of machine gun fire. A tired, sour and conflicted voice breaks its sound.

“Gods! that’s what we were,” shared the stranger loudly. “The cream of the crop, the best ever assembled.” “Everything we touched in our research propelled us to the next level, producing extraordinary results”.

“We had the world at our feet”. The out the molecular structure of DNA sequences unlocking the mysteries to the regeneration of cell growth and from that point on there was no looking back. We could finally put a stamp on eliminating disease, imagine the ability to reverse cell damage, aging; we held the formula to the fountain of youth in our hand”.

“Who knew what other break throughs would follow, but when all was said and done there was no turning it off and before long, we began testing these theories on dead cells, laughing at the chances or even the possibilities it might work, but to our surprise, it had, and it thrived, breathing life into the rest of the systems and soon anything dead was revived”.

“Don’t want to sound like this was a Stan Lee creation from those great comic books he produced, but with this gigantic discovery, the cost came at an even greater responsibility to the human race”.

“That’s where the exceptional turned catastrophic once heads of parliament soon began to cypher from these programs, catering to their own agendas and what do governments do when an opportunity like this arises, they do what they do best ... FUCK it all up. Oh, they had such a cute codename for it too “Operation cold front”.

“The only thing these egomaniacs do well is breed war and soon the first batch of testing followed with the actual dead, but not just any Joe was dug up from the grave, no! these nobodies were former military masterminds and strategists”.

​“So here we sit, right smack dab in the middle of this fucking hell on earth, and why because our fearless leaders decided to create this chaos which has now become our reality, the consequence spelling our doom and knowing what I know, there’s no way I’m going to fall prey to these fucking monsters we helped create”.

Reaching for a bottle of scotch he poured himself another glass of liquid courage, raised it to his lips, swung his head back draining the contents quickly into his mouth and swallowed ... gingerly turned his head, faced the sergeant and his team, smiled sheepishly and continued to speak …

“Your hours are numbered, enjoy what moments you have left while you still can”, suddenly he drew a nine-millimeter pistol from the side pocket of his bloodied jacket and fired a round into his mouth; he was dead before the shell hit the ground.

​Frozen the squad stood over the slumped body of a man they barely knew anything about, only that he abruptly took his own life. The team still shaken by the method he chose to escape this world and quite confused by the cryptic message he drunkenly shared.

It only fed more questions with no significant source of answers besides the idea that something went horribly wrong, but it would get much worse.

​Looking more closely at the scientist’s remains the team searched for any clues or any identification or indication of who he was, a way they may notify the next of kin instead they found a faint beeping that broke from his chest and under his now blood covered coat.

Suddenly one thing was completely clear as the sarge was thrust into action and tore open the doctor’s jacket with his shirt simultaneously to find the corpse was rigged with explosives, the body was now live. The sarge saw that his team only had a few seconds before detonation.

“MOVE...MOVE...MOVE, ...TAKE COVER” he yelled and within a microsecond the bomb would succumb to time. The chemical burst flooded through like a flash over the entire platform burning and melting everything within its path, a radius about the size of a ball diamond, maybe more.

It was within the aftermath of these eight seconds rushing for cover that the squadron had understood that their sarge did not survive the devastation.