Hybrid .4 (Book One of The Upgrade Trilogy)

It All Starts Now (Prologue)

I remember the night my whole life changed. I may sound like I'm exaggerating, but this is no lie. It changed, but not just for me. For the entire planet Earth.

Honestly, I wish I'd received the signal. If I had, my life would've been...better. But no, I wasn't upgraded. So here I am now, still with the mind of an eighteen-year-old, but probably hundreds of years old physically. Right now, I should be dead.

Because I'm not, because I'm still living, is the reason I'm gonna tell you this story.

"What do you mean, you didn't bring any stuff for s'mores?"

It was a Saturday night, late June 2014. I was eighteen, and I'd just graduated high school. I had snuck out against my parents orders, and gone into the woods, with my best friend Ethan, and my girlfriend Maddie.

We'd set camp a few hours ago, and considering Ethan and I were forced to spend the summer of our sophomore year in boy scout camp, we made a pretty impressive fire.

"It's the truth! I forgot the stuff, Trevor!" Ethan raised his hands. "I thought you were bringing them!"

"Ethan, we talked this through. You bring the matches and stuff for s'mores, I bring the tent and set up camp!" I replied. I wasn't really that mad at him, though. At least he'd remembered the matches.

He sighed. "You know what? It's getting dark. I'm just gonna call it a night."

"Have fun doing that!" I waved, as Ethan slipped into the tent, and Maddie returned from having done her business.

She sat down next to me. "Hey. Did I miss too much?"

"No, not really." I put my arm around her, smiling. "But, no s'mores tonight."

"Dang it." Maddie grumbled, before looking back at me.

I took her hand, helping her up. "You tired?"

"Yeah, a little bit." Maddie shrugged. "I'm in no mood to stay up tonight, anyways."

We headed into the tent, and we saw that Ethan was still up. He smirked when he saw us. "Hey, guys. I was waiting for you to go to bed. How late is it, anyways?"

Maddie picked up her phone. "Uh...11:29. We partied real hard, didn't we?"

"Yeah, we kinda did." I laid on my sleeping bag, even though I could feel a tree root under my leg. "Good night, guys."

"G'night." Ethan saluted.

Maddie turned her phone off. "See you in the morning."

But, we never did see each other in the morning.

Because, only a few hours after we fell asleep, something happened. I'm not gonna say what it is for now, but it was something huge. By the time we woke up, though, we were too late. We'd missed that something.

I remember, I was unconscious, and I felt this weird chill that brought me to my senses. If I'd been even a second faster, maybe I'd wouldn't have missed out.

I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. Something was keeping me awake. I picked up my phone, but the time was messed up, I wasn't able to read it clearly. At the time, I was still unaware of what had happened, so I blamed not being able to understand words on my phone on blurry vision from having just woken up.

I silently slipped out of the tent, hoping to take a walk to tire me out again. But what I saw next, shocked me.

The moon had been full that night. I remember, because I was looking at it while I was talking with Maddie. But now, the moon was crescent. What else? It was purple? And because it was purple, so was the grass, the trees, everything in that forest, except for one thing.

Me.

Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

Something was making a weird noise, and I highly doubted it was I myself. I turned around, but saw nothing. Even so, I was being watched.

Bleep. Bloop. Bloop.

There it was again. It was getting closer. Nobody else was in this part of the forest, so who else could it be? I had to be dreaming. I just had to be. I'd wake up and say: Trevor, what has gotten into your head?

Whirrr....

"Trevor!"

I spun around. Maddie was there, and so is Ethan. They must've also been woken up by the weird sounds. Both of them were terrified of the thing in between of me and them.

A robot.

I screamed, as it turned it's attention to my friends. It placed it's hands on their shoulders, and they both collapsed in unison.

And then, the robot turned in my direction.

Animal instincts seemed to kick in, and I ran, terror plunging throughout my soul. However, almost a second after I started to flee, I tripped, over a tree root. Yes, I know. That's lame.

The robot stood over me, and spoke. Please do not be scared. I am trying to help you.

"Yeah, right." I growled, not looking at it's ugly face. "That's what the robots said in "The Girl Who Waited", and they tried to kill Amelia Pond, who isn't as good as Donna Noble, but still. All robots are evil in sci-fi movies."

There was no answer from the robot, because it was leaning down to touch me.

The second it's cold, metallic hand touched my back, I knew I had just felt darkness. No, come on, Trevor, no...

Like before, it was just too late.