COD: The First One's Story

Chapter 19: Future Infections

6 Delta Realm (Nightmares)

The Delta Realm diverged from the Gamma Realm sometime in the 21st Century. By the 2050's, the three largest groups of countries on the planet were the Winslow Accord, the Common Defense Pact, or CDP, and the Nile River Coalition, or NRC. The Coalescence Corporation was building robotics and new technologies. They invented the Direct Neural Interface, or DNI, which allowed the user's brain to have the efficiencies of a computer. However, to get the DNI operational, they used incarcerated test subjects by force. Doctor Yousef Salim planted the idea of a Frozen Forest to calm the test subjects. However, in their experiments, they used two old compounds discovered during World War II, Nova-6 and Element 115. They combined them into the compound 61-15 and injected it into test subjects' DNI.

On June 2, 2060, during the secret Project Corvus, Salim opened the gateway to another universe called Malum and made contact with Deimos, the demigod of terror and destruction. The blast from the opening of the portal unleashed 61-15 as a virus into Singapore, killing thousands of people. Then people started reanimating, and Virus 61-15 was revealed to be the start of a zombie epidemic. Deimos was confined to the DNI of the test subjects of Project Corvus. He controlled the zombies, and they had eyes of many colors. Concentrated amounts of Virus 61-15 coalesced into Parasites that spread the infection as well. Deimos's sister, Dolos, demigoddess of deception and trickery, also crossed over through the gateway. She remained hidden. The Winslow Accord and CDP worked together to set up quarantine zones around the world to keep the zombies contained, and it worked. Drones were reprogrammed to kill zombies, but when the drones became corrupted, they couldn't differentiate between the living and undead, making many drones hostile to humans.

The local gang in Singapore, the 54 Immortals, or 54i, led by Goh Xiulan and Goh Min, became the rulers of the original quarantine zone. Coalescence executive Sebastian Kreuger and Salim survived the disaster, and Kreuger moved the Coalescence Corporation headquarters to Zürich to pick up where they left off. When DNIs were sold to the public, the military bought the majority of them. The Winslow Accord accepted John Taylor as the first subject in a new program to create cybernetically augmented soldiers capable of fighting any zombie threat. He was implanted with a DNI and cybernetically augmented. His job would be to lead the Undead Extermination Teams, and he earned the nickname Deadkiller. Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti followed in line, signing up as Deadkillers, joining Taylor's Undead Extermination Team.

That year, Damien Bishop claimed to have discovered a cure for Virus 61-15, a cure capable of turning the undead human again. However, the cure always failed in practice, and Damien believed that someone controlling the zombies purposefully stopped it. Deimos wouldn't allow a cure to exist. Bishop became the most wanted man in the world because every country believed they could get the cure to work, and the NRC abducted him. In the mission Black Ops, Taylor's team teamed up with Hendricks and a new soldier known only as the Player, as they went into Ethiopia to abduct Bishop for the Winslow Accord. The Player was fatally wounded in the mission, and she was the only survivor from Hendricks's team. Taylor rushed her to a hospital as a candidate for the Deadkiller program. Hendricks also volunteered to join the Deadkillers in cybernetic augmentation. The same year, in the mission New World, Taylor's team stopped an attack with Virus 61-15 by the Cotardist Terrorist Collective, a group of undead sympathizers who believed that the undead were the next step in human evolution. The Player set off the bomb loaded with Virus 61-15 before it entered the city. Deadkillers were immune to it, but she sustained non-fatal injuries. The Player and Hendricks left Taylor's team, and they formed their own team.

Taylor's team was given a mission to investigate the old Coalescence Corporation facility after a disturbance that Salim caused. However, when they interfaced with their DNI, Deimos possessed them, controlling them like he did with the zombies. They then began a mission to spread the zombie epidemic as far and wide as possible. They went to the CIA Black Station, and Deimos had them kill the staff there because they knew too much. Then they went to find Salim. Salim thought Deimos would be grateful for what he had done, but Deimos just executed him. In 2070, in the mission Hypocenter, the Player and Hendricks were sent to the original Coalescence Corporation facility to locate Taylor's team. Diaz deactivated the quarantine zones, letting zombies loose around the world, and so they killed Diaz. Hendricks interfaced with his DNI to learn where Taylor was, and Deimos possessed Hendricks, although it lay dormant. They escaped the facility as the 54i blew it up to try to contain the zombies. Meanwhile, Taylor met with Goh Xiulan and Goh Min of the 54i and interfaced with their DNI, and so Deimos possessed them too. In the mission Provocation, the Player and Hendricks tried to escape Singapore, but they had an altercation with the 54i. Goh Min was killed, and Goh Xiulan escaped, missing a hand. By this time, since the quarantine zones were down, zombies were attacking every nation around the world. In the Undead Wars, Hong Kong, Berlin, and Cairo were the first to fall to the zombies.