Virus (A Minecraft Story)

Prologue

The man sat down at his computer and gave a grunt of satisfaction, reclining comfortably in his chair. He'd just come from a meeting with his boss, Marcus, and he was feeling pretty proud of himself.

He'd scored a job at Mojang a week ago, and had already made suggestions and examples for a pretty sweet game they were working on. They'd listened to him and taken his ideas into account, which was one of the best things in the world right now.
But now they expected him to walk the talk, which meant he had to get to work.

Sitting forwards to look at his screen, the man cracked his knuckles and frowned in thought, trying to think of a new idea to place into the software of the game.
For a moment, his mind was blank, offered no suggestions. All of his confident swagger evaporated, and he started to worry.

Then an idea popped into his head, like a gift from God himself, and he hunched over his computer, hands already dancing across the keyboard at the speed of light.

He spent several hours working furiously, typing and altering code until his eyes became sore, his back ached and his fingers started to cramp. But he finished his project just as they started to close up work, as people started to shut down computers and gather up their things, and he leapt to his feet in the wildest excitement.
"I've done it!" He shouted, so exhilirated he did a fist pump and a small dance of happiness.

One of his co-workers, and also a good friend of his who had helped the man score his job, came walking over, curious about the commotion.
"What's up, man? What'd you make?"

"Only the greatest mob to ever exist," The man replied proudly - and turned the screen around for his friend to see. There, sitting in a flat world of grass and dirt, was a mob that was going to change the world.

Its body held no shape; it was just a black shifting mass of pixellated blocks, its darkened skin moving jerkily around on the screen. Its blank red eyes stared through the screen, at the man, and into his very soul.

His friend stared in surprise and apprehension at the pixellated monster. "What the hell is that?"

"A new mob for the game," his friend explained with a loud weary yawn, stretching his arms above his head. "I'm going to show this to Marcus tomorrow, but at the moment, I'm exhausted. Let's call it a night, huh?"

He reached over the keyboard, hit the power button, switching off the computer, and the field disappeared - but, somehow, the creature remained.

The man frowned, puzzled. "What the hell?" He tapped the screen, then hit a few keys, then tried to power on the computer and type in a command, but it failed to reboot, and his new creation remained, just sitting.
Staring.
Waiting.

His friend pushed him aside, rolling his eyes at the man's inexperience. "Let me try."
He reached out to experimentally tap the screen, to see if it was just a glitch - and then the creature lunged, bursting completely out of the screen like it didn't even exist, breaching the surface of the glass like Jaws on a rampage.

Before either of them could react, it opened it mouth wide, revealing a set of black, slime-oozing fangs - and then plunged them into the man's outstretched hand.

He screamed in pain as blood spurted violently from his hand, staggering backwards as the other man tripped over his chair trying to get away, letting out a horrific cry of terror.
The sufferer desperately tried to yank his hand away, took hold of the horrific monster and tried to rip it off him, but the black sludge travelled up his arm like a ferocious infection, consuming his hands, arms and torso at an alarming rate; the terrified man could not free himself from this monster's iron grip.

The creator of this living nightmare could only watch in horror as his friend tripped and fell to the floor hard, screaming in agony as the sludge crawled up his neck, into his open mouth - and directly down his throat. He suddenly fell silent, slumping to the floor as the substance crawled across his face to cover it like a mask - his desperately scrabbling hands fell limply to his sides.
Within moments, the man was just a human body covered in a writhing midnight shroud.

There was absolute silence, apart for the remaining man's panicked breathing; everybody else was still locked away in their own offices, utterly oblivious to the nightmare that had just occured.

The man should've dove for his phone and called the police immediately, called in a SWAT team or the FBI, but instead he cautiously crept closer to his unmoving friend, who was now completely covered in a mass of shifting black. "Dude...? You okay...?"

For a moment, his friend lay motionless, completely unresponsive. He really was dead.
Then he sat up, let out a rattling, gurgling breath, and opened terrible, solid red eyes, utterly blank and devoid of emotion.

The man that was no longer human lifted his hands and studied them curiously, turning them over with an eerie fascination and flexing his dripping, midnight-coloured fingers, before he examined the rest of his body.

He looked over at the shaking man on the floor, stared at him with those eyes of blood, and rumbled in a deep, ground-shaking voice of stones and bass, "You have given me life, which I am grateful for." He stood, brushing himself off, splattering little droplets of black ooze at the man's feet, and stepped calmly towards him.
"But I cannot allow you to live."

His shifting hand shot out and closed on the man's throat with crushing force.
He lifted his creator into the air with laughable ease, while the man scrabbled uselessly at the black shifting skin of the monster looking up at him. He couldn't breathe; he choked and gasped for breath, each feeble attempt growing weaker by the second, each blow of his foot sinking further into this monster's oozing skin.

"Tell the Creator of Humans to expect many more of you to follow, because Virus has risen - and he is out for revenge," The monster said, and, as he flashed a brilliant white-toothed smile that had once belonged to someone else, he crushed the man's throat with the sound of splintering bone, and tossed the body carelessly aside.

Virus turned, looked at the glowing screen from which he had emerged, and grinned, leaning over it with a gleam in his crimson eyes. "Ah, well. I'd prefer more killing, or something a little flashier, but this'll have to do."

He stretched out his hands, as dark as midnight and as cold as death, and they melted onto and into the computer like hot tar, and code began to flicker across the dormant screen.

"Come on... Where are you..." Virus growled, red eyes flashing. He gritted his teeth in concentration, stared intently into its flickering depths like a predator stalking its prey. He did not even notice the human that walked in, saw what was happening and immediately sprinted out in a panic.

Then he nodded in satisfaction as the flickering stopped and data, pure and beautiful information, started flowing up his arms. And, as he watched, a large orange M flickered to life, a proud and beautiful icon glowing gently on the screen.

"The main computer," he hissed, eyes flashing with excitement. "I found you." He couldn't help smiling to himself as he murmured, "Time for some good old-fashioned revenge."
It was not a nice smile.

Then he began to ooze over the computer, his body pouring over and into the whirring and humming computer, even as codes were altered and warnings flashed. Somewhere in the building, an alarm sounded, and red lights flashed in warning.

Virus laughed, a terrible, maniacal sound that echoed throughout the abandoned building, while the dead and broken body of his creator watched the beginning of the end with lifeless eyes.