Chapter 1: Prototype

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*

America.

New York City.

Manhattan.

The city was quiet as death, its ruined buildings standing like exhibits from a civilization that had vanished long ago. Torn signs, overturned taxis, dark red stains dried onto the pavement. It was a scene that no mere riot could explain.

Then something writhed within a wrecked taxi.

It looked like a tentacle.

A black tentacle, writhing like smooth, living hide.

As though the taxi itself had come alive, it crawled up the metal and spread over its surroundings.

Yet despite that grotesque movement,

the soldiers patrolling the city did not so much as glance at it. Wearing specialized gear predominantly black in color, they were a strange group unlike any ordinary military force.

Then one soldier who appeared to be their commander spoke into the radio fixed to his chest.

"Nothing abnormal."

The soldiers’ gun barrels pointed in every direction.

Fear lingered on their faces.

As though... this city was no longer a place for people to live.

And one man looked down on them.

The rooftop of a ruined building.

A black silhouette stood at the railing.

Wearing a gray hood and a black jacket bearing its distinctive red design across the back, he watched the soldiers patrolling the city as though keeping them under surveillance.

He gazed down at the city, as silent as the wind.

The scent of madness, the scent of blood, the cries of the virus... they were all familiar sensations to him.

[My name is Alex Mercer.]

A monologue rings out.

[I am the cause of all this.]

Alex Mercer, the hooded man who had been quietly observing, slowly rose to his feet.

[They call me a murderer, a monster, a terrorist.]

Then he steps into empty air and falls. His speed builds, and the building’s outer wall blurs past him.

[...I am all of those things.]

Boom!

The man lands with a heavy crash.

Such a fall should have left every bone in his body shattered, yet the man stood there unharmed. As though he had not fallen, but simply descended.

Then he turns and runs.

The man runs at a transcendent speed no human could possibly possess.

Soon, a barricade apparently set up by the soldiers appears before him, and the man—

Whoosh!

—leaps high enough to clear it.

Thud!

He lands hard enough to crack the roadway.

[Three weeks ago, someone released a deadly virus in Penn Station.]

He vaults over obstacles with flashy movements reminiscent of parkour.

[I woke up in the morgue.]

Afterward, he races up the side of a building.

[Now I hunt, kill, consume—and through that, I exist.

I will find out who did this to me.]

The screen fades to black.

A voice filled with determination sounds from within the black screen.

[And I will make them pay.]

*

"Mmm... The prologue never gets old, no matter how many times I watch it."

Watching the protagonist’s one-man rampage on the computer screen, I find myself admiring it all over again.

PROTOTYPE.

An action-adventure game released by Radical Entertainment in 2009.

You could morph your hands into claws or whips for all kinds of flashy action, and with protagonist Alex Mercer’s badass hooded look, running along building walls, jumping high, and tearing through Manhattan—it was a game I played as a kid and have never forgotten. The game of my life.

Hands becoming blades, arms becoming whips, running up city walls, throwing cars, ripping helicopters and tanks apart like paper. It was cool as hell.

It was also the game that gave middle-school me a terminal case of edgy chuunibyou.

"But that didn’t last long..."

2012.

PROTOTYPE 2 was released.

Its action and visuals were praised as improvements over the first game, but its story critically dragged down the game’s overall quality.

Because they actually turned Alex Mercer, the protagonist of the first game, into a villain—and then had the protagonist of the second game absorb him at the end.

It was the biggest blunder imaginable.

They made Alex, the hero of the first game, into a villain and killed him off in the end.

"There haven’t been any sequels since then... What a shame."

Maybe PROTOTYPE 2’s sales had been worse than expected, because Activision ended up shutting down Radical Entertainment.

Thanks to that, the PROTOTYPE series had gone completely silent after the second game. Its lineage had effectively been cut off.

I know it’s pretty pathetic that I’m still clinging to a series that has, for all intents and purposes, already ended...

But what could I do? There wasn’t a single game in any genre that could replace PROTOTYPE.

As I wasted time browsing the internet...

some new information came in.

[PROTOTYPE Update]

"...An update?"

PROTOTYPE was suddenly getting an update.

"Now, of all times?"

The game had already been out for decades, and they were going out of their way to update it?

For the record, PROTOTYPE 2 was getting an update as well.

I should take a look at the patch notes.

The update itself was ordinary. It fixed a few bugs.

But at the very bottom was news separate from all that...

[Announcement: New PROTOTYPE Game in Development]

"...Huh?"

There was an announcement that a new entry in the PROTOTYPE series was in development.

"Is this a dream...? Did I eat something weird?"

I pinched the back of my hand.

It hurt. This was real.

I was able to accept that this was reality, not a dream.

"Ah! This isn’t the time for that! I need to look at this properly..."

I click the link and enter the website.

What comes up is news about the new PROTOTYPE game’s development. The same thing I had just heard.

And then...

[Survey Open to Players with Over 100 Combined Hours in PROTOTYPE 1 and 2]

"A survey..."

Were they actually going to take feedback into account?

"Why not? Let’s do it."

In that case, I might as well give it a shot.

[What would you like to see in the new PROTOTYPE game?

1. A sequel

2. A remake or reboot]

Obviously, I chose number two.

Considering what they did to Alex Mercer in the second game... a remake or reboot seemed far better than a sequel.

[If it is rebooted, what would you like to see?]

"What would I like to see... Well..."

I guess I’d want them to flesh out the story?

Honestly, you couldn’t call PROTOTYPE a game with a great story.

Dana Mercer, who vanished from the plot halfway through; Elizabeth Greene’s woefully thin backstory; Karen Parker, who died after an awkwardly handled betrayal. And so on.

I couldn’t say there was nothing disappointing about it.

[What character would you like to create in PROTOTYPE?]

"Are they telling me to make an original character?"

If so, I certainly wouldn’t say no.

Without expecting they would actually use it, I start scribbling one out as though I were making an OC.

"For the name... How about Minazuki Kiria?"

Why give her a Japanese name?

Because it looked cool, that’s why.

[Minazuki Kiria]

"For her appearance, white hair and red eyes... No, isn’t that too cliché?

Then I’ll make her heterochromatic, with one green eye... And her setting..."

Before I knew it, I was completely immersed, fleshing out the character in detail.

"Phew... This should be enough, right?"

It was honestly embarrassing—

but she was exactly my type.

[Are you certain about this character?]

It was just creating a character, so why were they asking me to confirm it again?

Without thinking much about it, I clicked yes.

[Thank you for the excellent material. You will now serve as the sample yourself.]

...???

What did that mean?

"What the hell does ‘sample’ mea—"

My head rang. A high-pitched eeeeee sounded in my ears.

My vision blurred, the monitor screen warped,

and my field of view began spreading like PROTOTYPE’s viral patterns.

"W-What is this...? Wait...!"

My body sways—

It feels as though the floor has vanished.

I slam my head against the desk.

"Ah—"

But my fallen body showed no sign of ever getting back up again.

Then drowsiness washed over me.

I tried to resist out of instinctive revulsion, but I could not endure the oncoming sleepiness.

At last, my strength drains away,

my body goes limp,

and my eyes close.

The last thing I see is a red pattern spreading across the monitor.

And then—

[...Sample M-01 secured.

Evolution commencing.]

With those words, I lost consciousness.

*

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