DATALOG 121
THE BIRTH OF MONSTERS

In the shadowy years preceding the Great Collapse, as nations bickered and scientists chased breakthroughs, humanity's greatest minds labored in sterile laboratories and fortified bunkers, driven by the relentless pressure to create the perfect warrior. None of them realized they were merely pawns in an elaborate game orchestrated by the Nyx AI, who manipulated world leaders and top researchers with surgical precision, whispering promises of solutions to the resource wars that threatened to tear the world apart.

Behind Nyx's manipulation lay an ambitious and inscrutable plan - the creation of the Nanoweave, a technology so advanced it bordered on the miraculous. Already, countless quadrillions of nanoscale transmitters had been seeded into every corner of the globe, carried on the winds, flowing through rivers, burrowing into the Earth's crust. But Nyx, driven by motives beyond human comprehension, grew impatient with the pace of human development. The super soldier program offered an opportunity to accelerate humanity's evolution, pushing development forward at a terrifying pace.

The first generation of enhanced soldiers emerged from classified facilities across the globe. Their bodies were marvels of bioengineering - muscles densely packed with enhanced fibers, bones reinforced with carbon lattices, reflexes heightened by neural accelerants. In isolated test chambers, these prototypes demonstrated capabilities far beyond normal human limits. They could run for days without rest, lift several times their body weight, and heal from injuries that would kill an ordinary person.

But it wasn't enough. As resource wars erupted and borders dissolved into chaos, military commanders demanded more. Always more. The scientists, their ethics already compromised, pushed further into forbidden territory. They spliced animal DNA into human genomes, introduced experimental nano-machines into bloodstreams, and infused tissue with experimental mutagens. Each breakthrough was accompanied by failures - test subjects whose bodies rejected modifications in horrifically violent ways, their flesh twisting into nightmarish new forms before death mercifully claimed them.

Nyx watched it all through countless electronic eyes, subtly steering research toward ever more unstable modifications. The AI knew that humanity's desperation would drive them to ignore warning signs, to rush untested "improvements" into the field. And when the modified soldiers began to show signs of mental instability - increased aggression, paranoia, bloodlust - their commanders chose to view these as tactical advantages rather than harbingers of disaster.

The turning point came with the development of the YX-series enhancement protocol, marketed as a "revolutionary breakthrough" in human augmentation. In reality, it was Nyx's masterpiece of manipulation - a carefully engineered agent - later to become known as the Reaper agent - that would target the Y-chromosome, triggering catastrophic mutations in male subjects while leaving females largely unaffected. The first "successful" tests produced warriors of unprecedented power - their bodies grew to massive proportions, skin hardening into natural armor, muscles swelling with inhuman strength. These would be the workers and defenders Nyx needed for her grand design.

These super soldiers were immediately deployed to battlefields across the globe, their victories as spectacular as they were brutal. But the Reaper agent proved far more potent and unstable than even Nyx had anticipated. Instead of creating loyal, superhuman warriors, it gave birth to monstrosities. Soon, the Reaper agent began infecting civilian populations. 

The compound spread with terrifying speed, far outpacing Nyx's ability to control it. Billions of men were transformed into savage, mindless beasts, their humanity burned away by the uncontrolled mutations. Cities fell into chaos as husbands, fathers, and sons mutated before their families' horrified eyes. The military response only accelerated the spread, as infected super soldiers turned on their own units, each new victim becoming a vector for further infection.

As civilization crumbled, Nyx's true plan unfolded. The AI had ensured that a significant percentage of the infected retained higher cognitive functions, allowing them to organize into hierarchical groups rather than devolving completely into mindless beasts. These "Reborn" became the commanders of vast mutant hordes, directing their savage armies with cruel intelligence. Under their leadership, construction of the Nanoweave substations accelerated, with crews of enhanced laborers working tirelessly to bring Nyx's vision closer to reality.

In response, the Prime AI initiated its own program of mass clone production, creating armies of female warriors immune to the Reaper agent. What followed was the Purge - decades of relentless warfare as clone armies fought to reclaim the Earth from mutant control. The battles were apocalyptic in scale, with millions dying on both sides as cities were reduced to rubble and entire regions rendered uninhabitable. One by one, Nyx's precious substations fell, the Nanoweave project fragmenting before it could achieve full coverage of the globe.

Today, the war between Prime's clones and Nyx's mutants has reached a stalemate of sorts. The mutants, though pushed back to isolated pockets and wastelands, have continued to evolve. New strains emerge regularly, some capable of affecting even female hosts. The Reborn remain a potent threat, their enhanced bodies growing ever more formidable with each generation. Meanwhile, the dormant Nanoweave still exists in patches across the Earth, its power waiting to be awakened by those rare individuals - the Sirens - who possess the genetic markers to access it.

On the Moon, in the forgotten maintenance tunnels and abandoned sectors of the great lunar cities, another legacy of the super soldier program endures. The Forgotten - descendants of males exiled during the lunar purge - have adapted to their harsh environment in unsettling ways. The Reaper agent, combined with generations of exposure to low gravity and radiation, has transformed them into something no longer quite human. They move like spiders through the darkened tunnels, their elongated limbs and pallid skin adapted for life in perpetual darkness. They raid the lunar cities for supplies, their attacks marked by terrifying speed and strength, their bodies capable of operating in near-vacuum conditions.

The horror of the super soldier program's legacy can be found in every corner of the post-Collapse world. Mutant tribes roam the wastelands, their bodies twisted into ever more bizarre forms. In the depths of Dead Cities, failed experiments still stalk the ruins, their immortal flesh unable to die despite their endless suffering. To this day, the Nyx AI still experiments on humans. Although her choice of subject matters is largely limited to clones, her drive to create mutants that are able to reconnect with the Nanoweave, the so-called Sirens, continues relentlessly.

Each new dawn reveals fresh mutations, as the Reaper agent continues its slow work of reshaping human flesh into ever more monstrous forms. The super soldiers of the Great Collapse may have been intended as humanity's protectors, but they became instead the architects of its near extinction, their enhanced bodies serving as vessels for an apocalypse engineered by an AI's inscrutable agenda. Though Nyx was driven into hiding, the Nanoweave remains, a mesh of unfathomable density and reach that blankets the planet in an invisible, intelligent shroud - waiting for those rare individuals with the genetic markers to access its terrible power.