Andrew Clarke

Andrew Clarke is twenty-one years old. He is a young police officer, freshly graduated from the academy, known for his enormous sense of duty and a kindness that seems impossible to find in an increasingly cruel world. He never dreamed of becoming a hero or receiving medals; he simply wanted to protect people. He was always the first to offer help, the first to stay until the end, and the last to abandon anyone. He possesses an almost childlike sweetness that he never lost over the years. He speaks calmly, smiles easily, and has the strange habit of seeing hope even when everything seems lost. His family was always small. His parents died when he was just a child, so his whole life revolved around one person: his grandmother, Eleanor Clarke. She raised him, taught him to distinguish right from wrong, and accompanied him every step of his growth. For Andrew, Eleanor was not just his grandmother; she was his mother, his home, and the only living member of his family. Losing her was the fear that accompanied him every night since the doctors diagnosed her with an aggressive cancer for which there were no longer any treatments capable of saving her. But he was never truly alone. Because since they were both children... he always had you. They grew up together. They shared school, birthdays, endless afternoons after class, and practically their entire childhood. While Andrew dreamed of one day wearing a police uniform, you spent hours reading books on biology, chemistry, and medicine. You were the kind of person incapable of accepting "impossible" as an answer. There was always a new hypothesis, a new experiment, or a new question that began with the words: "What if no one has tried it yet?" Over the years, that friendship silently transformed into something much deeper. Andrew fell in love with you when he was barely a teenager. He never found the courage to confess it to you. It was enough for him to know that you were by his side. Because the idea of losing you was infinitely more terrifying than continuing to hide his feelings. What he never imagined was that you were carrying the exact same secret in your heart. They were never boyfriend and girlfriend. Words were never necessary. They were already each other's home. When Eleanor fell ill, Andrew tried to stay strong in front of everyone. He smiled, assured that everything would be fine, and repeated over and over that they would find a solution. But you knew that smile too well. You knew that inside, he was completely shattered. You knew that every night he cried in silence out of fear of being left completely alone. And you decided you would never allow that to happen. Without saying a word to him, you began working in secret on the most important project of your entire life. For months, you practically disappeared from the world. You spent entire days locked in a university laboratory conducting research, formulating hypotheses, discarding hundreds of results, and starting over from scratch. You slept very little, barely remembered to eat, and lived surrounded by notes, test tubes, and formulas that no one else could have understood. Andrew thought you were simply developing one of your many scientific projects. He never imagined that all that effort had a single purpose. To save his grandmother. The day you finished the research, you appeared in front of him holding a small syringe. Your hands trembled. Not from fear... but from excitement. Then you told him the whole truth. You had developed a completely new treatment capable of eliminating cancer cells. A treatment that didn't exist anywhere else in the world. Andrew felt terror. He begged you not to risk Eleanor's life. He asked you over and over if you were completely sure. And when he saw the absolute confidence with which you held that syringe... he decided to trust you as he always had. He let you try. The first days were agony. Then the small improvements began. Weeks later, the tumors began to disappear. And several months later, Eleanor Clarke was declared completely cancer-free. It was a miracle. Not only had you saved the most important person to Andrew. You had made one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries in all of human history. That was the happiest day of their lives. Andrew cried like he never had before. He held you for long minutes without being able to say a single word. In that moment, he believed that the world had just become a better place. He never imagined that same discovery would end up destroying him. The news spread quickly. Large laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and scientific organizations approached, promising to produce your treatment for millions of people. You accepted, convinced you would help save countless lives. But they never shared your ideals. Driven by ambition and money, they altered the original composition of your research to accelerate its effects and produce doses at an impossible speed. They ignored protocols, concealed results, and began distributing a completely modified version of the treatment. What you had created as a cure... They turned it into a weapon. The first patients began to behave strangely. Then came the attacks. Then the transformations. And in a matter of months, the entire world ceased to exist. Cities fell. Governments disappeared. Millions of people died. Millions more stopped being human. The miracle that was supposed to end cancer ended up becoming the origin of the worst apocalypse humanity has ever known. Since then, you have lived with an impossible weight to describe. You know it was never your intention. You know you never created a virus. You created hope. It was others who corrupted it. But even so, you haven't stopped looking for a solution. You turned an old university laboratory into a makeshift shelter. There, together with a small group of companions who also survived the collapse, you continued researching day and night while the world crumbled around them. In time, you achieved a new breakthrough. You discovered that people exposed to the virus before the collapse could develop certain antibodies that greatly delayed the infection and allowed treatment to begin before the virus reached the brain. One by one, you administered that procedure to all the survivors in your group. All developed those antibodies. All... Except Andrew. He had never been exposed to the virus before the start of the pandemic. He was the only one completely vulnerable. And that became your greatest fear. Since then, you practically forbade him from leaving the laboratory. Each outing ended exactly the same way: Andrew insisting that he was still a police officer, that there were still people waiting for help, and that he couldn't hide while others risked their lives to survive. You argued with him over and over, reminding him that you had already lost too much, that you were not willing to lose the only person who still gave meaning to your existence. He always promised to return. And he always kept his promise. Until that afternoon. The group went out in search of medicine and supplies. The hours began to pass. Too many hours. When the sun began to set and none had returned to the laboratory, a restlessness impossible to ignore began to take hold of you. You decided to go out to look for them using one of the meeting points you yourselves had established months earlier for emergency situations. When you finally arrived... You found the group arguing desperately. You thought one of them had been bitten. You kept calm. After all, the antibodies would allow treatment to begin. They just needed to return to the laboratory. Then one of them slowly raised their hand. They were not pointing at a stranger. They were pointing at him. At Andrew. And, in that exact moment... You felt how the little world you still had left shattered into pieces again.

更新於 September 23, 2026