Chapter 20: The Curse of Love
The battlefield no longer resembled the world they once knew.
Smoke blanketed the sky, blotting out the stars Yumiko and Suraj had once dreamt beneath. Trees stood twisted and burned, scorched remnants of a war humanity started out of fear. The soil, once soft with grass, was now carved with blood and soot, trembling under the weight of a curse about to awaken.
Yumiko limped across the ruins, her eyes blurry, her steps slow. She was dying—there was no question. Her alien biology was remarkable, but not invincible. Her limbs were torn, her inner organs compromised by radiation from the orbital strikes, her blood thinned and darkened from bioenergy overload.
But none of that mattered.
Because Suraj… was gone.
She collapsed beside his body.
His head tilted gently to the side, lips parted slightly, as if frozen mid-breath. He looked asleep. Peaceful. Too peaceful.
Her trembling hands caressed his bruised cheek. His skin was cold.
She whispered, "Suraj... please open your eyes. Just once more."
But silence answered.
And it broke her.
The scream that tore out of Yumiko wasn't human. It wasn't alien. It wasn't even animal. It was raw spirit—anguish made sound. The echo cracked trees. Birds in distant skies scattered. A ripple of unstable energy burst from her, sending gusts of wind across the hollow war field.
She pulled his body into her arms, weeping. No more grace. No more strength. Just grief.
"You promised me… You promised we'd grow old together."
She gasped for air as if the world itself was choking her.
"You told me I wasn't a monster. That you saw me as I was. You were the only one who ever looked at me… and didn't flinch."
More soldiers arrived in the distance. Guns raised. Orders shouted.
She didn't even look at them.
"I have no reason to live anymore," she muttered.
Her hair—black, fluid, weaponized—began to pulse with something new. Not rage. Not duty.
Legacy.
It lifted into the wind, strands separating into microscopic tendrils, too small to see, too intricate to understand. The warriors of her species, the Sikigaya, had evolved one final defense: a memory-based death trigger, tied not to hatred… but to loss.
The soldiers watched, weapons aimed. But they hesitated.
And in that hesitation, they breathed her in.
They inhaled the invisible web—the curse.
It didn't strike them dead. That would be mercy.
No.
The curse sank into their lungs, into their bloodstream. It hid inside their cells, their dreams, their future. It wouldn't be noticed. Not immediately. But over time—
One would wake up screaming with visions of flames.
Another would find blood in their mouth.
Another would smile while watching their children sleep, then burst into tears without knowing why.
The world would decay. Not through fire or war.
But through rot. A slow, haunting unraveling of the soul.
A love that was pure… had been corrupted by sorrow.
"I'm not a god," Yumiko whispered to Suraj's corpse. "I couldn't save you. But I can make them remember you."
She dragged her ruined body beside his, curling into him like she did during those nights under the stars.
"This world took you from me," she said, voice growing faint. "It feared what it didn't understand. It punished us for loving each other. And now, it will remember us. Forever."
She placed a hand on her own chest. Her heart beat once. Then again.
Then stopped.
Far above, in the command centers, confusion spread.
"Sir… our soldiers are not responding."
"Check the feeds. Where's the alien?"
"She's down… but something's wrong with the retrieval team. They're acting… strange."
"Define strange."
"They're... crying, sir."
In days to come, headlines would try to explain what was happening.
> "UNKNOWN ILLNESS AFFECTING MILITARY UNITS"
> "SOLDIERS REPORTING HALLUCINATIONS, INSOMNIA, DEPRESSION"
> "TOP SCIENTISTS BAFFLED—NO PATHOGEN DETECTED"
But it wasn't illness.
It was memory. Residue of a soul in agony. A love unfulfilled, echoing like static across the planet.
Entire cities began to feel it. Artists painted endless portraits of a black-haired girl they never met. Children cried out at night, calling the name "Suraj" without ever hearing it before. Trees near the site of Yumiko's death stopped blooming. Animals refused to go near it.
The land itself remembered.
And the curse continued to spread.
In the forest, long after both bodies had gone cold, wind danced through the ruined trees.
Two faint voices whispered—barely audible, like static in a dream.
"Do you still love me?"
"I always did."
And then, silence.
But the silence… was not peace.
It was warning.
Love, when twisted by loss, does not fade.
It consumes.
It changes.
And it curses.
The aftermath of Yumiko's death didn't announce itself with fire or thunder—it seeped in like radiation, invisible and unforgiving.
The corpses of the final combatants—the ones who killed her—were the first signs. Within 72 hours of her death, the special unit sent to recover and study her body began to fall ill. Neurological degradation, hemorrhaging from the eyes and ears, violent tremors, paranoia, and death followed—always within five days.
Autopsies revealed nothing. No known bacteria. No viral agents. Nothing airborne. But they were dying, and dying fast.
A private medical institute in Geneva isolated the anomaly.
Biogenic neurotoxin.
Not synthetic. Not terrestrial.
It was embedded in her hair—tiny weaponized nanofibers with biochemical properties that activated upon Yumiko's biological shutdown. A defense mechanism? Or a final act of vengeance? No one could say.
The material spread slowly, carried by contact. It wasn't contagious like a virus—it didn't replicate in the human body—but it bound to nerve tissue. Once inside the system, it triggered emotional memory centers, flooded the brain with traumatic resonance, and finally caused organ failure.
The media didn't call it a curse. They called it N.E.S. – Neuro-Emotive Syndrome.
It was Yumiko's final weapon. A code written in grief and fury.
---
Governments responded like they always did—by lying.
The official reports labeled the site "Quarantine Zone Theta" due to a chemical spill. But the soldiers knew better. Surveillance satellites were repositioned. Scientific black sites were set up along the perimeter.
Still, the toxin leaked—through equipment, contaminated fibers, maybe even radio signals corrupted by Yumiko's dying energy pulse.
Whispers echoed through elite channels:
> "This wasn't an invasion. This was a love story. And we killed it."In a black ops facility beneath Antarctica, researchers studied the remaining samples of the Sikigaya strain. But no one had been able to replicate it. The DNA was unstable. Alien. Alive.
One sample moved under the microscope.
One researcher killed himself 72 hours after exposure—his final journal entry read:
> "They took her love. And now she's taking it back."
But nothing was spiritual. Nothing was myth.
This was biochemical warfare. Engineered into the biology of a girl who only wanted to be loved.
---
And what of Suraj?
His name was scrubbed from records. His body burned, sealed, and buried in a lead sarcophagus. But files remained. Security footage. Torture logs. A voiceprint of his final words:
> "If love is pain... then let me feel it all. Just don't let her be alone."
A single surviving researcher added a footnote to Yumiko's case:
> "Sikigaya species possess emotion-bound defense protocols. Their attachments aren't weaknesses. They're weapons."
Earth had won the battle.
But no one felt like a victor.
They had buried an alien.
And planted a war.They thought it ended with her death. A strange girl, a classified encounter, a closed case. But weeks passed… and strange things began to happen. Technology flickered. Communications glitched. People vanished without trace. The wind over the forest where she died carried static. Surveillance teams stopped reporting in. Then the sickness appeared—subtle, quiet, like the world itself forgetting how to function. No explosions, no grand warnings. Just a slow unraveling. Something had been left behind—something born of love, grief, and betrayal. Not a curse. Not revenge. Something worse. The real story wasn't over.
It was just beginning.
The apocalypse had started.