Kain looked around and felt the warm yet somber feeling of nostalgia wash over him. Alexis had no such reaction, but that was because she had never seen this place at all. But then again, that was to be expected. After all, the White Room had not fashioned for them a place that was of Mortis. No, this was the beating heart of a major Earth city, or at least it was the place that most Earthling associated with it. The two of them stood in an empty version of Times Square in the heart of New York City, and immediately Kain understood that they had been placed in something that most would feel to be cruel.

Not one single living human could be felt for as far as either of them could sense, and all that they could sense were beings that were ‘human’, but also were not. Unlike a typical Mortisian Zombie, these were still very much alive. They just had more in common with a typical viral zombie than a true undead, with their minds hijacked and filled with blind rage and a desire to spread their infection at all costs.

Kain joked that maybe they would have to wait for 28 days or even weeks before they could leave, and Alexis didn’t pick up on the reference. Kain didn’t care, though, as he focused on preparing for the horde to descend upon them. However, there was one minor issue. The infected may very well have been driven to spread their plague, and both Kain and Alexis might very well have been the only beings in this simulated world that hadn’t been infected, but the fact remained that even a near-mindless berserker could, at least instinctually, understand that they had no chance against being like the two monarchs.

Therefore, Kain and Alexis would have to find some way to pull the entire simulation’s collection of berserkers towards themselves, or at least they would have normally had to. Thankfully, it seemed that Zero Noir saw the same issue and determined that it would not make for a good show (both for himself and for others) if the hordes of animals that had been driven mad by the plague didn’t come to the party. A simple tweak of the emulated world was enough to cause one infected being to try and rush towards the empty square, and this being was son followed by another, and then another, and then tens, and then hundreds, and then thousands and finally millions.

The sound of howling, or feet trampling the pavement and sidewalks, of clothing rustling and glass breaking and so much more went from a whisper to a thunderous cacophony until the horde began to flood into the square like water rushing into an empty place at a lower elevation. Kain and Alexis shared a glance as the horde reached just a few meters away from them and their faces immediately twisted into ones filled with a savage glee.

The first few dozen lines of virus-controlled humans and other animals didn’t even know what hit them, as they simply were reduced to a cloud of blood and gore in less time than it took for anyone to realize what had just happened. Soon thereafter, winding lines of shredded meat and bone snaked their way through the horde, looping in upon themselves as hundreds of bodies were utterly obliterated in mere seconds.

However, the primal instinct that had deterred the horde from attacking had been utterly expunged, and now the hundreds of millions of remaining infected creatures had only one overriding motive. More the pity on their part that they had no possible way of making their singular desire become reality. After all, Kain was far from human, and even if he was, he had a mastery over Disease Magic to the point that a simple viral pathogen like this would be utterly impotent against him.

Likewise, Alexis was already technically dead, yet not dead. She was a vampire, a being who consumed blood as sustenance. If something like a blood-borne virus would have been enough to harm her, she wouldn’t have been able to call herself the apex of her kind, now, could she? Even if they had the blood or bile or any infected substance enter their bodies, the most that the plague could do was to simply wait for the body that it had entered to utterly eradicate it and then treat that dead plague as a power-up for later usage.

It took them both less than ten minutes to wipe out every last infected animal or human, and by the time that they had finished, they had reduced New York City to a ruin. Of course, Kain had insisted on them avoiding the act of damaging certain things. A part of him wanted to preserve as much of this place as he could, if only to show Alexis around after the horde was annihilated. Plus, there were landmarks that were not around when he was an Earthling, along with those that had been destroyed during his childhood.

Despite the fact that toppling them would have wiped a lot of the horde at once, Kain refused to do what those asshat zealots had done and knock down those two towers. The last time that happened, shit got bad really quickly, and, as a former American Citizen, he was not of the mind to replicate a national tragedy, even in a mere simulate version where everyone was already either dead or in a state worse than that. The rest of the city, though? Well, most of the structures there were not that important, at least not as landmarks, and multiple movies had already skull-fucked so much of New York City multiple times over, so he didn’t feel nearly as bad when he destroyed those buildings.

He did keep the best eateries and monuments and art galleries safe, though. Unlike his previous visits to this city, he would finally be able to enjoy the art, the food, and the sights without being put on a waitlist that was over two years long. After the last zombie was slain, though, Kain felt a sense of guilt as he viewed what he had done. Sure, he had burned off a hell of a lot of steam, but he had reduced a once glorious city to a shattered husk of what it once was.

Zero Noir must have picked up on this, as the simulation distorted, and the city was returned to its pristine condition. This time, however, it was not a dead, empty place. Cars drove along the roads (at least when they could), humans walked along the sidewalks, chatting and going about their normal routines, birds flew through the skies and roosted here and there, and the stink of all of that was even more potent than Kain had remembered.

A second wave of nostalgia washed over him, taking yet more weight off of his shoulders, but a bit of that weight returned as he was forced to stop Alexis from going to town on everyone and everything. They had indulged in their more violent desires, and now it was time for Kain to show his wife exactly what Earth had to offer. Sure, it wasn’t the real thing, but the Big Apple had a lot of things that he was sure that Alexis would find intriguing, if not enjoyable. He may not have been able to enjoy them before, but now that all of this was at his fingertips once again and under his manipulation, he would finally enjoy all that this city had to offer.

And this time he wouldn’t have to worry about being mugged or nearly run over by the cabs! Although, if someone did try that, he knew full well that, unlike the last time that he was here as an Earthling, he now had the ability to resist and not just resist, but also to fight back with more ferocity than any man had ever seen.

Well, unless they had seen a few movies, cartoons, anime, manga, etc., of course.