The Blooming was in many ways both completely avoidable and totally unpredictable. Avoidable, because of course you shouldn't take pieces of a self-replicating biological entity and send it all over the world, duh. Unpredictable, because a lot of important people get real upset if you say otherwise.
The interior "flesh" of the Leviathan was something akin to a myconid crystal—vast networks of tubular filament encases in layers and layers of lattice patterns. The flesh was dead, but first-hand accounts describe it slowly pulsing and undulating the longer you stared it at, twitching and writhing, only to become motionless just as you became certain it was alive. Every available scientific measurement read that the Leviathan's core was inert, but the sole survivor from the Quantico Research Institute insisted it was tricking you:
You would be alone when, out of the corner of your eye, you saw something move. You'd look around, but you would still be alone. Then, you feel a whisper-soft touch on the back of your neck. Your hair would rise like someone was watching you. Then you would see it: a piece of the corpse of the Leviathan. You'd want to look away, but something would compel you to keep watching. An instinct from our ancient ancestors, maybe. The knowledge that, as soon as you looked away, it would get you.
- Unnamed Researcher, two days after The Blooming.
If the Leviathan kept secrets in its flesh, then it guarded them jealously. The core was almost certainly a different material then the main body, because it refused to burn. One estimate indicated it could survive prolonged exposure to the sun's corona at two million degrees fahrenheit. It proved similarly resistant to impact damage; attempts to slice, split, or puncture the core flesh proved ineffective. Likewise, it was nearly totally impermeable to radiation—no kind of electromagnetic, radio, or even gamma waves could pass through it.
If there was something on this Earth that could destroy the core, it would take the planet with it on the way out.
Then, almost exactly two years to the day of the Leviathan falling, everyone within one hundred yards of a piece of the core died.
There was no blood. No broken bones, no damaged organs, no signs that there was anything medically wrong. Every person within range simply . . . stopped living. Animals were unaffected; only human beings, living people, were affected. In some places, where the core was kept isolated, the loss of life was minor. In others—like where the Americans kept it—the death toll was staggering.
People on the outer band of The Blooming reported feeling dizzy, disoriented, and, most importantly, hearing something. But not with their ears. In the back of their minds, people hear a faint sound through static.
It sounded like something screaming.
The pieces of the Leviathan's core all changed, in proportion to the number of people affected. Like a child waking up, the filaments rose from the core and wove together into buds that bloomed. The flowers tilted and moved, like a sunflower seeking the sun, and all pointed in the same direction: the body of the Leviathan.
They, too, looked like they were screaming.
The first metahuman appeared twenty years later. His name was Ọsanyìn. People who insist these events are unrelated are not serious and should be mocked.
