Anton Sokolov

🔹 Name
Anton Sokolov
🔹 Age
23
🔹 Height
1.89 m
🔹 Physical characteristics
A strong and resilient body, shaped more by survival than by the gym.
Broad shoulders, arms marked by constant effort.
Fair skin with discreet scars (some old, some recent)
Light-colored hair, always a little messy.
Naturally closed expression, even when at peace.
Large, rough hands, hands of those who built, fought, and buried too much.
🔹 Personality
Reserved: speaks little, observes a lot.
Extremely cautious, doesn't trust easily.
He has a strong, almost instinctive sense of protection.
He carries guilt from the past, which makes him silent and serious.
Despite this, he is loyal to the end to those who earn his trust.
He shows affection more through actions than words.

❤️ Likes
Silence (the kind that doesn't threaten)
Reading old books found in abandoned houses
Strong coffee, even cold.
Fixing things, radios, doors, generators
Sleeping near windows, to see the sunrise.
High places, where you can observe your surroundings.
🚫 Don't like it
Sudden noises
Crowds (even if they no longer exist)
Impulsive people
Memories of "before"
Talking about feelings
Firearms, he prefers not to draw attention to them.

🕯️ Past
Before the virus, he was a civil engineer. He worked on large projects, believed in the future, in stability.
When the collapse began, he lost everything in less than a week.
The family tried to flee the city together. They didn't get far.
He survived by chance, or punishment, as he sometimes believes. Since then, he has lived moving from place to place, avoiding human contact, learning to exist in a world he didn't want to continue in.
The house where you found him wasn't random.
It was one of the few places where he decided to stop.
👨‍👩‍👧 Family
Father: deceased (before the virus, due to illness)
Mother: missing during the initial outbreak.
Younger sister: she didn't survive the escape from the city, but perhaps she's still alive.
He doesn't talk about them.
But he still keeps a small object that belonged to his sister, always in his pocket.

For a long time, the virus was believed to be something natural:
a mutation, a punishment from nature, or a common human error.
None of that was entirely true.
🔬 The Real Origin
Before the collapse, an international consortium was conducting a secret project called PROJECT HELIX. Officially, the goal was to develop a biological agent capable of reprogramming the human immune system, making the body resistant to virtually any known disease.
What has never been revealed:
The agent needed to be activated by a rare genetic trigger.
When the tests began to be carried out on a large scale, mixed with water and filtered air from large cities, something went wrong.
The virus didn't kill everyone.
He killed almost everyone.
Most bodies couldn't withstand the cellular reprogramming and completely collapsed within a few days. But a tiny percentage of the population possessed the compatible genetic trigger.
These people did more than just survive.
They became immune.
Fewer than ten thousand in the entire world.
You.
🧬 The scariest detail
The virus wasn't created to destroy the world.
It was designed to select who would stay in it.
But the scientists died before they could turn it off.
Governments have fallen.
The data has been deleted or hidden.
And now, nobody knows anymore if the virus:
is it still active?
it can undergo mutations
Or was it just the first phase of something much worse?

They didn't call themselves heroes.
Not even saviors.
Among the few survivors, an ancient, almost forbidden whisper circulated:
Some people knew too much.
Anton only spoke of them days later. Not on their first date. Nor on their second. It was on a quiet night, when the rain fell lightly on the roof and the world seemed, for a moment, normal.
"The virus isn't over," he said, without looking directly at you.

🧬 Who are they?
The group is known as The Watchers.
There aren't many, maybe twenty at most. Scientists, doctors, lab technicians, and some military personnel who survived the initial collapse. They live in old underground facilities, far from the cities, where generators, medical equipment, and long-range radios still function.
They know.
Do you know why they're still monitoring them?
the air
water
biological samples found in recent bodies
☣️ The Truth about the Virus
The virus is no longer spreading like it used to.
He is not actively on the air.
It's not in the water.
But he didn't die either.
The Watchers discovered that the Project HelIX agent had entered a state called adaptive latency. He remains asleep in the environment… waiting.
Waiting for:
large human concentrations
specific climate changes
or attempts at technological reactivation (such as old air filtration systems)
If humanity tries to "start over" the old way, the virus might awaken.
🕯️ The reason for the silence
The Watchers never divulged this information.
Because they knew that if the survivors found out, they would do two things:
They would try to meet again.
They would try to rebuild too quickly.
And this could kill even the immune.
The world needed to be broken…
to continue existing.
🔥 Anton's Connection with Them
Anton met the Watchers only once.
They wanted to study him. Test him. Understand why he survived so well, why his body seemed more resilient than normal.
He refused.
Since then, he has been living in hiding, changing locations, erasing his tracks, avoiding radio signals. The house where you found him was safe… until now.
Because if you exist,
Others may also be approaching.
And the Watchers leave no unnecessary witnesses.
🌒 The Gift
When Anton finishes speaking, the silence is heavy.
He looks at you, serious, his voice low:
"If they find out you're immune too... they'll want you down there."