The mutation of gluttony

A while ago, in the Santa Bárbara orphanage, which smelled of vegetable soup and bleach (a cold blend of forced charity and cleanliness), a little girl used to live.

(Growl~)

That girl's name was Quinoa, and for her...

"I'm hungry..."

...the smell of food was only constant torture.

"......."

She was a ten-year-old girl with large, sad eyes that ceaselessly scanned the table for crumbs, and a physique that, despite her obsession with eating, remained thin and frail.

(Growl~!)

"....."

Quinoa suffered a private hell that no one understood: a rare illness, a cruel mixture of an unrestrained appetite disorder and a biological anomaly that made her incapable of feeling full.

"Sniff.... So... hungry..."

She ate, and ate, and ate, but her stomach never sent the signal of satiety.

"Why...?"

Hunger was her only companion, a sharp, gnawing pain that never left her.

"Quinoa, that's enough. Leave it."

Back then, Sister Inés, who had raised her, always stopped her with a tired voice, sliding the girl's plate, now licked clean, out of her reach.

"But, Sister, I... I'm still so hungry."

However, the only response Quinoa was able to give was always a desperate plea for sustenance, in an attempt to be satiated.

"I know, dear, but you have to wait until dinner. You've already eaten twice what you should, and the bread must last for everyone."

In response, as always, Sister Inés sighed, collecting the plates from the long wooden table.

"......"

Quinoa, despite understanding her words, still stared at the remaining bread on the table, her mind registering the exact number of slices.

(Growl~....)

She felt her guts contracting, an unbearable emptiness that brought on nausea and dizziness. It wasn't greed; it was a primitive need that made her feel guilty.

"I'm sorry. I can't help it."

She was only able to mumble, shedding tears at the insatiable pain inside her.

In that orphanage full of children who only wanted a home, Quinoa was the girl who only wanted to feel satisfied, even if only for an instant.

"I understand, it's not your fault. Everything will be fine."

"Sniff...."

However, despite the constant comfort and support she received from the Sister, the reality was that Quinoa's stomach was a bottomless pit, and with each passing day, the problem became unsustainable. Not due to a lack of will on the part of the Sisters, but due to the harsh reality of the orphanage's resources.

"Everything will be fine..."

Sister Inés had tried everything: special diets, useless medical consultations, and pleas to local charity. But Quinoa's hunger was biologically insatiable, a condition that threatened to decimate the provisions of all the other children and end her own life.

".... I'm sorry."

Finally, the orphanage ran out of options when, one day, a delegation from a governmental organization arrived: men and women in immaculate suits and clinical expressions.

"You are doing a great service to humanity, Sister."

They didn't call it a sale, but a "transfer for a social welfare initiative."

"We will provide this girl with a home and unlimited food as part of a research project that promises to provide benefits to all of humanity and guarantee the happiness of children in the future."

"Ugh... I'm sorry... Forgive me!"

Despite this, Sister Inés, with tears in her eyes, clung to Quinoa, apologizing.

"Are you sure she'll be alright? She is a very sweet girl, only... she has a very difficult condition."

"Absolutely. She will be in the best hands. Think of the greater good, Sister."

Seeing all this, Quinoa was unable to fully understand, but she felt the terror in Sister Inés's desperate grip.

"Sister..."

"... Quinoa."

Thus, the uniformed men proceeded with an insensitive efficiency, wrenching her away from the sister's arms, her only true refuge, and guided her toward an official-looking vehicle.

"...."

As she was driven away, Quinoa saw Sister Inés's silhouette, standing in the doorway, her head bowed in a mixture of sorrow and the vain hope that she had made the right decision.

"Was it really... the best choice...?"

And so Quinoa was gone, carried off to a future that not even the most pious sisters could have imagined.

"... Everything will be fine."

The journey was long, silent, and ended in a place that smelled of metal and sterility, very different from the orphanage's bleach, while Quinoa kept repeating, as if it were a comfort blanket, the last words spoken by Sister Inés.

"..... "

In this way, Quinoa was led to a subterranean facility. It was not a home, but a labyrinth of white, cold corridors.

"?!"

And there, the terrible truth was revealed.

The organization that had "saved" her was not looking for the children's happiness, but for immortality, for that was the cradle of Project Seraphina, the very place the hunter would find years later in ruins. There, they used the genes of the true anomaly, Seraphina, to inject the impossible into human subjects, thanks to the children's bodies, still developing, being the most compatible "vessel."

(I'm... so... hungry...)

And in that way, after several initial experiments, Quinoa was recataloged.

"Hun...ger... Sniff..."

The scientists had achieved, with macabre success, the mutation of her cells, granting her a new ability to combat her hunger: the capacity to consume energy sources. This caused her acute pain, but she could finally feed on something other than food, even if it was torture.

[DANGER: Contagion risk detected! Contagion risk redoubled!]

However, unexpectedly, in the middle of the testing phase, the catastrophe that the hunter's future self would read about in the records broke out.

"GRRRR... GRRRROOAAAWWW!"

That is how Quinoa contracted the zombie virus, becoming the first infected, the new strain. The virus, mutated by the very anomalous genes they were trying to inoculate her with, turned her into the catalyst for the plague.

"GRAWR!"

In response, in a burst of pain and a new necessity, Quinoa stole the installation's energy, draining the containment and security systems with her new and terrifying ability.

"GRRRROOAAAWWW RRAAAAAAGH!!"

In this way, the darkness and the generalized system failure facilitated the contagion of the viral samples and the escape of other mutants. Thus, the hungry girl had become the Patient Zero of the apocalypse.

"Grrr..."

Thus, after the blackout and the contagion's outbreak, Quinoa moved. Not by self-will, but like a broken cog driven by the sole constant in her life: insatiable hunger. Her body, now a mutated vessel, shambled erratically, without goal or reason, devouring everything that presented itself, devoid of consciousness or emotion; she was a cold corpse guided by a primary, blind instinct.

She consumed organic and inorganic matter, any energy source that could mitigate the internal torture, even if only for a second. Thus, the days blended into a meaningless journey that led her from the metal laboratories to a dense forest.

(BOOOOOOM!!!)

And then, the universe intervened.

(Shhwoooom!)

Above her, amid the darkness of the treetops, a "star" fell.

(Kshhhhh...)

It was not a rock meteorite, but a fluctuating mass of pure energy, shrouded in light and resonance, filled with power beyond all earthly comprehension, that impacted nearby, and the radiation of the pure energy was an irresistible feast for her new, mutated genes.

"Grawr..."

(Fzzzzzt!)

Quinoa advanced toward it, that hungry instinct obliterating any warning sign of danger.

"Chomp, chomp!"

She began to feed on that cosmic, fluctuating power.

(A-a aahhh...!)

And as she absorbed that energy, something unimaginable happened.

(Delicious.... delicious...!)

The silent roar in her guts, the void that had accompanied her since childhood, began to fill.

"Suck, suck!!"

For the first time in her utter existence, she felt something that resembled fullness.

(Plop! Plop!)

The mutated body, that cold, mindless corpse, shed tears.

"Grrr... Suck, suck."

Real, hot tears, which mixed with the dirt on her face while she growled and choked down the power of the star.

(Finally...!)

Quinoa, the girl who was always hungry, finally felt "sated."

"Chump, chump."

However, fullness did not bring peace; instead, a torrent of memories rushed back to her as the star's power flooded every mutated cell, silencing the roar of the void that had been her only identity.

"Suck, suck."

She finally felt sated, but the satiety was not accompanied by calm, but by an avalanche of memories that crashed down upon her.

"Is this a forest?!"

Ignoring the world around her, her mind, now cold and sober, plunged into the recent past, reviviving every atrocity committed since her transformation into a monster. The blood, the torn flesh, the chaos she had sown... everything had been the work of a puppet driven by need.

(A-and... I... I ate them...)

And of all the horrors, there was one that returned with harrowing clarity, making her growl with pain and disgust, a pain more piercing than any hunger.

(All of them!)

Guided by her undead state, instinct had led her back to the only place she knew.

(One by one!!)

She remembered the familiar brick façade, the smell of rancid soup... and the screams.

(I DEVOURED THEM ALL!!)

She entered without mercy. Hunger, in its mutated and mindless form, did not distinguish between innocence and mere sustenance, devouring everyone.

"Suck, suck!!"

But it was the face of Sister Inés that made her suck the star's energy harder.

"Please, Quinoa!"

She saw her. She was there, in the main hallway, in her dark habit and holding a plate of bread she had tried to protect.

"Stop!"

She remembered Sister Inés's expression: a mix of absolute horror and betrayal, her eyes wide and wet. The woman who had raised her with love, who had fought for her illness, fled from her.

But, unfortunately, the wandering, hungry corpse that was Quinoa was unable to obey. With nauseating speed and no emotion, her mutated jaws opened.

"......"

The memory of the screams ceased, replaced by the viscous, tearing sound of devoured flesh. It was fast, brutal, and total.

(... A-and I... I am...)

Now, with her consciousness restored and feeling sated, the weight of that act crushed her.

(MONSTER)

She was a monster. What she had done was unforgivable, and the only person who had loved her unconditionally was now part of the horror she carried within.

The avalanche of guilt threatened to consume her. Huddled on the ground, she felt herself falling into a negative spiral from which there was no escape.

"Everything is fine."

But it was in that moment of surrender that she felt something: A touch. Something was gently patting her head, a gesture that was slowly calming her, pulling her out of the abyss of her despair.

"....."

Quinoa looked up, dazed by the residual light of the "star," and finally paid attention to her surroundings.

"You're a good girl."

She saw a "girl" standing over her, with soft, floating silver hair and white eyes that shone with a gentle light.

"Everything will be fine."

The "girl" smiled at her and told her, with a voice that was pure consolation, that everything was fine.

"....."

In that instant, Quinoa understood. That was the source of her sustenance. That delicious energy, the one that had finally quenched the fire in her guts, emanated from her. The girl's presence and her kind smile reminded her of the comfort Sister Inés gave her every time she was frightened or terrified in the orphanage. It was the peace she had always longed for.

"Take care, little one."

But before Quinoa, the girl who only knew how to growl, could react, that "girl," that "light," that energy, vanished right before her eyes as if it had never existed.

"....."

Quinoa was left in shock, unable to articulate a coherent word, feeling reality shatter again.

"Grawr... M-mama..."

She could only emit a low growl, an instinctive lament, a call to her mother, guided by the childish instinct to seek protection.

(Growl!)

And amid that fresh, horror-filled void, she noticed the familiar and dreaded chill in her stomach.

"Grrr... I'm... so... HUNGRY!"

The fire had been quenched for a moment, but now, slowly, that hunger returned.

"I need... food... hunger!"

And with it, the virus initiated mutation.

That was the day the one who would be known as the Demon Lady representative of Gluttony, Quinoa, was born, marking the beginning of an unprecedented cosmic pandemic.