Apocalypse Gene
Appearance: prior to activation, there’s nothing particularly unusual. After activation, the victim loses all of his or her hair, teeth become bony plates that regenerate over time, the skin becomes hard but flexible, and the body loses most of its body fat. Primary sexual characteristics do not disappear, but someone with an activated Apocalypse Gene cannot reproduce.
Effects: increased speed; hyper-strength; exceptionally efficient digestive and immune systems; mild healing factor; skin effectively immune to unarmed attacks and resistant against both crushing and impaling damage; retractable, serrated claws on hands and feet; an optimal temperature range that runs from -10 to 110 degrees Farenheit; the ability to commit multiple acts of violence (including murder) without longterm psychological trauma; creative slave mentality, linked to a thankfully extinct Dominator leader caste; and an effective immunity to fear, shock, panic, and despair. Needless to say, once the Apocalypse Gene is activated the effects cannot be reversed.
When the Gene gets activated, the victim (called a ‘genie’ by those in the know) gets turned into, well, there’s not a great word for it in English. “Monster” assumes a lack of control and “creature” implies a lack of intelligence. Neither is true; those with the Gene are perfectly capable of controlling their impulses and using their heads, unless of course a Dominator tells them to do otherwise. One out of every two hundred and fifty two people carries the Apocalypse Gene, which would be enough to wipe out civilization within six weeks, and probably the human race within a year.
Fortunately, there are no Dominators left — that particular gene sequence is not in the human genome — so theoretically the Apocalypse Gene will never be activated widely. The few times that it has been activated have all been by accident; you can always trust Mad Scientists to fiddle with things they don’t even remotely understand. The problem is that when the Gene gets turned on, the genie eventually decides that what the Dominators would really want to have happen is to be resurrected, somehow.
So the new genie will go ahead and try to do that (again, somehow). Every genie has their own idea as to what will make the magic happen, and while none of the schemes have ever managed to bring back even one Dominator none of the schemes were actually insane. The genies certainly didn’t abandon those schemes either, no matter what the circumstances were. Most organizations that are aware of genies simply try to kill them on sight, because it saves time; the ones that don’t usually learn better after they try to capture their first genie. Or they all die, screaming and on fire, which is almost as good as a method of negative reinforcement.