128

128 is a 2020 horror-thriller novel by Zachary A. Zander. It is the first and earliest installment in the book series, although chronologically, Ysrael precedes it.

128 centers around a group of detectives, who are caught in midst of a deadly pandemic, while attempting to uncover the truth behind an organization that is supposedly responsible for the virus outbreak. It is later revealed that a medical drug originally intended as a cure for another disease, known as AES-128 (Advanced Euclid Substance 128), has the capabilities of infecting a subject with the virus, making them aggressive and violent.

Plot
128 takes place around different cities and towns across the East Coast in the United States, although mainly in New York City. The cities are then attacked by waves of "creatures", which are human subjects infected by a new virus known as the Bipolar Meningoencephalitis Virus 2 (BMEV-2).

NYPD Detectives Matthew Blake Davis, Daniel Washington, Megan Stewart and Civilian Administrator Emily Anne Watson are temporarily relocated to a police precinct in Allentown. Each of the detectives are given a case. Matthew receives a missing person report case, which he seemingly specializes in. He then arrives at the Pace Family's House in Centralia, Pennsylvania, where the two missing children were last seen at. As he is about to enter the house, he gets knocked out by an unknown figure. He later wakes up in the house and soon discovers that the unknown person that had took him down earlier on was not a human but a "boar-human hybrid creature". As the creature pursues him throughout the house in an attempt to eliminate him, Matthew desperately tries to find ways to escape the house. Eventually, he outwits the creature, retrieves his gun and shoots the creature down, allowing him to escape and get treatment from a hospital back in Allentown.

After recovering, Matthew returns to the police precinct. While filling up a witness account report form regarding the incident at the Pace Family's House earlier on, he realizes that he is now trapped again; this time in the precinct as an armed criminal is spotted and thus a lockdown takes place. Lights constantly go out in the precinct, and each time, a person is killed. It is later revealed that another creature was responsible for the killings, along with the precinct captain, who helped to take out more people each time he turned the lights down. Matthew and the other detectives escape the precinct, together with the remaining civilians, who are all brought to another precinct for assistance.

Three weeks later, Matthew and his colleagues are back in New York City. He decides to meet up with them in a newly opened gallery, which his close friend owns. Their NYPD captain makes an unexpected appearance at the gallery, saying that he would like to be updated on rethheir recent situations. All the exits in the building suddenly get locked, trapping the detectives in for yet another time. Like in the Allentown precinct, gallery visitors and staff start getting killed, all over the building. With manipulated evidence that Daniel believed to be true, he assumed that their captain was the killer. Thus, he picked up a gun on a artifact table and proceeded to shoot the captain. They unfortunately discover that the ammunition was modified, containing AES-128, and hence, the captain begins to transform into the same type of creature that they all had seen earlier. In the end, it is revealed that the gallery owner and his girlfriend were behind the killings. In a last attempt to assassinate Matthew, the gallery owner places a bomb in the gallery before he dies. Fortunately, the detectives manage to escape.

After the incident, the detectives are placed in the Witness Protection Program. With new identities for the time being, the detectives hide out in a forest manor, supervised by two officers. However, it is later proved that there is a traitor amongst the six officers in the manor. They end up fighting it out, until three detectives, Matthew, Daniela and Megan, remained, who all ended up going separate ways. Later, Emma who was assumed to be dead, comes alive, injects herself with AES-128, and transforms into a creature, before proceeding to attack Matthew, but fails and gets killed by Daniel. The remaining detectives leave, and cut connections with even the police.

Matthew is later convinced by a business tycoon, Seamus Palmer, to assist him in rescuing children in Scranton Middle School. Unfortunately, they fail to save any children, as the only ones they managed to turned out to be assassins, but they manage to save a teacher. They later meet Mr. Palmer in his car. Mr. Palmer reveals the vicious organization behind the virus outbreak—Ysrael Technologies, who is also behind the assassination plots of the detectives. Mr. Palmer then drives them to his hospital after Matthew faints, owing to a bacterial infection in a wound in his leg. After being in a coma for two weeks, Matthew wakes up, only to realize that the hospital has been overrun by creatures. He leaves his room as soon as he realizes that his mother has been hospitalized in the same hospital. Avoiding a swarm of creatures successfully, he moves towards the west wing of the building, and finds his mother's room. Sadly, he finds his brother, Jean and his niece, Amelia, crying in the room, after his mother had seemingly passed on. Distressed, Matthew begins to sob too, before bringing the two of them back towards his colleagues to plan an escape. Unfortunately, Jean gets killed by a creature, so Matthew takes Amelia in, and returns to the detectives. Finally, they decide to leave through an exit towards a metro station under the hospital. In the station, they encounter the chairwoman of Ysrael Technologies, who attempts to assassinate them, but fails. The detectives also try to kill her, but fail too. They then escape on a train to Brooklyn.

The detectives finally return to the city, only to find that it has become the epicenter of the BMEV-2 epidemic, with violent bombings and creature rampages going around. They then enter a carnival owned by Mr. Palmer, hoping to find him to get more information from him. Unfortunately, they arrive too late, only to find a note left by him, warning them to stay away from him for their safety's sake. They later encounter a secret organization, The Rebellion Alliance, which rivals Ysrael Technologies, who suggests that the detectives leave the city immediately and reenter Witness Protection in the Philadelphia. Following The Rebellion's advice, the detectives go to Philadelphia and are placed under Witness Protection instantly. Unfortunately, the program fails again, with yet another assassination attempt in Matthew's apartment. Before fleeing southward for Baltimore to escape the outbreak and the assassins, a Rebellion member, Isabelle, confronts the detectives and tells them that she has managed to track down Mr. Palmer.

The group of detectives then arrive at a mall in Baltimore for a quick stopover to collect supplies. Surprisingly, Matthew manages to meet one of the persons in his missing person report case—George Pace. To their horror, the creatures have quickly caught up and have began to enter the territory of Baltimore. Therefore, they continue to move southward, towards Mr. Palmer's location on Isabelle's tracker. They arrive at the location, which happens to be a small outpost that is unknown to the public. Entering the outpost, they realize that the outpost had been infiltrated by creatures earlier on, which infected all of the soldiers in the outpost.

Finally, they find Mr. Palmer, who takes Daniel hostage and transfers them to the hands of the chairwoman. He repeatedly apologizes, claiming that he doesn't have a choice. The chairwoman eventually kills off Mr. Palmer, and places Daniel in a test room that has a divider separating him from a creature. Matthew manages to snatch the chairwoman's pistol and shoots her multiple times, and though she is wearing a bulletproof vest, she goes unconscious for a while. Just as the creature manages to get a small scratch on Daniel, Matthew shoots the creature dead and retrieves Daniel. The detectives then go into a laboratory facility owned by Ysrael technologies, near the outpost, to investigate and find out what they have been up to. The chairwoman catches up to them, but they manage to subdue her and tie her up, leaving her to die.

After discovering that extremely loud and high frequency signals can be fatal to the creatures, the detectives proceed to a powerhouse, where they will be able to release the signal. Unfortunately, the one who releases the signal will surely die, as it is too loud and too close for them to survive. Thus, Daniel sacrifices himself and volunteers to release the signal, telling the other detectives to leave and run as far as they can. Hence, they run all the way back, beyond the outpost and drive away in their car. Daniel then gives Matthew a final call on his phone, telling them that he was going to release the signal and said goodbye to them. The detectives begin to cry, before the signal is released and a loud explosion from the powerhouse is heard, which kills Daniel. In another scene that happens a month later, the primary antagonist, P.S.T. reveals herself, before taking Isabelle in for her own experiments.

Six years later, in Los Angeles, Matthew prepares to leave for New York City with Amelia, while the other detectives decided to stay on in LA. In the end, they say their goodbyes as Matthew and Amelia step into the train and it departs. The book ends off with the train exploding and thus derailing, supposedly killing everyone onboard, including Matthew.