Infected

A catch-all term for organisms who have had their code and format violently re-written and changed after contracting The Infection.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The format makeup of infected organisms varies wildly with little consistency or even traditional features as seen in autos or programs. There appears to be no sexual dimorphism- or for that matter genders- across infected beings and, indeed, at times appear to have little to nothing in common beyond code similarities and the same basic behaviors.
This is in part thanks to the wildly disparate hosts that infected arise from. They range from just about every breed and variety of auto that is found in The Omni-Net as well as programs. The host organism does not appear to be an ultimate decider of appearance and form, but rather the raw bytes and code an organism possesses does.
Really, the term morphology is the most apt- emphasis on morph. Infected anatomy appears to be very malleable with their formats able to adjust and in some cases adapt as needed. This is not a quick and efficient enough process to allow for, say, self-repairing damage at accelerated rates and being self-sustainable, but it does appear to allow for situational adaptation.

Genetics and Reproduction

The Infected appear incapable of reproduction in a traditional sense. Rather, they appear to re-purpose pre-existing coded matter to replicate more of themselves, effectively "re-programming" living beings.
This is accomplished by spreading The Infection via direct code-to-code contact, inflicting the target host with an illness that gradually destabilizes their Code and Format until foreign code algorithms can completely overwrite their native code.
This is a process that is, ultimately, irreversible and fatal to the host.

Growth Rate & Stages

The infected growth cycle is largely tied to the progression of The Infection illness, with the disease's final stage killing it's host and resulting in the propagation of infection organisms.
Emphasis on organisms plural. It varies wildly from instance to instance but study has shown that the infection can result in the emergence of both singular and multiple new infected organisms from the same amount of coded byte mass. Additionally, the infected appear capable of re-purposing and absorbing their own and are capable of growth via the consuming and combining of smaller infected lifeforms into larger organisms.

Ecology and Habitats

Much of the Taxon Red Zone is at this point unrecognizable for the city that it once was. The infected appear to have harvested much of the resources from the area by effectively strip-mining entire city blocks and destroying city infrastructure to re-purpose into creating inter-connected hive-esque structures.
These infected constructs appear to follow no uniform design philosophy, much less conventional sense.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Just like natives to The Omni-Net like Programs, infected survive by consuming Bytes. Unlike programs, however, the form those bytes come in appears to be irrelevant.
Infected have demonstrated an ability to consume and subsist off of fragmented data and raw bytes from The Datastream as well as simply re-purposing bytes and information from programs, autos and even the environment around them. In line with this much of their behavior appears to revolve around foraging for resources as well as traditional hunter-prey dynamics focused on autos and programs.
Observation seems to indicate that infected organisms require little in the way of bytes to survive- possibly as an adaptive measure in order to survive. Many infected appear to enter a hibernation state when low on subsistence to help conserve energy.

Biological Cycle

From "birth" (for lack of a better word) onward the infected do not appear to follow a traditional pattern of growth, operation and later fragmentation, or if they do their lifespan is long enough that the natural end of their lifecycle has not yet been observed in the decade since the start of the Infection Crisis.

Additional Information

Social Structure

It's still a bit hazy how the infected interact with each other. They appear to be communal and non-violent to one another and have some sort of method of communicating, but there appears to be nothing resembling pack, hive or tribal hierarchies among them. They just seem to be and manage to cooperate and co-exist as is.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

The Infected are currently confined to the Taxon Red Zone in the Taxon District in Lower Datum, and are kept from expanding outward by the QIC and The Silent Line.

Average Intelligence

Infected seem to possess at bare minimum a rudimentary animal intelligence. Self-preservation, reproduction, eat, survive. All of their behaviors and actions appear to be based around these needs. Additionally they have been observed to possess basic "fight-or-flight" responses and the ability to weigh options and chances when addressing issues.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Infected sensory capabilities appear to mostly be visual and movement-based. This is largely confirmed by an observed inability to perceive sounds with the exception of what could be considered "loud" and QIC noting infected tendencies to stalk, track and assault Bots deployed in their territory as if they were living creatures.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

By their nature the Infected are a hostile parasitic species that consumes it's host organism in it's totality in order to grow and survive.

Lifespan

Unknown

Conservation Status

The Infected "species" (if it even qualifies as such being a topic of much debate) has uniformly been declared a Malicious Process by Firewall and has been marked for extermination.
Results on carrying out this edict have been "mixed".