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Inside the cockpit, he took aim. He pointed the nose of the helicopter down a bit… then fired. The missiles hit square and true, exploding magnificently into the Hive. A shiver ran through his body every time the missiles landed. A sense of euphoria - not from his own love for it, but from the love of the crowds in his head. They whistled and cheered with each blast, some screamed and others cried. He paid them no mind.Eventually, the Hive toppled over and crashed into itself, marking the rubble as the final one in Manhattan. Three Hunters fled from it, mindless animals without their master. They were quickly shot to pieces by the surrounding soldiers.He let out a quick sigh, part relief and some part regret. Now he would have little excuse for wanton destruction. But, the last bits of the Infection were finally being snuffed out, quickly and efficiently as were wont for Blackwatch.The radio attached to the dash of the helicopter came to life without him touching it. “Red Crown to ZEUS. Report to the Chelsea base immediately, over.”So much for his good mood.“...Mercer to Red Crown,” he bit out, almost crushing the radio as he held it to his mouth. “I’ll be there in 10. Over.”With a scowl, he turned the helicopter around. It may have been faster to run there himself, but there was no way he’d give those assholes the satisfaction of seeing him skip over to them on foot. Better to do it with their own stolen equipment.—---------Walking into the base without a disguise, though by now he’s done it more times without than with, still made his skin prickle. The soldiers and Blackwatch troopers stared at him with naked disgust as he stalked past, hood down. By the time he made it to the main entrance, the temporary commander was already there waiting for him.“ZEUS,” the commander greeted with a glower. “Was it necessary to crash the helicopter into one of our buildings?”He almost cracked a smirk. Instead, he just shrugged a single shoulder. The commander pinched the bridge of his nose and gave an exasperated sigh.“If you keep fucking around like that, we’ll see how long the deal lasts,” the commander said tiredly, though not without a healthy measure of vitriol. He jabbed a thumb behind him to point at the door. “In you go.”Mercer’s response was to politely shove him aside and storm through the opened door. The commander gave an undignified squawk and shouted curses and threats after him, but he ignored it.Ever since he agreed to the deal with Blackwatch, he had to get express permission to enter bases, regardless of how many times he visited prior. Even if he left and came back within a few minutes, he still had to radio in permission. It was standard procedure for everyone of course, though it irked him with the inefficiency. If he could just consume the commander, he could go in and out whenever he so pleased, but he doubted Blackwatch would be too happy about that.The interior was familiar. Rather, it was exactly the same as the rest of the bases he frequented. Blackwatch, and the rest of the U.S. military, weren’t very imaginative when it came to base layouts either. He beelined directly to the standing sergeant major of the base. He didn’t know the man’s name, and never asked. They switched out the higher-ups too often for him to care to. The man wasn’t Blackwatch at least, but he worked closely with them.He stood before the captain and purposefully didn’t salute. They stared at each other with equally stony expressions. Eventually, the sargeant gave up the match.“ZEUS,” the sargeant grunted. “Heard you cleared out the last Hive. That’s your end of the bargain almost done. Don’t know why the hell the Captain would call on a terrorist abomination to do military work, but if it works, then it does.”As much as it pained him to, Alex ignored the jabs. They were getting far too comfortable in their assumed safety, these days. In a neutral tone, he asked, “What’s left?”“Just clear the city of the rest of the Infected,” the sergeant said dismissively. He produced a small device from his pocket and tossed it to Alex. He caught it and gave it a look over - a disposable cell phone. “Captain will call you if he needs you for anything. Otherwise, fuck off.”“The hell did you call me over here for, then?” Alex grumbled, but pocketed the phone regardless. At least he didn’t have to reach under a pay phone this time.The sergeant just shooed him away. They were really getting far too comfortable with their idea of safety. As he left the way he came from, the silence of the base turned to mass muttered comments from the soldiers. ‘Creepy bastard’ was a favorite among the marines, he noticed. ‘Fucking germ-bag’ was for the Blackwatch troopers.He left the base, and slammed the door as loudly as he could without ripping it off the wall. Maybe he should have, give the jarheads something to clean up. Something to do other than stand around with their thumbs up their asses.…The thought wasn’t his own, but from the murmuring collective of commanders and what not swimming in his head.Without warning, he dropped into a dead sprint, causing all the troops around him to shout in surprise. Most couldn’t help but point their guns at him, but he was long gone by the time they could’ve pulled the trigger.He readied a jump, the tendrils in his legs swirling and squirming. With a single bound, he made it nearly to the top of a skyscraper. He landed a bit too close to a window, and it shattered from the sheer force of his slam. He ignored the glass shards that sprinkled over him and sprinted vertically to the top. With a graceful leap, he perched at the very tip of the building.He didn’t exactly carry a map with him, but he could recognize much of the city’s layout from the bird’s eye view. Their new apartment - rather, Dana’s - was somewhere in the southwest part of the city, within the Blue Zone. They’ve been living there for the past 4 years since Alex was strong-armed into an agreement, but he would hesitate to say that he lived in it.It was originally projected that the cleanup would take only a year after the Infection ended. Of course, it was the military that said that, and the military did what it does best. Periods of inaction led to the infection spreading further than it had any right to. For the first year, they refused to let Alex have any of the fun, though he would always find his way into the battlefield regardless. In the end, they just let him do what he wanted to, so long as the leash was tight enough.Blackwatch had very little to do with the cleanup. After the nuclear incident, they mostly pulled out of the city, leaving only handfuls of troops to keep tabs. Even the Captain left, though he kept a close eye on the going-ons. He was, after all, the one that directed Blackwatch and the marines to lay off him. Alex wouldn’t be caught dead saying it aloud, but in a sense, he was grateful.It was nice to see a blue sky.—---------He shoved the window open and hopped through, only to be face-to-face with his sister.“There’s a door, you know,” she scolded, and pointed to the door on the other side of the room.He grunted in response, and closed the window behind him. It rattled loudly in protest, but thankfully didn’t break. He would never hear the end of it if it did.“How did it go?” she asked. Ever since she woke up from the coma, she was a lot more talkative, even considering Mercer’s existing memories. She made up for his lack thereof plenty.He shrugged. “Went fine. Hive’s gone, and Cross probably wants a chat sooner or later.”He passed by her, making certain to keep a small barrier of space between them. He made it to the couch and gingerly sat down. It creaked and threatened to buckle beneath him, but held steady. He learned pretty quickly that he had to be careful around delicate furniture with his level of density, especially those for sitting. As soon as he took his seat though, he started tapping his feet restlessly.“God, you’re like a hyperactive kid,” she said, though her soft smile betrayed her tone. She went to sit next to him, which made him shift uncomfortably. He scooted slightly away to keep up the wall. She let him.“Can’t help it,” he muttered. The foot tapping evolved into leg bouncing. “I’m not made for sitting around.”“I know, I know,” she placated. Her expression brightened as if she just remembered something. She stood up and retrieved her brown leather bag, the one she always took with her for outside trips. She rooted through it for a moment, then pulled out a newspaper. “I found something interesting while you were out, by the way. You might want to take a look.”She shoved the newspaper in his face - and yep, it was about what he expected. A large picture of him on the front page, with the headlines declaring him some sort of terrorist or alien or monster. He pushed the paper down a bit, careful not to come into contact with her fingers.“How is this interesting?” he asked bluntly. It was nothing new, after all. Whenever he bothered to read a newspaper, he would inevitably be there in one way or another.“The part below your headline is what I’m referring to,” she said, and pointed to a section that he skipped. In smaller fonts, it spoke of some kind of drug addled apocalypse occurring in the middle east. It didn’t specify the country, being a sensationalist article, but Dana seemed to believe it. He scowled slightly, and looked to her in thinly veiled confusion.“They’re calling it a junkie apocalypse, but I think they’re covering something up,” she whispered, her eyes almost twinkling. They got that way when she found a new mystery to uncover, he discovered. “I didn’t really have that much time to look into it yet, but don’t the symptoms sound familiar? Thousands of people just screaming, running around aimlessly, and getting violent out of nowhere?”His scowl deepened. His grip on the sofa tightened to a point where he heard tearing of fabric, and his fingers dug into the cottony material inside. “Redlight,” he deduced curtly.“Could be,” she said. She then shook her head, as if disagreeing with her own assessment. “Most likely. But what would it be doing all the way out in the middle east? Neither Gentek nor Blackwatch operate in those countries, and I don’t think Redlight can pop up naturally like that.”“Someone brought it over, then,” he tried. She nodded thoughtfully. She scanned the newspaper again, as if trying to pluck out new information hidden somewhere on the page.“There’s not really many websites talking about it online, and those that did deleted the posts shortly after,” she said, not looking up from the paper. “They’re most likely being silenced. I couldn’t find anything in the Blackwatch records either, but I only spent a couple hours browsing around. I’ll look into it more next time you go out.”Alex grunted noncommittally. It wasn’t that he was ignoring his sister, more that he just didn’t have anything to say. She wore a patient smile like she always did speaking to him. At least, always in recent years. It hadn’t been very patient at the start, moreso filled with another, far more familiar emotion instead.A new infection, this time out of the country. It wasn’t unheard of for the military - and military-esque organizations - to test on people outside of the States, but still, the thought of someone testing the Redlight virus again left him incredulous. And unfathomably enraged, though he kept that under wraps so long as he was still in the apartment. The furniture was bought with Dana’s money, not his.“I’ll ask Cross about it,” Alex growled, tentacles thrashing about just below his skin. He doubted that Cross would be privy to that information, though. Dana shot him a slightly nervous look. Right. She didn’t like it when he growled or did other ‘creepy as fuck’ things. He forced himself to still his writhing tendrils.“No need,” she said, holding her hands up in a calm-down gesture. “Well, you can do what you want. I don’t think the Captain would know about it, though. Seems a little above his grade in secrets, but you never know.”He gave a stilted nod, and the conversation lapsed into silence. They sat next to each other, though he was very aware of the space between the two. No matter how much he tried to tamp it down, no matter how much he consumed, there was always the urge to consume more. It wasn’t like the tiny gap would save her from him - she could be miles away, and it wouldn’t save her - but at least it wasn’t direct contact.Still he sat, though with the amount of energy coursing through him, and instincts screaming to get up and go hunt, he wouldn’t sit for long. Both of his legs bounced now, in no particular rhythm other than the rhythm of his thoughts. Dana was reading the newspaper, flipping page after page, most likely searching for any further nuggets of information. She peeked from time to time over at his displays of restlessness without comment, but after a few minutes, she spoke up.“Alex, can’t you sit still for five minutes?” she asked, somewhat exasperated. Before he could interject, she continued. “I know, I know. And I get it, you can’t control it, but it’s really distracting.” She thought for a moment. “We could go on a walk, get some groceries. Hell knows we need it. I’m almost out of coffee, and the only store that stocks the good kind is all the way in Lower East Side.”A two minute jog, then. He couldn’t understand the appeal of walking. “I don’t think you can keep up.”“If we’re going together, then we’re walking. You have to get used to human life at some point,” she said. He knew better by now than to protest against her word, so he simply nodded instead.—---------By four days time, he fell into a neat schedule. Well, neat for him. From early morning to midday, he would spend as much time in the apartment as possible. It usually ended up with him pacing restlessly around the cramped space until Dana would yell at him to find something to do that involved being anywhere else. She would send him on errands. Pick up this or that, find this clue or that. By noon, he would return from whatever it was she sent him out to do, and she would be far more welcoming seeing him back after a break.However, unlike humans, he never ran out of energy. He would still be restless, and it didn’t take long for the pacing to restart. He would leave the apartment - through the window, much to her displeasure - and start his daily hunt for the remainder of Redlight. It wouldn’t end until every last infected was either killed or absorbed, and though he was an unparalleled master at mass murder, he was still just one being versus several hundred thousands. He estimated only about 10% of the infected population remained, but that was still a substantial amount. He wasn’t complaining though - plenty of biomass for him to eagerly consume guilt-free. He didn’t want to think about what he would do after the infected ran out.Dana, on the other hand, would spend her day sniffing through the new mystery, though wasn’t making much tangible progress. The story so far that she pieced together was that during the Athletic Games of Harran, Turkey, many people started acting strangely and hyper aggressively. Loved ones attacked each other, beating them to death at times. At others, they would just bite down and try to eat the other. Talk about a classic zombie movie.She frowned at the sight of the article. “Alex,” she called. He stopped his pacing and looked over. He readied himself for a mild scolding, but relaxed when it was clear her expression wasn’t directed at him. She was pointing at something on the screen of her computer. “This is weird. Was Redlight spread through physical contact? Fluids?”He shook his head, and read some of the article over her shoulder, careful not to get too close. The article detailed a brutal and bloody attack on the main highway of the city. It sounded similar to how his own attacks were described, but he kept that part to himself. “It was mostly spread through the air, but if you got it on you in any other way, you would also be infected.”She hemmed and hawed for a brief few seconds. “Everything I’m seeing about the virus in Harran indicates that it’s spread through bodily fluids. That seems uncharacteristic of Redlight, don’t you think?”“It could just be a new variant,” he stated, though he doubted his own words. Redlight was efficient, full stop. Limiting itself to a single vector was counterintuitive, especially such an unreliable one as breaking the skin to infect, while also somehow having to keep the host alive. Parts of himself felt contempt for such inefficiency.“Maybe,” she said, her tone just as doubtful as his thoughts. Her voice lowered, as if she was going to tell him a secret. “Or, it could be an old variant that was set loose.”He furrowed his brows. “How’d you end up with that?”“I’m just throwing things out there,” she said, waving off his dubious expression. He flinched back when her hand came a little too close to him. “I’d be really surprised if it was natural. I’m sticking with my theory that it’s lab grown, I just have to find some leads on whose lab it was grown in.”“Gentek,” he said simply. Who else would it be?“Unless I find some evidence to back that up, it’s in the air.”He shrugged, though a bit put off. Nearly all of his problems came in some way from Gentek, so it would only make sense that they were behind other fuckups in the world too. He was capable of waiting for an answer, though.—---------By the week’s end, Dana was engrossed in the story. It was amazing how quickly the virus spread through Harran without a Runner at the helm, or so she theorized. If there was a Runner, the virus was acting too uncontrolled and uncoordinated to really seem like it. Now, main news agencies were reporting on it, so the information was no longer kept under wraps. It made searching quite a bit easier, but more difficult at the same time to sift through speculation versus the truth.Apparently, the Global Relief Effort started sending in aid, among multiple other, lesser known organizations. The U.S. government was keeping its hands clean of the matter, at least on the surface. They wanted nothing to do with an epidemic outside of their borders. It seemed like Blackwatch had the same idea - none of the files on their servers indicated any plans to deal with it, other than the general ‘kill all infected, human or not.’ A travel advisory was issued, though it was far too late for that to matter since all flights in and out of Harran stopped pretty much immediately at the word of Turkey’s Ministry of Defence.Something about it nagged her. Well, in truth, the whole thing nagged at her. Where was Patient Zero? What led to the outbreak? How did the Ministry build such an enormous quarantine so quickly and with little to no warning? How did the GRE get the operation set up and running so quickly? It would be admirable if it all didn’t seem way too convenient. It wasn’t her first experience with secret government bullshit. Getting governments to make a decision was like prying nails if there wasn’t something in it for them, so obviously, there was a lot of ‘something’ in it for them.Unfortunately, all she could do was speculate. When it came to investigating Gentek, it was considerably easier since she had an in on it with Alex. In fact, he was the one who asked her to look into it in the first place, though she imagined that his motivations for it changed after the whole Blacklight incident.He really has changed a lot since then. To the point where he was unrecognizable. She would’ve mistaken him for a stranger if he didn’t wear his face. He was always vague about what happened in 2008, though she had no doubts that it was due to Blacklight. In the past, he was obsessed with it. He would only speak to her if it had to do with Gentek or Blacklight, and would just end the call if she tried to talk about anything else.But after that day when he barged into her apartment, something was off. It wasn’t the Alex that would only stop working if he was forced to, that would work through many sleepless and hungry nights just to progress in his research. It was the Alex that would look at her when he spoke to her, but with eyes that betrayed his confusion and complete lack of familiarity.And she didn’t know how to feel about that. She was almost giddy at first - her brother came to visit her - but it was quickly overshadowed by his menace and clipped words. There was a routine for a bit, too. She would spend time finding people for him, and he would barge in to ask about it, then leave. His… confessions were…Well, she still didn’t want to think about the things he admitted to. All that mattered in the end was that he was still her brother, and nothing could change that, not even a superpowered virus.—---------In the midst of one of his hunts for the day, the disposable phone that pressed uncomfortably against him finally rang. He almost missed his whipfist swing in surprise, and it ended up goring straight through the infected into the building behind it. The phone continued to ring as he reeled it back, leaving hefty webbed cracks and a sporting new hole in the concrete. He willed his tendrils to reform into his hand, and they squirmed into place.On the 5th ring, he picked up.“Took your time answering,” snapped the voice on the other end. Captain Cross.“I was busy,” Alex deigned as a response. Cross should be happy that he picked up at all. He readied a jump, the swirling tendrils crawling over his legs, and leapt to the top of the nearest building untouched by Redlight. At least if he got interrupted here, it would be due to a stray Hunter instead of a horde of annoyances.He could practically see Cross’s irritated expression before continuing. “The daily reports of your actions paint a pretty clear picture. You’ve thinned out a lot of the infected. If you keep up the rate, Manhattan will be clear in a couple months.”Alex nodded, even though Cross couldn’t see the gesture. “Sounds about right. So, what’s with the phone your sarge gave me?”“I’ll just get straight to the point,” he said brusquely. “Have you heard of the GRE?”“The Global Relief Effort?” Alex mused. He almost let out a ghost of a chuckle. “What, looking to invite me to do charity work? Not really the type for that, if you haven’t noticed.”There was the sound of an exasperated exhale on the other end, but Cross continued. “Not quite. They were partnered with Gentek for a few years back in the 70’s.”Immediately, there was a tone shift akin to a bucket of ice water dropped onto the conversation. Alex narrowed his eyes at the mention, the glare he always had somehow becoming more pronounced. He let Cross carry on.“Details are foggy, but they split in the early 90’s. They tried to keep the partnership under wraps as much as possible, but nothing gets by Blackwatch.” Alex couldn’t help a small growl, but Cross ignored it. “As far as we’re aware, they didn’t take or keep any data, but we can’t take chances.”His grip on the phone tightened. He loosened it a bit when he heard the telltale groan of plastic about to snap. “So, what do you want me for? Blackwatch is good enough at spying and killing as it is, you don’t need my help with that.”“Leave the investigating to us,” Cross said. If he was frustrated with Alex’s attitude, it didn’t color his voice. “Your job is in the city of Harran. In Turkey.”Alex alerted at the sound of the name. It was the very same one that held Dana’s current fixation, the pseudo-Redlight.“Where the epidemic is?” he interjected, disgust seeping into his tone. A sense of restlessness spurred him to begin pacing around the roof of the building.There was silence for a few seconds on the line as Cross processed what he said. “...Yes. I’m surprised you know. Been keeping up with the news?”Alex shrugged, then realized Cross couldn’t see the gesture. “Dana turns it on sometimes.”“Right, anyways,” he muttered. He raised his voice. “Right now, there’s an outbreak in Harran. It looks like Redlight - Infected everywhere, attacking people in the streets. Only thing missing is the red shit all over the buildings. GRE is in the city at the same time, sending aid to the people trapped in the quarantine.”“Doesn’t sound like a coincidence,” Alex spat.“You’d be right about that,” Cross agreed, a bit surprised. At himself for agreeing with the virus about something, or with his cooperative attitude, Alex didn’t know. “Your job is to cut the head off Redlight, or whatever it is, in Harran. The quarantine in place is holding them in for now, but the city is mostly landlocked. Only a matter of time ‘til it escapes.”Alex thought for a long moment, and the silence dragged on until he spoke up again. “You’re going to send me to Harran to clear it out?”“Why the hell else would I be telling you about this?” Cross said, frustration finally clear. Though, Alex wasn’t sure if it was directed at him. “Wasn’t my idea, and I don’t think it’s the best one either. But deal’s a deal.”“So long as I work under Blackwatch…” he began.“Then Dana Mercer stays safe,” Cross finished for him. “And Blackwatch wants you over there, so you’d better do what we tell you. I don’t want to hear about any dead troopers, are we clear?”“Yes, sir,” Alex droned mockingly.“And don’t attack any GRE operatives either, or political figures,” he continued. He seemed to think for a moment. “Hell, just don’t attack any humans at all. We don’t need an international incident. You got that?”Alex resisted rolling his eyes. He wasn’t that much of a loose cannon anymore. He kept his human kill count to a minimum. He wasn’t picking the fights anymore, just finishing them. “Sure.”“That doesn’t inspire me with confidence, Mercer.”The line was silent for a few moments until Cross spoke up one last time.“Well, as fun as it was to speak,” Cross said, exaggerating his tone slightly. “That’s your job. Cut the head off the Runner and you’ll be home free, for good. We’ll have pickup arranged in a day. Just wait by the Palace. If we don’t see you there, you know what happens.”Alex crushed the phone.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
He slid open the window and hopped in, taking care to not damage the tile flooring. Last time he did that, Dana banned him from going through the window. Technically, he was still banned, but rules never stopped him from doing anything before.Surprisingly, she wasn’t in the room. She usually acted as if she had some psychic ability to tell when he came home, so her absence was gaping. He sniffed the air - she was there recently, within the last hour. Her computer was still open on some articles, and there was a half-empty cup of coffee already cold on her desk.He stalked through the tiny apartment and slipped into thermal vision, but she was nowhere to be found. He frowned. She wouldn’t leave unless there was a good reason. The both of them were recognizable figures, him being the terrorist and her being the harborer, but she wasn’t the one who could change her face on a whim. Even when leaving to pick up groceries, she took special care to dress herself and do her makeup in a way that left her harder to recognize.Her cosmetics case was open and had clearly been used recently. She hadn’t been kidnapped then, at least. He debated internally whether he should follow her trail. She was deep inside a Blue Zone, so it was highly unlikely any infected could get her. Blackwatch wouldn’t dare gun her down if they wanted to keep their piece in check, though an agreement never stopped them before. The most likely danger was being recognized in public and being harried.But still, he tapped anxiously. Anything could happen if he wasn’t there. A surviving Hydra could erupt from the ground and mutilate her. A Leader Hunter could rush in like it did once and take her again. Blackwatch could just forfeit the agreement and try to cause as much damage to him as possible as a final ‘fuck you’. Cross could have betrayed him and sold their positions out.As he was talking himself into a frenzy, the front door creaked open to reveal an unharmed Dana carrying a plastic bag. He dashed over, looking her over for any injuries. She smelled normal, no blood, no bruises. She held her hands up in a mock surrender.“Uh, good to see you too, Alex,” she greeted with a bemused smile. “Looks like you got home before I did. That’s rare.”“Where were you?” he asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. He didn’t need to interrogate her.Thankfully, she didn’t seem to mind the rough tone. “I went out to pick up the day’s newspaper. No, there wasn’t anything worth looking at on it, in case you were wondering.” Her expression became thoughtful. “Cross actually called me. He seemed upset that you destroyed the phone he gave you.”He scowled at the mention. “It was disposable,” he protested. Then, he asked, “Did he tell you anything?”She chuckled at his justification. “Let me go set this down, then we can talk.”He watched as she pushed past him to place both the plastic and her regular brown bag down on a nearby chair. She gestured for him to follow, then walked into the room with her computer, and took a seat.“He was pretty sparse with the details, but he mentioned that you were going to leave the country for a mission,” she said, hands clasped together and holding up her chin. “I seriously doubt he would lie about something like that, but I still find it hard to believe. Why is Blackwatch letting you leave? You are quite literally both public and private enemy number one, and at the very top of their shit list.”“They’re not letting me leave,” he replied haltingly. He took a few moments to piece together his thoughts into usable words as she waited expectantly. “It’s the thing you were talking about yesterday. The virus in Harran. They want me to deal with it.”Her eyes widened. “What?” Her expression quickly shifted to contemplative, eyes narrowed. “…No, actually, that makes sense. Of course they’d want you to do it, that would get you out of their hair for months. They’re probably hoping they could develop something to finally kill you for good by the time you get back, or that you’ll keel over while over there.”He blinked. That did make sense. It was Blackwatch, of course they would have an ulterior motive.“Okay, right,” she said. “When do you leave?”“Cross said there would be a pickup tomorrow.”“So soon?” She leaned back into her chair, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “That doesn’t sound right. I’m willing to bet they’re just calling you in for a briefing. The military is a lot of things, but unprepared isn’t one of them. Well, mostly. There’s no way they would send you over so quickly.”He shrugged, and mulled the idea over in his head as well. She was probably right, but Blackwatch liked to be quick and efficient with everything they did. The supersoldier program they briefly had borne from his virus took them only a couple weeks to develop. The Bloodtox chemical took them even less time, finding a direct counter to him in just under that. So, if Blackwatch was in charge of the operation, he very well could be on a flight to Turkey before the next day’s end.“Maybe,” was all that came out.“Anyways,” she said. “Just in case, I think you need a means of communication. A radio would be nice, but it wouldn’t travel far. A phone would be better, but it’ll be monitored.” She smirked. “Unless I jailbreak it. I mean, I can’t completely clear it, and you’ll only have one contact, but it’s a start.”He just nodded along. The last time he had his own phone was when he was still Doctor Mercer, and the only times that man used it then was to call into and out of work when necessary. He had plenty of memories from his pool of biomass, though. There were just far too many different types of phones to really keep track of, with each having their own interface and style. He had no real preference for any brand, though some were definitely more popular than others.“I’ll see if I can get you one before you go out tomorrow, but if I can’t, just use mine - it’s already jailbroken, and I’ll just text you the new number of whichever phone I get,” she said. “Uh, but, try not to break it this time,” she added hastily. He huffed, but allowed the side of his mouth to quirk up into a sort of half smile.—---------It turned out she could just walk into a store and buy one, though she ended up changing her mind while she was there. She bought the new phone for herself, and handed him her old one along with its charging wire. It would’ve taken too long to completely set it up by the time he would leave, was her reasoning.He recognized it as a Blackberry, and looked over it delicately, analyzing the features. He promised to be careful with it and to return it to her in one piece, though perhaps not with so many words.—---------The last time he’d visited the main base on his own terms was back in 2008. Twice he entered inside, twice too many. He’s glided over it other times, though that idea stopped being so much fun when they installed the Bloodtox canisters and guided turrets. The kind that could track him no matter how fast he ran. While it never killed him, the bullets still stung like a bitch and tore through armors like wet tissue paper. Then, they started putting those systems on the helos… Well, that was not a fun week, to say the least.He was explicitly not allowed inside the main base under almost any circumstances since he took the deal. Most likely for multiple, obvious reasons. The first that came to mind being personnel with too much important and secret information for him to consume.The Blacklight detectors blared as he stalked by. They improved the design over the years to hone in on his signature almost immediately, so many sneak missions were forced to be loud. It got to the point in 2009 where it was just too much trouble to mess with the military stationed there, so for a while they had a tenuous truce - he wouldn’t attack them, they wouldn’t attack him. And it did work. He had no reason to kill marines, only Blackwatch, and they couldn’t catch him even if they wanted to.His body prickled from the hundreds of eyes following him as he trekked through the base towards the main entrance. He kept his own strictly forward. Anything could set off the twitchy bastards. One wrong look at the wrong guy and he’d have his biomass decorating the floor of the base, though it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t defend himself if it came to pass. That would just make it worse, and he’d have to figure out pretty fast how to get Dana beyond the bombing wall.He said nothing as he arrived at the gate, and waited patiently - patiently for him, at least - for it to lift. It was huge, both taller and wider than the apartment he squatted in. The base was a hangar, after all, though it was secondary to the Reagan before that blew up. It had to compensate for jets coming in for refueling and repair. There were some APCs sitting idle, parked in the corners away from the landing strips, so the hangar worked maintenance on those too. Dotted along the walls of the base were dozens of inactive Bloodtox canisters. Hopefully they would stay inactive until he left. He didn’t need a repeat.After an agonizing minute’s wait, the mechanism to open the gate began to slowly lift it, inch by inch. It had to be on purpose with how slow it was. He waited, arms crossed. Eventually, it lifted enough to reveal a dozen marines on the other side, guns readied and pointed at him. He glared at the one in the middle that had a slightly different uniform with two medals adorning the chest. Clearly the commander of the group. The gun tips dropped slightly as the commander stepped forward.He pressed the muzzle of the M27 to Alex’s throat, and glared with a personal hatred. Everyone nearby stopped breathing. Alex could smell their apprehension, laced with palpable fear. The heartbeat of the commander remained steady, however. Alex merely stared, hands metaphorically tied behind his back.“What I would give,” the man spat, pushing the rifle as hard as he could. His hands trembled, not from fear but from the sheer exertion of pushing against such a solid wall. “To blow your fucking head off your shoulders right now. I don’t have a clue why we were ordered to work with you, you fucking monster.” His voice lowered into a deadly whisper. “You murdered my entire squad. You wouldn’t remember, would you? But I do.”Alex watched impassively. He did remember. He remembered every life squirming and screaming in his biomass. But, telling Staff Sergeant Wilmot that would probably be a mistake, so instead he kept quiet. He still needed to get briefed on the OPLAN after all.The rifle stayed for a few more moments, before Wilmot finally tore it away with no small effort. The men surrounding them started breathing again, though the tension remained.“You put one single toe out of line, and I’ll put you in the fucking ground myself. I don’t give a shit how much it’ll take,” he snarled through gritted teeth. Alex shrugged. What happened, happened. It wasn’t as if he could reverse his mistakes. Wilmot caught the gesture, and stared with a renewed naked fury. Thankfully, all he did next was to jerkily point behind him at the opened gate. The venomous glare, coupled with the rest of the eyes from his men, followed Alex as he entered.The first thing that struck him of the inside was its sterility, even with the countless men marching through it. The scent of specialized cleaning agents rankled his nose. Specialized against Redlight, it seemed, but his biomass lurched in protest with every step forward anyway. At the very least, it wasn’t Bloodtox.The group that greeted him at the door surrounded him in an escort formation with the sergeant directly behind him, rifle pressed to his back. He could admire the effort they took to make themselves feel secure, but it was bothersome having them at such close quarters.He understood revenge. He couldn’t fault the man, not when Alex certainly did deserve it. However, Alex cared a little more about his own and his sister’s wellbeing than entertaining the fantasies of a traumatized man.The group escorted him through the base, not wasting any time. He struggled to walk at a pace the group could keep up with, his instincts screaming at him to just leave already. Each room and hall they passed carried the same foul stench, some stronger than others. If he had human biology, he would’ve already expelled the day’s meal all over their squeaky clean floors. Luckily, his biomass wasn’t in the habit of removing pieces of itself voluntarily, so he kept it together.Eventually, they stopped outside of a door without a handle. In the place of where it should’ve been, he recognized a glowing biometrics security system wired for retinal scanning. No biometric scan could stop him, but then again, there was no security system on Earth that could stop him from just bashing a door down either. He elected to wait patiently as the private in front called in for permission. After confirmation, the private waved over for Wilmot, who reluctantly removed the rifle from Alex’s spine and stepped forth to undergo the scan. A few seconds passed, and the scanner beeped its approval along with a green light. The group, including Alex, walked through single-file, and the private that opened the door closed it behind them.Inside was a standard conference room. Big circular table surrounded by chairs, and a projector in the back. There was no decoration whatsoever, leaving the room plain, white, and, to Alex’s distaste, sterile. There were already four men inside, but no one he recognized. The memories drudged from his biomass supplied the gaps, and their names and faces flashed through his mind. Only one of the four was Blackwatch, though he wasn’t involved with Manhattan. He was one of the generals that ‘helped’ contain the Runner incident in Arizona. Alex shot him a menacing glare, and made a mental note to deal with him later once Harran was solved.“That’s Blacklight?” one of the men, Major General Doss, asked, sounding distinctly unimpressed. Alex didn’t bother answering, and walked over to stand behind the seat farthest away from any of them.“It is,” the Blackwatch officer supplied in his stead, his jaw set.“Looks different in person,” Doss noted. He shuffled his stack of papers on the table and set them in front of him. He cleared his throat. “Will you be taking a seat, ZEUS?”Alex looked over, a bit surprised to be addressed directly. “Nah.”Only the Blackwatch officer scowled at the rudeness, while the other three seemed to ignore it. The oldest one there, Lieutenant General Crockett, passed Alex a several page document across the table. It was an operation plan. He flipped through it, reading faster than most humans could, then set it back down. It held a plan for his involvement to deal with the virus in Harran, though it wasn’t detailed. Were they really presenting him a CONPLAN and passing it off as the real thing?“You made an ops plan involving me without consulting me first?” Alex asked, though he knew it would be pointless to.“Frankly, your consent isn’t a factor in this matter,” said Crockett in a voice more gravelly than his own. Alex scowled, but held his tongue. He’d get his shot back at some point, and it would be all the sweeter. He committed all four of their scents to memory. There would be nowhere they could run. “Let’s get this show on the road. Chairman?”The fourth man, Chairman Miller, stood up and pressed a button on the remote to the projector. The projector shuttered on, displaying a map of Harran. Crocket ambled over with a slight limp to stand by it. Alex held in a sigh, already bored out of his mind. Even unprofessional meetings were still meetings.“Since you’ve already read the doc, I’m not going to rehash what it said,” Crockett said. “We just need to get some things clear and understood before we send you out there.” He cleared his voice, and began with as commanding a voice as he could muster. “Right now, the Ministry of Defence is in charge. They don’t know we’re sending a superweapon, and you’d better keep it that way, ZEUS. The man they’ve got there, Colonel Suleiman, you stay out of his way. Let the Ministry handle the human side. That means no killing any humans. Keep it to the infected only.”He walked over to Alex slowly, putting up airs. He leaned in close, and Alex instinctually backed away. “If the Ministry finds out about you, we’re pulling out, and the deal you have with Blackwatch is off. Do you understand?”Alex nodded jerkily, only half a moment away from tearing the man in half where he stood.“I want an answer! Do. You. Understand?” Crockett barked. Alex wasn’t one of his fucking privates. He snarled audibly, causing the other three men to jump to a stand, and the entourage that escorted him there to point their rifles at him.“Yes,” he spat, seething. “I get it. No killing humans, no fucking with the Ministry.”There was nothing in the world that would stop Alex from ripping the man to bloody shreds once this was all over.Crockett backed off, satisfied. “Good. Be ready in a month. We’ll be taking you to the airfield in Drum where you’ll be taken across the Atlantic in a jet. You’d best study those plans while you can, because we’re burning them before you get on.”Alex’s hateful glare followed the man as he hobbled back to his seat. The rest of the room calmed down along with him, lowering rifle points and thunderous heartbeats settling.“I don’t think I need to say it, but don’t go around sharing those,” Crockett added as an afterthought, speaking as if he hadn’t just threatened him. Alex let out a low growl, but didn’t snap back.The rest of the meeting flew by without him being addressed, though he was closely watched by all members of the room. They stiffened at each movement, but it never escalated again as it did when Crockett lectured him. He didn’t offer any input, and they didn’t ask for any.The general plan was to drop him into the slums of Harran and have him connect to the Hive Mind to find the Runner. The secondary plan, if that one failed, was to search for the Runner manually. The tertiary plan was to just have him kill every infected he could to pave the way through for the Ministry of Defence to deal with the problem. Simple and straightforward, though they didn’t tell him what to do in the event that the final plan failed. It sounded a bit too familiar - if the Ministry was going to start pointing nukes at the city, he would just leave, find his own way home, and draw himself a relaxing bloodbath.—---------The window was locked, he noted as he attempted to pull it up. On the other side of the glass was Dana, shooting him a slightly exasperated look. She waved, then pointed to the front door, mouthing ‘use the door!’ at him. He grumbled wordlessly and hopped down to the street level with a loud thud, frightening away a pigeon in the process.He stormed up through the building and kept his hood obscuring his face when he passed by a neighbor. Despite living there for years, he could barely recognize any of their neighbors. Humans all looked the same. Their features just blended together in his mind; He never had to remember faces anyway - their scents were identifying enough. He was certain Dana at least knew their names, though he never saw her interacting with any of them before.At least the door was unlocked. He would have been in a worse mood if he was forced to knock. He slammed it behind him hard enough to shake the complex, and didn’t bother to check if there was damage.“I take it that the meeting didn’t go well,” she noted mildly above a steaming cup. She was sat at her laptop, scrolling through what were likely more articles. Or top secret databases.“Went fine,” he growled. He was already pacing, navigating blindly through the furniture to and fro. “Got more assholes to kill after this is over with.” She couldn’t suppress a shudder at the clipped tone, and hid behind taking a sip from her mug.She reached over to him when he got close, but he flinched back hard. Just beneath his false skin, his tendrils were roiling and twitching violently. He wanted - no, needed - to hunt soon. Needed to get the pent up rage out. Needed to smash something, destroy something, mutilate something.Her hand faltered, then she reached into her pockets to pull something out.“You left your phone here,” she said, and held out the Blackberry for him. He took it from her slowly, gingerly, and stuck it into a pocket.“...Sorry.” He couldn’t take it out on her. She didn’t deserve that.She just calmly smiled, though it was strained, and set the cup down onto her desk. She turned her chair to face him fully. He let out a frustrated sigh and let himself down onto the couch, this time laying on his back. …It had been a long time since he last laid down. He sunk into the cushion, it creaking dangerously from his density. It wasn’t the most comfortable or expensive couch in the world, but it was still theirs.“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked. “Or would you rather have some quiet?”He grumbled, staring at the ceiling. There were long cracks leading across much of it. Water damage from the upstairs neighbor, supplied memories of the type of pattern from his biomass. He flipped and turned the day’s experience around in his head, trying to extract words from it to form a comprehensive story.“I’ll be gone in a month,” he ended up saying. The phone pressed against his biomass uncomfortably, a foreign object touching coldly on his feverish flesh. He plucked it out and placed it onto the nearby coffee table where it couldn’t bother him. “Don’t know when I’ll be back.”She rested her jaw into her cupped hand and hummed tonelessly. When it came to anything other than working on a project, the both of them shared the trait of slow, awkward wording. She was still several times better at it than he was, though he wouldn’t say it aloud.“At least you aren’t gone yet. I’m glad I was right about it being just a briefing,” she said after a moment. He nodded from where he lay. “They’re probably just ironing out the rest of the details. Things like your travel accommodations-” He scoffed. As if Blackwatch would give a shit; they’re just going to throw him out of the plane as soon as they can. “-and whatnot. They’re also most likely contacting the Ministry of Defence that they’re sending someone, because I can imagine what kind of diplomatic mess it would be if no one knew you were coming.”It would be a mess. For all involved, especially him. His biomass squirmed, and his chest split open. His tendrils flailed openly as he reached in and pulled from its grip the sheaf of papers they handed him earlier. Dana stared in open horror at the sudden display, her smile turning so strained it became tugged and flat.“Uh-”“Here,” Alex interrupted, his flesh knitting back together. He tossed her the CONPLAN, and she barely caught it before it hit the floor. He shuddered. Disgusting shit - it still had some of that disinfectant on it. He had to create a wall of hardened mass on the inside to surround it so it wouldn’t touch him as he carried it back. “These are the plans. I’ve already read them.”“...Right,” she squeaked, face white as a sheet. Her heartbeat thundered in his ears. “I’ll- look… at them.”He cocked his head from where he lay. What had her so worked up? …Oh. Right. The visible tendrils fell under the ‘creepy as fuck’ category.She cleared her throat, looking pointedly away from his direction. Her heartbeat calmed only as she began scanning through the leaflet, though she remained the picture of tenseness.Her brows furrowed. “Alex, are you sure these are the right plans?” she asked softly. “They’re missing a lot of detail - nothing like what Blackwatch usually whips up.”He nodded. “Joint operation with Blackwatch and the marines. Probably a concept plan.”“A CONPLAN only a month away from takeoff for an operation of this magnitude?” she said incredulously. “That’s really weird. This is moving fast, even for them.” She fell into a thoughtful silence for a few seconds, then piped back up. “Well, it could just be that this is only what they’re willing to share with you while they work behind the scenes. But this is setting you up for failure. These ‘plans’ don’t tell you anything!”“It’s what I’ve got to work with,” he replied simply. Of course they were setting him up for failure. But he had no real choice in the matter, unless he wanted to figure out how to escort Dana across the Hudson River without her being blown to pieces. He had considered that option in the past - tried it himself using several different methods. All of them earned him a massive explosion to the face and a brief but melting dip into the river.She sighed, and grimaced. “You should bring this up with Cross when you can. We need to figure out what the hell is going on before you leave the country. Since you have my phone, he might try to reach you that way.”He just stared at the ceiling. Somehow, the energy that normally coursed through his entire body was absent. Was this what being tired felt like?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
On the sixth day since the meeting, the phone he now carried around finally rang. Thankfully, he wasn’t in the middle of anything that time, just perched atop the roof of a building to scan the area. He fumbled with the phone, searching for the ‘answer’ button. The memories sloshing about in his biomass made it confusing - each type of phone had their own thing going on, some even having the two buttons in reversed places.“Dana Mercer?” asked the gruff voice on the other side. Cross, again.“Guess again,” he answered. The line was silent for a moment.Eventually, Cross spoke up, irritation clear in his voice. “I should lecture you about the value of property, especially when it doesn’t belong to you,” he grumbled out. “But that would be a waste of breath, knowing you.” His tone shifted to be more neutral, business-like. “I’ll tell you now that this line isn’t monitored. You can speak freely.”Alex arched his brow. “So, the other one was?”“Yes.”Of course it was, he should have guessed. Why his line was monitored and Dana’s wasn’t was beyond him when it came to discussing state secrets, but he wasn’t compelled enough to ask for the reason. Most likely, he assumed, it was because Blackwatch was aware of Cross’s communications with Alex but not with his sister. Cross could just be telling a bold-faced lie, too.He mulled through the options in his mind, sifting through what Cross probably could and could not answer. “Why was I handed a draft plan at the briefing?” was the question he decided to ask. If Cross didn’t know, then Alex doubted the man would have much power to actually help him with the upcoming mission.“Draft plan?” Cross repeated. “Oh. You’re mistaken, Mercer. That’s the real one. For you.” Yep, he thought so. “The higher ups are being tight lipped about it. The other plans are beyond my position.” Cross let out a sigh. “It’s embarrassing the way they’re handling this.”“Embarrassing?” Alex couldn’t help but ask. Hearing Cross be honest about his thoughts when it came to Blackwatch was a first.“They’ve got their heads so far up their asses they can’t see what’s right in front of them. They just want you out of the picture,” he elaborated lowly. “You’ll never hear me say anything like this again, so savor it: You’re useful, Mercer. You’re a thousand trained men in one, with skills in just about everything, and brute strength to match.”Alex couldn’t recall the last time he received a compliment. He didn’t know how to respond, or how he was even supposed to react. So, he stayed quiet. They both did, until an entire minute passed with nothing being said.“...Regardless, that’s related to what I was going to call your sister about,” Cross said, continuing as if nothing happened. Relief filled Alex as the moment passed. Dana would tease him relentlessly if she ever heard about it, so he filed the call away in his head as ‘do not touch.’ “I was going to go through her to get into contact with you, but it seems that won’t be necessary.”“Yes,” Alex agreed stiltedly. He squatted down, scanning the street below for any infected. Unfortunately, it was clear. No distractions for him. Even the Redlight on the nearby buildings have diminished to a point where only small veins could be detected.“I’ll be returning to Manhattan soon along with my Wisemen,” he said. Alex narrowed his eyes. The Wisemen were no threat to him, as even the elite of the elite die when their throats get torn out. But, to have his squad reformed spelled action in the near future. “It’ll be after you leave. With you gone from the city, we’ll be gassing the whole place with Bloodtox to clear out the last of Redlight. My squad and I will be in charge of that operation.”“Why’re you telling me this?” He couldn’t fathom a reason why Cross would go out of his way to let him know if he wouldn’t even be there to see it.Cross scoffed loudly on the other side. “I assumed you’d want to know what would happen to Manhattan while you were out,” he said, a touch incredulous. “It does concern the Blackwatch deal, though.”Alex shot to his feet, snarling. “In what way.”“Calm your shit, Mercer,” Cross ordered. He could imagine the placating gesture the captain was making. He settled down some, though his glare remained. “Not in a bad way. They still want Dana as leverage, but they’ll be handing her off to me. But only if everything goes right, on both my side and yours.”
What.
“That doesn’t sound like Blackwatch,” he growled out. They existed to make his life hell. An addendum to the existing deal that would be almost entirely in his favor. And it didn’t seem like additional leverage, considering they kept it from him. Perhaps Cross was told to tell him about it. Perhaps Cross was lying. There would be no way to know unless he quartered the man and consumed him, but that would just be another huge mistake in a long line of huge mistakes.“Sure doesn’t,” Cross agreed. “But orders are orders. You follow yours and I’ll follow mine, and I’ll see what I can do about Dana. Don’t get your hopes up.”With that, Cross ended the call before Alex could respond.—---------A young woman and a man raced across the rooftops beside each other. Each placement of their feet was steady and sure, as if they had done so a hundredfold. Considering their situation, they could very well have. They sprinted wordlessly in near perfect synch, leaping over gaps and obstacles, towards the billowing red smoke in the distance.They skidded to a stop on the roof of a squat building closest to the source - a flare. And by the flare sat two large orange boxes side by side attached to an undecorated and torn up parachute. Their lifeline.Silently, she addressed the man with a light brush against his shoulder, then gestured towards their surroundings and to the airdrop. He nodded, and gingerly stood. The area was unoccupied, but it would take only one wrongly placed movement, one word spoken too loudly, and they would be overwhelmed. There was one chance, and one chance only to get it right.But, just as the man was about to slink his way to the ground, three men wearing metallic masks entered the street from an obscured alleyway. Bandits. He crouched back down to rejoin her as the three almost leisurely strolled up to the airdrop and began fiddling with the latches.“Fuck!” she hissed through her teeth. “That was the third one this week…”He clasped her shoulder comfortingly, and she relaxed at the touch. They slid to the floor, backs against the thin roofing wall. She rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh.“Amir, did Lena say how much we had left?” she whispered. The man in question nodded, and spared a glance at the three men below. Two were packing the supplies into more mobile packages while the third stood watch, a solid pipe in hand.“We have enough for the next few days,” he replied in a mutter. “But at this rate, if we keep being beaten to it…” He didn’t need to finish his sentence. He placed his calloused hand over hers and gently squeezed it, threading his fingers through hers. They sat by each other for a few moments more. The heat from his body warmed her, more and better than a fire ever could.They both slowly and deliberately took to their feet once more. The bandit watchman thankfully didn’t notice the movement, and they made their exit back the way they came.Roof to roof they leapt, the Tower in sight. The glow of the evening sun bathed the dead city in a serene orange. While the sight was once a source of comfort and beauty, now it only spurred their movements frantically onward. About halfway back, she slowed, though didn’t stop, to activate her radio. Amir slowed alongside her and listened in.“Brecken, do you read?” she spoke into it. “We-”“Jade! Thank God- Are you and Amir alright?” the voice on the radio crackled back, interrupting her. “The two of you were gone all day. Did you manage to get the drop?”They jumped over a gap between two roofs and rolled to safety before she answered. “We’re fine. No, we didn’t get the drop. The bandits beat us to it.”“Again? Fuck!” The line was silent on his end for only a moment. “There is another one coming soon, but…” His voice became resigned. “We can try to send someone out at dawn. Just come back for now.”“Understood, we are returning now.” With that, she ended the transmission. As if on cue, they heard the telltale rumble of a plane flying overhead, and saw a billowing parachute drop from it somewhere nearby. They gave each other a look.It was in reach.She changed directions to start running towards the red smoke when Amir grabbed her by the arm, stopping them both in place. “Stop,” he ordered, though in a voice softer than his words. “We won’t be able to carry it all back before the sun sets.”“But we can get at least one parcel each,” she protested. She glanced quickly between the Tower, the setting sun, and the smoke. They likely had little under half an hour left, based on the stretching shadows. “That way, if the morning crew misses it, at least we will have some supplies.”Amir’s hand stayed, squeezing slightly. He was silent. Weighing his options. They had no time to decide. Jade gazed defiantly into his eyes. Her expression sent a clear message: ‘I will do it, with or without you.’He sighed, and relented. He never could go against her, that headstrong woman.“Let’s go, then.”—---------The month passed by quickly and, surprisingly, without much incident. Almost suspiciously so. He would leave to clear out the remaining Infected and catch a meal, return to Dana for a quick report, then leave to bound across the city looking for something to do. The marines, when they spotted him, tried to ignore him as he cleaved his way through the crowds. Whenever he noticed them driving too closely to Dana’s apartment, he would posture and threaten until they left. No killing marines if he could avoid it, but it would be their own fault if they didn’t flee.Unfortunately, however, the rainy season was beginning to rear its head.Alex could do many things. He could recite hundreds of books word for word. He could outplay a master at cricket. He could juggle. He could drive an armor that required four men by himself, pilot a helicopter through gaps so thin that a jet would have trouble, and sneak into maximum security military bases that were expecting him.But he could not dodge rain.He could only hope that Harran would have lower precipitation levels. None of the screaming masses within him knew much of anything about the city beyond the name, so he would have to look it up later if he found the time. The thought of carrying an umbrella briefly flashed through him, but was just as quickly dismissed; It would be too difficult to keep an umbrella intact. If Blackwatch knew that rain of all things hurt him…He hopped from roof to roof, and glided by a helicopter. It was tempting to rip it out of the sky - so tempting, his arm automatically shifted into a whipfist and attached himself to the cockpit window. The pilot eyed him warily, nearly hyperventilating, as he ran through his choices. Blow it up, hijack it, or leave it be. He had no particular use for it other than to fly into the base in style. Explosions were always a thrilling sight, but he had promised to kill fewer soldiers. So, he regretfully tore himself away from the chopper and continued his glide. There would always be another time.On the surface, the job was simple. Easy, almost, if not time consuming. But his prior experiences with the military and Blackwatch combined with both his and Dana’s misgivings made him absolutely certain that the actual job wouldn’t be how they described it. There was always something that would be wrong about it, some unforeseen - or perhaps in this case, foreseen - complication. He knew betrayal was to be a certainty, he just couldn’t see in what way. They had to know that stranding him in another country couldn’t stop him from just breaking out and killing them all later. There had to be something else that he wasn’t seeing.To execute Dana while he was away? He doubted it; they could do so at any time he wasn’t in the apartment. To set up a trap on his readmission? Most likely. Something that would take months to set up, something he couldn’t be present for for it to work. But if a nuke couldn’t take him out, he couldn’t imagine what else could.He readied a jump from the top of the nearest skyscraper, his tendrils coiling within his legs - and leapt. He adjusted himself mid-air, gliding for a moment to position himself directly above the base, then shot straight down. The brass wouldn’t be too happy about it, but as long as no one died, they couldn’t do much to him.With an earth-shattering impact, he landed in the middle of the base, sending chunks of concrete flying in all directions. It sent up an explosion of dust, coating both him and everything around him with it as it settled. The blast proof windows rattled madly, and all nearby soldiers were knocked from their feet, luckily dodging the stray concrete chunks.For a moment, everything was silent. No one dared to even breathe. Then -“ZEUS!”He was quickly surrounded by a cacophony of shouting men, though none of the soldiers approached. He struggled to hold back his smirk. A single man broke free from the crowd and stormed towards him, rifle pointed directly at the virus’s head. His finger was poised on the trigger, trembling as if he was only just barely holding himself back.“ZEUS! What the fuck was that!?” Sergeant Wilmot nearly screamed, veins popping in his head. The man’s face flushed a deep red, so much so he resembled the stains that littered the streets.“Reporting for duty,” Alex said, only a bit smug. It would be his last act of wanton destruction until he was able to return, after all. He had to make it count somehow.“You stupid motherfucker! You could have killed my men!” the sarge shouted. Alex casted a quick glance around, slipping into thermal vision. All of the men were standing and very much so alive, and all pointing rifles at him. He shrugged.Sarge radioed in, visibly seething. “Red Crown, do you read? Requesting authorization to neutralize ZEUS, over.”“Request denied. Provide justification for the intended action,” chattered the voice neutrally over the radio. Alex blinked in surprise. They had an excuse to try to kill him and weren’t taking it?“The justification is that he almost caused the casualties of my entire unit!” he bit out, glaring daggers down at the virus. He saw Wilmot’s finger twitching over the trigger, practically begging him to make a move. Alex just watched impassively, waiting to get permission to be allowed into the building.The radio was silent for a moment. “...Justification acknowledged. However, the request remains denied,” the voice said, though a note of regret seeped into it. The communication ended with Wilmot still held onto the radio, hands shaking. With rage or with fear, Alex didn’t know. Probably both; The man was slightly too far for him to smell it, though his heart pounded near deafeningly, pumping him with acidic adrenaline.He considered if adrenaline would be a useful compound to synthesize for his own use. Humans briefly became supermen when it coursed through them. He had heard stories, and witnessed many himself. They moved faster, could lift cars and rubble - though not as efficiently as he - and gained impressive reaction times. Sometimes, an attack of his would fly over the head of a human just because he underestimated them. Though, those mistakes were always quickly corrected barring a single case. What effect would adrenaline have on him, then? He dismissed the idea, but filed it away for later.During his train of thought, the sergeant radioed permission to allow Alex to enter the base, though he could see by the man’s face that it wasn’t easy for him. “Go!” he ground out, as if it was all he could say without devolving into threats and spitting. The rifle point never strayed from Alex’s head as he was steered to the entrance.Once again, he was escorted through the disgustingly sterile base interior. Nothing of note changed, though he detected a note of Bloodtox wafting from some rooms. He decided to deconstruct his olfactory organs for the remainder of the tour, as even the quick scent of the stuff almost made him expel the morning’s meal. It didn’t help too much - the sticky and prickling sensation of Bloodtox clung to his false skin. Even though by now he was certain it couldn’t kill him anymore, it was still unpleasant.Instead of taking the same route as before, they led him elsewhere. As they walked, he mapped the facility in his head, noting where each hallway led and which door opened to where. Humans walked so frustratingly slow. He itched to bound ahead, maybe bring the whole place down on their heads and blow it all to hell with help from the thermobaric armor he spotted on the outside. He couldn’t help a tiny smirk as he reminisced about his fun with the armored hive, but wiped it from his face when a soldier to his left glanced at him suspiciously.Eventually, they reached a door with another retinal scanner. Like before, his entourage radioed permission and opened it, and ushered him in.The room was enormous, to say the least. It was the interior of the hangar he saw from outside. A sterile, grey hangar. But the room wasn’t his focus. There were rows and rows of sleek-looking jets sat in formation, stretching from where he stood all the way to the distant exit. Jets! He couldn’t help but wonder about the firepower they packed, and very nearly licked his lips in anticipation. It was some of the only equipment that the military hadn’t thrown at him and therefore some of the only equipment he hadn’t been able to try out for himself. There was no way in hell they would let him pilot one, so he resolved to steal one later when he got the chance. There had to be at least one member of the Chair Force around the place.They kept walking, cutting a line through the parked jets. Thankfully, there was enough space between each one that his entourage didn’t have to get any closer to him. He suspected they were grateful for that as well. After some time trudging through, they met up with a bearded man and a younger man beside him. There was no spark of recognition within his biomass, so they either were not of high rank, or were from another base out of the city. The two of them flashed a salute at Sergeant Wilmot.“Sir! Is that ZEUS?” asked the younger one, looking at Alex curiously. Considering Alex was the only one out of uniform in the entire base, he wondered why he even felt the need to ask.“Yes,” Sarge answered curtly. At his words, the two immediately tensed up and set up their guard. The older man studied him carefully, while the younger one stared openly in apprehension.Wilmot shoved him forward with his rifle, and he allowed himself to stumble towards the two. “You follow their orders, no matter what they are,” Sarge grit out. “If they tell you to bark, you bark. They tell you to sit, you sit. They tell you to jump, you fucking jump. Got it?”“Yes, sir,” Alex droned. So these two were to be his handlers, at least for the time being.“Brief it and give it the radio,” Wilmot ordered the two. He bristled slightly at the ‘it’, but held his tongue. “It’s under control of Blackwatch at the moment, so it’s docile. Anything goes wrong, you call the General. You have authority to call in reinforcements any time, and make sure you do. Got that?”“Yes, sir!” they piped up in sync. With that, Wilmot and the entourage left the three alone. The younger one glanced around nervously, and the older one took out a radio from one of his chest pockets to hand it to Alex. He took it without comment and slipped it into a pocket where it pressed coldly and uncomfortably against him, right next to the other cold and uncomfortable phone Dana gave him.“This is a standard issue military radio,” the older one explained, only slightly hesitantly. “There’s a communication jam in Harran at the moment, but this can break through and communicate back to base.” A communication jam? So the damn phone wasn’t going to work anyway. He made a mental note to tell Dana, and scowled as the man continued. “We’re going to fly you to Fort Drum, then we’ll be taking a transport craft to Harran.”The young man seemed excessively nervous. Alex could practically taste the fear rolling off of him as he turned his gaze to him. “We- we were told not to take too long, with you in there,” he stumbled over his words. “So you can choose to either be sedated for the ride or be put into the cargo. Or both.”Was this really the military’s best choice of handlers? They jumped at every move he made. Hell, the younger one looked like he was even close to crying. Was the brass expecting him to do something they’d all regret?“Can’t be sedated,” Alex growled, and they startled. “Just have me sit in the back. I can behave.” He added only a little sarcastically.It struck him, suddenly, that he would be in an aircraft for several hours alone with two humans, hungry and with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Of course they were scared out of their minds. There was no in-flight entertainment in the world that would keep him occupied for that long. He hoped vainly that they would use one of the more modern planes that could cross the pond in just a handful of hours, but they were most likely not willing to wait for refuel over international waters with him in stow.…Shit.—---------The whole ordeal was hellish. Though Doctor Mercer had been on planes in the past, as well as nearly everyone in his biomass, he decided that he, as Alex, despised being a passenger. On the flight to Fort Drum, he was placed in the cargo hold. They didn’t seem to trust him enough to put him in the same hold as them.It had been bitterly cold, so much so that his movements were forced to a minimum in order to maintain a level of heat to prevent virion death. There was no room to pace when he became restless, though he most likely couldn’t have anyway with the level of turbulence and frigidity. Thankfully, the lack of oxygen wasn’t going to kill him, though it put him into an almost comatose state. Hypoxia, his addled biomass had provided for him.When the jet finally landed, he hadn’t been even able to stand on his own until his body warmed up to a manageable level. Unfortunately, he found out immediately that the fort was situated just a few miles below Canada, and therefore shared the country’s fate of being a frozen hell. It wasn’t subzero like the flight, but still he was slowed.He was expressly forbidden from interacting with any of the humans there. There had even been civilians, he noted. It was a base, after all. He even recognized a few of them, owing to his biomass. But he kept his head down as ordered; He only had to play along for a bit longer. The cold had numbed his hunger somewhat, so he was able to hold out despite watching the curious heat signatures meandering about.Every time the duo pilots ordered him around, he resisted the very real temptation to tear them to bloody chunks and add them to his biomass. He had to play along, play nice, he kept reminding himself, but he was fucking pissed about the ride. He committed their scents to memory. If they forced him into the cargo again, he would track them down to the ends of the fucking earth to murder them.He had voiced the complaint as nicely as he possibly could in the state he was in, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. He then decided that he would rip apart the shorter one first when it came to it.They didn’t spend long in the fort, only about an hour at most. During that time, they took stock of inventory, fueled the jet, and took turns watching him to make sure he didn’t do anything. He paced relentlessly, itching to get some action, but didn’t end up ‘doing anything.’ He couldn’t help but snarl any time they came close, however.When it came time to corral him back into the cargo hold, he had to physically stop himself from mutilating the two. His claws were out and inches away from them, but he held back, just barely. Unfortunately, that made them want to keep him away from the passenger hold even more so.He had an incredible temptation to forgo his restraint. He shook with the effort it took to not kill them both on the spot. But in the end, he was forced back into the cargo hold, and the flight across the Atlantic began.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Jade! Welcome back.”She nodded to the gun-carrying guardsman, who waved her through the opening to the Tower. Nimbly, she hopped up the emptied stairwell into the building proper, where more guardsmen wordlessly greeted her as she walked by them. Emre, the quartermaster, swung around on his chair and beckoned her over.“Jade,” he greeted, though his face fell once he saw her come close. “Oh, empty-handed. The run didn’t go well?”She shook her head and grimaced. “Rais’s men,” she muttered. “They were at both airdrops. They didn’t even leave the food.”Emre’s face darkened. He flipped through the papers on the clipboard he held, and tapped on a spot somewhat idly, then noted something with a scratch of a pen. “We’re really running low…” he said, his shoulders sagging. “At this rate, we might have to give Khaliq’s garden idea a shot, if we even live long enough to see it bear fruit.”“We should be doing that regardless,” she said, and turned to leave. They long since collected the seeds on the various runs through the city, and the amount of rainfall this year lent itself almost perfectly to growing conditions. It was just that, despite being made up of nearly all of the survivors in the city, no one there actually knew how to grow a plant. Of course she understood the basics - give it water, place it in soil, and leave it in the sun - but the basics wouldn’t be enough.A thought struck her, and she paused, slowly turning back. “Have you… seen Rahim leave?” she asked tentatively.Emre hummed tunelessly. “If he did, I didn’t see him,” he answered, shrugging. “The boy getting up to something?”She groaned in frustration. “Yes, him and his friend. I just don’t know what. Would you keep an eye out for me? Make sure he doesn’t leave the Tower, okay?”“I’ll do my best.”“Thank you,” she said sincerely, and left to jog towards the elevator.Whatever went through that boy’s mind, she couldn’t comprehend it. He didn’t care for his own safety in the slightest, leaving her to worry out of her mind any time he left her sights. He was selfish, just a self-absorbed teenager, with nothing but hare-brained ideas that went nowhere. She always had to pick up the pieces each time they failed. Even before the virus.He was going to get himself killed someday, and all she could do was watch.The elevator let out a half-hearted, nearly muted ding as she arrived on the 19th floor, and the doors slid open. She stepped off it quickly - she didn’t want to be the one on it when it finally gave out. The guardsman sent her a smile and a wave as she strode passed, which she only halfway returned. Nearly everyone she passed gave some indication of a greeting, be it a nod, a wave, or even a quiet ‘hey!’, but she returned them all only a short nod.She hesitated in front of the door to the headquarters. It seemed all she ever gave was grim news. She saw it affected Brecken; He grew colder, more distant, more stressed as time wore on. It was clear that there was no rescue coming. He would stand by the radio and the television day after day, just waiting for the next transmission. Just waiting for the next failure of a mission to get back to him.She steeled herself, and entered.“Jade, you’re back,” called over Brecken. She took it as an invitation and joined him in the spacious room. For once, he wasn’t standing in front of the TV, but instead was grabbing something from the fridge. He pulled out a single bottle of alcohol, one of the few remaining in the stash. She raised an eyebrow at that. “It’s to celebrate the good news. Or to stave off the bad news,” he explained, holding up the bottle and giving it a small shake. “Don’t tell the kid we have this stuff.”“He already knows,” she said disapprovingly. She had caught Rahim with one before, and gave him the earful of his lifetime. Somehow, he seemed to forget they were facing an apocalypse and needed to stay alert at all times. She changed the subject. “About the run…”Brecken placed the bottle down and preemptively placed his head in his hands. “Do I even want to hear it?” he muttered. “Nevermind. Just lay it on me.”She shook her head. “Both drops were already taken by Rais’s men-” He sighed loudly. “-and they left nothing. They had guns, Brecken. There was nothing I could do.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry.”He didn’t respond. His hands curled to fists, and his entire body grew rigid. But after a moment of silence, he let out a breath. Still tense, he stepped toward the TV, and she gingerly followed him.“Fucking guns?” he grit out. He ran a hand through his hair, almost pulling some out. She couldn’t blame him. Time was running out, and she had nothing to show from days upon days of supply runs. “Great. Just fucking great.”He leaned over the couch, face hidden, gripping the leather at its seams. She knew what was coming next. They had both shot it down before, argued for weeks over it. They couldn’t come to a mutual decision, but it had to be done. It was the only choice left, and the time to truly consider it was fast approaching. She opened her mouth-“Brecken? Jade?”She whipped around to see Rahim standing at the entrance doorway. He gave her a quick, unreadable look, then passed by her towards Brecken.Ice pooled in her belly. How much had he heard? At least they hadn’t begun discussing plans. If he knew, she had no doubt he would take off on his own the moment her back was turned and get himself shot to pieces. What scheme would he even come up with? For all she knew, he would try to steal guns from the guardsmen below for himself to fight them back.“Rahim?” Brecken’s fury vanished from his voice, though his figure still held tension. “Was there something you needed?”“I want in on what you guys are planning,” Rahim said, almost cutting off the end of Brecken’s sentence. Of course. Of course that was what he wanted. She set her jaw, and Brecken froze at the same time.“No,” they said near simultaneously. They spared a glance at each other. Rahim’s excitement turned to frustration, but before he could argue with the words she knew he was going to say, she intercepted him.“Rahim, you are needed here. I need you here,” she began desperately. There wasn’t a set of words in the world that could convince him out of a new stupid idea he had, but she had to try. “If you go out there, you will get yourself killed. They will kill you without a second thought. If you stay here, you will be helping everyone in the Tower, helping all of the survivors that we just don’t have enough manpower to take care of. You will be helping me, Rahim.”She knew that the moment the words were out of her mouth, it was a mistake. She should have let Brecken speak instead. He would listen to him, not her.A determined fury took over Rahim’s expression. “I can do so much more out there! I know we don’t have enough runners on the field. We have too many people sitting around, doing nothing in the Tower! We don’t need another!”“Rahim!” she raised her voice. What could she say? What could she say to make him listen? “It’s your and Brecken’s job to train new runners. If you were to go out, then you would be leaving it all to him. Harris already has to juggle manning the airdrop locations, runner teams, and guiding everyone in the Tower. Do you want to put that responsibility on him too?”“You can’t just keep treating me like glass!” His voice raised to match hers. “I’m not going to die the second I step out there! I’m a runner too - You can’t keep me in here!”She resisted the urge to yell back. It wouldn’t help. Instead, she pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a frustrated groan. She knew how he felt. Ever since their first disastrous supply run together, he’d been relegated to Tower duty. It wasn’t his fault. But it was for the best. It was all she could do to protect him.“Rahim, you can’t go,” Brecken piped up calmly. He spared Jade a regretful glance, then continued. “Those thugs, they got guns now.” Rahim opened his mouth to argue, but Brecken kept going. “They aren’t afraid to use them, either. You and I both know a single shot is more than enough to kill you no matter how fast you can run. And if that single shot misses, the Virals’ll come and mop up the rest. You’re not invincible, and like your sister says, you aren’t expendable either. The work you do to keep us, and the whole Tower together, is invaluable. We can’t afford to lose you, mate.”Rahim was silent for a moment, clearly fuming. “What about you, then?” he demanded, rounding on the man. “You go on runs all the time, and you’re the leader of this whole place. If you go missing, then what? Me and Jade will pick up the pieces?”Brecken looked stricken, but Jade had enough. If reasoning couldn’t get through his stubborn skull, then authority would. She hoped. “Rahim! Enough of this. This conversation is over. You are staying home, and that is final,” she ordered in the most commanding voice she could muster.He quailled at her tone, but she knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. He was a young boy, trapped in a prison inside another prison. Of course he would want to wander, to spread his wings and fly from the nest. Her heart clenched at the thought. How many different ways could he die? How long would it be until he stopped obeying, and left? He couldn’t be thick enough to leave in the cover of night, she told herself. But she doubted even that much to stay true.The room was deathly quiet, with only the sound of a strong breeze billowing the window drapery on the balcony filling the air. It was always the same after each argument. He would most likely head to the roof to sulk once they simmered down. She caught him there once, by accident. He was throwing himself into running the parkour course they had set up in the Gym over and over until he couldn’t move, and she had to drag him back to his quarters. After that, Amir had told her that Rahim timed it so she would be out on a run while he was busy.The gulf between them widened each passing day, and there was nothing she could do about it.Suddenly, the distinct rumble of an airplane flying overhead sounded in the distance. The three snapped to attention, scanning the room and the balcony to the outside. What? The TV was blank, and the radio was silent. There were no planned shipments, as far as she knew - they were done for the day. She looked to Brecken, eyebrows knit closely, silently asking him the question.“What the hell?” muttered Brecken, the previous conversation completely forgotten. He charged towards the TV, but the screen remained black. He turned to the radio - still silent. “The day’s drops already came. What’s going on?”She shook her head, and she and Rahim hurried to the balcony to see outside. The evening sun made it difficult to make anything out with its orange glare covering the sky. She heard Brecken approach from behind as they searched the clouds - and spotted it. In the far, far distance was a plane, too high to make out any details. That was the part that unnerved her the most; Too high to be normal, too high to drop support packages.“That can’t be a drop flight, can it?” Rahim asked next to her. Brecken shook his head, a definite no.It couldn’t be a civilian aircraft. Harran and the cities around it were established no-fly zones ever since the lockdowns began. She saw it herself what happened when an unrecognized flight went over the city; The fireworks were still seared in her mind. But what else? What else could it be?Her heart plummeted to her stomach in realization. There was no way - it was too early! The Ministry of Defence had promised that as long as there were still survivors, nothing would jeopardize the city. The eyes of the world was on Harran, at least so far as she still knew since the satellites had stopped broadcasting the news. They couldn’t possibly do something so drastic, not so soon.“Bombs,” was what quietly slipped out. They were stuck in place, staring at the plane. Panic curled in her gut, yet she remained frozen. What could she possibly do? “They’re going to raze Harran.”“What? Bombs? Wait, wait, wait! No - they can’t do that!” she heard Rahim say desperately. “There are still people living here!”Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the railing. She hoped beyond all hope that her brother was right. With great effort, she tore herself away from the railing, and embraced him tightly. He made a noise of surprise, but quickly returned it.No matter what happened, she would protect him.Her mind flitted to Amir, and nausea wracked through her, causing her to hold on even tighter. She never had the chance to say goodbye to him. Her mind split - did she have enough time? Could she make it to him before they fell?But the thin, warm arms wrapped around her assured her she made the right choice. She rested her chin on her little brother’s shoulder, and waited.“Shit! It really is! Fuck! Fuck! Jade, Rahim, I’m so sorry!” shouted Brecken, voice nearly cracking from the exertion.They braced for impact.5 seconds went by. 10 seconds. Then 20. Finally, there was a distant sound of a crash, like metal folding in on itself, followed by the crumpling of a massive structure. The familiar shrieks of Virals filled the air, but nothing more.…Huh?She pried open her eyes to see a plume of dust erupting deep in the city, in the direction of the apartment complexes. Pure apprehension held back any relief as she watched the dust settle slowly. Her mind overran with panic-fueled thoughts. Where was the explosion? Why were they alive? What was that?They held each other for a moment longer, lingering in each other’s arms. When it became clear they weren’t in immediate danger, they slowly unraveled, and faced the decaying pillar of dust. The rumble of the plane petered out in the distance. Could it have been a dud?After a few seconds of watching for anything else, Brecken was the first to speak. “I’m- I’ll… I’m going to the roof. To get the binoculars.” With that, he left, though she heard him mutter under his breath, “What the fuck was that…?”She spared a glance at the still-silent radio on the table, expecting it to come to life at any moment to explain what just dropped. But it remained dead quiet, with only the wind pushing the drapery beside them. The blackened dust grew fainter and more difficult to see as the sun sank over the horizon.“We should go, too,” Rahim noted, his voice wavering. She nodded - they had to see what it was before it became too dark. By morning, whatever it was would be long gone, either taken apart by Rais’s thugs or by other scavengers in the area. Though, perhaps the threat of Volatiles would keep it intact until the morning crew could get to it.—---------Alex was cold. He could barely move, tendrils frozen in place. His entire body shivered, though it was less to actually heat him and more just a vestigial psychosomatic response from the memories swimming in his biomass. The bastards just dropped him from the jet, dumping him out with no warning. Or, maybe they did warn him, but his awareness was so dim that he couldn’t have noticed.After what felt like hours passed by, the world slowly bled into focus around him. Distant, animalistic shrieks filtered through his warbled hearing. Closer still, he heard inhumanly deep, labored breaths following heavy, wet footsteps. But after listening for a few seconds, the footsteps seemed aimless, following no strict pattern. Whatever it was, it wasn’t looking for him.Shortly after his hearing recovered, so did his sight. The lighting was dim, and the sky above was moonless. But to his surprise, it was also lightly speckled with stars. There never was a chance in the Big Apple to see them. He never considered himself to be the sentimental type, and would rather chop off a limb than admit it aloud, but seeing visible stars filled him with a sense of… something. Curiosity? He quickly crushed the thought to focus on the more immediate, more important surroundings.He adjusted his eyes to work in the pitch dark, and let out a small frustrated growl when he still couldn’t make out much. Despite being able to make near perfect nocturnal vision, even he had his limits; If there was no light to begin with, then enhancing the amount of light he could take in would have no effect. Still, with the light of the stars, he could tell he was inside a building of some kind. Judging by how far the hole he made through the roof was, he was within a basement of sorts, crashed several floors through a multi-story complex. It was no skyscraper, though.He made to drag himself to his feet when he felt a tug of something attached to his body, attempting to pin him in place. Alarmed, metallic claws sprung from his fingers and he swiped instinctually at the offending object. He almost stumbled as the thing snapped off of him with little to no resistance, and brushed gently against the rubble-filled floor. It sounded like… Oh. It was the strings from the parachute they demanded to attach to him. He quickly tore off the remaining pieces of it, leaving the rig to fall uselessly to the ground. Though, he noted that the strings didn’t seem to be attached to the actual parachute - it must have torn off at some point.Despite his lack of sight, he could tell he was surrounded by concrete rubble, most of it directly below him ‘cushioning’ his fall. He finally fully got to his feet, resisting the urge to cough as a cloud of dust fell from him, and searched briefly for an exit. Well, the only way was up through the roof, where he came from and so conveniently left a massive hole. He crouched, coiling the tendrils in his legs, and leapt directly skyward-And completely overshot the roof. The building was smaller than it seemed. For a precious few moments, he hung motionless in the air, high above all else in the city. His mind worked overdrive to absorb all of the new details despite the cover of utter blackness. It was a large city, surrounded on all sides by a wall that must have spanned at least 50 feet tall. Some buildings were lit up, still containing electricity, and stuck out like a sore thumb. The one he hopped up from had none, nor did any nearby.He began falling. Quickly, he righted himself, and shifted into a more stable glide to land atop one of the nearby apartment complexes. The landing was anything but gentle, and sent him almost straight through the brittle roofing, snaking cracks throughout the entire rooftop with a massive crash. Following shortly from the sound were distant screams, but he ignored it. As it were, his legs were through the material, and he had to struggle to free himself into a less humiliating position. If he had blood vessels, his face would have heated. He immediately filed the memory into the ‘do not touch’ vault along with everything else he omitted telling Dana about.What the hell were these buildings made of? Cardboard? The infrastructure was atrocious, some members of his biomass couldn’t help but bubble up and comment internally. The code violations in the structural stability alone would make any lawyer a mint, though that depended on what building codes were even in place in Turkey. Some parts of his biomass that he recognized belonging to the few innocent safety inspectors he had mistaken for Gentek employees despaired at the sight. If it could barely handle his density, then he couldn’t imagine how it was able to survive through harsh winters.With a huff, he stalked to the edge of the roof, taking care of how he shifted his mass with each step. Then, he made the mistake of tasting the air.Rot.He doubled over and heaved, but nothing came out. He lacked the organs to do it. He swiftly deconstructed his olfactory organs, but it didn’t help. His tendrils tasted the air regardless, kept dragging in the scent of death, filling him with it. He coughed violently, desperately trying to disgorge. He staggered back, away from the stench to no avail. It followed him, curling acridly through him.In a final desperate attempt, he forced his skin to harden to block his senses. A thick, impenetrable mass grew over him, similar to the black Armor he wore, covering his body from head to toe. Thankfully, it seemed to work - he abruptly couldn’t smell anything at all, like a blanket covered him. He let out an internal sigh of relief.
What the fuck was that!?
Redlight didn’t do that. It didn’t smell like death. It didn’t carry the stench of old rotting corpses. The hosts were alive, if brain-dead, but still alive. At most, it simply smelled of masses of unwashed humans covered in blood and rank bile. Which was not pleasant, but his senses had long since attuned to associating Infected with food.This? He tried to imagine consuming anything with that fetid miasma attached, and shuddered. His tendrils coiled in on themselves as if protesting the very thought. They might as well have been.Suddenly, inhuman shrieks filled the air below him. Claws scratched manically against the side of the building - something was scrambling up, spitting and screeching. More and more claws joined in, until a veritable mob of creatures were quickly advancing onto his position. Calmly, he turned to face the first one that leapt onto the roof.It was a… creature. Rather, an infected. It stood upright unlike a Hunter, though it was covered in slabs of red, fleshless skin patched with deathly pale skin that mimicked his own. Its chest was burst open with sharp ribs splayed out haphazardly, but most notably, where its jaw should have been was sliced open, and instead was hanging loosely from its cheeks like insect mandibles.It circled him slowly, predatorily, as if unsure what to make of him. Its eyes burned an unearthly orange and bore straight into his. Was it trying to measure him up? Intimidate him? Two could play at that game.He moved to match its stride, and it snarled warningly, clicking its mandibles. Shortly after, he was surrounded by the other creatures that made it to the roof, but none made a move to attack yet. Not all of them were like the creature ahead of him. Most were more human, but he didn’t want to look away from the creature to make any sudden movements. Predators would take that as an offense; He had to squash that instinct fast back when peace times rolled around.Its movements were unsettlingly familiar to his own. Confident, predatory, hungry. He could feel the rest of them move in closer, but… They didn’t feel coordinated. They each moved separately, unsynchronized, guided by instinct rather than command. They had more in common with animals than the Infected under Greene.Sudden worry struck him. Did they have a Hive Mind at all? How would he find the Runner if they were all disconnected? Was there even a Runner in the first place?He chased the thoughts from his head. He was about to find out anyway, after he consumed them.The creature evidently had the same idea. With all pretenses dropped, it lunged at him, claws swiping out uncontrollably. He curved away from the attack, and readied a kick - but was grabbed from behind. They pulled at his neck, screaming while attempting to rip it from him and drag him closer, but he instead reeled back and splattered the head of the infected behind from its neck with a single punch.He blinked, analyzing the viscera on his armored fist, then at the fallen body. It was one of the more human ones. One punch usually was enough for the infected, but to have its head explode? The flesh and bone holding its body together must’ve been thin.The headless body didn’t seem to bother the rest of the crowd. They jumped at him, spitting and screeching. Gangly arms tugged and clawed at him in all directions, but none were able to scratch his Armor. He didn’t bother dodging. Instead, he willed his arm to sharpen.With a slice, he bisected three of the human-like infected. They crumpled into a bloody heap - but were stomped over by more screaming infected taking their place. He sliced through more, cutting through body and limb like butter. Strangely, the mandibled creatures simply watched the carnage from outside of the group. Yep, they were definitely measuring him up.As soon as he beheaded the final human-like infected with a gurgled shriek, they pounced, actually bowling him over with the force. He was pinned against the floor, those orange eyes glaring boiling hatred into his. Fists smashed against his head, claws tore into his chest, mandibles bit into his throat, but still his Armor held. The bastards were fucking heavy-But not heavy enough. With a shove, he forcefully threw the creature atop him several feet back and jumped to his feet. Credit to where credit’s due - the creature only stumbled, quickly regaining its balance. The assault didn’t stop. He dodged aside as another one of the creatures pounced at him, then again when he almost backed into another.He had enough of being on the defensive. It wasn’t his style. The tendrils in his legs coiled, and he leapt straight up. Snapping his eyes to the nearest one, he shot towards it with a burst of speed - and sliced through it with almost no resistance. It slumped to the floor with a pitiable whine in two bloodied chunks.…What.Experimentally, he lifted his bladed arm high above his head and swung down on the next creature. It cut straight through cleanly in half, as easily as the screeching infected. It screamed bloody murder just like them when it died, too.That was it? This was what he was called to a whole different fucking country for? This is what Blackwatch was scared about? Even fucking Walkers didn’t keel over so easily, not to mention Hunters. These ones couldn’t even scratch his Armor, let alone take a hit from him. This had to be some kind of diversion, he was certain of it now.Growling, he turned to face the final creature, readying his bladed arm. It hissed and clicked its mandibles, but held no fear. It didn’t approach, standing back, so he did instead. It inhaled suddenly - and he was too close to dodge the globule of mucus it spat at his face.The first and only thought he had was Bloodtox.“Motherfuck-!” he hissed, clutching his face. His face - it burned, dripping, dissolving. Pieces of himself dribbled down his body, sizzling and steaming. The pain radiated, spreading slowly outwards, and his world grew dark. He felt his skin bubble and burst, only increasing as it traveled through his body.Blindly, he swiped where he last saw the creature, but his blade only sliced through air. The acid ate through his Armor, ate through his false flesh. It was dissolving his virions into denatured goop - so he made the only choice he could. Desperately, he willed his blade into claws, then with a single strike, he sloughed off half of his head.…For only a precious moment, he lost consciousness. But through it, he forced every single part of Blacklight in him to repair the missing chunk as fast as possible. His biomass obeyed without question, thinning and stretching to cover the wound and regrow it, leaving him to stumble forward dizzily. It felt like patchwork, like replacing a hole with flesh from another body. A part of him emptied, and he felt the beginnings of hunger fray the back of his mind. But it was a sacrifice that needed to be made.Snarling with regrown teeth and glaring with rebuilt eyes, he faced the creature once more. Surprisingly, it had only moved away from him during his regeneration instead of pressing its opportunity. Was it wary of him?He didn’t care for the answer. Without any hesitation, he leapt at the creature with his claws forward, knocking it to the ground. It wriggled and snarled in his grasp, clacking its mandibles forwards in a pathetic attempt to bite him. But when he saw it inhale once more, he immediately grabbed its jaws with both hands and tore its head in half. Its body spasmed once, then fell limp.Wasting no time for somatic death, he burrowed his feeder tendrils into the flesh of the creature, pumping it full of his virus. But it wasn’t melting. Confused, he tried pushing further in, but the creature’s body only partially liquefied. Was the virus somehow more powerful than his own? That made no sense. It wouldn’t have died so easily if it was.He shrugged - a meal’s a meal - and pulled its mass into himself regardless.And immediately threw it up. His tendrils rejected it so hard that it flew from the roof to the ground below, where it exploded into a splatter of gore, covering the street and unmoving cars with blood, slightly dissolved chunks of flesh, and shattered pieces of bone.What the fuck.That thing was dead. Fully, completely dead. And it wasn’t him who killed it - it died months ago. What he fought was nothing more than a virus piloting a corpse. Familiarity with that particular situation aside, that meant he couldn’t assimilate them into his mass. He couldn’t eat them.
He couldn’t eat the Infected in Harran.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After the fun of the fight wore off, he recoiled from the stench of the rotting flesh that hung in the air. The new corpses he added to it didn’t help, the fresh blood seeping from where he cut them already blackened and congealed. In response, the hardened mass that covered the rest of his body automatically regrew to cover his face, leaving him once again in a blissful, scentless world.He knew he couldn’t stay Armored forever; Though he had evolved vastly through the years he spent cleaning up the remains of Redlight, he never could quite get over the diminished mobility that it saddled him with. The density was just too much. The laws of physics, distant as he was to them, had to intervene at some point. Additionally, the Armor was very noticeable. He’d just have to get used to the smell of decay eventually.He stalked over to the edge of the roof, and listened to the din of activity on the street below. Several more of those creatures walked the streets with those same heavy footsteps, but none of them noticed him, or even the remains of the half-digested creature. They stepped right through it, tracking the blood with them.He frowned. They weren’t acting as a Hive Mind, not in the slightest. Greene’s Infected would always know where he was, even before he was connected himself. She sent Hunters by the droves, pinpointing him through hundreds of other warm bodies. Most of the time, he took priority over the military even when he wasn’t attacking them back. If there was a Hive Mind directing these creatures, either Alex was too low a priority, it was too fragmented to focus, or it was just stupid. He wasn’t about to underestimate them, though, not after one melted his Armor like that.What kind of virus was able to animate the dead like that, though? There were viruses that could remain on bodies long after death in the effort to transmit to the next host, usually in hopes that the body would be eaten. But these hosts went about it in the opposite way - they bit the victim. Most likely some off-shoot of rabies, genetically engineered to somehow remain despite complete cell death. In other words, zombies. Real zombies. Dana would get a kick out of that.At the thought of his sister, her phone’s presence in his mass grew obvious. With the communications jam, it was effectively now a useless chunk of metal and plastic that took up space in him. But he said he’d give it back in one piece, usefulness aside, so he would. He then noted, with some mental chiding, that it wasn’t accompanied by its charger. He wouldn’t have been able to use it no matter what in the end.The streets below finally cleared of the creatures during his train of thought, their wandering hunting taking them elsewhere. Tempted as he was to jump down and get on with it, he first took count of his surroundings, both distant and near. Two tall complexes, nearly on the level of those he was used to in Manhattan, were lit up a few miles away. The one to the right had multiple floors with lights on, while the one on the left was fully dark. Further out beyond to the right was a genuine skyscraper, though it seemed to be under construction that would never finish. No other building in this part of the city came close to matching its height, which just made him wonder why the hell they would scrape the funds to build that in the middle of the city slums instead of the city proper.Lights meant humans. Survivors. On the broadcasts Dana showed him, the news anchors did mention that there still were some alive - and no wonder, humans were remarkably tenacious. Even after 90% of their population in Manhattan were infected, they bounced right back after Greene bit it. That was some good news at least. Depending on how long he spent here, he’d need to keep an eye on his food supply.He hopped down onto the highway street below, and landed with a booming crunch onto a parked car, nearly flattening it to the ground. A growl rose from his throat as he stepped out of the wrecked car and punted it off of the raised highway, causing it to flip and crash into the softer dirt below. At least he didn’t crash into the road itself. Asphalt cracked too easily, and always left a trail of evidence whenever he took to a sprint. If his mass was more spread out instead of being concentrated into one superdense spot, then he’d have to worry a lot less about breaking shit all the time, but a vain part of himself wanted to keep his appearance as it was no matter how inefficient it was.Then, he heard the screams, and along with it felt a twinge of annoyance. The familiar screams of those infected like the ones he slaughtered erupted in the distance and were rapidly closing in. They weren’t as fast as a Hunter, or even as fast as a Walker at full sprint, but they scrambled towards him at a speed pushing the limits of the human body. To his surprise, they clambered over buildings and cars seemingly effortlessly, like the city was just a giant obstacle course. He was almost impressed by their mobility - Walkers couldn’t climb and Hunters just jumped to the tops of buildings. No wonder most of Harran was overtaken if this was what was chasing everyone.He willed his arm to lengthen into coiled, bladed ropes, and waited for the group of six infected to arrive. He reeled back, then swiped in a lengthy arc, cutting cleanly through the group. The screams cut abruptly short. Their bodies all crumpled to the ground in a bloody heap of parts, to which he turned his nose up at. It was a disappointing waste of biomass, but his feeder tendrils refused to even try consuming them after the first failure.He waited a bit longer for more to come, but no more did. What attracted them? If it was all instinctual as he thought, then it was most likely their senses. A dead body wouldn’t have good senses if their eyes rotted from their sockets and their nose from their face, but undead didn’t have to follow known logic. Based on how his crashes brought them over, it was most likely sound that attracted them. He growled - subtlety was not his strongest suit, but he’d have to get some practice in if he didn’t want to get mobbed at all times.And so, painfully slowly, he jogged at a pace that wouldn’t crack the asphalt.—---------As the sun rose, he noticed that the mandibled creatures left somewhere, and taking their place were hundreds of slow-moving, drooling human-like infected. They crawled out from within buildings and from under cars to the streets in daylight. They didn’t even turn their heads when he walked by, hissing and gurgling at nothing in particular. Experimentally, he punched a few of them in their tumor-filled heads. Each one exploded delightfully in a shower of gore, dead on the spot. And, as expected, his feeder tendrils refused to touch their bodies. He even had to wipe off their coagulated blood from his hands in the old-fashioned human way since his usual method of corpse disposal wasn’t working.The slow infected barely reacted to others dying right next to them. More accurately, they reacted to the sound of the body hitting the street, then stood around dazed. He tipped one over with a light push, and it fell to the ground with little resistance.Why did these ones exist? They were a waste of space. How anyone could possibly get caught by the slow ones was a mystery.Tucked within his biomass, the military radio suddenly came to life, with someone speaking through it in a terse tone, though through his mass he could only make out warbled murmuring as if hearing it underwater. He lifted an arm, splitting his wrist apart in a mass of writhing tendrils, and plucked the radio from it. The voice he instantly recognized as Cross’s became clear as soon as it hit the air, though with some obvious static and interference.“-and are you hearing me, Mercer?” snapped the man on the other side.“Couldn’t before, I can now,” he answered, pushing roughly through the crowd of drooling infected, knocking over several of them. “Repeat what you said?”“Fine. I’ll make this quick,” Cross said, calmly but urgently. “This line is unmonitored. For future reference, don’t call it yourself, I’ll call you with it. I can spend only a few minutes on it too, so keep it short. Give me your report.”“You’ll be relaying this?” he asked. He crushed the skull of one of them with his heel.“No. Blackwatch isn’t aware of the full extent of our communications yet. You’ll be contacted by them in a few days with the same question - not much time. So, give me your report.”Cross wasn’t in on the operation, then. Alex hopped atop a nearby van, the metal creaking under his density, and shifted to a crouch. He briefly ran through the order of events in his head. He couldn’t trust Cross - not fully, never fully - but on the slim chance that management could keep their word, he relented.“I woke up in Harran about six hours ago, but I’m not sure how long I was out for,” he began. “Some Infected found me and attacked, so I killed them. Easily.” He scowled. “Even a normal human could kill these things. A damn civvie could do it. What the hell was I sent over for?”Cross seemed to chew on what Alex said for a bit before speaking up. “Like I said, the higher-ups are being tight-lipped about it. Regardless, there’d be boots on the ground if they knew it wasn’t as dangerous as they thought, so keep that part to yourself. But for Christ’s sake, when you give your report, don’t lie outright to them. Remember what’s on the line. Anything else?”Blackwatch didn’t know? Or did Cross not know? It could just be the beginnings of investigations; If he was their first agent on soil, then it was possible. Relative strength was difficult to gauge through observation, after all. But he still found that difficult to believe.“I tried consuming one of them,” he said. “Didn’t work. Whatever this virus is, it isn’t Redlight.”“Shit,” Cross muttered. “Omit that, too.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “Try to collect samples of it. You’ll need something to send in when they come to collect. Don’t put your opinion on it, just give them the data. Is that all?”
“Should be,” Alex said. Collect, huh? So they would be sending someone down after him. That, or they’d find a terminal to establish a connection to, but it wasn’t as if he was given coordinates for any. He couldn’t imagine how long it would take to relay data samples through voice, even though that was something he was definitely capable of doing. Willing to do too, just to piss them off.
“Alright. In the meantime, go play nice with the locals. I doubt you were given anything to store samples in, so go find someone who does. Over and out.”
The locals? The human locals? “Wait-” he started, but the transmission already ended. “...Roger that."
He could play human. He could play human good enough to fool some of the most paranoid people on the planet, those that were both aware of his abilities and actively looking for him. Stifling himself was annoying, but a means to an end was a means to an end. No one in Harran knew his face - or maybe they did, if they paid attention to American news. Knowing his face never helped the people of Manhattan. They never recognized him until it was too late.
With that, he turned his sights to the twin complexes.
—---------
Before the sun had fully risen, the Tower was abuzz with activity. One of the scouts that often spent time on the roof had been readying himself for sleep when something fell out of the sky. It fell too fast to be a drop, and when he pulled out the nearby binoculars, he saw that whatever it was had parachutes attached to it. When the Tower leader himself showed up to take the binoculars from him, Yusuf knew better than to deny him. Or stick around.
The rumor mill exploded overnight. It began with low chatter about a strange noise people heard that woke up the kids. Most thought of it as maybe a Goon hitting a power main, or one of the bigger ones chucking a slab of concrete at a construction site to send it all crumbling down. But when Yusuf came down the stairs talking about some weird thing falling from the sky with a parachute, it sent ripples down the ladder, ending up like a game of telephone.
Some thought it was a bomb, that the Ministry finally lost their patience and decided to blow up the place, but that somehow the detonation failed. Others thought it was maybe a giant care package from a different agency, and that the morning crew should go pick it up before Rais’s men could. A select few thought it was a chemical weapon being dropped in to deal with the plague. The kids said it was a monster sent to kill everyone.
Investigating what it was became the most interesting new topic for the survivors at the Tower, and by morning, there was a runner squad prepared to go out and have a look.
—---------
Rahim kicked an empty can, causing it to roll and fly off of the roof with a clatter. He followed it to the edge, and watched the city he once knew burn below. He could point out the Apteka where he used to pick up prescriptions for Jade when she was too busy to do it herself. It was already looted dry by the time the quarantines got put in place, so all it was was just a standing memory. Even from so high up, he could point out the video rental just by the color of its roof. He could still remember the fit his mum put up when he spent his first pocket money on a rental instead of on ‘something useful.’ The videos were probably all still there by now; no one really had much use for those anymore.
“Hey, Rahim, we’re here,” said a voice from behind. He turned and saw Omar and Rami both waiting by the door with - yes! - their gear already on. Decked out in machetes and spare bats, and if he wasn’t mistaking it, there was a handle of a pistol sticking just barely out of Omar’s pocket.
“Alright!” Rahim said excitedly. “So, they’re gone?”
“Yeah, but not for long,” Rami said, and Omar nodded. “Adham is going to distract the guards soon on our signal. We put the stuff in a bag outside. We couldn’t bring too much without Emre getting suspicious, so it’s just the basics.”
“That’s fine, the basics are all I need,” he assured, both to them and to himself. Finally, finally, he’d be able to do something useful. Even if it was something so small as investigating whatever it was that Yusuf was talking about, or if he was lucky, intercepting an airdrop before anyone else could.
He jogged over to join them, and the three of them ran down the stairs and to the elevator. Some survivors they passed by gave them odd looks, but didn’t say anything. When they reached the first floor, Omar told Rahim to act as casually as possible, and the two of them engaged in a meaningless conversation about the weather and the price of tea in China. Only a couple minutes later, Rami whistled them over to the entrance stairwell, with the guard that normally stood there conspicuously missing.
“We don’t have much time,” Rami whispered, pushing something small and cold into Rahim’s hand. He stole a peek at it - it was the keys to the door - then shoved it into his pocket. “Go run out, we’ll be right behind you. The bag is on the bench near the tree. If any Biters come, just climb the tree.”
“I know how to get away from a Biter,” he hissed back petulantly, but nodded to the plan.
At Omar’s thumbs up, Rahim strode from his spot leaning against the wall and leapt down to the broken stairwell. The guard that was normally there was missing too. He briefly wondered how Adham managed to get them to desert their posts and resolved to ask him later when they got the chance. When he reached the front door, he fumbled with the keys for a moment before unlocking it with a clink, leaving the key in the lock.
The first thing that hit him as he stepped through, other than the sudden sunlight blinding him for a second, was the horrible smell. Biters, he knew. Their distinctive dead-body odor never reached the roof, especially not with the constant breeze up there. But he didn’t care! He was out! He was out!
He let out a whoop, not caring who heard, and practically sprinted to the large bag sitting near a toppled bench, just like they said it would be. Or close enough to it, anyway. In his haste to unzip it, it got caught on the material several times before he was able to fully see what was inside. A giant grin stretched across his face. Batons, bats, knives, firecrackers, flares, and even two small pistols! One gun for him and one for Rami, he guessed. They’d be unstoppable!
He whirled around as he heard footsteps approach behind him, but it was just those two, jogging up to him. Rami dug into the bag and picked up one of the pistols with an approving grunt before stashing it in his back pocket.
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Rahim asked breathlessly. “Brecken’s going to kill us if he finds out.”
“Emre leaves his crap lying around when he goes to sleep,” Omar answered nonchalantly. “Me and Adham were able to nick it over the last couple weeks without anyone noticing.” He pointed to Rami, who was zipping up the bag. “Rami took the guns from the closet where the guards leave their stuff. There’s not a lot of ammo, though.”
Rahim inspected the pistol that held heavy in his hands. He didn’t know guns that well, but he at least knew how to point at things and shoot. From the movies, he knew guns came with a safety catch, but he couldn’t see where it was on this one. He hoped that wouldn’t get in the way when it came time to use it.
“Is Adham coming too?” he asked as they got ready to set out.
“Nah,” Omar said. “He didn’t care about the bomb-thing. He just wanted some action, I think. Maybe he just wanted to screw over the guards. I heard them yelling at him for something earlier.”
“Let’s go,” Rami said, slugging the bag over his shoulder. Rahim was secretly glad he wasn’t the one carrying it - it looked heavy as hell. “Yusuf said it was over by the apartments, kinda far northwest from here. We can also just go to the Cauldron and wait if any airdrops come. I don’t really want to run into your sister if I can help it.”
“Jade is over at the Cauldron today with Amir,” Rahim said. He wasn’t completely sure who was in the runner team at the explosion from yesterday, but at the very least, she wasn’t.
“Oh. Bomb-thing it is, then.”
They set off without another word. If they paced themselves while running, he guessed it would take the three of them about an hour and a half to reach the apartment zone, since it took Jade three to go there and back. She knew the layout of Harran a lot better than him or Omar… He added ten minutes extra to the total estimate. Rami went on a lot of pickups, though, so he led the way.
As they ran across the ledge by the Gym, he took one last look at the Tower. His prison for almost eight months. It looked… a lot smaller on the outside, somehow. Like the past few months have just been spent in a tiny hut instead. It might as well have been, since only five of the twenty-two floors weren’t blocked off. Every month, another floor was lost, and his space grew smaller and smaller, though they only really had half of it to begin with. But now, he finally would get a taste of what Jade could do every day.
Rami hopped over the stone wall with ease, landing on the makeshift wooden bridge below with a loud creak. The three of them tensed - but it must have been too quiet for Virals. He beckoned them down, and they followed.
“Shouldn’t we stick to roofs?” Rahim whispered as they sprinted through the alleyways of the ghetto, stepping carefully over any wood or metal. So far, no Biters.
“If we go fast enough, Biters can’t catch you,” Rami muttered back. “We’ll go to the roofs once we’re out of this part. It’s too loud to run on them without getting Virals on your ass.”
“Maybe too loud for your fatass,” Omar remarked. Rahim stifled a laugh and Rami shushed them both.
Soon, they skirted through an opening where the buildings seemed more solid. It used to be shops - not any he used to visit, but he could recognize those signs anywhere. His heart almost stopped when they nearly ran headfirst into a group of Biters, but Rami abruptly changed directions to climb onto the roof of the closest shop. He offered a hand to the other two, but they didn’t need it as they clambered after him.
Now they jumped from roof to roof. It was a game of being careful and sure-footed while also keeping enough momentum to actually make it from one platform to the next. The movements he made were the same as those he made at the Gym, but it was so different. The only way Rahim could describe it was exhilarating. One slip up could spell death. If he lost his footing at any moment, he would tumble straight into a group of Biters. The wind rushed by him as he ran, drowning out the growls of the infected below. Laughter bubbled out of his chest - he never felt so alive!
When they reached underneath an overpass, they had to drop to the ground again. Luckily, there were only a couple Biters standing near the makeshift houses. They easily ran past them, though Rahim’s heart jumped to the roof of his mouth when they reached out to grab at him. Suddenly, Rami skidded to a stop, forcing the other two to almost trip over as they stopped near him.
“What-?” he began, but Rami shushed him, and pointed directly ahead. His blood ran cold. Standing before them at nearly two and a half meters tall was a Goon, seemingly unaware of their presence.
The Goon blocked their path. They weren’t stupid enough to try and run past it like they did Biters - one hit from that monster meant turning solid bone into paste. But, he doubted the roofs of the nearby hovels could support their weights. Evidently, Rami and Omar thought the same, because they stood stunned, hopefully forming a plan. Wet, drooling growls echoed from behind. The Biters were approaching, and the only weapon he had on him would invite all the Virals in a fifty kilometer radius to dinner.
Omar silently shook Rami’s shoulder, pointing to an alleyway close to the Goon. Rahim stole a peek at what they were looking at, but all he could see was a chain link fence, and on the other side of it a muddy hill, too steep to properly run on. But between the Goon, the broken roofs, and the Biters, trudging through mud sounded pretty good. The three nodded to each other, and took off. But the Goon saw them.
With a gurgled roar, it stomped towards them, the rebar it held scraping loudly against the stone. They were faster. But as he climbed over the fence, he was tugged back - his coat was caught. Heart hammering in his ears, he frantically struggled to loose himself, with Omar and Rami both urging him to hurry. The stomping grew closer along with the ear splitting scraping, one slow step at a time. Then, he remembered.
“Rami! In the bag! Firecrackers!”
Wasting no time, the bag tore open as they dug one out. Omar chucked it as hard as he could over the fence, the loud crackling and popping already starting before it hit the ground. As expected, like the (thankfully) easily distracted idiots they were, both the Biters and the Goon lost interest in the living humans near them to focus on the new noises, leaving them be. He still couldn’t unhook himself, so Omar pulled out a knife from the bag and cut the piece of coat off, causing Rahim to fall ungainly into the mud with a quiet splat.
“Thanks,” he said shakily. It took several deep breaths to get his heart out of his ears, but they waited patiently. He got up and did his best to get the mud out of his clothes, but his best was far from enough. “Why didn’t you use the firecrackers earlier to get the Goon out of the way?”
Rami shrugged, his expression slightly pinched with annoyance at the question. “I don’t usually need them for anything. Like I said, Biters can’t catch you if you go fast enough, same goes with Goons. This was just bad luck.”
“Whatever you say,” he said breezily.
They continued on, avoiding the Biters on the ground. Thankfully, the Biters weren’t in big groups as the pathways were too narrow for them to gather up, but just wide enough to give each one a necessary berth. After a few more minutes of running, they finally made it through beyond the crumbling slums and into more sturdy architecture. They immediately took to the roofs again, not stopping for rest until they hit the trainyard. And they would’ve passed it by without care if he didn’t spot something out of the corner of his eye.
A shadow flew by them, so fast that the wind it left behind fluttered his coat, yet so silent that he couldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t seen it. Wide eyed, he stopped in place and whirled around, searching for what it was and where it could’ve gone.
“Rahim? What’s up?” Omar asked, trying to see what Rahim was looking for.
“...Thought I saw something.”
There was nothing there, but a shiver ran down his spine. His hair stood on end - there were definitely eyes on him. Was there a bandit watching them, waiting for them to drop their guard? But what was that shadow? Was he seeing things? Nothing human could move that fast. Not even Virals could, as far as he knew. He could only think of one other. Only the nightmares could do something like that, but the sun was bright in the sky. It wasn’t even lunchtime.
After staring for a while longer, Omar grew impatient with him and pushed him along the tracks. Rahim stumbled forward, then shook his head. He couldn’t afford to get distracted on the ground. They began their sprint again, running on the grass beside the tracks as the gravel would just slow them. Rami changed directions again, starting up the hilly incline towards a concrete wall with barbed wire curled on it. They followed suit, until Rahim heard the grass disturb behind him as if something just landed from flight.
“Hey.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hey.”The low, gravelly voice from behind made Rahim nearly jump out of his skin, along with Rami’s and Omar’s sudden expletives as they pulled out their guns. He stumbled over as he reached for the closest weapon - the pistol - and whipped around, shakily pointing it at the owner of the voice, his heart roaring in his ears.Standing before them was a man. Despite his face being obscured by a black hoodie, the slow crawling on Rahim’s neck made him fully aware that the man’s gaze was locked on him. It was watching his every move, his every twitch of the muscle, his every breath and every blink. He couldn’t help but freeze in place, like a rabbit centimeters from the open jaws of a fox.Still, he pointed the gun at the man’s chest, trying desperately to stop his hand from shivering. He needed to- he needed to say something, but his mouth was too dry to form the words. The man didn’t move, his hands in his pockets, yet something about his stiff posture, his stare, the way he didn’t even seem to breathe made all of Rahim’s body scream danger.“Who… Who the hell are you!? One of Rais’s guys?” he heard Omar yell, brandishing the pistol wildly with his finger on the trigger.The man cocked his head, as if confused by the question. Finally, the oppressive weight of his eyes left Rahim and snapped to Omar instead, who froze up. Still, Rahim couldn’t move - somehow, he knew the three of them were already dead. Omar’s hands shook so much that Rahim worried he would drop the gun, but somehow he managed to hold steady.“Do you…” the man began in the same low voice. He trailed off, seemed to think for a moment, then continued. “Do you have a large bore hypodermic needle, some swabs, a biopsy punch, or a triple sealed container? Any will do.”What.“What-?” Omar squeaked, echoing Rahim’s thoughts. “No! Wait- Answer my question first!”A soft, inhuman growl reverberated through the air forced him to rip his eyes away from the man. It sounded like a damn Volatile-! Both he and Rami looked around wildly for the source, but soon realized with a seize of his heart that the source was right in front of them. Omar, pinned under the man’s gaze, just stared back, not daring to make a sudden move.“Do you… know someone who would have it, then?” the man asked stiltedly. Despite his confused tone, Rahim could tell that his patience was wearing thin. Whoever - or whatever - this guy was, he didn’t seem to even notice the guns pointed at him.Rami stepped in front of them, pistol raised to the man’s head, but the man didn’t react. Was it just a brave front? Rami was stiff, so tense that he looked seconds away from springing into action. He dropped the bag hanging from his shoulders to the gravel with a thud, then used his free hand to hold up the other to steady his aim.“Answer the question,” Rami demanded. “Give us your name. Are you one of Rais’s men?”“We aren’t afraid to shoot!” Rahim piped up, lying. The man’s gaze flicked to him, then to Rami, and let out a quick huff. Was that… a laugh?“Fine. I’m Alex,” the man- Alex relented. Rahim blinked. That name was too normal for a creepy weirdo like that! He even knew an Aleksandra at the Tower! “I don’t work for Rais,” he continued, saying the name as if it was the first time he heard it. “That good enough?”The pistol aimed at Alex’s head wavered, then lowered. Rahim stole a glance around. Omar lowered his too, though didn’t put it away. So, Rahim decided to follow suit, holding it at the ready but not outright threatening the man.“Do you know where I can get the stuff or not?” Alex asked, leveling a scowl. His hood lifted slightly to reveal the eyes that have been watching the three. Rahim startled at the sheer cold and dead look, and resisted jumping again when they snapped to his movements. Those eyes belonged more on a Volatile than some random guy!Alex seemed to be waiting for something, shifting about in place - then Rahim remembered that there was a question asked.“Uh, I don’t know,” he said, stomping down on the urge to stammer and wilt back. Even as the guy tried to make himself unassuming, all of Rahim’s nerves still screamed at him to get the hell out of there. “Maybe Doctor Zere would have something like that?”The words left his mouth before he even registered what he said. Omar stared at him like he was an idiot while Rami tried to shush him unsuccessfully. And with that, he realized that he was indeed an idiot. Not even Rais’s gang knew about Zere as far as he knew, and there he was, just giving out names because he got intimidated. He would’ve sunk into the ground if Alex’s stare wasn’t focused on him, keeping him ramrod straight. Did the guy ever blink?“And where would I find Doctor Zere?” he asked, though it felt more like a demand.Before he could make another mistake though, Rami came to his rescue. “If you don’t work for Rais, then who do you work for? You’re clearly not from the Tower, and we’ve never seen you before.”Alex stood silently, trying to bore holes through Rami’s skull with his glare. Maybe they shouldn’t be interrogating the man who wasn’t bothered by three guns pointed at his face, Rahim thought but didn’t voice.“I was a tourist,” he said eventually, shrugging. “Made it from the other side of the city.”“Fine,” Rami relented. It didn’t sound like he believed Alex, but Rahim didn’t either. What kind of tourist could make it all the way through from the epicenter of the infection all the way to the Slums by himself? Without any weapons either, Rahim noted with surprise; Unless he was concealing it, the man didn’t even have a pipe on him. “What do you want with those… things you asked for?”“Could we have this interrogation somewhere else?” Omar cut in out of the blue before Alex could say anything. “We’re out in the open. I’m surprised a horde of Biters hasn’t shown up yet. At least maybe to the roofs.” He gestured towards the trainyard roundhouse, then faced Alex again. “You’re good with climbing, right?”Alex raised an eyebrow, the first truly normal expression Rahim’s seen on him since they met. He could understand the feeling - getting interrogated with guns aimed at him, then directed to join them in a secondary location to get interrogated further. That didn’t help him relax any, though.“I can climb,” Alex said, sparing a glance at the metal roundhouse. “If I tell you what I’ll be doing with the materials, are you going to direct me to this Doctor?”“That depends on what it is,” Rami said in a clipped tone, bending down to heft the bag back over his shoulder. Rahim’s eyes widened. Rami must have been seriously freaking out to be that outwardly hostile.But Alex just shrugged. Hands still in his pockets, he began to walk towards the roundhouse. The guy didn’t even walk normally. His shoulders were hunched like he expected to get attacked at any moment, his steps were confident yet quiet, like he was on the prowl for something. Rahim had half a mind to ask him if he was related to a Volatile, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.The three of them - four now, he corrected - made it to the edge of the roundhouse without incident. The area was clear of Biters, despite it being a perfect place for them. Shaded, damp, lots of places to pop up unexpectedly. The majority of them were probably inside of the roundhouse, since it was pretty easy to stumble on the gravel surrounding the outside. Still, he was grateful that they didn’t have to deal with them. There were already thirty people in the Antizin line, he didn’t want to be number thirty-one.There wasn’t a direct way up to the roof, but from what he’s heard from Jade and Rami, there never usually was. They were runners, experts at parkour - they’d figure something out. From what he could see, there were two ways they could make it up without having to go inside of the building. To the left, there was a stone walling they could climb up, then if all four of them had the right upper-body strength, they could pull themselves up onto the metal sheet that was jutting out. The other way was to climb on top of one of the parked trains, up the metal railing, then take a flying leap onto the roof. Either way was dangerous for a beginner.“Left or right?” he asked quietly, but both Rami and Omar were already clambering up the stone. It made sense, he supposed. Real runners thought on their feet. They didn’t need to ask when they could already work in tandem. They didn’t need dead weight.He was about to follow when a chill ran through his body. Oh. Right. Alex. Those dead eyes were locked on him, and he couldn’t help but shudder. The constant glaring, he could deal with. Lots of shell-shocked victims of the outbreak stared into space for minutes to hours on end. One of the kids had it so bad that he would only talk on good days, and even then it would be single words. He was used to getting stared at.Rahim had only run into a Volatile once before. He thought it safe to say that standing beside Alex felt like the second.“Do you need help getting up?” he asked hesitantly.“No,” Alex replied, and Rahim let out a muted sigh of relief. “It’ll be loud if I get on there. The screamers might come.”Screamers? Oh, Virals. Wait- “How could you climbing up that be so loud it attracts Virals?”He actually looked somewhat bashful for a moment, an expression almost alien on his face. “I’m pretty heavy,” Alex admitted. Rahim gave him a once-over. As creepy and hunched up as he looked, he seemed like an average build under that jumper. Maybe he was secretly jacked. That would explain at least partially how he was able to get through Harran without dying.“Let’s just get off the ground, at least,” he said, and lifted himself onto the wall. “You can’t be that heavy. And if you are, then we got plenty of weapons! It’ll be fine.” Why was he reassuring this guy!? But, then again, Alex hasn’t actually done anything to them yet. Maybe they were being suspicious for no reason.And so, Rahim pulled himself to the roof where his friends were waiting and chatting about something in hushed tones. He was about to join them when the metal behind him wrenched with a loud screech. The three of them abruptly dropped what they were doing to rush over to the edge to see a disgruntled Alex on the ground, holding a ripped-off chunk of what used to be the jutting out sheet of metal on the roof. He threw it aside with a clatter like it personally offended him, then started off towards the direction of the entrance of the building. Thankfully, as loud as it was, it was under the volume threshold for Virals to come swarming in.Now he wanted to ask if Alex was related to a Demolisher too. A Volatile and a Demolisher having a night out - it sounded like the start of a bad joke, but from what he saw, it might as well be a valid theory.“What the hell was that?” Omar hissed, blinking owlishly at the now vacant spot. “Did you see that? He just- he took off that whole thing!” Rami just nodded, white as a sheet.“It was already rusting, maybe it just broke off when he got on it?” Rahim tried, though the justification sounded weak even to him. How heavy did someone have to be to do that?“Maybe? But-” Whatever Omar was going to say was cut off by the creaking of metal behind them. They jumped and turned - Rahim was suddenly glad he was young, because having so many heart attacks in one day probably already shaved off a decade from his life. The man climbed out from an already broken window leading to the roof without saying a word, and stalked over to them like nothing happened. Both Rami and Omar drew their pistols again, but kept them pointed to the ground.“Hey.”“What was that?” Omar blurted out, gesturing with the gun hand towards the direction where the metal sheet used to be.Alex’s scowl deepened. “I’m heavy.”“What? Bullshit! How fat do you have to be to rip off metal?”“Not fat, it’s-” Alex took a breath, muttering something unintelligible yet distinctly colourful. “Doctor Zere. Where is he?”“Like we’d say anything before-”“Tell us what you want with him first, and those materials,” Rami interrupted. Omar shot him a look. Business first, questions later. Though, Rahim really did want to know what was going on. Did Alex have something to do with the shadow from earlier? Was that him?“Fine,” Alex said. Then, he explained, each word sounding like it was physically painful to say, like pulling teeth. “I was a… scientist. Virologist. Before the outbreak. I lost my lab and my equipment, and everyone I used to work with.” He paused for a moment. “I need at least the basics to take field samples. Depending on what data is collected, a cure could be synthesized.”What.What!A scientist! Virologist! A cure!Rahim’s mouth dropped open. “Why didn’t you lead with that, then?” he said. So much could have been avoided if that was the first thing Alex said. If it was true, at least. It sounded way too good to be true.“You had guns pointed at my head,” Alex said in a deadpan.“Hang on, you said you were a tourist first,” argued Rami, stepping closer. “Scientist or tourist, which is it?”“Both. I don’t work every damn day of my life.”Well, they couldn’t argue with that. Maybe he was just antisocial, and that’s what made him creepy. That didn’t explain why Rahim’s skin crawled every time Alex looked at him, how he made it from the city center to the Slums, or how he managed to snap metal with his hands, but it was a start.“Are you going to direct me to Zere or not? I told you what you wanted to know,” Alex snapped, and the three of them flinched at his tone. They exchanged looks between each other, considering what to say next.“Prove that you’re a scientist,” Rami demanded.Alex shot them an exasperated look. “How? I don’t carry a doctorate around with me.” He muttered something under his breath again, then gestured towards the Tower and the Gym that stuck out above the motorway. “Look. You’re from there, right? That’s the Tower?” They froze, but Alex continued. “Just escort me there if you’re so damn scared of what I’ll do. You’re armed, you can handle it. Three against one.”—---------Alex decided that dealing with teenagers wasn’t worth the air it took to talk to them.Blackwatch was simple. He knew what they wanted - him dead - and they knew what he wanted - them dead. The situation got more complicated as time passed, unfortunately, but the base level of wants never changed. It was easy. With the Marines, it was a bit different, since they were just the fall boys. But a bullet through his mass usually came from the hands of an enemy unwilling to talk things out in the first place. He didn’t start fights after Randall’s death.Teenagers, on the other tendril, were much different. He had little experience with them. They were on Dana’s ‘do-not-eat’ list, as well as the ‘do-not-eat’ lists of many of those screaming in his mass. He’d never go out of his way to consume one anyway; there wasn’t much practical information to be gained from them, and their smaller bodies would provide less biomass for the trouble it took.But another issue was just that they were annoying. He never had much patience in the first place, but asking him to play nice and pretend to be human around a group of snotty brats was another thing altogether. He would just have to grit his teeth and bear it, though. At least until they reached Doctor Zere. Then, maybe, he would have some direction to go towards.It was slow going, the way to the Tower. The one with the bad attitude insisted on sticking to the roofs to get out of reach from the zombies. The slow, ineffective, useless zombies. What good would being on the roof be against the screaming ones? They would just climb right after, and faster too. He couldn’t stick to the ground, however, because at least one of the three always had an eye on him, and they would demand him to climb back up.What Cross would think of him now, if he saw the mighty ZEUS taking orders from a group of teenagers. He never heard the bastard laugh before, but that might be what it would take.He had to subtly shift his density for each footstep to not fall directly through each building, which didn’t help how long it was already taking. Even so, he still largely outpaced them. When they reached some kind of shanty town nearby the towering apartments, they jumped down from the rooftops, now weaving through the alleys. He completely understood why - there was no possible way any of those shitty roofs would be able to hold a human’s weight, let alone his.When they reached the edge of the stone stairs that led up to the Tower, the one with goggles on his head and mud on his shirt suddenly stopped, forcing the rest of them to as well.“Wait,” Goggle-boy said, even though they were already waiting. “I can’t just go back in. Not yet.”The rounder one frowned. “Right, your sister…”“She shouldn’t be back for a while, I haven’t seen the drop come down yet,” said the one with the bad attitude. He shifted to a whisper, and the three of them leaned close together away from Alex, but he could hear everything regardless. He looked away, pretending to ignore the conversation. “Rahim, if you want to stay out of the Tower, we can ditch this guy after we hand him off to Spike.”“Spike’ll tell Jade that I’m out,” Goggle-boy- or, Rahim whispered back. “And I don’t… really feel comfortable having him around everyone else.”“We’ll warn the guards about him. They have rifles, they can put him down in a second if he causes trouble.” Good luck with that. “Just wait outside, me and Omar will drop him off, then we’ll come back and we can do stuff.”Rahim nodded, and the three of them split the huddle. The annoying one took the bag from his shoulder with a huff and shoved it into Rahim’s arms, who almost buckled from the sudden weight. The innards of the bag clinked and shuffled around as the kid put it on. There were definitely weapons in there, judging by the metal and plastic sounds, but the only guns were the ones already in their pockets. It made sense, ammunition would be scarce in an apocalypse for the everyday man. He wished it were scarcer in Manhattan. As much as he enjoyed using the toys himself, his biomass didn’t appreciate healing the holes and burns all the time.The remaining two, Omar and the other, approached him. They kept their expressions neutral, but he could hear their racing heart beats and their quickened breaths. It was a good thing that he didn’t have a sense of smell, because just seeing them jittery like that caused a spike of hunger in his writhing mass.“We’re taking you to Doctor Zere, follow us,” said the unnamed one, taking the Glock out of his pocket, but not aiming it. That children had better gun manners than the spooks and troopers he met on the field was astounding. He could get used to this level of respect.“What about him?” Alex asked, jabbing a thumb at Rahim, who was leaning against the wall of the stairs.“He’s staying. The trailer isn’t that far, it’ll only take a couple minutes to get there.”And so they slowly trekked in an arc around the Tower. The streets were almost completely bare of the infected, and they jogged fast enough that any attempts to grab at them failed. He took the time to inspect the Tower as they passed it. The build itself wasn’t all that different to any apartment complex in Manhattan, being just as drab and colorless. The brick foundation wasn’t even painted over, criticized some of the more particular members of his biomass. Most of the windows were boarded up, and much of the outside was covered in graffiti. Yet, somehow, the most notable part of it were the billowing sheets that read ‘PLEASE HELP US!’ and ‘SURVIVORS INSIDE’, something that many of the buildings he passed by shared but never bothered to notice.They kept jogging until they reached a tall chain link fence by a road, one of the few made of asphalt and with cars in the area. The kid was right, it really was only a couple minutes away from the Tower. Omar put a finger to his lips, then knocked twice on the makeshift metal door stuck in the fence. After a second, it slid open with a screech to reveal a man in a combat uniform holding an ACR, but again not aiming it. A speck of respect bloomed in him for the survivors of Harran - they at least knew some form of trigger discipline.“Omar and Rami, isn’t it?” the guard said with a familiar accent, ushering them inside and closing the gate behind them. It was a small soccer court inside the fence, probably for little league. And, more importantly, to the right was a large semi truck occupying close to 70% of the place. Zere’s trailer. “And who’s this? Some straggler you picked up? The hell are you troublemakers gettin’ up to this time?”“Yeah, you could call him that,” Rami said. “This is Alex. He’s a scientist from the city center, and he wants to talk to the Doctor.”The guard’s eyes almost bugged out of his head as he turned to face Alex. “What? You serious? Jesus, man! How’d you manage that? You must be packin’ some serious heat under those layers!”Alex shrugged, then resisted startling as the man clapped him on the shoulder. He shoved the hand off more roughly than he meant to, causing the guard to hold up his hands in a mock surrender. Luckily for them both, his biomass was still dense enough that a brief touch wasn’t enough to make him lose it.“We’re just dropping him off,” Omar said behind him. “He’s not a bandit, as far as I can tell, but if he causes any trouble…”“Don’t worry about it,” the guard replied, lifting up the rifle in an obvious manner. “How’s Rahim doin’ these days? Haven’t heard much from the Tower lately.”“He’s fine, just bored.”“Ah, yeah, I get that. All cooped up in there. I don’t envy him, that’s for sure.”Alex tuned them out. Small talk was never high on his list of interests. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t much useful information to glean from the conversation, but he kept a single line of attention on it just in case. Fortunately, it didn’t end up taking too long.“Alright, I don’t want to keep you kids any longer, so off you get,” the guardsman said, and opened the gate again with a grunt. He waved as the two left, then closed it up after them. “Those lil’ shits, they’re worse than the ankle-biters up on the 19th. At least those ones don’t got a nasty attitude, you get me?”Alex just blinked. Was he supposed to respond? Evidently not, as the man continued. “Anyway, so you’re here for the Doc?”“Zere? Yes,” he replied. Finally, he’d be able to get something done, as soon as this guy would shut up and let him through.“Yeah, alright. Since those two vetted you, you’re probably an okay guy,” the guard said. He then studied Alex’s face for a moment, squinting. “Hang on a sec, do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar…”Oh. Of course the guy with the Boston accent would recognize him. “No. I look like a lot of people.”The man stared suspiciously for a few more seconds before shrugging. “Eh. Well, go on in. Zere’s in the trailer. He’s probably busy with somethin’ right about now, since he always is.”With that, Alex strolled towards the back of the truck. The guardsmen he passed gave him odd looks, some glaring and others just trying to get a better look at him under the hood. But, since they overheard his conversation with the gate guard, none tried to stop him as he walked up to the door in the back. It didn’t have a handle, so he pushed on it lightly and it gave way.It was a lab alright. A shitty, tiny lab with almost nothing but the bare essentials. He expected as much - it was in a trailer. At least it was organized. All the papers were filed and stacked neatly, nothing was strewn on the floor, though a pinch of nostalgia struck him as he looked upon the hundreds of sticky notes stuck over all available surfaces. It was missing a blackboard, but he could live without getting his hands dusted with chalk again.He frowned. Those weren’t his thoughts.There was an old man standing over an open laptop who immediately noticed Alex as he walked in. It would be hard not to, considering the ominous creaking that followed his every step on the trailer.“Another patient for Antizin? Come, sit, sit,” Doctor Zere directed, attempting to usher him into a nearby chair, but stopped as Alex held a hand up.“No, I don’t need… Antizin,” he said, causing Zere’s face to scrunch up in confusion. Was that what they were calling the vaccine? Did they already have one? He slightly regretted denying the offer - he could have studied the compound.“Then…? What are you here for? I’m sorry, but I’m terribly busy, if you aren’t here for your dose then I need to get back to work,” Zere said firmly but gently. To the point. He could respect that.He wasn’t much one for directing a conversation. He could, owing to both the memories in his mass and Dana’s yearslong quest to get him to talk to people. But if he wanted anything useful out of this encounter, he had no choice. He let his mind drift and latch onto a personality, bubbling up to the surface and taking over.He stuck out a hand, and when Zere hesitantly took it, he shook it firmly with both hands. “It’s great to meet you, Doctor,” Alex said with a lazy grin. He flipped down his hood, revealing a mop of messy dark hair. “Sorry about that! I must not look it at the moment, but I’m a doctor myself. A Virologist and part-time Geneticist, by trade. I’m afraid I left my lab coat at home.” He let out a good natured chuckle.Doctor Zere’s face lit up, washing over the confusion. “Ah! Really?” he said, his voice completely different to when he addressed Alex a moment before. “Forgive me, but is there any way that I could verify your claim?”“Don’t sweat it! I understand completely. I’d have a hard time believing that at face value too,” said Alex’s persona, running a hand through his false, wiry hair. It squirmed slightly at his touch, but he willed it to tamp down. “Unfortunately, most of my papers weren’t published, barring my graduate thesis. My piece on non-coding RNA was what got me hired.” He sighed. “Top secret stuff. Military contracting, y’know? But if there’s any way you could look it up, I’d be happy to show you.”Zere relaxed as Alex spoke. That’s a first, a part of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Dana commented.“It is okay, I can believe that,” Zere said, and glanced at the laptop. “There is no Internet access in Harran ever since the communication jam was put in place. In hindsight, it may have been a bit foolish of me to ask for proof.” Alex just smiled. It was good for them both. He didn’t need to see that name again. “Regardless, I didn’t catch your name, Doctor…?”“Alex. Just call me Alex.”“Yes, well, Doctor Alex-” His eye twitched minutely. “I still must ask what you came to me for. Is it to work on the cure?”Thankfully, his iron grip on the simulacrum prevented him from bursting into laughter then and there. The man was working on such a thing in a trailer lab with almost none of the necessities? He might have followed along back when he believed Karen was somehow developing a cure in a god damn house lab without any backing, but it’s been years since then.“A cure, you say?” Alex said, voice filled with interest. “I didn’t believe it possible! Could you tell me about it? I may be able to help.”“Yes,” he began, pushing some papers aside on the desk and opening files on the laptop. “It is… entirely theoretical, but my colleague and I believe a cure, or at least a vaccine, to be possible.” He opened a file full of raw sequencing data that Alex faintly recognized as Rabies. “I will have to introduce you to Doctor Camden if you are genuine in your offer.”Alex considered for a moment. Cross did ask him to collect samples. The plan he was given was vague enough that he could extrapolate almost any meaning from it. If he wasn’t going to be able to consume any of the Infected, then he wouldn’t be finding the Runner any time soon. Having any kind of direction at this point would be better than nothing, even if it wouldn’t result in anything substantial.“Certainly,” he said, and Zere gave a tired, yet hopeful smile. “But, I’m unfortunately out of any usable equipment. You’ll have to understand that I wasn’t expecting a zombie apocalypse when I came to visit.” Alex let out a laugh, and Zere joined in quietly.“It is of no worry, Doctor Alex-”“Please. Just Alex, thank you.” When Zere recoiled at the sharp tone, Alex amended with, “I haven’t practiced in some time. It wouldn’t feel right to use the title.”“I understand… Alex,” Zere replied carefully. He cleared his throat. “My lab here is somewhat under equipped for the task at hand.” Alex resisted saying anything. “But that is what Doctor Camden is for. He is in Sector 0, where the outbreak first occurred, trapped in a bigger lab with all the materials and equipment necessary.” He gestured to a box radio resting on top of the refrigerator. “We communicate by radio when the connection allows us to, but it has been slow progress up to this point.”“You’ve been relaying data by voice?” Alex asked. No wonder the man had a rasp. “Regardless, may I see what you’ve tried so far? So I can get an idea of what I’ll be working with here.”“Of course, of course,” Zere said, ignoring the first comment. He beckoned Alex over to look at the screen, and opened up several files. He explained the data and experiments on screen while Alex read, but it wasn’t necessary as he parsed through it.The theoretical virion structure on the screen seemed to be closely related to Rabies. A variant. But Rabies couldn’t pilot a corpse, and he doubted it could naturally develop the ability to do so. A manmade variant, then.The numbers and words passed by near instantaneously, but he could read all of it. There were also several pictures and files of data involving various experiments. There weren’t many field experiments conducted, and the data gained from them seemed insubstantial and inconclusive. However, the experiments done on the ‘Antizin’ drug were… interesting. He needed to see and taste the compound for himself to verify, but it was already drawing a picture of the whole situation for him.“I see,” Alex said after the explanation finished. “Yeah, I can definitely be of use to you here. I haven’t worked directly with Rabies before, but I’m familiar with it and its family.” He shot the Doctor a grin. “Also, I can do field tests. I might not look it, but I’m quite the Runner. How d’you think I made it here otherwise?”“I’m not doubting your expertise, Alex,” Zere said calmly. He was nearly beaming, held back only by deep wrinkles and the bags under his eyes. “This is excellent! I… welcome aboard, Doc- Mr. Alex!” Zere shook his hands readily. It was only the simulacrum that prevented Alex from ripping his away. “Next time the radio is working, I will introduce you to Doctor Camden, then we can truly begin!”“Yep!” He nodded, and mimicked holding up a pitcher. “To a long and fruitful partnership!”He would have to remember this simulacrum well, because it was going to be getting a lot of use in the coming days.
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“I’m sorry, but I must refuse your request,” Zere said politely. “There isn’t enough Antizin to go around anymore to freely experiment on it. Had my previous research on it borne fruit, I might have agreed, but there is barely enough for the Tower.”“I understand,” Alex’s simulacrum said, voice dripping with sickly sweetness. “They need it much more immediately than we do. One missed dosage is one too many.”Zere nodded mutely, delving back into his work. Alex shuffled his own stack of papers. He’d long since analyzed their contents for any scraps of useful information in the two days they’ve been partnered. And there was plenty, of course. Thousands of lines of raw, unformatted data, scribbled down in barely legible writing. It reminded him of his own, what Dana would call ‘chicken scratch.’ The people that largely made up his mass never helped to improve his penmanship much, either.But data on paper was just that - data on paper. Research and hypothesis could go a long way, but without hands-on testing, he would only have the uncertain results of a single man. Two, if he counted Camden, but observation of results would be quite limited when the other was confined in what amounted to little more than a sterile prison. If he wanted actual results, he would need to find some himself.He could steal some while the man’s back was turned, or while he slept, but it would get noticed with Alex being the only suspect. While his mask helped to ingratiate himself with Zere, two day’s work together was hardly enough to call it trust. No matter what Dana said, he wasn’t that naive… anymore.“How do you get your shipments?” he decided to ask. Whoever this personality belonged to, they were not an experienced interrogator. He nearly furrowed his brow, though his surface face prevented any actual changes to expression. Why was the personality so nauseatingly familiar? Why was it the first one he grabbed?“The Runners from the Tower usually bring in the drops,” Zere explained, not looking up from the laptop. “But the supplies have been running low recently, so much of it goes directly to Doctor Lena before the rest of it is distributed to our lab.”Alex filed the new name away. It wasn’t quite the answer he wanted, but he could work with it. Drops. So, airdrops, then. Cross mentioned that at one point.“When’s the last time the lab’s received anything?”The Doctor grimaced and glanced wearily at him. “In truth, I’ve stopped counting after the fourteenth day.” He sighed. The blue light of the laptop reflecting on his face made him look twice his age. “Runners come only in an emergency when the Tower is just too far to get to. It is… difficult to reach when the seizures begin, as I’ve been told.”“Ah, I’m sorry,” Alex’s mask sympathized. He then allowed it to control his body as he launched into thought.The Harran Virus was fast acting. Perhaps even more so than Redlight in its initial stages. Redlight would spend several days in incubation prior to any symptoms showing, whereas this virus would begin to show symptoms in mere hours. And, despite its method of transport, its spread was somehow on par with Redlight. As a bioweapon, it was impressive, but uncontrollable.Spreading through bodily fluid couldn’t explain the level of infection. Harran wasn’t as closed in as Manhattan was. There had to be another factor he was missing, something that spread beyond Rabies. As a variant, it could be anything, but the sequences that Zere had belonged only to Rabies. Prior to the victim’s transformation into a… zombie, the vector could be different to facilitate a more thorough infection throughout the populace. But there was no use speculating on that unless he had actual data - namely, viral particles he could sift through in his own body.It was an experiment, no question about it. A bioengineered virus put upon the masses at the worst possible time. But unless the goal was mass death and a global incident, he couldn’t fathom why they would release it during the Global Athletic Games where millions of tourists around the world would be. But Redlight was not released purposefully on Manhattan. He could only assume the same of the Harran Virus.If only he could pick the brains of the engineers who made it.—---------Alex had taken to exploring Harran at night. To get his bearings, to see the limits of the city, to find any leads, to get away from being questioned why he didn’t sleep, to get out of being in such close quarters. He had spent the majority of the first two days familiarizing himself with Zere’s work and investigating the area nearest to the trailer lab and the Tower. Truthfully, there wasn’t much to see. While it wasn’t a concrete jungle like his city was, there was very little ground not touched by shacks, broken cement, or overflowing garbage.What did surprise him was the lack of bodies. Despite the constant scent of decay in the air, he identified only scattered chips of human bone and dried splatters of blood. Did the human bodies affected by the disease just get up and start walking? Or did the zombies actually eat the dead? That was far from typical virus behavior. What good would eating a corpse do to spread itself further?The strange creatures - Volatiles, Zere said was what the survivors called them - seemed to only wander during the night. When dawn approached, they turned tail and fled, even if they were in the middle of a hunt. Even if they were about to win. He had witnessed one seconds away from securing the kill on some wanderer before abruptly jumping away, sprinting away with reckless abandon. He hadn’t followed, but it never returned.Was it some kind of primitive self-preservation? Covering a weakness. Only the Volatiles reacted in this manner, too. The other types - the screaming ones and the slow ones - seemed completely oblivious to external stimuli. Was it a mark of animal intelligence, or some remnant of their past lives? He needed more information, but if he couldn’t gather it his usual way, then he’d do it the human way: Observation.He didn’t have to search long to find one. Their footsteps were heavy and distinct, along with the unmistakable deep breathing with a slight whistle to it, as if the air was traveling straight through the pipes in the throat than through the mouth. Their flesh crawled with the disease, covering every pore and exposed muscle. Bodies perfectly suited for it, maybe even sculpted for it. The Volatiles were the furthest from humanity the Harran Virus could get while still carrying the silhouette.Suddenly, it turned to face him where he thought he was hidden on the solid rooftop. He bit back a hiss as it stared. Its mandibles clicked together warningly, but it didn’t approach. It stood where it was, twitching and growling lowly. Just watching, as he watched it back.Evidently, it didn’t know what to make of him. He suppressed his roiling tendrils from showing on the surface, though he was taut in the position to lunge at any moment. He didn’t need a repeat of the first time when there was no reliable source of mass nearby.Its heavy breathing filled the silence while they were locked eye to eye, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Then - an inhuman shriek from the distance broke the spell. He snapped his attention to the offending noise. A mistake.He noticed only at the last second a whistling inhale. Instantly, he sprang from his spot, wincing at the explosively loud crunch that echoed as he pushed off from it. Sailing through the air, he saw several more Volatiles converging on his location, clambering over buildings and sprinting across the crumbled ground. There were even a few of the screaming ones joining the group, though they couldn’t keep up with the pace.He could kill them all. Quickly and easily, before they even knew they were dead. His arms twitched with the urge coiling through them. But that was not the goal. He couldn’t observe behavior by poking at a corpse. No. He would have to stall. Stall until the sun rose, all while somehow avoiding their surprisingly accurate shots.He sped along the paths, careful to stick to the dirt when possible to muffle his thudding footsteps. He didn’t run as fast as he possibly could - he didn’t want to lose them - but he kept pace, just far enough to avoid their spittle. Even so, it flew by uncomfortably close too many times to count. Their shrieks grew frustrated behind him. Chasing their ‘prey’, so close yet so far.But right before the chase started getting fun, they skidded to a sudden halt. He had to drop to a crouch, clawing at the ground, to stop himself too. He snapped his gaze around. There were no threats. But the Volatiles saw something he didn’t. Felt something he didn’t.He blinked, and did a double-take. His range of vision was nocturnal, not thermal or infected. Yet their exposed flesh began to glow brightly, lighting them up at the same time like a signal fire. And, as if on cue, they all turned to flee.He smirked. Now, it was his turn to be the predator.They didn’t even notice him as he ran just behind them. At least, they gave no indication of it. They scrambled blindly forward, all eight of them going the exact same way. Their flesh began to blister and boil, with sickening pops of blood bubbles bursting through their skin. Burning flesh was never a favorite of his, he noted mildly as their movements grew increasingly frantic.The rays of the sun peeking over the mountainside briefly blinded him before he adjusted his vision to the human color spectrum. The Volatile’s normally pinkish flesh now glared an unnatural orange with a light steam wavering off from it. They really were burning to death. Was their weakness the sun? What aspect of it? It couldn’t be the light, as they were unbothered by moonlight and streetlamps. The heat neither, since there wasn’t time to warm up yet. UV, X-ray, Gamma? He’d have to ask Zere, he knew more about them.He tailed after them as they fell over themselves, crashing over rocks and scattered debris, until they landed into a small gully behind the buildings. They splashed through a shallow fetid pond, which he deftly avoided, though hissed when some droplets managed to catch him. Ahead was a deeper pool almost completely covered in buzzing mosquitoes, shaded by the cliff face of the nearby hill. He glanced at the water - there seemed to be a large, orange box underneath. Was that an airdrop?Being out of reach of the sun didn’t stop the Volatiles from surging onward, however, as they dove at the pool in desperation. With an animalistic cry, one fell below the surface, struggling and squealing like a rat caught by the tail. But it couldn’t get its head above the water. It thrashed wildly, splashing the rippling water away and causing the swarm of mosquitoes to fly away in a hurry, until it stilled. Its body did not float to the surface.So they couldn’t swim. Another weakness, though markedly less exploitable than the sun. It made sense, in a way. Rabies was hydrophobic, like Redlight and Blacklight. But, they didn’t seem particularly afraid of the water. More just… unable to handle it.The rest of them managed to cling to the walls of the rocks, clambering into what he initially thought was a tiny crevice beyond the pool. They crawled, one by one, squeezing into the cave, avoiding the touch of water, until all seven of them were through. He didn’t follow. While he trusted his ability to hold onto walls, he wasn’t that desperate to find out what the Volatiles were doing in the cave.A low growl emitted from his throat. The water was too deep for him to collect the body without getting any of it on himself. So, no samples. Even though Zere hadn’t given him any tools to collect nor to conduct any on-site studies, he still could have brought the body itself back. It was his understanding that they didn’t often see dead Volatiles. There went a chance to gain some trust and good will. He shouldn’t have let all of them get away like that, he really only needed to observe one.Well, there was always the next night.With that, he leapt from the base of the gully to the top of the rock formation, taking care to cushion his landing so he didn’t cause a cave-in. Though, if that was where the Volatiles were coming from, then maybe a cave-in would be a good thing. The thought of their bodies and bones being crushed to paste by rubble was a satisfying one. But as long as he needed his samples, all-out destruction wasn’t the best idea.From the top of the formation, the wind whipped at him, causing his false clothing to flap about. Harran was rather windy, though it didn’t have much on New York yet. In some months, it even affected his gliding speed. At least it wasn’t raining. He had enough rain back then, and he could do the rest of his life without more.He could see the rest of the city from the top, beyond the large lake that intersected it. The buildings in the other portion of the city seemed newer, taller, and far less fragile. Based on the map of Harran, that was most likely the Old Town, where Camden’s lab was situated. He would have to pay him a visit some time. Faintly beyond the sprawling city, there were rolling hills of wheat. Farmlands. Or as it was colloquially referred to as, the Countryside.Without anything to show from his night out, he turned back to Zere’s trailer. It wasn’t that far. It would take a human only ten minutes or so to make it to this point. He had to wonder about the safety of being situated so close to a cave where Volatiles apparently made their Hive in. Most likely, they were just unaware. Volatiles were a lot more sneaky than Hunters and Hydras. That begged the question then - how did the humans keep themselves safe from them? If Volatiles ran at a pace even those marathon runner zombies couldn’t keep up with, then what repelled them from just snatching up humans while they slept?He thought for a moment. Both the Tower and Zere’s trailer were equipped with those incredibly bright street lights. In his grayscale world of nocturnal sight, they looked the same as the rest, just emitting more light. But he already ruled out light as the-... Oh. They must emit a different kind of radiation, the same kind that would be prevalent during the day. UV was the only one common in bulbs enough to fit the bill. Whether it was UVA or UVB or a mixture of both, he couldn’t tell, but he was suddenly glad that he consumed people whole.Empty handed, he returned to the trailer.—---------Jade clutched Amir’s waist so tightly her knuckles turned white. His arm hung limply over her shoulder. He was still awake. He had to stay awake. He had to. She dragged him forward, one step at a time, the blood pooling and seeping into his shirt. She had to make it. It was so close.They said nothing. He grew heavier with each step, but she kept going. His breathing was ragged in her ears. If only she were stronger. If only she was braver. If she hadn’t slipped at that fatal moment, Amir wouldn’t be… No. He was alive. He would stay alive.“Amir,” she muttered. He didn’t respond, but his body jerked slightly. “We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”She kept whispering to him as they approached the chain-link fence. She couldn’t move her arms from under Amir to knock, so instead she hissed out, “Ben, it’s Jade. Let us in.”“Jade!?” She winced as the gate screeched open to reveal a worried man on the other side. His expression morphed into horror as he laid eyes on Amir. “Jesus Christ! What happened!?”“Not now, we need to get inside first,” she snapped, and he nodded. He lightly pushed them through, then shuttered the gate with a crash. Ben then took Amir’s other side without question, hefting up much of the load. Together, they dragged Amir to Spike’s office and sat him on the cot.Spike, to his credit, immediately began gathering up medical supplies from the stash before asking any questions. He produced a standardized medkit, one of the few that still remained not created through the mishmash of scavenged material, and tore off Amir’s shirt to inspect the wound.“Jesus…” Ben commented. A whole chunk of his torso was torn out. Scratches marred his entire body, some shallow and others so deep that entire pieces of flesh were missing. The wounds wept a constant stream of blood, to which Spike began treating.“Any of his organs hit?” Spike asked gruffly, replacing the gauze.“I don’t know,” Jade said quietly. She stared down at Amir. His breathing was shallow. Her head was fuzzy. She couldn’t think. Useless. She was useless here.“I’ll ask you what happened later, but we need to get this bleeding under control,” Spike ordered. “Has he been bitten?”“...Yes,” she croaked out. Amir was bitten. On borrowed time. Even if he lived through this, he would still die. There wasn’t enough Antizin for thirty-one people. There just wasn’t, no matter how Brecken tried to assure everyone.“Shit. Ben, go get the Doctor.”Ben nodded quickly and ran out, leaving just the three of them in the tiny office. She stood paralyzed, and watched Spike work. She dressed wounds before. So why couldn’t she move? Amir was dying, and all she could do was watch. She clenched her fists.After only a couple minutes, Ben rushed back in with Dr. Zere in tow. He carried the familiar Antizin syringe. He gasped when he saw Amir, and quickly made his way through the small crowd to reach him.“Oh, no. Oh, dear,” Dr. Zere mumbled as he injected the drug into Amir’s left arm, then gently held it up against his chest. He moved out of Spike’s way immediately after, allowing the man to continue treating her partner.Numb. She stood numb. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Amir couldn’t die. Not him.The strong arms that once swept her off her feet now lay limp by his side. The face she kissed day after day was ashen and gaunt. The dark eyes she got lost in were half open, stuck in a clouded daze. The man that lit up her world, that assured her they would one day make it out of Harran and live together far away, was laying there, dying.She took to his side and grasped his hand with both of hers. It was cold. Shaking, she brought his hand up, and planted a kiss. She held it to her chest. Vaguely, she heard a conversation behind her between Dr. Zere and Ben, but she couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t, until someone shook her shoulder.“Jade?” It was Ben. “We… we need to know what happened. For something like this, he needs to go to Lena once he’s stabilised.”She grit her teeth. Then let out a breath. He was right, and she wasn’t helping by obstructing Spike. Gently, she placed Amir’s hand back by his side, and followed Ben and Dr. Zere out.Standing outside of the office, they patiently waited for her to speak. The other guards near the lab stole concerned glances at her, but didn’t crowd her. She took a shaky breath, then began.“We were… out, too far from the Tower to get back at a safe time,” she said, shame colouring her voice. “We made it to a safehouse, but it wasn’t turned on. We couldn’t get the power on. The whole district was black.”Ben’s face paled, while Dr. Zere frowned in sympathy. “But it is morning now. How long has Amir been injured?” Dr. Zere asked, bluntly but not unkindly.She grimaced. “We weren’t found immediately. We hid for hours in the dark, until there was an explosion nearby. It stirred up everything around.” She stared at her still shaking hands for a moment before continuing. “Whatever caused it ran away and took all of the nightmares with it. But the Virals stayed behind. They found us so fast…”She choked up. The memories assaulted her. She lost her footing in the dark. Amir defended her. He killed so many of them just so she could get away. But she stayed.“...I’m only alive because of him,” was all she could say to finish.Ben looked ready to cry. She gasped in surprise when he enveloped her in a hug, though he quickly backed off. Dr. Zere’s expression was grim, and he remained silent.“Christ, I’m so sorry,” Ben said. He was quiet for a few seconds, searching for what to say. “Amir was… is a great guy. Strong as hell, too. He’ll pull through this, definitely.”“Jade, I’m sorry about what happened to you two,” Dr. Zere’s more gentle voice said. “Once his condition improves enough, Ben and the others will escort him to Doctor Lena. I’ll provide two shots of Antizin to take with.” He paused, then added, “Please do not administer the injections yourself. If it is not done correctly, he may go into shock.”She nodded mutely. She and Ben left to sit on the steps, while Dr. Zere re-entered his lab. The other guards gave her words of sympathy and assurance, which she only nodded to. They seemed to understand. Eventually, Ben stood up and left to guard the gate again, though told her to talk to him if she needed to.Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a dark figure standing at the door of the lab. She snapped to attention, jumping to her feet. The figure was a man dressed in a dark jumper, though he removed the hood before he gave a knock on the door. How the hell did he get in? She didn’t see him just seconds ago - it was like he just appeared there.He was about to enter through when she walked up to him and forced him to turn around. That… wasn’t a face she recognized.“Can I help you?” the man said, but she couldn’t place if the tone was bored or annoyed. He had an American accent, similar to Ben’s - definitely not from Harran.“I don’t know you. Who are you?” she asked bluntly. She didn’t have it in her to be polite at the moment. She didn’t take her eyes from him, but she saw the guards only suspiciously regarding him. They didn’t spring into action as they should have against an intruder.“Alex,” he answered simply, unoffended. Then, as she was about to speak up, he continued, “I’m helping Dr. Zere with his research.”She shut her mouth, and looked to the guard sitting nearby for confirmation. The guard nodded - he was who he said he was.“Fine, go in, then.”Alex gave a quick smirk before turning back to the door. “As if I needed your permission for that,” he said cheerily. She scowled, but shook her head. No fights when Amir was hurt.…Time passed as she sat idle outside of Spike’s office. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but she couldn’t tell. It dawned on her suddenly that she had yet to report to the Tower - they might start a search party if she wasn’t quick about it.She pressed a button on the radio on her chest. “Jade here. Brecken, do you copy?”The answer was immediate. “Jade! Where the fuck are you? You were missing all night!” came Brecken’s expected reply. She steadied herself with a breath. Brecken would flip his lid no matter how she worded it. She loved the man, she did, but he knew how to yell.“We couldn’t make it back in time.” She paused, grimacing. “...and Amir got hurt. Badly hurt. We’re at Dr. Zere’s trailer right now. He’s getting treated by Spike.”Silence. Then- “What the fuck do you mean? Couldn’t you have found a safehouse? What the hell were you thinking-” The static overpowered the radio for a moment before it cleared up. “Wait - Amir’s hurt? Shit! Is he alright? Are you alright?”“I’m… fine,” she said. “I’m uninjured. Amir… protected me. He was bitten.”“Bitten!? Good fucking god,” Brecken yelled, though the static made it difficult to make out what he said. “Shit. …I’m glad you’re alright, but… FUCK!” She jumped at his sudden shout.“Dr. Zere is giving two extra shots to bring,” she tried to assure, but she didn’t know who she was convincing. “It should last him at least two weeks, counting the one he received today.”“Right. Right…” he mumbled, just barely over the interference. “Good man, that Zere. I doubt he has the stock to be giving that stuff away. Thank him for me, will you?”She nodded, then realised he couldn’t see the gesture. “I will.”“I’m sending some runners over to pick you two up-”“You can’t!” she interrupted, then explained. “Not yet. He’s still in critical condition.”“...Right. I’ll have them swing by in a couple hours, then. Keep me posted if you can. I’ve got to direct some teams now. You sit tight. Brecken out.”And then the radio was silent. She sighed, and leaned back into the concrete steps. They pressed uncomfortably into her back and her hair brushed against the filthy, walked-on stone, but it didn’t matter. Amir…She stared at the clouds overhead, her mind filled with memories of the past. Though she knew him only for the past few months, he saved her life more times than she could count. She pulled his ass out of the fire plenty of times, too. Where she was fast, he was strong. Where she was blunt, he was patient. He even dealt with Rahim in ways she could only dream of doing. Rahim would get that grin only Amir could bring out of him, and they’d talk for hours. He was even able to talk her brother down from those ideas he’d sometimes get.Without Amir… How could she continue? She couldn’t go back to what it was like before. Just thinking of it burrowed an empty feeling deep in her chest.The distinct rumble of a plane resonated through the air.She straightened up, searching through the sky. There! She spotted it, flying high overhead, just above cloud level. Too high for an airdrop. Deja vu prickled at her - the same thing happened just days before. Something was dropped, but no one could figure out what. The runner team that came back from that investigation couldn’t find anything except a body that looked like it exploded, melting in the daylight. No one found the drop site, and the rumours hadn’t subsided since.Was this the same? She watched as it flew by, apprehension curling in her belly. Two strange drops in under a week. What on earth was going on?—---------“HUD activated. Commence briefing.”