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[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn	By : ShinaRyun Category: +M through R > Prototype Series Views: 3341 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: PROTOTYPE and all derivative/associated works and titles belong to Activision, Radical Entertainment, and their affiliates. I make NO PROFIT from this writing.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
“There you are!” Maynard exclaimed once the Evolved walked back into his lab, both surprised to find that the doctor had re-tuned the lab’s biometric scanner to accept their DNA. “What the sweaty hell took you two so long to get here?!?”
“Helicopters,” Horst said with a shrug, reverting to his usual appearance once the lab’s door sealed shut. “Picked up some goodies along the way. Want to see?”
“When I’m not out of my mind with confusion?!? Absolutely!” the old man screeched, bony hands mounted on his hips. “When I tell you two that there’s something of grave importance to be had here, it’s a trifle disturbing when your response is ‘Yeah, later’!”
“We had a job to do out there,” Fritz muttered, narrowing his eyes. “And for the record, the scientists you sent us after didn’t know shit! Why’d you send us after them?”
“Two of them because the heads of their teams had annoyed me in the past, the third just to buy time,” Maynard answered dismissively, waving the Evolved over to his computer.
“Buy time for what?” Horst asked suspiciously.
“This!” Maynard yelled, jabbing fingers at the glowing display screens over his computer. The Evolved approached and looked, neither seeing anything meaningful until they looked more closely.
“Is that…our DNA?” Horst asked quietly, hands starting to curl into fists.
“Yes,” Maynard said with all the nonchalance of a tightrope-walker unfazed by imminent death. “Notice anything peculiar about it?”
“Other than the fact that it’s on your fucking wall?!?” Fritz snarled, stepping closer to Maynard. “How the hell did you get it?!”
“Off the bullets I shot you with. Before you decide to kill me for invading your privacy, would you pretty please, with sugar on top, close your fucking mouth and open your fucking eyes, and LOOK at what I’m showing you?!?”
Horst and Fritz both growled under their breath, but kept their jaws securely shut long enough for Maynard to nod and point sharply at the screens with their DNA. “These are basic models of your DNA; if you let me do some testing on you both, I’ll be able to flesh out my information more fully. This,” he said, leveling his finger at a third screen, “Is a fully-rendered model of Blacklight, Mercer’s pride and joy and the reason why all this started. I’m assuming that you’ve each eaten a geneticist or two in the last ten years, so summon up some knowledge and tell me what you think of when you see these side by side.”
Maynard was correct, and so, grudgingly, the Evolved did as they were bid and examined the screens closely. Even with the memories of dozens of scientists swimming around his head, Fritz lacked practice in executing their knowledge and so saw little to give him pause. Horst, more used to such matters, picked up on what Maynard was showing them within seconds, and gasped loudly.
“Fuck!” he spat, eyes flicking back and forth between the screens, desperation starting to enter into his voice as he screamed. “Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck, Nixon?!? What IS this?!?”
“The truth!” Maynard screeched, clearly flustered by his discovery, his voice free of malice. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the bloody truth!”
“What’s the fucking truth?!?” Fritz screamed, confused and more than a little disturbed by the scientists’ fervor.
“The truth is that this…this isn’t what we fucking have!” Horst screamed as he stepped closer to the screens, hoping to see something he had missed. “Oh, fuck my life, we don’t have Blacklight!”
“What?!? The fuck do you mean, we don’t have Blacklight!?! We’re Evolved! Mercer infected us with-“
“-With the Mercer virus,” Horst finished, whipping on Fritz with eyes locked open in raging turmoil, pointing at the screens with their DNA. “Sweetheart, whatever we were infected with, it wasn’t Blacklight. There are…similarities, here and there, but…it’s not the real thing!”
“How can you even tell?!?”
“Trust me, I can tell! If we really had Blacklight, this,” Horst shouted, pointing at his own DNA model, “Would look like an off-color variant of this,” he said with a point towards the Blacklight model.
“So...what the hell does ours look like then?!?” Fritz asked worriedly, hands lifting to grab at his head, face tense.
“A cheap knockoff,” Maynard interjected helpfully. “No offense.”
“Offense slightly fucking taken, doctor!” Horst roared loudly enough to give the old man pause. “Even if you’re right!”
“He’s right? What does that even mean?!?” Fritz asked exasperatedly. “What the hell does a cheap knockoff mean, in genetics?!?”
“It means that we’re infected with…something,” Horst tried to answer, starting to pace rapidly in front of the screens, gesturing angrily and nearly spitting as he spoke. “A virus, I don’t know what…it has to be something similar to Blacklight, but where that would even come from…?”
“I might know,” Maynard spoke up, keeping his insults to himself for fear of turning the Evolved’s confusion into fury. Both of the mutants whipped on the old doctor, and spoke in unison.
“Where?”
“Mercer,” Maynard answered simply as he fumbled for his seat and crumpled into it, wheezing a little before speaking hoarsely. “During the first infection, Mercer fought with a woman who had been infected before him, who was infected with a virus which was, in essence, the prototype for Blacklight. That virus was called Redlight, and the woman’s name was Elizabeth Greene. When she was infected, Redlight formed something of a symbiotic relationship with her; her DNA made her its perfect host. Once she became infected, her body started producing viral strains every day, dozens and dozens of them, of which many were taken for study. One of those viral strains was eventually made into Blacklight. To make a long story short, after Alex released Blacklight, he and Greene met and fought, and eventually Mercer won and consumed her. You follow?”
“Barely,” Fritz replied. “Redlight, Greene, Blacklight, Mercer…so what? How would that make…whatever we have?”
“Well, while Greene was alive, she was subconsciously making new viral strains. I believe that when Alex consumed her, he might have accidentally gained that trait as well, unknowingly making new strains of Blacklight. One of those strains might be what you were infected with…it would certainly explain a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Well…” Maynard sighed and turned back to his computer, hammering at the keys and eventually pulling up a bank of pictures. Most were blurry and grainy, but a few were decent, and these he flung up onto the display screens. The Evolved recognized them immediately, images of Brawlers, Juggernauts, and even a shot of a Goliath.
“What are we looking at, Nixon?” Horst asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Gunbox recordings. The results of Mercer’s second infection,” Maynard answered. “With a little tinkering from Gentek. Take a look at them; notice anything unusual about them?”
“Other than the fact that they’re all fucking ugly?” Fritz muttered.
“Close,” Maynard said firmly. “Look at this Brawler. It’s taken a few bullets, but that’s nothing compared to the fact that it’s missing parts of its skin! You can see its spine coming out of its back! You can see the viral flesh glowing through cracks in its body! Nothing alive was meant to look like this and survive! It’s an evolutionary disaster!”
“What’s your fucking point?!?” Horst growled.
“They are products of the second viral release,” Maynard hissed, pulling up another few images. “These, boys, are the products of the first one.” The Evolved looked, and were puzzled. The creatures on the screens before them looked remarkably similar to Brawlers, but with less…flair. They were obviously powerful, but the Evolved couldn’t see muscles bulging through their pink hides or bones showing through their chests or backs. Horst was about to comment that they looked weaker than Brawlers, until he saw a picture of one of the things holding up a chunk of a building’s wall that looked like it weighed more than the monster did.
“What are these things?” he asked more quietly. “A new Gentek monster?”
“Not even close,” Maynard wheezed, leaning back in his chair and sipping from a water bottle. He wasn’t used to so much activity at once, and even for someone as wired as he was, the Evolved made for taxing guests. “These are Hunters…Greene’s soldiers. There were other types as well, bigger ones, but no-one who got close enough to take a picture of those things lived long enough to get them back to base. Other than Mercer, obviously.”
Fritz was puzzled, stepping closer to the screens and looking back and forth between the Brawlers he knew and the Hunters from the first infection. “I don’t get it,” he muttered. “These things look more…ordered, put together. How did these things come first, and then Brawlers come after them? Wouldn’t the next step from a Hunter be something less…unstable?”
“Yes!” Maynard screeched, getting the two mutants attention as he stood up sharply. “Of course it fucking would! To go from a well-composed, complex, fully-formed monster like a Hunter to something as shoddily-made as a Brawler is like leapfrogging backwards down the evolutionary scale! Which is why,” the old doctor wheezed, “I believe that Mercer accidentally released an inferior virus when he tried to recreate the first infection. I believe that, without his knowledge, his body made his…Mercer virus, as it’s known, and set it up to be released instead of Blacklight.”
“But why would Blacklight want Mercer to release a different virus?” Horst asked, scratching his head.
Maynard shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t! Mercer was gone for a year, and suffice to say that he changed while he was away! He grew to hate humanity, as you well know, and perhaps that hatred bred this new virus within him. Accidentally releasing it instead of Blacklight could have been a mistake caused by his hatred.”
Fritz raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Fuck if I know,” Maynard said with a flustered sigh. “I’m not Mercer, I don’t know what in the name of Cthulhu was going on inside his head. All I know is that for whatever reason, he released this lesser virus instead of Blacklight…more to the point, I don’t believe that he knew what he was releasing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have…well, you know.”
The Evolved both paused and exchanged curious glances before turning towards the old doctor. “Know what?” Horst asked suspiciously.
“Well,” Maynard scoffed, “I mean, if he had known that he was releasing an inferior virus, he wouldn’t have…done what he did during his fight with Heller.”
“What are you talking about?” Fritz asked, eyes narrowing. “What did he do?”
“Holy shitballs!” Maynard exclaimed, eyes shooting wide, leaning forward in his seat. “You mean…you don’t know about the fight?!?”
“We know he fought Heller,” Horst explained, still wary. “But he ordered us to get out of NYZ before then. We were out of town for a few days, came back and found the place empty.”
“Oh,” Maynard said quietly, folding back into his chair, a hollow expression making the innumerable lines and creases of his face deepen and darken. “Oh, gentlemen, then I’m afraid that I have distressing news for you. You need to see this,” he muttered, turning back to his computer and pulling up another file, nodding towards the primary display screen as a piece of black and white footage started to play across it; the way that the point of view rotated and vibrated told the Evolved that it was footage from a helicopter. Both the Evolved recognized what it showed, one of the buildings in the Red Zone with a wide, flat helicopter pad, currently occupied by several familiar human figures.
“Mercer,” Horst breathed. “And look! Galloway, Harrison, Miguel, Sasha…Mercer called in the whole damn army!”
“Except us,” Fritz muttered, confused. “Why would he-.” He felt silent as another person appeared on the platform, another that both Evolved immediately recognized.
“Heller,” Horst snarled under his breath.
“Stupid motherfucker,” Fritz breathed, watching intently. “Thinks he can take Mercer and all of them?”
Behind the Evolved, Maynard sat in his chair and tried to say something to brace the two Evolved for what was about to happen, but he could not find the words. He couldn’t say anything, or even move, paralyzed in fear of what the volatile men’s reactions would be and, he was surprised to find, in sympathy for what they were about to experience. He could only watch the Evolved as the video played; he had seen it enough times to know exactly what would happen, and was much more interested in watching their reactions instead.
“He’s monologueing,” Horst commented, watching Mercer pace back and forth, gesturing around himself until Heller interrupted him.
“There’ll be an ass-kicking eventually, give him time,” Fritz shushed, starting to say something else until the events unfolding on the screen before him derailed his train of thought.
“What…” he breathed, as he watched Mercer suddenly attack the other Evolved, one of his arms snaking out and stabbing through half of what remained of their army.
“No,” Horst murmured, eyes wide in shock, hands starting to shake as the other half of the army was skewered. “No, no no…no, what are you doing?!?”
“Nein!” Fritz screamed, one hand reaching out to grab at Horst’s arm, whether for support or out of confusion, he did not know. “Alex, don’t! Maynard, what the fuck is he doing?!?”
Maynard could only watch in silence, trying to lean away from the screaming Evolved as they watched their creator, their idol, betray their own kind and consume them like so many lambs to the slaughter. None of the assembled Evolved were spared, each one disintegrating and flowing into Mercer’s body, empowering him and eventually making him into the creature which lunged for Heller. The Evolved’s screams died down, then started up again as they watched the fight, confusion and furious anger boiling within them.
“What the fuck is he DOING?!? It’s like he’s toying with Heller! Stop this shit and just kill the sonofabitch!”
“Oh my fucking god, where’s his defense?!? Block these attacks!”
“He’s not doing anything! Why isn’t he killing that black motherfucker?!? What the hell is he doing, Horst?!?”
“Nothing fucking right, that’s for damn sure! Fuck, he’s hurt! Why is he hurt?!? This shouldn’t fucking happen!!”
It did happen. Second by second, blow by blow, more and more of Mercer’s blood hit the ground than Heller’s did, and through each change in tactics, nothing seemed able to turn the tide against Heller. When it ended, as the Evolved knew that it had to, the lab went silent as the Evolved watched Heller maul and cripple Mercer and then tear him to pieces. Both flinched and gasped when they saw Heller’s last act, his body erupting and cleansing the island of all its infected, and both stood staring at the screen once the footage finished, shocked beyond words or action.
“I’m sorry,” Maynard murmured, breaking the silence after a time. “I thought…you knew. It’s why I was so relieved that there were some of you still alive…I thought that Mercer had killed-“
“-Shut up!” Fritz screamed, lunging across the room in the blink of an eye, one hand tight around Maynard’s throat, silencing him and pinning him to his seat while Fritz’s other arm cocked back, fist clenched, ready to pulverize the old doctor’s skull. Up close, Maynard could see the grief lining the Evolved’s face, his eyes red and wet, jaw clenched and lips trembling even as they pulled back in a terrifying snarl. “Just shut the fuck up! He couldn’t have done it! He wouldn’t have!”
“He did!” Horst yelled as he flitted across the room and grabbed Fritz, yanking him off of Maynard and throwing him against a wall, pinning him there. Horst was no less emotional, openly weeping, his hands shaking as he held Fritz’s shoulders against the wall. “He did,” he said again, a tremor running through his body, a sob sticking in his throat before he swallowed it and just shook, weeping silently. Fritz struggled in his grip for a moment before he crumpled and wrapped his arms around Horst’s body, clinging to him and burying his face in his lover’s shoulder to silence his own tears.
Maynard let them cry, too busy massaging his nearly-crushed neck and checking to make sure that being face-to-face with an enraged super-mutant hadn’t caused him to have a bodily accident. “Like kissing a fucking shark,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head and settling into his seat once he was sure that all was well with both his neck and his pants. His attention was brought back to the Evolved when he heard Fritz murmuring weakly into Horst’s shoulder.
“What are we gonna do, Horst?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“We can’t…we can’t bring him back. Not if he couldn’t beat Heller with all that power…and not if he’d kill us just like that!”
“Bring him back?” Maynard muttered, getting the Evolved’s attention. “What do you mean, bring him back?”
Horst sighed and wiped his eyes; a miniscule shift of his body cleared his tears and the redness from his eyes as he spoke. “That’s what we came here for. To bring Mercer back.”
“Impossible,” Maynard snorted. “Maybe if he had just been killed and thrown aside, but he was consumed, gentlemen. How would you bring him back when there’s nothing left of him?”
“We have a way that could work,” Horst said, “If we can get his DNA.”
“There’s none left!” Maynard said helplessly. “Believe me, I’ve looked! His file has been completely burned out of Gentek’s records and anything that was left of him in NYZ was destroyed when Heller cleansed the city!”
“Heller ate him!” Horst exclaimed. “So there has to be some part of Alex left inside him! If we can extract and separate it, then we can use it!”
“And how the hell are you going to do that?”
“We know where Heller is,” Horst said with a sigh, the shock of what he’d seen loosening his tongue considerably. Fritz was still too shocked to try to silence him. “We came here to become more powerful and then go after him.”
Maynard raised an eyebrow and leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, finger steepling before his face, thinking about the possibilities of what Horst was saying. “That could work, I suppose, if your method of resuscitation doesn’t fail catastrophically.”
“And if we decide to go through with it, after seeing this shit,” Horst muttered, jerking a thumb at the display screen. “How the hell can we bring Alex back if he’s done this?!? Betrayed our own kind, and for what?!? So that Heller can still kill him, even with the power of a dozen Evolved in him?!?”
“Well…” Maynard said hesitantly, “That might…not have been so wise a move on Mercer’s part.”
“No shit,” Horst spat. “When is it ever a good idea to betray your allies?”
“More than that,” Maynard said firmly, “I believe that consuming the other Evolved might have weakened Mercer instead of strengthened him.”
“How?” Horst asked.
“Well, you’ve already seen that the Mercer virus is more unstable than Blacklight. I have a theory that by consuming so many Evolved, and taking in so much of the Mercer virus at once, it might have overridden the Blacklight virus long enough to leave him unstable and vulnerable. You saw the fight; he didn’t use any form of defense, he attacked without consistency, he made no attempt to parry Heller’s attacks…it was just brute force and mindless fury, no skill or technique. Mercer was smarter than that, and stronger than that! This fight was a sham!”
“And you think that consuming a dozen Evolved was the reason why?” Fritz asked, looking up and clearing his eyes, starting to get his composure back.
“Precisely.”
The Evolved fell silent, exchanging looks with each other and Maynard before pushing away from the wall and finding seats of their own on lab tables. “Even if that’s true,” Fritz said hollowly, still clearly upset even if his face refused to show it, “It doesn’t change the fact that Mercer killed our army just to try to kill Heller.”
“That was his mistake,” Maynard said, “But not exactly his first, and not even one that was out of character for him. Mercer was a sociopath, gentlemen, lacking the ability to trust in others who were outside of his closest circle. Simple soldiers and tools would be perfectly expendable to him; only the allies he held closest to him would have been worth anything more.”
“You’re saying that he only trusted us, and that’s why he killed the others?” Fritz asked skeptically.
“Well, did he trust you?” Maynard asked.
“Yes,” Horst said firmly.
“Then there you go,” Maynard said, clapping his hands helplessly over his thighs. “The proof is that you’re still alive. Whatever his reasoning behind killing the others…whether it was a misguided attempt to gain power to kill Heller, or whether it was just because he was sick of being around them, the fact remains that he trusted you two enough to exclude you from that bloodbath.”
“Or maybe he wanted to make sure he had someone to eat afterwards if he got hurt too badly,” Fritz muttered.
“That’s another possibility,” Maynard said with a sigh and a shrug. “It’s not for me to guess at what goes on in any other mad scientist’s head but my own.”
Horst snorted a chuckle, but it died quickly, and the room felt even colder for its lack of mirth. “We need a minute,” he said glancing up at Maynard. “Need to talk this out between ourselves, see where we go from here.”
Maynard looked worried, but nodded his assent and rose unsteadily to his feet. “As you will, gentlemen…I’m off to go duel with a toilet. If I’m not back in an hour, then it was an honor to serve with you, however briefly.” The old man tottered out of the lab and shut the door behind him, leaving the Evolved alone to powwow. The lab felt even emptier without Maynard in it; the man’s infectious energy, both Evolved realized, was sorely missed.
“So,” Horst said simply.
“Yeah,” Fritz said with a sigh. “So.”
“So, it seems to me, sweetheart, that we have two options, eh?”
“Do tell,” Fritz said dryly.
“Option one: we leave. Walk away from this, go find somewhere in the world with lots of people who won’t be missed, live out the rest of our days killing, eating, and fucking whoever we want until either Blackwatch tracks us down and finds a way to kill us, or our viruses degrade and mutate us into oblivion.”
“I’m not so keen on that option,” Fritz said with a snort of derision. “Second possibility?”
“We keep doing what we’re doing, as planned,” Horst sighed. “Kill, consume, evolve, go get Heller, bring back Mercer-“
“-Break Mercer’s teeth until he tells us why he was such a fucking prick?” Fritz interjected.
“Among other parts of his body, yes,” Horst said firmly. “We stick to the plan and get our answers once we can bring him back.”
“So, basically,” Fritz said as he stood, holding out his hands like a set of scales, weighing their options, “We can either go to Milan for sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, or we can go to Ireland for whiskey, blood, and Alex fucking Mercer?”
“In a nutshell,” Horst said with a shrug.
“God, do our lives suck.”
“Yes they do, sweetheart.”
“Fuck,” Fritz grumbled, hands flopping against his sides, his head falling backwards to stare up at the ceiling. “I suppose that Milan is all full of tourists this time of year…might as well go to Ireland.”
“That’s the spirit,” Horst muttered, his voice belying what both Evolved felt: that they were now working towards a goal that neither one of them fully believed in.
Eventually, Horst spoke again. “Let’s try not to think of it as bringing Mercer back,” he said gently, stepping up to his lover and wrapping his arms around Fritz’s waist, pulling him close. “Try to think of it as going to get revenge on Heller for killing most of our friends.”
“And revenge on Mercer for killing the rest?” Fritz asked as he leaned into the embrace, lifting his arms up and hooking them behind Horst’s back, hands grasping his shoulders.
“More or less,” Horst said, nodding. “And besides, even if revenge wasn’t part of the equation…if not for the end result, then let’s do this for the power. I mean, think about it…we went out once into that wasteland,” he said with a nod towards the window and the islands outside, “And we came back with cannons, for god’s sake. Imagine what we’re going to find even deeper in!”
“Mmmmm, gotta say, that’s a bit of a silver lining,” Fritz said agreeably, his lips starting to curl in a small smile, his arms tightening warmly around Horst’s neck and shoulders.
“And besides,” Horst murmured, smiling wider. “There’s killing to be done, sweetheart…lots and lots and lots of killing, eh?”
“And that, my love, is how you bring a smile to my face,” Fritz said as he grinned before leaning closer and planting a kiss on Horst’s lips, humming lowly and leaning more fully against Horst’s body. Horst returned the kiss, head tilting down and his arms tightening around Fritz’s waist, knowing that as happy as they both were at the prospect of more bloodshed, Fritz needed this. He needed the intimacy and the unspoken reassurance that Horst was there for him and would not betray him.
Horst knew this because he needed it, too.
“False alarm,” Maynard called as he shuffled back into the lab a minute later, sighing and grumbling under his breath. “Enjoy your youth, gentlemen, because old age brings nothing but misery and a misfiring colon. Eh?” he muttered as he glanced up from shutting the door and saw the two men locked together. “Oh, for the love of god,” he sighed as he walked past the two and fell into his seat. “When you two are about done sucking face, could I have your attention?”
“Two more minutes,” Horst mumbled around Fritz’s lips.
“By all means, take your time, I’m only waiting to deliver earth-shaking news,” Maynard said dismissively, turning away from the two Evolved and busying himself at his computer until they finished kissing a minute later.
“You mentioned news?” Fritz asked as he came to stand behind Maynard, looking over his shoulder.
“The news is going to be my fist in your face if you don’t stop breathing down my neck,” Maynard grumbled, shooing the Evolved away before putting his work up on the display screen. “I had a thought while on the Seat of Wisdom.”
“Come again?” Horst asked.
“Porcelain Throne,” Fritz clarified.
“It occurred to me that if you’re seriously thinking of going and fighting James Heller, then you’ll need something more than you’ll get out of stealing from Gentek,” Maynard continued. “Heller killed god-knows how many of you in NYZ, and while I don’t doubt your abilities, I do not see how another two of you would do anything more than provide him with a snack if you don’t empower yourselves more completely.”
“How would we manage that?” Horst asked, leaning against a lab table and pushing his glasses higher up his nose as he looked up at the display screen. “Some new mutation?”
“Not good enough, although I’m certain you’ll need more than a few of those, too. No,” Maynard said, pulling up his schematic of Blacklight. “You need that, gentlemen.”
“Not that we wouldn’t love to have that,” Fritz interjected, “But it’s not like you have a bottle of Blacklight and some shot glasses lying around, do you?”
“Don’t I wish,” Maynard grudgingly muttered. “All traces of Blacklight have been scoured from Gentek…deemed too troublesome for anyone to possess. The ongoing studies on monsters and mutations are all being done on creatures taken from the islands and tinkered with by scientists using other viruses or chemicals.”
“So where do you think we can get Blacklight, then? Do you know how to make it?” Fritz asked.
Maynard turned around in his seat, one bushy eyebrow pushed up to what was once his hairline. “Fritz, if I knew how to make Blacklight, I’d have a hip flask full of the stuff on my person at all times. Now if you’re in the mood, I can strip down and prove that I don’t, or you can take my word for it that I don’t have a hope in hell of synthesizing this incredible virus!”
“I’m good,” Fritz said with only mild distaste.
“Very wise of you,” Maynard growled, turning back around and banging away at the keys. “Blacklight no longer exists, as far as Gentek and Blackwatch are concerned. I, however, refuse to believe that it is completely gone. That virus does many things well, but it does one thing better than anything else.”
“And that is?” Horst prompted.
“It survives,” Maynard rasped enthusiastically. “It survives like nothing else I’ve ever seen! If the apocalypse came tomorrow, with volcanoes and ice ages and meteors and atomic bombs, if the planet cracked apart and even the cockroaches started digging graves, Blacklight would find the warmest, darkest crack it could and wait for something to find it! Humanity will be dust and waning memory before that virus fades away, and it is somewhere out there!” The old doctor flung a skinny arm out towards the lab’s window, pointing straight at the hazy, red-fogged mass that was once Manhattan.
“You think that the virus is out there?!? In the Red Zone?!?” Horst exclaimed incredulously. “It’s been eleven years since Mercer released it out there! And, I will remind you, he released another virus after the first one was stamped out, and suffice to say that it’s gotten a bit bigger than Blacklight ever did!”
“Which is why I believe Blacklight is hiding!” Maynard roared, skinny neck stretched out like a turtle’s. “It’s somewhere deep in that island, a dormant virus in a living body, just waiting for the right moment and the right conditions to rise up and overwhelm!”
“That…kind of makes sense,” Horst said agreeably, his voice quieting as he started to think about the possibility. “If it’s as tough to kill as you say, then I suppose that it’s just possible. But where would it be hiding?”
“There’s only one place it could possibly be,” Maynard said certainly, bringing up a map of Manhattan and focusing on one place. “There…where this all began.”
“Penn station?” Fritz asked, raising an eyebrow and cupping his right elbow in his left palm, right hand lifting up to cup his chin, tapping a finger slowly against his cheek. “Why there?”
“It was first released there. It’s had the longest chance to grow there,” Maynard said, ticking off on his fingers. “It’s underground, outside the reach of Blackwatch’s bombs. There were plenty of vermin to pick it up and carry it away into the dark to fester. Trust me, gentlemen, somewhere underneath that station, there is a rat or a cockroach that is positively seething with Blacklight.”
Fritz looked to Horst, trusting his lover’s more scientific mind to process this information more clearly. Horst returned the glance and shrugged. “It could happen,” he said. “Hell, stranger things have.”
“And if it hasn’t?” Fritz asked critically.
“Then, gentlemen, you’re boned,” Maynard said cheerfully. “Because regardless of what kind of mutations you find or what kind of power you get out there, without Blacklight, Heller will rip you limb from limb.”
Fritz scowled. “He might no-“
“-Yes he will,” Maynard interrupted, holding up a hand and shaking his head slowly. “Boys, he has Mercer’s DNA in him, Mercer’s powers. That means that he can manipulate the Mercer virus as he sees fit. Without Blacklight, one touch from him and you could melt.”
“So that’s our only option,” Horst said firmly, nodding out towards the island. “We have to go out there, find Blacklight, and then we’ve got a shot at this.”
“Yup!” Maynard exclaimed, sitting back in his chair and sighing slowly, starting to chuckle. “Gentlemen, I do not envy you.”
“Why not?” Fritz asked, stepping around Maynard to stand before the window, looking out at the fog-shrouded, armor-plated landmass that had once been a thriving center for business and culture.
“Well, first of all, getting to the island is no picnic. You can either get a helicopter to air-drop you in from its maximum altitude, or you can try to get across the checkpoint between the Testing Area and the Red Zone. Neither are particularly easy; getting a helicopter to go anywhere near the Red Zone requires you to find a suicidal pilot, and getting through the checkpoint means fitting through the cogs of the Blackwatch war machine at its most powerful.”
“The helicopter might be easier,” Horst said thoughtfully.
“I don’t think so,” Fritz said, pondering. “Maynard, how many people move through the checkpoint each day?”
“Very few,” Maynard said discouragingly. “It’s not unheard of, but it’s not exactly common, either. Scientists usually go in if they want to release a specimen for remote study, and DX-soldiers occasionally go in to hunt particularly dangerous monsters. Otherwise, no-one goes near it. It’s absolute and total chaos out there, with no known purpose or leader. It’s basically become a self-sustaining environment built almost entirely around predation; whatever bottom-level producers exist out there only do so to feed the next link in the food chain, and they to feed the next link, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Any idea what’s at the top of the chain?” Horst asked, raising an eyebrow.
Maynard snorted and shrugged, crossing his arms as he looked critically at the far island. “As far as anyone knows, everything out there that can fight for the top does so. If there’s something in there that can truly call itself the apex predator, then I’m sure you’ll meet it eventually…assuming that something weaker doesn’t find and eat you.”
“Right,” Fritz muttered. “And how many people ever get air-dropped in to find this apex predator?”
“Almost no-one,” Maynard answered. “Blackwatch used to drop in teams of soldiers to try to contain the infection, but they stopped that shit when it became clear that they were out of their element. Even DX-soldiers don’t go too far in there.”
“Then unless we really want to raise some wigs higher up the command ladder,” Fritz said with a shrug, leaning an elbow against the window, “We need to get through the checkpoint. Calling in a helicopter for an RZ drop would raise too much attention.”
“And waltzing through the most heavily-fortified and aggressively-monitored gateway on earth with a twenty-foot-long dog won’t?” Horst asked sarcastically.
“Less than the air-drop would,” Fritz said confidently. “As long as we get the proper authorization, it shouldn’t be any problem.”
“And I’m assuming that you can take care of that?” Horst asked, glancing at Maynard. The old man chuckled dryly and cracked his knuckles as he replied.
“I can do you one better than that, boys. You’ll need a bit more help if you want to find Blacklight…it’s not exactly going to come with a neon sign, you know. Fortunately, I have something which should make the job easier for you,” he said with a grunt, standing up and hobbling to a worktable covered in parts, tools, and bits of electronic equipment. He grunted as he picked up a finished piece, a boxy piece of metal the size of a computer tablet with two long antennae protruding from one end, a small, rotating sensor the size of a thumb fitted beside them.
“Your gay-dar?” Fritz asked with a smirk.
“Do you hear it ringing, pillow-bitter?” Maynard snapped back as he calibrated the device, muttering under his breath. “No…better. Damn thing, work with me! Ah!” he exclaimed with a smile as he got it right, the tablet’s screen lighting up and the rotating sensor starting to spin. The old doctor hobbled over to the Evolved and set the device on a table for them to examine, explaining as he retreated to his chair. “One of the old portable detectors that Blackwatch issued to its mobile teams, before the infection spread so heavily that they became useless. I’ve recalibrated it to look for Blacklight by programing it with Mercer’s original formula.”
“Kind of risky, isn’t it?” Horst asked as he hefted the device. “If Blacklight’s mutated or changed by even a single molecule, won’t this lose it?”
“It will have a harder time finding the virus, but as long as Blacklight hasn’t changed by more than fifteen percent, it should still be able to sniff it out…once you’re within a reasonable distance,” he added a touch hesitantly.
“And what exactly is a ‘reasonable distance’?” Fritz asked, raising an eyebrow. Maynard suddenly found something interesting to look at in a corner, mumbling something under his breath.
“What?”
“I said twenty feet!” the old doctor snapped, frowning, his wrinkled face crinkling like a piece of origami. “I know it’s not perfect-“
“Telling me,” Horst muttered.
“It’s all I’ve got,” the old doctor sighed, throwing his arms up helplessly. “If I could do better, I would, but without an actual sample of the virus…”
“It’ll have to do,” Horst said with a sigh of his own, picking up the tablet and sliding it into a small field bag lying on the table. “So let’s be clear: we’re going to get a flight to the Testing Area, walk through Blackwatch’s gate, and then sneak through the Red Zone to Penn Station so that we can hunt through the sewers until, by some miracle, we come close enough to what might be the only rat in New York with Blacklight for this thing to start beeping?”
“All while dodging every predatory monster ever spat out of hell,” Maynard said, nodding. “Like I said, I don’t envy you.”
“I don’t envy us,” Fritz said with a dry chuckle. “Shall we go, love?”
“Might as well,” Horst said, nodding and standing. “Nixon, you’ll have the credentials we need in our phones by the time we get there?”
“I’m on the case,” Maynard replied, already starting to hammer away at his keyboard, breaking into Blackwatch’s security network while the Evolved donned their disguises and slipped out of the lab. Clad in his usual attire as a Gentek handler, Fritz was surprised to see Horst grow into the imposing armor and skull-sculpted helmet of a DX-soldier.
“What’s with this?” the shorter Evolved hissed as they made their way down to the helipad, where they had left Darwin’s cage.
“We’d look suspicious as just a handler and a footsoldier,” Horst muttered, having to speak even quieter because of the speaker grilles hidden in his helmet. “A DX-goon won’t look as risky, walking into a viral hell.”
“Fair enough,” Fritz muttered, the two falling silent to avoid saying anything that could blow their cover until they got to the helipad, stopping only to pick up a rifle to complete Horst’s disguise. Sure enough, they found a cargo-chopper already waiting for them, Darwin’s cage hooked up and ready to fly; Maynard’s ability to hack and set up their credentials was proving to be a welcome convenience. Getting into the air and over the Testing Area was easy, but from the moment they flew over the perimeter of Blackwatch’s control zone, both Evolved knew that their game faces had to be tight. The control zone was a small compound built at the end of the Testing Area island, where the bridges to the Red Zone connected the two land masses with enormous cables of ropey red biomass and thick black armor. From their elevated positions in the helicopter, the Evolved could see that Blackwatch was at least taking the threat of large-scale infection seriously.
Four enormous watchtowers stood at the furthest edge of the island, each practically dripping in weaponry that neither Evolved recognized, each capped by massive, swiveling cannons which sent bursts of neon-white energy down onto the bridges below. Between the towers, concrete walls ten feet thick stood in an imposing seawall, faced in thick plates of metal across their seaward surfaces. The Evolved noticed that these plates boasted forests of small metal pylons which crackled and snapped with a powerful electric current, sending sparks flying anytime a wave crashed against them, lighting up the walls in sheets of corposant. Smaller towers mounted with conventional weaponry sent the occasional burst of gunfire or rockets into the smaller bridges which reached close to the electrified walls, snapping at fast-moving tendrils which tried to arc over the wall.
“Sweet zombie jesus,” Fritz muttered, pulling out his phone and calling Maynard as their helicopter circled around towards a landing pad.
“Yes?”
“Doc, what are we looking at here? I’ve never seen anything like this kind of operation.”
“Ah, you must mean the towers? The wall?”
“No, I mean the unicorns fighting off the rainbow-roaches trying to infect the Testing Area.”
“Har har. Any more, or would you like me to tell you what you’re about to walk into?”
“I might have one more.”
“Fritz!”
“Oh, fine…Horst says I have to ask you what’s going on down there, doc.”
“Well, the walls are pretty obvious: electrified to keep infected from climbing up them or crawling out of the sea. The metal siding is just to keep them mostly bulletproof, and so that the Brawlers can’t tear chunks out of them so easily.”
“Electrified how?”
“From the big towers. Small nuclear generators at the base of each one of them power the wall and just about everything else in the controlled area.”
“And the towers themselves? I’m seeing some firepower here that doesn’t exactly look child-friendly.”
“Nor should you. The big bits on top are particle cannons, powered by the nuclear generators. The smaller ones around the walls are neural disruptors, good for stunning anything smaller than a whale. DX-soldiers’ helmets cancel out the effect, if they fire ‘em up, but there isn’t much that’ll save you if you get caught under one of the particle cannons.”
“And what exactly is a particle cannon, doc?” Fritz asked.
“Lightning in a bottle, shaken until it gets good and mad.”
“Good to know,” Fritz muttered. “Thanks, doc,” he said hurriedly as he hung up and slid his phone away, jumping out the moment the helicopter touched down. From ground level, the stink of the infected presence was drowned out by an overwhelming smell of ozone and salt, which Fritz figured was the result of seawater evaporating on contact with the electrified wall. The particle cannons formed a whooshing, roaring quartet over the crackle and snap of the lethally-electrified walls and the bustle and chatter of the active military post. Looking around, Fritz saw four armed DX-soldiers for every unmodified human, and the Evolved felt his stomach knot at the thought of being discovered here. He suspected that even with their armor and their new toys, he and Horst would get chewed up in minutes.
“Welcome to Post Styx,” one DX-soldier rumbled as he approached the two Evolved, snapping a salute which they returned. “Last stop on the way into hell.”
“We’re not staying long,” Horst replied, his voice deeper and gruffer, made slightly static by his helmet. “Need to get this test subject into the RZ ASAP for observation.”
“You’re accompanying?”
“Affirmative.”
“Nice knowing you,” the DX-soldier muttered, shaking his head and gesturing with his rifle. “Check your orders first.”
“Stupid if you ask me,” Horst said as he pulled up the wrist computer built into his armor, displaying the credentials that Maynard had arranged for them. “Why get papers to go get killed?”
“You’re lucky you didn’t need to get it in triplicate,” the DX-soldier said with an electronic chuckle as he read through the digital papers, pausing for a heart-stopping moment before nodding contently. “You’re good to go, soldier. This way,” he said, waving towards the post’s only gate, an airlock-style portal set at the base of the wall between two of the huge towers. Fritz and Horst followed, the Evolved relieved to see that there were no viral detectors within the compound; concentrations of infected biomass in the air had grown to the point that the detectors became useless, a point reaffirmed when their escort spoke next.
“What’s with the sensor?” he asked, nodding towards the Blacklight-keyed detector on Horst’s back as the Evolved rolled Darwin’s cage towards the airlock.
“Keyed to the subject’s DNA,” Fritz answered quickly. “Need all the help we can get with this sneaky fucker.”
“Eh,” the soldier grunted, standing beside the airlock and nodding once the Evolved got the cage close. “Alright, here’s the drill. I open this door, then you open yours. Your freak goes in the lock, then you two. I close this door and open the one outside, and then hell or high water, you’re on your own...and I really do mean that. The cannons will not shut down for any reason, so my advice is to keep your eyes peeled. You wouldn’t be the first slow starters to get fried out there. Questions?”
“Negative,” Horst said with a shake of his head.
“Good. Then I’ll start the exit procedure. Any part of it takes more than six seconds and I’ll shoot you both to make sure these doors stay secure.”
“Roger that,” Horst muttered before turning towards Fritz. “Let’s go! I don’t wanna get my head blown off because your mutt’s feeling sluggish!”
Fritz nodded, remembering that he was supposed to be a meek little Gentek drone getting bossed around by the Blackwatch hulks. The airlock door opened, followed swiftly by Darwin’s cage door and by Fritz’s purposefully high, nasally screech.
“Move it! Mush!”
Darwin rumbled a bark and leapt forward, a black-brown blur of fur and hard armor that whipped into the airlock quickly enough to leave his empty cage shaking and clattering like an empty tin can. Horst lunged in after him, pressing one hand to Fritz’s back and shoving him into the airlock with convincing apathy, playing the part of the brutal Blackwatch goon. The airlock door slammed shut behind him with alarming speed and locked into place with a series of resounding thunks as bolts the size of Fritz’s thigh shoved into place. The lightless space stayed sealed for a long count of three, and then the outside door snapped open with a wince-inducing shriek of tortured metal, allowing in a cloud of red-brown mist and dirty red sunlight which bathed the worn concrete walls like a coat of dried blood.
“Let’s go!” Horst urged, turning off his link to the common radio channels and allowing his natural voice to filter through as he jogged out of the airlock tunnel. Fritz was right on his heels, with Darwin following behind obediently, the massive dog’s head bobbing around as he sniffed and swiveled his massive radar-dish ears, trying to make sense of the myriad of new scents and sounds around him. Fritz had to dig a hand deeply into Darwin’s thick cheek-fur and drag his head down in order to keep the inquisitive dog from racing ahead, scolding him quietly as they stepped out onto the bridge itself. The virus’s efforts were incredible, the bridge on which the three mutants stood reaching more than a mile between Manhattan Island and the Testing Area. It was, essentially, a massive amalgamation of tendrils which formed a slowly-flexing, almost-stationary arm which was sheathed in plates of black biomass armor that gave it the girth of a nuclear submarine. An army of infected could have scrambled across its back, and the Evolved gained a much clearer understanding for why the massive watchtowers were so heavily armed. The endlessly seething, ripping lines of energy from the particle cannons swept back and forth across the bridge in a relentless, droning display of controlled chaos, nuclear energy harnessed and converted to a purely destructive form.
The evidence of their effectiveness stretched as far as the Evolved’s eyes could see. Charred, half-articulated body parts, smoke-like impressions of vaporized bodies, and a stink of burnt flesh and retch-inducing ozone surrounded them. The sound of the cannons relentless rays filled the air with a noise like a thunder god gargling with railroad spikes, multiplied times four. As the Evolved watched, one neon-white ray swept down the length of the bridge and obliterated a dozen scrambling infected like ants underneath a magnifying glass.
“Piece of advice,” Maynard’s voice crackled in over their radios, thick with static from the cannon’s electrical interference. “Don’t let the rays touch you, and for the love of god, do not under any circumstances fall off that bridge!”
“Know that I’m going to regret asking,” Horst muttered into his helmet link as he jogged over the thick armor covering the bridge, “But why is the water worse than the giant killer death-rays?”
“Because the cannons will disintegrate you faster than you’ll be able to feel anything so pedestrian as pain. Just take my fucking word for it, you don’t want to know what’s in that water!”
“See, now I’m curious,” Fritz said as he tried to lean over far enough to see the water beneath them. A sudden change in the cannon’s aim made him re-focus on the job at hand: dodging the sizzling rays of electric death that threatened to cut their mission, and the electrical bonds between their constituent atoms short. From the thicker build-up of armor plates ahead of them, the Evolved guessed that the towers had a range of only 600 meters, give or take. After that, their only problems would be getting through whatever life was waiting for them on the rest of the bridge.
“Why aren’t the cannons just cutting through the bridge?” Horst asked as they ran, the dominant Evolved leading the way while Fritz managed Darwin behind him. Both mutants were grateful to see that, whatever his intelligence, the massive hound seemed to catch on quickly that the whipping, cascading light show was not good for him, moving as swiftly as they did to keep the racing beams away.
“That armor’s too strong for blasters like these,” Maynard answered, “Or indeed, just about anything Blackwatch has tried. Thus far, they’ve managed to wear down the armor into the thinner plates you’re walking on, but with every day, anything they don’t focus on comes back a little bit more.”
“Good to know!” Fritz yelled as he flung himself flat, along with Darwin and Horst as one of the beams swept so close to them that it could have shaved their skulls and taken off Darwin’s ears. “Just guessing that we won’t come back if they fry us!”
“Most likely not, but you’re welcome to give it a try if you like, smartass.”
“Remind me why we haven’t killed him yet?!?” Fritz growled as he bounced up and took off running, whistling for Darwin to follow and trusting Horst to keep up as he tried to anticipate the beams movements. It wasn’t difficult; when infected drew too close, one beam or the other would snap up and consume them in a burst of pure energy. Without a threat, the cannons went into swift but steady sweeping patterns that vacuumed across whatever parts of the bridge they could reach, trying to keep the massive length of biomass from growing larger.
It was a fruitless effort, but at the very least, it kept the riff-raff out.
Reaching the edge of the cannon’s effective range made for some of the most nerve-wracking minutes of the Evolved’s lives, both aware that they could move more quickly, both aware that breaking from their disguises would likely mean death. Horst nearly had a stroke when one of the beams passed between him and Fritz, wondering if his lover had been swallowed up into the seething fury. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Fritz tumble ahead of the sizzling laser and start to climb up the untouched armor plating, Darwin close behind. His relief was short lived; from the moment they reached the built-up edge of the bridge where the cannons’ beams dissipated, they were under attack from infected.
“This is going to be a long fucking walk if we have to fight for every step!” Horst called as he made use of his disguise and started unloading his rifle into the oncoming horde which stretched all the way across the bridge, advancing ahead of Fritz as he fired. He didn’t need Fritz’s years of soldiering experience to tell him that he didn’t have enough bullets to do the job. Without that experience, however, he didn’t see what Fritz saw: that they had brought along their very own, Gentek-approved tank.
“Get ready!” he heard behind him a just as he felt the bridge start to tremble beneath his boots.
“For what?!?” he yelled, ventilating an infected skull before looking over his shoulder. What he saw nearly made him drop his rifle in stunned confusion.
Darwin was running towards him, head down to put his thick helmet to use as a battering ram, his stocky body wide enough to cover a significant portion of the bridge as he ran. That wasn’t shocking. What boggled Horst’s mind and left him momentarily slack-jawed was that behind Darwin’s helmet, clinging to his thick fur, riding perched behind his burly shoulders, was Fritz, wearing a grin bigger than a basking shark’s.
Horst grasped for eloquence and missed. “What the flying fuck are you doing?!?”
“I’M SEEING DEAD KINGS!!” Fritz cackled as he rode his dog forward towards the enemy, reaching down a hand to grab Horst as he rode past. Horst maintained the presence of mind to accept it, pulling himself up behind his lover and clinging to Darwin’s back armor for dear life. The dog clearly had less regard for its safety than Horst, charging into the oncoming pack of infected with an ear splitting howl, battering them aside like grass before a hurricane. Infected tumbled or were thrown clear off the bridge as the massive mutt barreled them over or tossed them aside, utterly in his element. Fritz was beside himself with glee, cheering Darwin on and throwing strings of acidic German curses at any infected who put up resistance or tried to grab onto Darwin’s legs. The dog left a wake of mashed and broken bodies behind it, the few lucky stragglers that avoided a trampling left dazed and stumbling, easy targets for Horst to pick off with pot-shots.
“How much further?” He called as he fired, snarling as an infected’s right shoulder and most of its neck blew apart in a shower of gore.
“Thirty seconds!” Fritz answered. “Think we can drop our disguises yet?”
“I’m just guessing that they keep the whole bridge under pretty close surveillance,” Horst grunted, interrupted by a two-shot burst that turned a lucky survivor into more wailing food for whatever lurked beneath. “Best that we keep up the act until we’re all the way across.”
Fritz nodded and kept Darwin heading straight and true, steering him around the large mounds of biomass armor and keeping a watchful eye for anything larger than infected humans. He didn’t have to wait long, spotting a larger body moving through the mass of small infected once they came within clear view of the hazy island.
“Brawler!” he roared. He was answered by a roar from the monster he had spotted, the quarter-ton mass of muscles, teeth, and bony spikes howling its hunger as it bounded towards the Evolved.
“Mine!” Horst growled confidently, turning himself around and standing up on Darwin’s back, biomass shifting subtly into his legs and feet to keep him balanced as he brought his rifle up. He fired, but missed as Darwin reared his broad head, skipped forward to get his legs square beneath him, and met the Brawler’s pounce with his own. Outweighing the simian monster by more than triple, and with a long, wide mouth full of teeth, there was no contest to who would win the high-speed game of chicken. The Brawler disappeared to its waist inside Darwin’s mouth before the dog’s jaws snapped shut like a bear trap. The Evolved heard a satisfying crunch and felt a sharp, grinding jerk of the dog’s neck, then listened to the primal moaning as the crippled Brawler was forced to spend the rest of its short life surrounded by teeth, staring down the gullet that it would soon explore.
They reached the end of the bridge without further incident, finding that the solid bar of armored biomass split into a dozen root-like cables which stretched away to various anchor-points on the island. They followed one of the thicker, armored tendrils up from the bridge into a decapitated skyscraper along the island’s edge; it was an unknown environment, but the building would at least offer a greater degree of protection than running out into the open. Once inside, the Evolved dismounted to scout their new surroundings while Darwin settled down to tear into his gurgling prize. The two men found that the black armor plates covering the thick tendril broke up to reveal the red flesh beneath, which carpeted the floor, ceiling, and what remained of the walls that they sheltered behind, bulging wildly and flexing in places like overdeveloped muscles. Whatever the floor had been used for pre-infection, no trace remained. Instead, boney, mottled black columns stretched from floor to ceiling across the other-wise empty floor in a haphazard array. Closer inspection revealed that some of the columns penetrated through to upper or lower floors, holding them together like nails the size of tree trunks.
“Structural supports?” Fritz guessed.
“To strengthen the bridge’s anchors, probably,” Horst agreed, nodding. “Bet they run through the whole tower.”
“Safe bet,” Fritz muttered as he changed out of his disguise and reached for his phone. “Let’s see if Maynard was worried about us.”
“Only that he’s going to die of old age before we evolve him,” Horst snorted, shaking his head as he took his natural form and dropped the Blackwatch rifle in favor of his bio-cannon. Fritz chuckled as he hit Maynard’s speed dial, heard it ring once and then picked up.
“Well, pillow-biter, did you manage to get across?”
“Safe and sound,” Fritz answered.
“Good. I was beginning to worry that I’d have to fly out there and draw you a map of how to go from one end to the other.”
“You don’t have too many friends, Frankenstein, you might want to reconsider trash-talking the two who can make you immortal.”
“I’ll worry about manners when I can live long enough to feel the consequences thereof. So, what’s it look like out there?”
“Like heaven, if it took a two-week vacation to hell and back,” Fritz said with a sigh. “We’re somewhere along the coast, taking a breather in a building.”
“I can see where you are, fool, I’m tracking your phones. And what the hell do you mean, breather?!? I’m chewing my fingernails to the bone wondering if any of the million things that could go wrong will, and you two are relaxing?!? If you’re wasting time fucking each other, I swear to god, I’ll put my foot so far up your ass-“
“I’ve bent re-bar into pretzels with my ass, bone-bag. I’d snap your foot off and beat you to death with it. In any case,” Fritz growled, “If you’re tracking us, why don’t you give us a hint about which way to go? It’s chaos out here, all the old landmarks are gone.”
“The severity of your helplessness makes newborns look like survivalists,” Maynard sighed, the sound of him typing filling in the background noise. “There…check the maps I uploaded. The station should be highlighted.”
“Thanks,” Fritz muttered, motioning for Horst to check. A confirmation thumbs-up assured Fritz that his lover knew where to go. “Alright doc, it worked. Thanks again.”
“If you need more, ask for it before you get to the station. I’m going to be cut off from you once you’re underground.”
“Good to know.” Fritz hung up and pocketed his phone before mutating out his cannon, sighing with relish as he flexed the powerful limb-gun and looked to his lover. “So…do we have a heading?”
“Indeed we do,” Horst said grimly, holding up his phone so that Fritz could see the scale of their problems. The picture quality was mediocre, a black and white digital render of the whole island of Manhattan, the thick veil of smoke and smog which covered it penetrated by whichever orbiting camera had taken the shot. Whole blocks of buildings could be seen fallen, scattered, gutted by fire or toppled over onto each other like a giant’s dominos. Some had been replaced by what looked like towers of hardened biomass, sprung up out of the ground like saplings pushing up through a concrete parking lot, damaging the structures above them before pushing up into the sky. Craters and cysts large enough to park a pair of busses in dotted the island, blanketing swathes of land in thick sheets of biomass, making forests of spore-pods and armored chambers whose purpose the Evolved couldn’t guess. Central Park was a black stain on the map, without detail, too choked for the camera to be able to even tell what was there.
These were not, however, the most worrying details, as Fritz pointed out with a tentative question and a pointing finger.
“Baby?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Does that thing…look like a Goliath to you?”
“Vaguely, if you could imagine one looking even bigger than they already were. Do these,” Horst asked, tapping a detail on the map, “Look like Hydras to you?”
“Baby, I don’t remember Hydras ever getting that fucking huge!”
“Yeah, well, seems like the neighbors have been hitting the gym while we were away. Sweetheart, look where they are.”
“Oh, for the love of fuck…the station?”
“And just about everywhere else, eh?”
Fritz sighed. “How many, do you think?”
“At least twenty Goliaths…the Hydras, who knows? These are just the ones up top…no idea how many are underground.”
“Remind me where we’re going to look for this stupid virus?”
“Underground, sweetheart.”
“Fuck my life.”
- 9
- 10
- 11
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[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn