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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
- 7
- 8
- 9
Like ripples disturbing a pond after the casting of a few small stones, word of the devastation in Seattle reached further and faster than those responsible could. The news was all over it, with reporters swarming all around the blood-soaked Blackwatch fortress within minutes of its attack and reports reaching major news organizations around the world within the hour. Only the deployment of DX-soldiers in a perimeter around the fort kept some of the bolder camera-jockeys from trying to climb the fences.
Horst and Fritz could not have known that their escapade had already become a national sensation by the time they made it to the train leading to NYZ. It was only once they had gotten Darwin’s box safely loaded up on a flatcar and retired to a more comfortable section for their cross-country ride that they were enlightened, flicking on the small television mounted in the wall of their room.
“Blackwatch has been understandably quiet about the details of the attack, saying only that the incident has been contained and that that there is no public threat. However, if you’ll look behind me, you’ll see that there is another ambulance pulling in through the main gates, that makes twelve in the last thirty minutes…Diane, has there been any mention of how this might affect the rest of the city?”
“Unreal,” Fritz breathed as he lay on his back on one of the room’s beds, hands behind his head, naked save for a t-shirt clinging to his torso. “I can’t believe that we’ve gotten away with this, baby.”
“One of the benefits of thinking before acting,” Horst commented, his voice muffled from his lips pressing lower and lower down his lover’s torso. “That was Alex’s one massive mistake; the man had no grasp of subtlety. If he had played things a little bit safer, maybe screened more of the idiots he found to evolve, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“You wouldn’t be a breath away from sucking me off?” Fritz asked teasingly, smirking down at Horst before gasping softly from his lover biting at his hip.
“I would probably be blowing you in a bathtub full of blood,” Horst said reproachfully. “You know, like victors usually do when they have millions of weaker victims to subjugate?”
“It’s a thought,” Fritz breathed, one hand sliding down to slip fingers into Horst’s thick hair, free hand grabbing slowly at the back of his own head. He bit his bottom lip and flicked his eyes down as he felt Horst’s tongue glide wetly over the sensitive skin between his navel and groin, drawing blood when the teasing lick slid tantalizingly close to stiff, hot flesh.
“That all you can think about right now, sweetheart?” Horst husked up from his position atop Fritz, lying over his lover with just his pants on, hands gripping tightly at Fritz’s hips to keep him flat on the bed.
“Give me…something to take my mind off it,” Fritz replied softly, eyes hooding, then closing tightly as Horst breathed hotly over his already-drooling tip.
Horst chuckled and did as his lover suggested, leaning his head down lower and opening his mouth to start dragging lips, teeth and tongue slowly over the taut skin of Fritz’s cock. The submissive Evolved immediately bit off a sharp, high-pitched moan at the feeling, his fingers tangling and knotting tighter in Horst’s hair, pulling and pushing intermittently as Horst slowly, easily worked his lover undone.
Out of sight and mind, the impassioned Evolved’s activities were drawing attention as fixated and precise as a microscope. The focus of this frenziedly-intense interest was not on their sordid play in the train, but rather on the trail of destruction that lay behind them, and was triggered by a simple, innocent sentence quietly spoken in passing.
“Hey, did y’hear about that fort out west? Damn shame…should have known better than to keep so many infected on-site.”
The speaker was a Gentek scientist, and the target of his conversation was another of the same stripe, two doctors walking down a hallway inside Gentek’s colossal center for Research and Development. Neither man, however, had the capacity for the level of absolute concentration and interest which was leveled upon them by another scientist who was fortuitously within earshot.
“What was that?” asked the third scientist excitedly, the elderly man’s path changing mid-step to bring him uncomfortably close to his two younger colleagues. Both men were clearly displeased by the interruption, but their discomfort stemmed more from the appearance and identity of the man who had broken in on their talk.
Doctor Maynard Nixon had been at Gentek for almost half of his long life, and it showed. What little hair remained on his pale, dark-spotted head was wispy and whiter than snow, almost reflective beneath the incandescent strip lighting in the ceiling. His clothes were ordinary, just a white button-down shirt and black slacks beneath his ever-present lab coat, shoes of indistinguishable but plain make tied tightly over his feet. Perhaps it was this bland exterior which made his feverish intensity seem so repellent and alien; it could not be denied that the aging doctor possessed a singularly twitchy nature usually seen in crack addicts many years his junior.
His face was that of a man who had seen more than he ever should have, deeply lined and aged to a leathery finish, with scruffy white stubble constantly waging war against his intermittent attempts at shaving. A narrow nose which reached from furrowed brow to whiskery upper lip seemed to carve his face into halves, which made the singularly omniscient knowledge burning in his eyes seem all the more disturbing. Each of his wide, bloodshot eyes burned with dark memories and mad wisdom, and secrets whose knowing should have warranted the doctor’s ‘retirement’.
Having those viciously green eyes staring at him made the scientist who had spoken look away and clear his throat uncomfortably before speaking again, trying to lean away as he did so. “It was on the news, sir…some Blackwatch fort in Washington had an outbreak of their infected, killed a couple dozen men and wounded more than that.”
“Are they saying how it happened?” Doctor Nixon asked with aggressive curiosity, uncaringly taking a step closer, nearly pining the younger scientist to the wall. “Did they?!”
“No, sir!” the scientist managed to say as he edged himself away, making no disguise of his unhappiness now, straightening his lab coat. “They wouldn’t say…perhaps it’s something you should look in on. Alone.”
“Indeed,” Nixon practically growled, his hairy eyebrows descending heavily over his devil-green gaze. He turned on one heel and was hobbling back the way he had come before either one of his younger colleagues could offer anything else. His ears tuned out the muttering behind him, too used to it to care.
When Raymond McMullen had first founded Gentek forty-four years past, it was to his senior professor of Genetics who he turned to for help in finding other scientists to fill the ranks, and with whom he built the foundation for the pharmaceutical company. Doctor Nixon, already in his fifties at the time, had seen his young student’s proposal as a welcome relief from the dreary trudge of academia, and had allowed the company to become his life. His marriage, already tenuous, broke apart after the first week of work, although Maynard did not notice until he actually returned to his home three days later. By then, the divorce papers were already in his mailbox; it marked the last time he ever set foot in that house, and began a habit of finding space to eat and sleep within Gentek’s walls.
More than forty years after Gentek’s birth, it remained the only thing in Maynard’s life that he could live for, but it was no longer his pride and joy. The satisfaction of bringing real scientific progress into the world had been cheapened by Blackwatch’s intervention; Maynard’s decision to loudly oppose any kind of partnership with the military complex had resulted in his removal from any power he had once held. Left with a low-grade position only as a courtesy by his student-turned-boss, Maynard had been forced into a life of simultaneous love and loathing for the company he had helped to build, needing it to survive and hating its existence.
Not until the ungodly viral outbreaks in New York City did Maynard find anything to enjoy in his life. Not until he witnessed first-hand the power that Alex Mercer had managed to wrest from the natural world through unnatural science did he begin to feel something other than spite.
Not until the day when Maynard watched Mercer go toe to toe with a nuclear weapon and win did he remember what hope felt like. Alone in his tiny office, his one window had faced the harbor when Mercer had taken the nuke-laden helicopter far enough out to sea to save the city from annihilation. Maynard had nearly gone blind from the flash, remembering just in time to turn away as the bomb had detonated. He was never more thankful for his sight than he was that night; while out for a head-clearing stroll on the waterfront, he had seen the unmistakable form of Alex Mercer slowly get up off the beach and walk away into the darkness.
Maynard had known all about Blackwatch’s virus before Mercer himself had ever come to Gentek. Even forced to distance himself from the projects, the crafty doctor had kept himself abreast of all that happened within Gentek and Blackwatch, managing to keep up with current events with a shaky understanding. Their atrocities had been a learning experience, revealing the depths to which his company could sink, and the lofty heights of knowledge that could be accessed only by falling face-first into moral filth.
And such knowledge…that it could lead to that thing, to that impervious god of flesh and death…
Maynard had returned to his office that night, and set about changing his life. The passion and unapologetic dedication which he had once reserved for Gentek was redirected towards everything and anything involving Mercer, the virus he had created, and its deplorable history. By the time Mercer returned to start his second outbreak, Maynard was the only man in the world who had a complete understanding of all that had happened to that point, collecting the knowledge furtively hidden away from prying eyes by his superiors.
Maynard’s fascination with Mercer had grown with the appearance of the Evolved in NYZ, for with them came a revival of the pure hope. If other people could be infected with this glorious virus and gain the power that Maynard had long revered, what was stopping him from attaining it, too?
James Heller’s unrelenting attacks on Mercer’s plans and the other Evolved made short work of Maynard’s desire to join the fight. What little he saw of Heller told him that to become an Evolved would be to court a death sentence; there seemed little that his old bones would be able to do to stave off the hulking killer, even if he did somehow evolve.
Ten years after Mercer’s death and Heller’s disappearance, Maynard maintained the desperate, sad hope that perhaps all was not lost. That hope had been kindled when the virus had returned with a vengeance and taken over much of New York, but the tiny flame could grow no further without some sighting of an Evolved.
So Maynard had simply guarded his little candle of optimism, shielded it with hysterical belief and kept it fed with sparks of unreasonable dementia, forming theory after theory of how the Evolved might have survived in lieu of their leader’s guidance. Doing so had affected him noticeably; many wrote him off as a senile madman and a conspiracy theorist, barely clinging to his job and slipping through the cracks, aimless and best avoided unless one wished to listen to crazy tales of immortality.
News of the Blackwatch fort had left Maynard with a significantly different appearance, so much so that the few people he passed in the halls stared over their shoulders as he passed, wondering where the old man had gotten the energy to practically run as he murmured furiously under his breath. He kept up his rickety jog all the way back to his little sanctum, where he slammed the door and threw the bolts before collapsing into his chair and setting up a storm of typing at his computer.
“Has to be them,” he muttered to himself, eyes glued to the screen. “Has to be…” He kept up the mantra as he pulled up the official Blackwatch incident report, easy to obtain for a man who had been cracking open Blackwatch secure databases for forty years. He scanned it quickly and let out a keening, screeching chuckle at what he saw.
“Traitors? Treason? Haw! Idiots! They were disguised…disguised, you fools!” The doctor nearly spun around in his chair with excitement, typing away with clawed fingers, searching for more to back up his theory.
“Shot down that far outside the city? Must have had a hell of a pilot…for dinner. Hahaha! Dinner! Now let’s see…where would you go from there? Another fort? No, they’re all on alert up and down the eastern seaboard…where, then?!? Suppose you might have just taken a car…WAIT!” Maynard stabbed a finger at his screen as if to try to stop the scrolling image he saw, freezing in his seat with a grin across his face. “Lorans Prison…of course! It’s perfect! It’s—wait. What’s this?” Curiously, a small tag was flashing beside the prison’s icon on his screen, prompting Maynard to click it and see what it had to tell.
“One shipment, late-authorized by Dr. Franklin Myers for delivery to NYZ…oh,” the old man breathed, eyes wide as saucers, falling back into his chair. “Oh, it…it must be. It must be them…I know it. I know it!” The doctor nearly screamed as he stood up in his chair with a frenzied jump, right fist clenched and shaking before his face. He held the pose for a moment before quickly returning to his computer, finding the time that the order had been put in and checking the time.
“Only a few hours away now, on the train…too perfect,” he muttered. “Mustn’t get my hopes up…could go crazy if I’m wrong. Crazy,” he repeated, his eyes sliding from the computer monitor to one of the drawers of his desk. He licked his dry lips quickly before he pulled it open and retrieved the item it held, sighing slowly to himself as the weight of what he was deciding to do settled upon him. If he was wrong, and the impending train into Gentek’s R&D center did not hold the genetic dream he hoped it would, then he would likely lose his mind to hopelessness.
And most of his chest cavity to Blackwatch bullets.
~             ~             ~             ~             ~
Horst and Fritz made the most of the few hours of peace that the train ride provided, working out the excitement which only a night of murder could give them. They were recovering from their fifth round of sex when a speaker mounted in the corner of their cabin announced that the train was approaching its last stop. Both Evolved wished that they could have seen what lay outside the train, but the windowless walls only answered their questioning gazes with unfeeling metal and plastic.
Soon enough, they felt the train slow itself as it neared its station, and both quickly changed into the disguises they felt were best to make the transition as smooth as possible. When the door to their cabin was opened by a Blackwatch private offering to help direct them where they needed to go, Horst nodded agreeably in the body of the highest-ranking scientist that he had consumed at the prison. Fritz had garbed himself in a black handler’s uniform, following Horst out the door to supervise Darwin’s unloading.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have to keep the cage closed until we can bring you to the release point,” the private explained as he led the two Evolved off the train. “Protocol. Can’t have a…test subject running loose in the halls, you know?”
“Understandable,” Horst said with a nod, looking around once he stepped off the train. The terminal was completely enclosed, denying him the view he desperately wanted with thick walls whose white paint had turned grey from the traffic of trains and passengers. The train had made very few stops between Washington and NYZ, though a fair number of people were getting off around him, Gentek personnel in a variety of uniforms mingling with the occasional Blackwatch goon. Regardless of their wear, everyone gave the train’s flatbed cars room, particularly the one holding Darwin’s bulky containment cage.
“If you don’t mind, private, we would like to accompany the cage to the release point. Can you get us there?” Horst asked, nudging Fritz with one foot to try to make his lover stop staring wistfully at the enclosed box as a lonely, quiet yodel emanated from within.
“He knows we’re out here,” Fritz hissed, starting to take a step towards the box.
“If he had even half a thought that you were out here, he’d be chewing through the door to see us,” Horst muttered with a roll of his eyes.
“Uh…sure, doc, shouldn’t be a problem,” the Blackwatch escort said from behind his mask. The full-face gas mask had undergone several revisions since Blackwatch’s deployment in NYZ, eventually replacing the two telescoping lenses with a dimly-glowing hololithic visor. The effect of the opaque piece of perma-glass dehumanized the soldiers and made them appear more authoritative; Horst and Fritz saw it as a bigger target.
“C’mon, it’s this way…be careful with that thing, huh?” The private motioned for Horst and Fritz to follow him and waited until Darwin’s cage could be lifted with a small crane and set on a secure, low gurney, its motorized wheels making it simple for Fritz to push it along. The trip from train terminal to release point was a short one, made easier by the seemingly uniform aversion showed to both Evolved as they walked, leaving them clear space ahead to roll Darwin’s cage.
“Everyone seems a touch nervous around us,” Horst commented to their escort.
“No-one ever really knows what’s in those boxes,” the private replied with a nod towards the cage behind them. “We’ve had a few subjects attempt to break out during transport. Tends to make people edgy.”
“I see,” Horst said with a nod, glancing aside as another cage, this one open and empty, rolled past them on the opposite side of the hall, a small cluster of scientists muttering amongst themselves beside it. “When these attempted break-outs occur, what’s standard procedure here?”
“Call in the cavalry and hope that whatever’s inside can either be replaced easily, or can calm down without dying after getting shot,” the private said with a chuckle and a gesture with his carbine. “Doesn’t seem like we’ll have that problem, though…we’re almost there.”
“Excellent,” Horst muttered, glancing around carefully. Security cameras seemed to monitor the hallways more closely than the eyes inside a casino, and the mixed Blackwatch soldiers who patrolled in twos and threes made a discouraging show of force. A glance back to Fritz and a nod from his lover told Horst that they were both thinking the same thing: they would be very far up shit creek if they did anything to disturb the peace within the complex.
The release point itself turned out to be much as the Evolved had suspected, a large, drab room of grey concrete large enough to hold six or seven containment cages; two empty cages were stacked by a wall, but the Evolved were the only ones with a loaded cage. “You’re lucky,” their escort mentioned as he led them across the largely-empty space. “On a bad day, this place is crawling with eggheads and boxes and DX-guys trying to keep everything moving smoothly. Nearly had one of those fucking crates fall on me last week.”
“How on earth did that happen?” Horst asked in his disguise’s admonishing voice.
“Idiot handlers didn’t sedate whatever was inside properly, they said…yeah, right,” the private grumbled as he flipped a salute to the two DX-soldiers standing guard at the release door. “Got me a good look at what was inside when it cracked the cage door open. They could have washed its face in chloroform and it still wouldn’t have gone to sleep.” The private’s head turned slightly towards the cage rolling smoothly along behind them, his expression inscrutable behind his faceplate. Horst guessed that he was curious.
“Something on your mind, private?”
“No, sir. Asking questions is above my pay grade,” the private answered as he straightened his head.
“A well-trained Blackwatch dog,” Horst said with a snort. “I was wrong, miracles happen.”
“Too true!” Both Horst and Fritz blinked in surprise at the loud, sudden voice behind them, turning to see who had been listening to them talk while their escort groaned and started muttering under his breath.
“Never fuckin’ fails…doc, I, uh, just remembered that I need to see my CO for a, uhh…”
“A couple rounds of anal?” Fritz offered, helpful and blatantly sarcastic as he leaned against Darwin’s cage.
“Sure. Whatever. Just roll your freak to the airlock when you’re ready to go,” the soldier grumbled before walking away quickly, cutting himself a wide berth around the seemingly-prehistoric scientist who had approached them. The old man did not even give the goon a second glance, his intense green eyes boring holes into the Evolved with disturbing focus, making them glance between each other and step forward, Horst leading.
“Can we help you, mister…?”
“DOCTOR, actually…doctor Maynard Nixon, and yes, I believe that you two gentlemen can help me a great deal…more than you know!”
The Evolved shared a mutual wary glance at the man’s raving before Fritz spoke up, gesturing towards the large doors behind them. “Doctor, no disrespect, but we have work to do. Can this wait?”
“Absolutely not!” the old man practically screamed, his cracked voice rising as he stomped up to Fritz and boldly grabbed him by the front of his handler’s uniform. The two DX-soldiers standing guard watched them intently, fingers close to the triggers of their cannons; were it not for them, Fritz would have torn the old doctor’s arm off and stuffed it down his skinny throat. Horst was weighing their chances of armoring up and killing the two guards before an alarm could be raised, but the cameras watching from every corner killed that dream, making him growl as he approached his lover to try to get the raving man off of Fritz.
“You can’t leave…not yet, not until I know for sure! It has to be you…has to be!”
“Easy!” Fritz exclaimed as he grabbed the old man’s arm and yanked it away from his shirt, glaring at him. “Careful, doctor, or you’ll get hurt.”
“Humanity didn’t evolve by being careful!” Maynard snarled, green eyes burning infernally, his voice suddenly dropping for just the Evolved to hear. “And I’m willing to bet that you didn’t either, did you?”
Horst froze mid-step, staring at the man with a mixture of shock and malign suspicion as Fritz tightened his grip on the old man’s arm, pulling him in closer to growl lowly. “We don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, dinosaur. Go piss off someone else.”
“Come with me,” Maynard muttered, “And hear what I have to say. Please,” he added, a touch of desperation entering his voice and making his bloodshot eyes grow wet. “Afterwards, I don’t give an earthly damn what you do, but as god is my witness, you will hear me out.”
Fritz narrowed his eyes and glanced sidelong at Horst, looking for direction. Horst just shrugged. “Can’t kill him here, for sure…at the very least, some privacy would be nice.” He nodded towards the DX-soldiers, both of whom were shifting restlessly as they stared at the three men.
“Fine,” Fritz hissed, releasing Maynard and swiftly rolling Darwin’s cage over to rest beside the empty cages. He only moved away after pressing an ear flat to the cage’s door and hearing a rumbling, low snore from within, nodding approvingly. “We’ll be back, thirty mikes at most,” he said to the DX-soldier closest to him before jogging over to stand expectantly before Maynard. “Alright, doc, let’s get a move-on. Patience isn’t one of our strong suits.”
“Then we’ll get along splendidly!” Maynard said with a raspy laugh before turning and running for the doorway. “Come on!” The Evolved were quick to follow, quickly finding themselves impressed by the old man’s speed. His hobbling, hopping gait set a quick pace through the building’s maze-like hallways, forcing both Evolved to dodge around other people in order to keep up; with all the security around them, running someone into the floor or crushing someone into a wall was not an option.
After leading the two Evolved through more hallways and stairwells than either could count, Maynard finally ducked into a half-open doorway and waved frantically for the Evolved to follow him. “Quickly! In here!”
“Twitchy old fuck, ain’t he?” Fritz muttered before walking through the doorway. Horst snorted and nodded as he followed, shutting the door behind him. Inside, the windowless space was claustrophobically small and littered with books, folders, loose papers, and other research materials which formed an unstable pyramid atop and around a rickety desk and chair which both looked older than their owner.
“Living the high life, eh?” Horst commented dryly.
“Am I? I wouldn’t know, been living in here for years. This isn’t where I wanted to talk, though,” Maynard said as he shuffled carelessly through the drifts of papers towards a tall set of filing cabinets standing flush against the back wall of the tiny room.
“So why bring us here at all?” Fritz asked suspiciously, his fingers curling into his palm. Maynard just chuckled as he flipped a hidden catch on one of the cabinet’s handles, and then yanked hard upon the thing with a grunt. The front of the cabinet pulled away, revealing a hidden space behind it within the cabinet, a door which looked like something from a fallout bunker, and a biometric scanner which Maynard unlocked with a wave of his hand. “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said craftily as the door unlocked and opened on its own, stepping inside and sliding his hands into his pockets as he chuckled. “Step into my humble home. It isn’t the Marriot, but Bruce Wayne doesn’t have some of the toys I’ve got.”
“I believe you,” Horst said without sarcasm as he followed Maynard into the large room, Fritz following behind in impressed silence. The white-walled space was one of the most complete, and compact advanced laboratories that either of the Evolved had ever seen, a concentration of technology that he had never seen in one place before. “You could have cracked the genome in here,” Horst murmured under his breath.
Fritz was considerably less impressed. “Alright, you brought us here, Frankenstein…now what the hell do you have to say?”
“That I apologize in advance,” Maynard said with a sigh as he turned to face the two Evolved while pulling his right hand from the pocket of his lab coat, fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of his compact desk pistol, a short, slender suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. Maynard’s skinny arm lifted and the gun made two quiet coughs as he fired a single round at each of the Evolved’s heads, startling them both and making them drop their Gentek disguises in surprise. Horst’s bulletproof body deflected the 9mm slug that struck his forehead off into a wall, doing little more than to make him glare and scowl; Fritz slapped a hand to his own forehead like a man stung by a bee, cursing under his breath before he started digging a finger into his small wound to loosen the bullet.
“Told you this senile jackass would try to fuck us,” he growled once his regenerating flesh pushed the bullet out, falling to the floor.
“I’m…not so sure,” Horst said slowly, pointing to get Fritz’s attention. “Look.” Fritz looked, and soon wore the same confused expression as Horst as they both stared at Maynard. The old man had stumbled to press his back to a wall and then slid down with his legs splayed out before him, arms slack at his sides like a dying soldier propped up in a foxhole. Tears streaked down his wrinkled face, and his skinny frame shook as he wept silently, the pistol dropped and forgotten as he started to whisper and croak, his weak voice making the two Evolved step closer and lean down to hear what he was saying.
“Ten years,” they managed to hear eventually as the old man’s bloodshot eyes looked up at them both. “I’ve waited ten years…more than that, even…just to see one of you in the flesh…to talk to you…ten years…” The old man’s weeping grew to the point that he couldn’t speak, leaving both Evolved to stand and scratch their heads in befuddlement. Fritz’s jaw worked back and forth for a minute before he managed to say anything.
“Any idea-“
“Not even one,” Horst sighed, shaking his head. “Well…guess there’s really nothing for it. Want me to do the honors, sweetheart?”
“Be my guest,” Fritz said a little helplessly, crossing his arms and watching as Horst reached for Maynard’s neck. The old scientist looked dumbly at Horst’s approaching hand, blinked, and then suddenly leapt up with his arms pinwheeling before him, eyes wide as saucers, screeching at the top of his lungs.
“WAIT! Waitwaitwaitwait! Wait wait WAIT!!!” Horst paused and blinked in confusion, furrowed his brow and finally stood up straight, arms held out to his sides to accentuate his shrug.
“Waiting,” he hissed testily.
“Don’t kill me!” Maynard said quickly, words falling from his mouth like a waterfall. “I can help you! Guide you wherever you need to go! Make you stronger! Just don’t kill me! I’ve kept myself alive this last decade dreaming that I would find you, that you didn’t all die back in 2010!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Fritz asked, glaring and stepping closer. “What do you mean, find us?”
“You’re M-virus mutants!” Maynard hissed. “Mercer’s soldiers, right? He gave you his virus and turned you into…er…”
“Evolved,” Horst supplied helpfully. “He called us his Evolved.”
“Fitting,” Maynard muttered with a nod. “And Mercer, he…he made you like this, right? He evolved you?”
“Ja,” Fritz answered slowly, still suspicious. “He infected us to help him bring about his revolution…take over the world, like you do.”
“Of course,” Maynard murmured, his gaze drifting as he spaced out for a moment. “Always was a clever one, Mercer.”
Horst raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “You knew him? How?”
Maynard snorted. “He worked at Gentek, didn’t he? Well I was working here long before he ever signed up…hell, I was the one who recommended him as project leader!”
“Project leader?” Fritz asked intently, eyes going slightly wider. “You mean, on the Blacklight project?”
“The very same!” Maynard laughed.
“Damn,” Horst muttered, taking a step back to lean heavily against a worktable. “Did…did you know about any of this? About what would happen? What COULD happen?”
“Do you really think I would have let Mercer work on Blacklight in public if I’d had any clue of what might happen? No,” Maynard grunted as he shuffled to a thickly-padded chair and sat heavily. “I didn’t know what would happen…just that whatever would happen would be earth-shaking. And I was right!”
There was a long minute of silence as Maynard caught his breath and the Evolved shared an exchange of expressions ranging from ‘Are you kidding me?’ to ‘Seriously, are you fucking kidding me?!?’ No-one made a noise until Horst cleared his throat and pushed off the table, walking around to stand in front of Maynard as he spoke.
“So let me see if I have this straight, eh? You’ve been at Gentek since who-the-fuck-cares when. You put Alex on the trail to making Blacklight-“
“Without realizing it,” Maynard interjected.
“Fine. You unwittingly put Alex on the trail to making Blacklight. You have some decent facilities here and you seem to know your way around…these things could make you barely useful to us, but they don’t make you even remotely trustworthy.”
“What do you mean?”
“He means,” Fritz spoke up spitefully, “That typically when Blackwatch or Gentek say that they’re going to help our kind, we end up getting fucked.”
“Is that right?” Maynard said, blinking owlishly.
“Pretty much,” Horst said with a nod. “These days, we’re really not in the business of letting anyone fuck us, but us.”
“I see,” Maynard said quietly, furrowing his brow. “Well, that presents a problem, because I need you to trust me…and if you were clever, you’d want to trust me, too.”
“Why’s that, exactly?” Fritz asked.
“Because you need my help!” the old man cried. “I can get you into anywhere you need to go, find you data in minutes that could take you days! I can point you towards solid genetic gold, gentlemen…DNA that would make as strong as Mercer!”
“Really?” Fritz asked, crossing his beefy arms. “Then why don’t we just eat you, take your knowledge, and cut out the possibility of you stabbing us in the fucking back?”
“Because I need you, too!” Maynard screamed loudly enough to give the Evolved pause. “I need you,” the old man replied more quietly, crumpling back into his chair to pant for a moment. “Can either of you…remember what it was like, being human? The weakness…”
“The mortality,” Horst added.
“The general lack of natural weaponry,” Fritz contributed.
“Exactly!” Maynard screeched, waving a hand wildly. “And most people haven’t even the slightest idea of how feeble they really are, because they have nothing to compare themselves against…they still believe that they’re at the top of the food chain. Well, I have something to compare myself to, and I have for the last twelve years, ever since I first saw Mercer during the first outbreak. For more than a decade, I have been frightfully aware of my own inferiority, simply by dint of being human. It has been maddening!”
“And it must be maddening to remain human,” Horst said slowly, starting to catch on to the old man’s rambling point.
“Yes,” Maynard said with a nod. “Why can you trust me? Because you have something I need, that I absolutely must have. I have skills and knowledge that, whether you like admitting or not, you will need for whatever the hell it is that’s drawn you out of hiding. That means that we can help each other…let me help you, guide you to what you need, give what aid that I can, and in return…”
“In return, we evolve you,” Fritz finished for him, sighing. “Which would effectively make you the hardest loose end to cut if you become a liability, or if you betray us.”
“I do understand the dilemma,” Maynard said as he rose from his chair and hobbled over to a large computer terminal, bringing up a dozen files with practiced ease. “If I’m telling the truth, I could be a great asset; if I’m lying, I could be your worst nightmare. I have two things to show you, gentlemen, which I hope will convince you that trusting me is the lesser of your available evils. Here’s the first,” he said as he pulled a Gentek file from his computer and threw it up on a large display screen for the Evolved to see. “NYZ plays home to most of our experiments. We send out teams of scientists and Blackwatch escorts to perform field tests on new creations, and to gather materials and test subjects for study. Give me your phones, and I’ll upload these codes to track these teams…should allow you to avoid or eliminate them at your leisure.”
“Why would we want to avoid them?” Fritz asked as he hesitantly reached for his phone.
“DX-soldiers with experimental Blackwatch weaponry and orders to protect their scientists religiously, that’s why!” Maynard replied as he snatched Fritz’s phone and plugged it into his computer, uploading the necessary information into it.
“Scientists whose memories could point us more accurately towards the DNA we need,” Horst said firmly as he handed over his phone. “And those DX-fuckers sometimes have decent DNA, eh? Eat enough of them, and I bet we could start sniffing out the ones that will help the most.”
“Help with…what, exactly?” Maynard asked innocently as he handed Fritz’s phone back and plugged in Horst’s. “I can readily guess that you’re here to improve yourselves and practice for something, but what’s the endgame?”
“For now,” Fritz said quickly as he checked his phone’s screen, “It’s probably for the best that you not know.”
“Still don’t trust me, eh?” Maynard grunted as he unplugged Horst’s phone.
Fritz shook his head. “Not really. More importantly, though, even if you really are on our side, if you’re caught doing this, you’ll have less information to give away. Deniability,” he said with a resigned shrug that made Maynard chuckle as he tossed Horst’s phone back to him.
“Caught? Please. To be caught, someone would have to look for me, and no-one’s done that in decades, gentlemen. I’ve been written off for dead by everyone who matters here. My file’s been burned and deleted, my name wiped from all the records. I’m just one more crazy old man who’s had one too many CAT-scans,” he said with a sigh, standing shakily as he spoke. “This company and these people have forgotten me, gentlemen. They have taken everything I’ve ever had to give them and then some, and left me with nothing but what I can scratch together for myself, and I want bigger claws to scratch with.” He glanced between the two Evolved, resolution burning bright in his old eyes. “For your help, for your power, there is nothing I wouldn’t do. Make me more than human, and my gratitude will be endless; I am willing to ally myself with you against all of humanity if I must, and you can take that to the damn bank!”
The Evolved exchanged silent, skeptical glances that spoke volumes of the old scientist’s persuasive ability before Horst sighed and spoke. “We still can’t tell you the real reason why we came back, for now…but I suppose that you need to know what we’re here for, if you really want to help. Back when we were first here, we gained power by hunting and consuming monsters mutated by the virus, and hijacking Gentek’s experiments. We need to do that again.”
Maynard chuckled, then laughed raucously as he walked between the Evolved to stand beside a wide wall, flicking a switch on a control panel mounted far along its side. “I sincerely doubt that you’ll have too much trouble with that,” he said smugly as the wall slowly turned transparent, revealing it to be a thick window of armored glass that allowed red-tinted sunlight into the lab, turning the white walls pink. The Evolved were too awe-struck to notice the change in color, staring out the window with expressions of shock plastered over their faces.
“Gott im himmel,” Fritz whispered.
“Yeah,” Horst rasped, unable to think of much else to say as he and his lover finally saw their home again. NYZ had undergone change such as neither Evolved could have imagined when they had seen it last, as a barren cityscape devoid of visible infection. From their elevated height within Gentek’s headquarters, they could tell that the massive structure had been built on the island once known as the Yellow Zone, with the Green Zone and Red Zone islands stretching far out before them, although calling them ‘islands’ was a gross misnomer. Even from a distance, the massive bridges of infected biomass connecting the two islands could be seen, anchoring the Green Zone to what had once been Manhattan as surely as the foundations of the earth. The Red Zone was difficult to see because of a thick, hazy layer of blood-red smoke which masked it, but the Green Zone was closer and absolutely took the Evolved’s breath away. Infected biomass covered the landmass more thickly than it had covered the Red Zone during the second infection, with massive bubbled pustules and cable-like tendrils of the red-black flesh blanketing whole buildings and choking streets. Squinting, the Evolved could see the mounds of biomass that had formed around the island, blackened and hardened like armor, reaching out in a tall, wide seawall. “What’s with all that?” Horst asked, nodding towards the armor.
“The shields? Ahhh, that’s just the virus doing what it does best: foiling Blackwatch and Gentek,” Maynard said with a chuckle as he came to stand beside the Evolved, hands in his pockets. “When they figured out that the virus had evolved sufficiently to become amphibious, they whipped up a chemical agent to poison it and started dumping the stuff into the water. A month later, those shields started growing, been getting bigger and bigger ever since. They’ve tried bombing the things, but it’s like dropping spitballs on a brick.” Maynard chuckled again and shook his head, sighing wistfully after a moment. “No-one wants to see the writing on the wall: we finally made something greater than ourselves, and it will be the death of us all. Most of us, at least,” he said with a sideways glance at the Evolved. “Hint hint.”
“Right,” Horst replied, a little smile crossing his features. “Alright, Nixon, here’s what I’ll offer you, take it or leave it. You help us, point us towards some really juicy DNA, run interference so that Blackwatch doesn’t start dropping precision strikes on us, and feed us any intel we need…and when we have everything that we came here for, if you haven’t betrayed us, we will evolve you.”
“Yes!” Maynard cheered, turning from the window to perform a happy, hooting dance across the lab. “Are you sure about this?” Fritz murmured, leaning close to Horst as the dominant Evolved nodded confidently.
“I’m sure. Look out there, sweetheart. Our home has grown a tad wild in our absence; we could spend months hunting in there, and wandering around this fucking citadel before we’re ready to go. I want this thing to be done with as soon as possible, because we both know that the longer we stay here, the better the chances are that we’ll get in over our heads. We’re going to change the game; someone’s bound to notice eventually.”
“And you really think that a half-mad bone-bag is going to help move things along more smoothly? I don’t think you see the full size of the risk we’re taking here,” Fritz muttered skeptically.
“Nothing that we’ve done so far has been without risk, eh? Everything we plan on doing is risky, too,” Horst said with a shrug. “If anything, this is the risk we can take most safely. If he betrays us, feel free to make a drum out of his skin.” That got a smirk and a nod out of Fritz, patting Horst on the shoulder as he stepped away from the window and got Maynard’s attention.
“So, doc…where should we start looking for power?”
“Er…” Maynard said, pausing his celebrations and straightening up. “Well, I mean…you obviously can’t got out like that. In here, obviously you have your disguises, but out there, you can’t go running around, jumping off buildings looking like humans. You need disguises to make you fit in, something infected…we could get each of you a specimen from the containment levels, I suppose…hmm?” The chuckling coming from the Evolved made Maynard stop and blink in confusion. “Did I make a joke?”
“No, doc,” Fritz chuckled, grinning. “We’ve just got our disguises covered. Care to show him?”
“I think we both should, sweetheart,” Horst said even as he started donning his armor. Maynard gasped as the Evolved grew their black exoskeletons, laughing hysterically once they formed fully and Horst casually draped an arm over Fritz’s heavily armored shoulders.
“Fiendish! Fiendish!” he cackled and applauded as he looked the two over, nodding quickly. “Perfect! You look like something the Red Zone spat out! You’ll fit right in out there, so just keep up those disguises and anyone who sees you will think that you’re just more virus-spawned monsters.”
“And they’ll be right,” Fritz said with a smirk, retracting his armor as Horst did the same. “So we’ve got cover, now we need a target. Anything leap to mind?”
“Of course!” Maynard replied, shuffling quickly to his computer. “There are experiments going on all over the Testing Area…you would have known it as the Green Zone. Some of them are worthless, but some can yield some very interesting results. I’ll tag three of the most promising experiments for you; they should provide a sufficient welcome back to your home.”
“Perfect,” Horst said, checking his phone and then nodding decisively once he saw the updates flash across his screen. “We’ll go get Darwin and then get a move on.”
“Darwin?” Maynard asked quizzically. “There’s a third one of you?”
“Sort of,” Fritz said with a smirk as he shifted back into his handler’s uniform. “Tell me, doc…you a cat person, or a dog person?”
~             ~             ~             ~             ~
Within minutes, the Evolved were hustling their way back into the release chamber where they had parked Darwin, leaving Maynard to laugh and rave about the potential of a virus-mutated Corgi. Accessing the detailed maps that Maynard had provided, they pinpointed the three teams of scientists by the time they reached the release point, and were quietly discussing their next move as they approached Darwin’s containment cage.
“If we move fast and hit their escorts,” Fritz murmured as he and Horst rolled Darwin’s cage up to the first set of heavy, wide doors, “We should be able to have the scientists and whatever they’re testing without a problem.”
“If they’re testing on something portable,” Horst countered as the DX-soldiers keyed open the doors for them, “We could drop in and steal it, and be gone before they can pick much of a fight.”
“Third option,” Fritz said as they wheeled Darwin through the first airlock and waited for the doors behind them to close. “We jump in and do our thing, and Darwin runs in behind us to fetch whatever we’re after.”
“Do you really trust the mutt not to eat whatever he steals?” Horst asked critically.
“Do you trust Maynard to not send us into a trap?” Fritz retorted as a klaxon sounded and the doors ahead of them pulled apart, revealing a series of shielded landing pads and a couple Blackwatch helicopters, high-efficiency models designed for cargo transport. A pilot waved for the Evolved to come over, jumping into the cockpit to start his pre-flight checks as the Evolved approached with their cage.
“I don’t trust Maynard,” Maynard said quietly as he helped push Darwin’s cage. “Not yet. But I do think that if he doesn’t wind up turning on us, he really could be helpful.”
“You’re talking about a man whose way of determining whether or not we were human was to shoot us,” Fritz growled.
“Well we’re not human, so no skin off our nose,” Horst muttered as they got Darwin’s cage underneath the helicopter’s cargo bay, then moved back to let assistants strap the cage in securely.
“Where to, doc?” the pilot yelled once Horst and Fritz piled into the helicopter’s cramped back seats. “South-eastern sector!” Horst yelled back. “ASAP! Don’t want that thing to start trying to get out in midair!”
“Roger that!” The pilot strapped in as the rotors started up, and within a minute the black helicopter lifted off the pad and turned towards the Testing Area, giving the Evolved a bird’s-eye view of the mutated warzone they would be running through. As they drew closer and closer, the towering flesh-forms of viral infection could be seen more clearly, whole blocks of building overrun and overgrown, streets chocked with shambling bodies. Larger creatures moved through the streets and gutted buildings, half-seen amid shadows and in gaps between the buildings, though never too close to the pockets of open space amid the infected mass. Once the helicopter cleared the armored seawall, the Evolved saw that the open spaces were where teams of DX-soldiers held back the infected horde around scientists clad in bright hazmat suits.
Both Horst and Fritz clenched their hands into fists as they thought about going toe-to-toe with the hulking soldiers again.
“I’ll set you down close to one of the escort teams,” the pilot yelled back as he brought the helicopter low over one of the clearings and held it for the Evolved to disembark and unload their cargo. “Frequency delta seven when you want to call in your ride back!”
“Don’t hold your breath!” Fritz yelled as he unhooked Darwin’s cage, grinning and waving the pilot off once the heavy box was free of its flying carrier. Even before the whop-whop-whop of the rotors dissipated, both Evolved could hear the eager scratching and clawing within the cage, Darwin’s low, demanding growls echoing the growling predatory urges that they both felt.
“Well,” Horst said with a smirk, “Let’s get started, eh?”
~             ~             ~             ~             ~
Maynard, too, was eager to begin, the aged doctor hobbling around his clandestine office to gather materials for the first of what he hoped would eventually be many tests, thanks to his new allies. Ironically, the first test he wanted to perform was on those same allies, without their knowledge, or even their presence.
“Got to have a baseline,” Maynard muttered as he got his workstation together. “Got to know what we’re dealing with…wonder if they even know what’s in their DNA? Guess I’ll surprise them.”
Once his workstation was sorted properly, Maynard stalked over to where the two Evolved had stood when he’d first brought them into his little sanctum, and stooped over with a loud, long grunt to pick up the bullet that Fritz had pushed out of his head. The small, flattened slug was mostly clean, but a few grooves in the bent metal still showed the wet glimmer of blood. Horst’s was even cleaner, Maynard discovered after he prized the bullet out of the wall where it had gotten lodged after deflecting off of the bulletproof Evolved; he hoped that it would suffice. He started scanning the bullets as soon as he had both, eventually finding enough traces of DNA to perform a meager few tests that would give him some insight into each of the Evolved. Two display screen showed each of their profiles as Maynard worked on developing his knowledge base on the Evolved, centered around the mostly-complete genetic structures he had managed to pull from the bullets.
Scooting back from his workstation, Maynard’s eyes narrowed as he glanced back and forth between the two images, his brow slowly furrowing in confusion. “What’s wrong with this picture?” he muttered before rolling himself back over to his computer, where he swiftly pulled up his file on the Blacklight virus. It was one of the last of its kind, a complete sequence of Mercer’s original virus which had started the first infection, hijacked from the young doctor’s work computer before Blackwatch could confiscate everything related to his work. Without Mercer’s scientific muse, however, the information was useless to Maynard. Whenever the old man looked at it, he felt like Rembrandt staring at the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling; he could appreciate the genius and effort which had gone into it, and could pick out small details which hinted at process and technique, but it could not be remade…not that Maynard hadn’t tried.
Pulling back from wistful memories of past failures, Maynard brought the diagnostic of the Blacklight virus up next to the Evolved’s files for a side-by-side comparison. He spent five long minutes staring at the three images, his eyes narrowed in concentration, picking over each of the Evolved’s virus-altered genes, his intense scrutiny concluding with a heavy sigh as he flopped back in his chair, shaking his head.
“Oh, they will not be pleased about this,” he muttered to himself as he reached for his phone and hit up the Evolved’s numbers, hoping that he wasn’t interrupting anything important.
On the second ring, he started to wonder how they could answer their phones at all in their armor.
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[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn