Road to Hell
Summary: What happens when "You are what you eat" meets "No good deed goes unpunished."?
Ferric had a request and the muse sang.
Alex had picked up many proverbs, plenty of them apt enough to capture the sickly comedic failure his existence had become. At the moment The road to Hell is paved by good intentions was being picked apart as he did the same to his current project.
After the gut-wrenching revelation about his origins, Mercer took a step back and considered his options. There was the easy one, to rage on and lose himself in the pursuit of Blackwatch and Pariah simply because he knew they still existed as shadow projects that'll eventually implode, taking millions more with them.
Or he could do some good in Manhattan, finish off Redlight's stragglers, get at the beasts that lived underground that claimed the heaviest losses of the remaining marines. Use that time to define whatever the hell he was.
The infection might flare up if he left the city now, the hivemind chaotic with no leader to keep them somewhat docile.
Flashes of a spandex-clad arachnid hero brought with them a saying With great power there must also come great responsibility. Responsibility, he couldn't think of a single thing he'd ever done out of responsibility.
Maybe he should start. Leave the civilians and marines out of it, sate his bloodlust on some appropriate targets. Be more of a hero than a villain.
Fighting above ground turned out to be a bad idea. USMC concentrated their fire on him, despite the hunters about to wipe them out. A bigger priority, a global threat, a panic inducing distraction that cost lives. So Alex left his comfort zone and took his hunt into the sewers were hydras slumbered and living biomass aggregated into colonies that grew large, entrenched deep into abandoned tunnels and forgotten railways.
Those days were hard fought. His skill set at a terrible disadvantage, having to consume every genetic monster he encountered to replenish himself. There were no screaming voices, no memories that spiked his senses, just flesh; nothing more than mass to burn for energy, his inhuman metabolism demanding more as the battles meshed into a single ceaseless struggle. A part of him missed the rush of knowledge and experience, that push of personality and perspective that was unique each time.
In the darkness, he lost his human sight without announcement or grief. Unnoticed as his infected vision grew more effective.
Such a waste of time. Weaken, pick up, snap, consume. Rinse and repeat. How long has he been down here? Must be a faster way, to just move forward and kill them, consume the lot in one motion. Something anything to hurryhurryhurryhurry.
Without people as a reference, Alex had not noticed his size; the growth slow, yet constant. Filling the tunnel so much his back bumped the ceiling, his elbows the sides, his legs bowed as he slouched. The ever present hammerfists pulling him forward into a gorilla crouch as he barreled down the maze, gleeful that none of the scurrying infected could slip by him to escape.
The hive was mindless, yet knew fear.
Alex found a faster way.
It was done. Every single last one of them, every tentacle, every bony protrusion, every blob of Greene's brood.
Exiting through an access tunnel, Alex made his way topside. It must have been a couple of years, his thermal vision picking up the heat signatures from buildings full of people, the rumble of nightlife, the smog from cars not fires. The infection had been dealt with and newyorkers did what they always do, survive and carry on.
Then the screaming started, yells that pleaded 'No! Not again!', the pops of policemen's pistols.
On reflex, Alex shot forward and consumed the cop without thinking, then he knew. Damn it all, he knew.
The cop's last memories was of a monstrous maw, full of rings of black teeth that spun in the wet cavern, as wide and tall as the long writhing worm that was still squirming out from its den underground. Two glowing yellow orbs on top of stalks thicker than a man, undulating to the rhythm of the crowds, the sway as it tracked movement unmistakable; armored pincers that was once arms, snapping at regular intervals as though snatching invisible morsels to feed itself.
Realization dawned on Alex then, so numbed by the routine, so concerned to finish it and be done; he'd let his odd evolution take the fittest route for success without supervision.
He tried then to change back, to assume the cop's form, to recover his senses.
Already too dense, could not compress any more, consumed more mass than he could burn off. He was stuck in the form; his attempts to force it caused tentacles to sprout impaling those shocked in place.
As the thump-thump of helicopters vibrated what passed for ears, Mercer decided it was time to leave back from where he came. Despite his body, his mind remained the same and he had no wish to kill unnecessarily anymore.
Alex should have know better. A person is known by the company he keeps. Even Nietzsche warned of it, Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
He did not heed them, so he whiled away his time in the dark as he picked at his mass, trying to regain control of his form once more. The only company to be had were sayings and proverbial phrases of hijacked memories, all of them a day late and a dollar short.