I own nothing.

Simple and straightforward. Prototype and Infamous take place in the same universe, no dimension shenanigans. Empire City is something like 'Little New York' and is somewhat south of New York proper. The story of Infamous begins roughly a month after Prototype ends.

Alex is believed by Blackwatch to have been utterly destroyed by the nuke. (Why didn't there seem to be any fallout from the bomb? Choices: Magic seawater comic science...It was a special bomb Blackwatch developed to have minimal impact beyond the initial blast...ALIENS!...It wasn't actually a nuclear bomb, just an incredibly powerful Thermobaric bomb...Other.)

Without Further Babbling From Me

Men Like Gods

Prologue/Chapter 1

Undisclosed Location: Hideout of Alex and Dana Mercer.

"Alex!" Dana shouted from her bed, laptop propped up on her knees. One thing Alex refused to compromise on now that they were more or less settled and now that the virus inside her was rendered more or less benign, was how much she exerted herself.

The man shaped WMD appeared in the doorway only seconds after she had called out to him. The number of emotions rapidly playing across his face would have been comical on anyone else, but for Alex, it was a sign that a small city may well disappear overnight.

"What is it? Are you-?"

Dana cut him off. "I'm fine, quit worrying." The only surviving Mercer sighed. Shaking her head at Alex, Dana turned her computer so he could see the screen. "I thought these companies might be tied to Gentek or Blackwatch somehow, and I found some weird files in their systems. Nothing concrete and I can't piece almost any of it together, but it's definitely looking like Blackwatch's special brand of fucked up."

"First Sons?" Alex muttered as he scanned the collected bits of information.

"Some kind of 'secret' organization. Can't find much other than rumors. Supposedly they've been around for decades. Conspiracy theories all over the place but nothing else. Check this out," Dana spun the computer back around for a second and brought up two new files. "Don't know if it's these First Sons weirdos or not, but some of what I found makes it sound like something's going on here and here."

Alex leaned forward again to examine the map and the file fragments Dana had linked to the two locations marked. One was just south of New York and he could reach it in less than two hours easy. The other was a bit more out of the way, in Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans.

"Empire City?" Alex asked, more to himself. Memories flashed through his mind, giving him quite a bit of background on the miniature New York. "And New Marias?" Another flash of memories, most just vague knowledge like that learned from a textbook rather than memories of people who had actually been there.

"Yeah. These companies have moved a lot of resources around and one way or another, it all goes through or ends up in one of those two cities." Dana said, nodding and turning her laptop around once again. "What do you think?"

Alex hesitated for several seconds, various shades of uncertainty flashing over his expression. "Will you be okay on your own? I can go check out Empire City and be back by tomorrow."

"Alex! I can't stay in bed forever," Dana snapped, glaring at her 'brother'.

"I'm sorry, Dana, but the virus isn't gone, just dormant. Too much activity could wake it up and I don't know if I could shut it down again. It's not safe for you to travel, especially if Blackwatch or Gentek are involved," Alex said, attempting to calm his sister down. "Please, just wait here and I'll be back as soon as I can. I promise I'll find a way to cure you completely, but until then, you have to rest."

Undisclosed Location: Just outside the Hideout.

Alex closed and resealed the hidden door with a sigh. Arguing with Dana was never pleasant, or easy, and he didn't like leaving her alone and blamed himself for her bedridden state. Yes, she was healthy enough to be up and active, but that was the problem. Thanks to Greene, Dana was healthier than she'd ever been, and if the virus had been allowed to continue it's mutations, she would likely be just as strong as Elizabeth had been by now.

No more Runners. If I can help it, no more outbreaks either. Alex thought as he sped across the landscape, taking care to avoid the eyes or cameras of humans.

Alex raced south towards Empire City.

+++ PoV From Here on is First Person Past Tense: Alex, Unless Stated Otherwise.+++

East Coast: Mainland Side of the only Bridge in or out of Empire.

I covertly completed my investigation of the area and came to one conclusion: something was rotten in the state of Denmark. I fished out my phone, modified of course, and called Dana.

"Something is definitely wrong around here," I said. Quite an understatement that.

"What do you mean?" Dana asked, still sounding a little upset at being left behind. I could practically see her indignant pout just from her tone.

"It's not Blackwatch, at least, not that I can tell without… asking someone, but the military sure is here. They're pretty well hidden, but it's obvious they're waiting for something. I doubt the soldiers know what's going on, but it looks like they're ready to set up a quarantine zone." I muttered, eyes locked on a pair of men who were obviously on duty soldiers, casual clothes aside, trying to blend in with the civilians.

"Like Manhattan? Alex, if it's another test, like Hope…" Dana trailed off, not sure what to say that didn't involve several choice expletives, I'm sure.

"If it is, I'll stop it, and I'll make sure everyone knows the truth," I said, meaning every word.

Empire City: The Docks in the Neon District.

I waited until the coast was clear before quietly hoisting myself out of the water and onto dry land. Walking along the bottom of the Hudson's cousin wouldn't have been my first choice, but the only bridge was being watched and I didn't trust myself to remain totally inconspicuous walking across it. Plus, the few tunnels that connected the islands to the mainland were already swarming with military units.

I shifted my appearance around so as to not be recognized. I didn't change my face much except for swapping Alexander's cold blue eyes for Elizabeth's eerie green irises and tinging my hair with her bright red. I altered my facial structure slightly in small ways, for as much as I hate the man the face originally belonged to, it's mine now and I prefer to keep it intact as much as possible.

I modified my jacket, lengthening it into a long coat reaching my knees and warping the tribal pattern on the back. I did away with the stripes on the sleeves and removed my hoodie entirely. I darkened the color of my jeans and gave my skin a slight tan, for as in shape as he was, Alexander wasn't the outdoors type. I was fairly sure my clothes wouldn't attract any attention and that facial recognition would only get a sixty-percent match at best.

Hands in pockets, I walked out into the street and began searching for anything out of the ordinary. After an hour of searching, I caught a lead. A man, late thirties or early forties, dark skin, in obvious pursuit of someone. He was on a bike, so it wasn't hard to follow him. He was dressed far too casually for the amount of effort he was putting into following his target. I guessed he was NSA, FBI or CIA.

Taking to the rooftops to tail the agent, I also caught sight of the man he was likely in pursuit of.

"A bike courier? He's not likely important, than. Must be what he's carrying that is," I muttered to myself. Wrong on that one.

They made it into the Historic District before the agent lost track of his target, getting stuck at a red light while his target on the other bike continued to weave through traffic recklessly.

I opted to follow the bike courier rather than wait for the agent to get moving again.

Good thing people don't usually look up. I thought, making one particularly long jump that may have been nothing compared to leaps I'd taken in Manhattan, but that was still not humanly possible.

I'm not the sort for pride, so I can freely admit I lost track of the biker, hard as it is to believe.

"Damn it," I grunted, dropping down into an alley. "He's gotta be around here some-"

I stopped dead in my tracks. I still can't really explain it, but I felt something was wrong. It may have been something in the air, some sixth sense from Elizabeth. I don't know. What I do know, is that no one else saw it coming the way I did.

A pulse, the only way I can describe it, ripped through the area, leaving the air charged as if there were an electrical storm imminent, and the lights went out.

Then came the explosions.

I hardly had to turn before I saw the growing bubble of blueish-white light. I reacted without really thinking, throwing a wave of force between the bubble and myself. The dark red distortion, shot through with brilliant green ripples, slammed into the dome and then everything went white in my vision.

I recovered fast, pulling myself out of a pile of burning rubble without any trouble. Looking around though, I was reminded of the latter half of the Outbreak. Buildings were flattened, charred and broken bodies were lain everywhere, and screams from the distance hung in the air as more died.

I'd only been on the very edge of the actual blast from the looks of things. Even so, my 'clothes' were somewhat damaged. I left them that way to avoid unwanted questions, and my 'skin' had been seriously burned. In several places I could see clear through to the chitin 'bones' and black slime that most of my internal body consisted of. That damage I repaired as quickly as possible.

"A bomb? Why test a bomb in-?" I cut myself off and shook my head. "Doesn't matter. They detonated a bomb in the middle of the city. That's all that matters right now. I'll worry about why later."

I made my way to the closest sounds of life, the closest survivor who might be saved, and began doing my best to rescue as many people as I could, not neglecting to sweep each one with Infected Vision. Even if I couldn't sense a new Hive Mind, I still wanted to be sure there were no traces of the virus involved. Call me paranoid.

Maybe ten or eleven minutes after the blast, I reached the last building I planned to search and found only one survivor, an unconscious young woman. A large portion of the ceiling had landed on her legs, more the right then the left, and she would have burned to death if I hadn't found her.

When I lifted the rubble away and pulled her out I noted that she was either the luckiest person in the building or the least lucky, since I wasn't sure if she would survive or fully recover from her injuries.

At least they probably didn't suffer. I thought. I'm very familiar with suffering and I don't wish it on many people.

As I made my way out of the still burning structure, carrying the girl to a nearby ambulance, lightning struck on the other side of the blast zone. Not once, twice, or even just three times. Bolts continued to rain down for nearly thirty seconds before things calmed down.

By the time I reached the area struck by the freak electrical storm, there was almost no one left alive on the Historic District side of the bridge. The bridge seemed to have taken most of the hits and much of it had already sunk into the water.

Day Four: Quarantine in Full Effect. Historic District: Fortified Safe House.

I'd called Dana a dozen times since morning, maybe more than one hundred times since the blast, and even though she said she was fine, I was having trouble restraining myself from tearing my way out of the quarantine just to get back to her.

I'd helped set up and fortify a safe house after the city started to fall apart and Dana insisted that people needed me there more than she needed me back at 'home'.

Finding enough food and medicine for everyone had already started to become difficult, at least, without thinning the population outside the safe house anyway. I estimated they could last a month as things were before they'd start to have problems with rations if everyone went extremely light on meals. No one had taken that very well, but a glare from me was generally enough to take the wind out of most people's sails.

What was wearing on my nerves at the time though, were the soldiers that had begun patrolling the district at night, and from what I'd heard, they were showing up in the day now as well. They weren't Blackwatch, that much was obvious at a glance, but their behavior was too similar for my liking.

I wouldn't have been half as concerned if I'd had the chance to consume one or two of them, but they were always in groups and they had begun posting lookouts on rooftops. As long as I was trying to stay low profile, I couldn't afford to attract attention more than I already had and I couldn't even travel quickly anymore. Making matters worse, most of the district's power had been cut, leaving everyone to rely on portable generators.

Day Seven: Historic District: Ground Zero.

I'd combed over the crater the day of the blast, a few hours after things had calmed down, or as much as they could given the circumstances.

I hadn't found anything useful. No fragments of a detonated weapon, no trace of viral matter, no chemicals that shouldn't have been in the area. Absolute nothing.

That day I had also noticed the plague, which was hard not to, so I had scanned everyone I saw suffering from it, and had found no signs of the virus. Other than all of those afflicted being in the city, I couldn't find any common factors between them either. Just being alive seemed to be enough for the plague to affect people.

I absorbed a few blood samples from the afflicted and was even further baffled after I found no viral or bacterial evidence that could explain the condition, cementing the fact that the plague just gave me even more questions and no answers.

So, standing in the crater for the dozenth time, I glared at the one clue I had: the pillar of concrete in the exact center of the devastation. It didn't react to the glare at all, of course, and I was left to sigh and wander off again.

Walking is, in my opinion, a massive waste of time. I could have easily covered the entire district in under a minute if it weren't for the First Sons soldiers on the streets and rooftops. Not that they could really threaten me, in the end, but I was trying to be covert at the time and dashing through the air would certainly have gotten me noticed.

Stealth isn't a bad thing. I have no complaints about doing things quietly, but being forced to practically inch along the ground like a slug for several days was infuriating. However, I was almost glad I'd been walking when I noticed a familiar smell and hushed voices from what appeared to be an empty alley.

Thermal vision revealed a pair of First Sons agents, one seeming to be larger, or carrying far more equipment, than the other. They were discussing patrol routes and shift changes. Just in case they noticed me, I made a show of stretching and then checked my non-existent watch before looking around and dashing down their alley.

They shuffled a bit, moving to clear a path, but otherwise didn't seem to think I knew they were there. I veered towards the wall and kicked off it, launching myself into the larger man and slamming him into the opposite wall. I shoved my hand into his chest and extended a blade through the other man's neck before he even had time to shout.

I consumed them both and quickly sifted through their memories. Admittedly, that little stunt probably tipped someone off one way or another, but it didn't come back to bite me in any way I noticed so I call it a worthwhile gamble. I found that neither knew too much about exactly why they were doing what they were, but they did give me a new clue. Their leader, a man called Kessler, had specifically requested the courier I'd seen the government agent following.

They didn't have any clue why their boss had wanted that specific man to deliver the Ray Sphere.

I was a bit shocked to find out they knew exactly what the device was. That it was supposedly a machine that could activate and amplify psychokinetic powers in people hardly gave me pause, though, considering my own abilities and nature.

Besides some new information, unfortunately not including the location of their main base of operations in the city, the two also provided me with a new power. Seeing them invisible to human sight had made me think they had a functional optical cloaking device. While this was true for the smaller guy, the larger man was what they called a Conduit.

The equipment that the Conduit had been hooked up to was a sort of relay and transmitter. Some of the equipment on the normal troops acted as a receiver and let them make use of the Conduit's powers. In this case, it served as a stealth device using the Conduit's invisibility to assist his allies.

I admit, I was mildly amused with the ability and spent almost a minute switching it on and off. It had its limits, of course, even now it's not perfect. Rapid movement disrupts it, for one, creating a flickering distortion in the air. It didn't help that it wouldn't hide me from the First Sons at all either, since the masks they all wore were designed to filter for their own cloaked troops.

Even with those limits though, I was rather pleased with the new ability and continued on my way back to the safe house.

Day 14: Historic District: The Safe House.

I made trips to both the Neon and the Warren over the seven days following my acquisition of the cloaking power. I investigated the Reapers and the Dustmen, finding both groups to be reprehensible. They had Conduits of their own, I found, but I didn't manage to run into any in the few hours I spent in either district.

Could I have actively hunted them down? Ripped the gangs apart and taken their powers, restoring order and relative peace to the city as I went? Maybe. But with Blackwatch still thinking I was gone I wanted to lay low as long as possible, and declaring an all out one man war on the gangs would have brought all kinds of attention I didn't need at the time.

Anyway, early morning on the fourteenth day of the quarantine, I got set on the right track to finding out what was going on in the city and what the First Sons leader was up to.

Amy Dailey, the girl with the crushed leg, violently protested when the self-proclaimed "Voice of Survival" hijacked the television to lay blame for the blast and the current state of Empire City at a courier named Cole MacGrath's feet. The exact same courier who I'd lost track of the day of the blast.

"He's lying! I know Cole! He wouldn't do something like this!" Amy shouted, not to anyone in particular. She was bed ridden. Her leg wasn't likely to ever heal fully, but it didn't need to be amputated.

Previously, I'd talked to her a bit when she had first woken up from her injuries. She had thanked me for saving her when she heard I was the one that had pulled her out of the rubble.

Before the broadcast had come on and her outburst, though, I'd been on my way out. I wouldn't normally have paid it any mind, but he got my attention with his claim, and Amy's reaction got me back in the door and across the room as fast as humanly possible.

"The courier, his name's Cole?" I asked. She jumped, probably shocked by my sudden appearance.

"Y-y-yeah. I know him. He's dating my sister, and he most certainly wouldn't do something like this," she answered, hesitating a bit at first but picking up speed quick. "I mean, Cole's not like, a saint or something, but he's a good guy. He'd never help anyone blow up the city. He's just a courier for Christ's sake. He couldn't have known someone had him delivering a bomb."

"If he survived the explosion, where could I find him?"

"What do you mean if?" She looked horrified at the implication Cole might be dead.

I knew she was worried about her sister. She'd talked about trying to call her, but no phones were working in the district at that point. Even I found myself having to cross to one of the others or to the mainland to call Dana. Implying someone she was close to might be dead probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done.

"A human wouldn't survive a hundred pound explosion from close proximity. The blast that caused all this was at least in the multi-ton range. If he was holding the device when it detonated… sorry," I said, stopping myself before I could give a graphic description of what might happen to a human body exposed to a close range multi-ton detonation.

"I have reason to believe he's alive though," I continued. "Where do you think I'd most likely find him?"

"I know he didn't have anything to do with it," she said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes.

"You know him. I don't. So, I'll take your assessment of his character as true unless he proves you wrong. I have no intention of hurting him, I just want to know what's going on here and who's responsible," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I already knew Cole had no idea what the Ray Sphere was. Kessler may not have told the rank and file why he had Cole carrying it, but they knew that Cole wasn't connected to them in any way.

After a few seconds, looking sideways at me with more than a bit of cautious suspicion, Amy answered.

"If he's not in the Historic District, then he probably would have made it back to the Neon before everything got closed down. He'd be with Trish and Zeke, his best friend," she said, smiling lightly.

With that, I made to leave. She was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to get to the Neon, but I told her I'd find a way, and that I'd let her sister know she was okay. I was sure Cole was alive. The First Sons seemed to think so, but I wasn't sure about Trish or Zeke.

I didn't mention it to Amy though.