"You and me, marine, we don't get to die just yet. We gotta go back, back where we're needed."
Those were the last words Alcatraz heard spoken by Prophet. Or more like Prophet's ghost. Was there even a word for inadvertently uploading your consciousness into nanomachines so your mind continued to live while your body died?
The nanosuit's visor adjusted to the glare of outdoor lighting as Alcatraz came to. As he lifted himself out of the rubble that remained of central Manhattan, his eyes were saturated with a series of scrambled diagnostic screens and incomprehensible text. The suit's visor seemed to be malfunctioning, and Alcatraz struggled to see through the visual mess as a new mysterious voice crackled in his ear.
"Am I reaching the Force Recon marine just recovered at Central Park? The wearer of Jacob Hargreave's nanoshell?"
The speaker had a thick German accent, telling Alcatraz this obviously wasn't Prophet buzzing in again. He began studying his surroundings, trying to find the source of the transmission.
"Uh... wait. I'm adjusting the feed."
When the male voice spoke again, Alcatraz's visor finally stabilized. The glitched data screens gradually disappeared, allowing him a clear view of the New York cityscape.
"Ah, better. Um... allow me to introduce myself."
This should be interesting. This was the second time in one day that he had been contacted by a disembodied voice, and he wondered how much weirder his situation could get.
"Karl Ernst Rasch, at your service. And you are...?"
This revelation fulfilled Alcatraz's expectations. Hargreave had implied Rasch was practically the only person involved in the nanosuit project NOT to seek some bizarre form of immortality, so the famed scientist should have been long dead by now.
While considering how he would respond, Alcatraz came to the conclusion that he would see Prophet's mission through until the end. Hell, with the memories of the nanosuit's former owner now freshly assimilated into his mind, he could BECOME the old bastard. He adjusted the nanosuit's voice digitizer accordingly, and then finally spoke for the first time since becoming the suit's user.
"They call me... Prophet."
Rasch, or at least this person claiming to be Rasch, sounded like he was amused by this answer.
"Well, that's good to know. Now I'll have a name to put on your gravestone."
Alcatraz didn't expect a response like this. He nearly found himself repeating Rasch's ominous words in a confused whisper, and he used his artificial vocal cords to convey only one thing.
"Huh?"
He was brought back to reality only when immense pain suddenly throbbed through his chest. He collapsed to the ground in a storm of strangled grunts, and his visor began filling with static. In his final seconds of life, he realized the suit was shutting down, and his heart was being stopped along with it.
When Alcatraz's struggles abruptly stopped, the nanosuit burst into white hot flame. His remains were quickly reduced to cinders, leaving no trace of him behind. The suit had destroyed itself and its user to protect its secrets.
Where ever he was, Karl Rasch simply smiled to himself.
"And that takes care of that little contingency."
The End.
Author's note: You can't say this fanfic is out of character because Rasch is introduced in the last 30 seconds of Crysis 2 and literally has no canon characterization whatsoever.