-To all those who've read 'Runner' and stuck around for the sequel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and sincerely hope that you enjoy the sequel.-

-Thrax-

Spit. Literal.

"B-boss!" Sniff and Sneeze chorused over waves of saliva, the tongue suddenly lunging forward and uprooting all of us. As if this body hadn't been a massive failure already, now we were exiting French-style. From where we'd been on the taste buds, we were thrown forward, the mouth opening and shining a blinding light down on me. I winced and squinted, the spit rolling forward between taste buds and throwing all of us forward, barely anywhere to latch onto for stability.

I threw an arm out, grating my teeth together and thinking that this was the last thing that I needed to have happen, when suddenly, the second tongue joined us. Sniff screeched, and I looked up just in time to see a giant shadow cast over us. One hand firmly gripping the edge of a taste bud, I looked up to the huge object sliding towards us and frowned.

"Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me." There was only one option that didn't end up in me getting crushed, and time to act on it was running in short. I lifted myself as high as I could with one arm and braced for impact, a wall of saliva heading my way with Sniff and Sneeze tumbling around above me. If they made it or not, I wouldn't put myself out of the way to ensure. Although, over the years, the two seemed to find a way out of even the most impossible situations.

With them screaming above me, I sucked in as much air as I could and let go of the taste bud, falling down and splashing into a pushing wave of saliva. Sounds were muffled, my eyes closed for a moment while I held my breath. When I managed to open them, everything around me blurry, I angled myself a certain way and reached forward through the thick, watery substance and, after a final push, grabbed the end of the second tongue.

I pulled forward and broke the surface of the saliva, breathing in and coughing just a bit before sliding downwards. The lips around us were joined, and I had to say, despite the discomfort and damn-near being crushed to death, this was one of the easier ways to body-jump. With a darkness now sealed around me, I slid clear down into the second mouth and managed to get my feet up under me, crouching until I reached the very back of the throat. Then, jumping up and hooking onto the bottom of my trench coat, I soared.

The air was thin in there, and I had to act fast before I ended up falling straight down the throat. I looked around quick, then found a large divet in the throat and angled myself down towards that. The tongue was moving up ahead, shaking the throat, but with a few close-calls I was able to land on the little ledge, stumbling and cursing until I got a sort of balance.

Out of the fray, I stood up, smoothed back my dreadlocks, and let out a long sigh. I reached up, taking off my shades and flicking saliva from them with a grimace.

"Ain't kids ever heard of 'holdin' hands' nowdays?" I muttered angrily, that chick I just exited still locked with whoever I'd just fallen into. Not that I was upset, with the Immunity in her being a pain in my ass and managing to trip me up one too many times. Now, I was over my deadline, soaked, and irritated. Not to mention exauhsted, as if I got much sleep these days.

Before I could get a good look around, there were two screams from above me and, barely stepping aside to avoid them, two loud 'smack's right beside me. I hadn't looked over, frowning and still looking at the throat around us as the two germs heaved and stood up shakily next to me.

"Boss! Hey, Boss, we made it!"

"Of course you did."I mused unhappily, looking around and seeing nothing but a normal throat and no sign as to where we were. It had to have been farther down, and without a second look back to them I walked to the edge of the ledge, seeing the person finally pull back for air. "Meet me later, boys." I threw back as I caught the updraft, jumping and hooking my coat, hearing them call out after me as I angled downwards.

I thought about acting out now, but held myself back. Acting too fast was what screwed me in that last body, putting the symptoms on too fast and not giving myself time to acquire a group of meat-shields to take on most of the, pun not intended, heat. So I just flew, catching gasps of breath and moving jerkily up and down, dodging the windpipe and speeding down, seeing a sliver of city open up. I hadn't seen a sign, and I saw why just before I broke into the open body. It had been broken off, the poles holding it up bend and screwy.

'Great,' I thought to myself as the city opened up before me, moving down to fall between two large apartement complexes, 'not like I'd need to act like I know the place or anything.' The buildings came up fast and I maneuvered between them, landing safely on the ground without so much as a sound. Sniff and Sneeze would find me somewhere, they always managed to, and for right now I had to concern myself with finding out my location. Needed to know if this were going to be an adult or child, what state the body was in, all things I'd have to learn from the scum between pretty city buildings like this.

Right now, though, I didn't see any lurking creeps in the shadows. In fact, all I heard were muffled voices from the front of the apartement I'd slid next to, and they didn't sound like germ voices to me. With my luck, I'd ended up near a group of civilians. 'Spit!' I cursed in my own head, keeping myself silent as I turned and climbed up one of the fire escapes. The voices below kept muttering, and as I made my way along the side of the building it struck me that I could snatch one of 'em up and get some info out of them. No germs involved.

And that meant catching on off-guard and keeping it clean when I wasted them. The voices got louder, and then entered the building. Smirking, I slashed a bright-orange line through the first-floor window and, brushing aside the ripped membrane and keeping sure that no one had called out anything, I slid easily in.

Inside I was in a small side-room, the door across from me open and the voices coming from just inside the door. They were low, muttering something in secret as I looked around the filthy room I'd just jumped into. The walls were peeling, the floor was littered with trash, and it looked nothing like how it looked outside. Casting this aside, I made my way to the doorframe, back against it and waited for one of them to separate, for a voice to get closer.

And as I did, I couldn't help but think that these voices, something about them sounded...almost familiar. It wasn't likely that I'd see a germ twice in my life, let along a normal civilian, and yet these voices, three of them with one female and two male, seemed to ring some sort of bell in my head. I quirked an eyebrow and listened harder, but the two quietest voices were now whispering and footsteps were heading my way. Adrenaline rushing through suddenly, claw lit, I waited until the footsteps got just outside the door...

A flash of red and I had him, throwing an arm out and then hooking a nail into what felt like a jacket, and then yanking the person inside the room, claw up to their chin as they called out suddenly... I froze, eyes wide, and shoved the white-blood cell away from me.

"Jones!"

"Thrax?!"

There before me, in all his Immunity glory, stood a shaken and shocked Osmosis Jones, the white blood cell I hadn't seen in a long, long time. His gun was held shakily out in front of him, eyes wide and brow furrowed, me unable to think of anything to say with a twitch in my hand. Jones was, and always had been, the last person I wanted to see. And after our history together, I was hoping I'd never run into his ugly mug again...

In seconds the other two ran in, and I knew now why I'd recognized the voices. With gun much steadier than Jones's, Maria Amino whipped around the corner and looked to see what had happened, the giant pill agent Drix rounding out onto Jones's other side. But, the moment we all locked eyes, weapons were lowered(if only slightly) and what took place were exclamations.

"Thrax?" Drix asked in a tone a bit too proper.

"El Muerte Rojo?" Maria's dialect rolled out the nickname and her gun was completely lowered. Normally, it would be the other way around. If an Immunity officer knew who I was, it was fair game for a shoot-out. Not with these morons though, not after our history together. I grit my teeth, things starting to fall into place in my head.

I clenched one hand, the claw forgotten for now as I huffed out a breath and ignored a coiling feeling in my gut.

"Spit." I snapped, "Don't tell me I'm back in Hector. Please, not with you all again..."

"Well I missed you too, sweetie pie." Osmosis shot back sarcastically, frowning and crossing his arms. Maria stepped foreward, gun still in hand but now completely lowered, and asked with a frown,

"How'd you end up in Hector? No one's reported any unauthorized germ immigration from the ears or nose." I rolled my eyes and nodded outside, in the general direction of the mouth.

"Our little Hector's swappin' spit with the body I was tryin' to ditch out on." Drix got a concerned look on his face, but I stopped him before he could ask, already sore about it, "And no, pill, the other body ain't infected. It was this chick, got a damn good immunity. You all could take some pointers." I had opened the side of my jacket and taken out my shades, sliding them on while Ozzy cheered and elbowed Drix, a big dumb grin on the white blood cell's face.

"Ya hear that? My Hector's got some moves! Uh huh!" He did a little dance while Maria rolled her eyes, me eyeing the window I'd just come in through. If I could get out before they saw, I'd make it to a new body in no time flat. I had to get out of here, regardless. Not this body, I'd never wanted in here again. Already standing here, breathing this air, it made my skin crawl, and it was taking more than it should have to block out certain images associated with Hector. I closed my eyes behind the shades and let out a breath.

"Well, as much as you don't want me here, I don't wanna be here. So, if you'll excuse me-"

"Shh!" Maria snapped, and I looked at her shocked as she suddenly brought her gun up and pressed her back to the doorframe. I was silent out of pure curiosity, realizing she hadn't been talking to me, and through the silence that followed came the muffled sound of something chirping. I quirked an eyebrow and, despite my previous thoughts of exiting, took a few steps to the door, Jones and the pill following.

"What's that?"Drix asked quietly, the chirping noise echoing from somewhere up the stairs to our right. Maria shook her head, then waited a few more beats before turning into the main parlor and putting a foot on the first step. Jones and Drix followed, with me left to grip the doorframe. I paused, looking back to the window, thinking of getting out of here. Of breathing fresh air, of putting as much distance between here and me as possible. I gripped the frame so hard it creaked, and I pushed out a breath as I let it go.

I never wanted to be back here. I wanted to be a thousand other places but here, wanted to forget that this body even walked the goddamned Earth. I wanted out. This wasn't even any of my buisiness, let Immunity handle whatever was going on in here... And then a darker thought entered my mind, and it was so far off that I didn't even have to think much to brush it off.

But it did enough to make me follow them. I could always leave later.

When Maria reached the top of the stairs, eyes narrowed and listening, she nodded her head down the hall that we could half-see from where we stood on the stairs. I thought of too many reasons to turn back by the time we reached the stairs, not the least of which being that I didn't particularly care about whatever situation this was. Remembering how something about this place, this body, made me overreact about things I shouldn't have cared about. Obsess over them.

Quietly I cursed myself, grumbling through a pang in my chest, and it suddenly dawned on me to ask a bit of an important question,

"Why were y'all in here in the first place, huh?"

"We got news of some big-shot germ boss putting bombs in some of Hector's muscles, and we figured the neck would be his next hit. Man, that'd put a hitch in Hector's game right now!" Jones exclaimed, making Maria turn and smack the back of his head. But while they walked to the front of the door that the chirping was coming from, I was stopped by the stairs, face fallen and a dread in my gut.

"Bomb?" I asked, and Maria was about to snap back something along the lines of 'that's what he just said', when she caught my drift. She paused, freezing, eyes wide as she gasped and spun around.

"Everyone down, now!"She exclaimed, just as I was grabbing the railing next to the stairs. Should have left when I had the chance, should have ditched right when I saw them. That's what I got for walking into something that wasn't my buisiness, that's what I always got. I cursed a constant string of words under my breath, adrenaline returning as, with the chirping that was now unmistakably a count-down, I jumped onto the railing. The others were scrambling for the stairs, and I was planning on making it as far as I could, still cursing under my breath.

But I'd only hooked onto the bottom of the jacket and jumped when, with a silence and one last, miniscule, anti-climactic 'beep', an explosion roared behind us. A heat that barely bothered me as much as the shrapnel did pushed out from behind us, and I barely had time to throw my arms in front of me as the force behind us slammed full-power into me.

From there, it was a mixture of colors and the turning on and off of all sound. For moments at a time I'd black out, only to come to again as I tumbled through wood and brick and fire behind us. I was upside down and rightside up too many times to tell what was what anymore, fighting for conciousness when I was thrown hard onto the ground, feeling something in my shoulder dislocate. I grit my teeth as my vision dotted again, sound of crashing and burning and people shouting all seeming too far away, shadows of what I could barely make out as tall buildings hovering over me. I was awake enough to see an alley, and then it began to blot out.

I'd been in worse scrapes than this, including the first time I'd met Jones in the Zit. That bomb had gone off not two feet in front of me and I came out of it kicking. But this one...this bomb had a kind of power behind it that, had I not been slipping from conciousness, would seem almost familiar. But now, tumbling and skidding along the ground in a way that was going to hurt like a mother, all I was thinking was how badly I wanted to get out of here.

A flash of orange and brown as I finally rolled to a stop, everything blurry and finally completely blotting out. I'd left this body once in a way I never wanted to experiance again. And now this.

I lost conciousness just a few moments after my vision blanked, passing out to the sound of footsteps near my head.

-?-

The news people flickered silently on the screen. Faces solumn, a still-image of the building in ruins in the background. Shuffling papers, indifferent eyes as they recounted, without volume, the failure of Immunity to get the identity of the new serial-bomber. The colors flickered across the room, invading shadows and falling on otherwise dark objects. I was looking for a particular color.

But I didn't find it. Not that I was too perturbed, I wouldn't worry. I knew it was there somewhere, lurking just beyond the camera lense, tense and tremoring like the flickering images on the screen. It was diluted, maybe. I hadn't seen it in person to tell. It could have changed shades as I had. It could be blotched and blurry. But I'd know it like a friend.

It couldn't hide from me. I was too intuned with it, I knew every fibre of its color, knew the way it moved and danced through the hues on the screen. It would be here. I was, if I wasn't mistaken, already here. I sat back, the news now covering something else, disregarding what was so impendingly important to others, but not to them. I closed my eyes and listened to a silence, and then breathed slowly out. I was waiting for the color white.

-Thrax-

It smelt stale, and then it felt stale. The air all around felt like the taste you got in your mouth when you woke up from a rough day, and I cringed before I even remembered how to move. The alley had to have been far from the blast, because there was a cold in the air that bit at me the way not many things could do. And then I realized something a bit odd: I'd fallen onto my shoulder. I was lying on my back.

With more force than I thought necissairy, I opened my eyes, only to squint against a bright light above me. I closed them again, breathing in as a dull ache began across my left shoulder, remembering what had happened and groaning silently. I could only guess as to where I was, opening my eyes again. Whatever guess I had, it was wrong.

The ceiling was familiar. I'd spent a good few hours staring at it over three years ago, and god damned if it wasn't generic, but I knew it. I knew it. And then my chest clenched, and I grunted, fighting through it and gritting my teeth as hard as I could. I squeezed my eyes shut again and just felt, physicaly, that I was on a bed and there were blankets and no noises from outside this room. No IVs, and no monitor to check for a pulse. Those kinds of things didn't work on viruses, anyway.

I wanted to ball my fists up against my face for remembering this goddamed ceiling, but the ache in my shoulder was too bad, and my right hand had some itchy, useless bandage wrapped around it. So I just had to lie there and stifle another curse, trying to think of who could bring me here in the first place. If it were Immunity, wouldn't they have put an officer or two at the door? Or did they really trust that much that I wouldn't burn this place to the ground?

That thought became strangely appealing. Burn it down, and if I took this body down with it, the wouldn't that just solve a good majority of my issues? Not the deep ones, not the ones that boiled up through a festering wound, but the shallow ones, the immediate ones. It wasn't a bad idea, and it grew in the seconds where I lay in my own self-pity, gritting teeth hard and squeezing my eyes shut.

And then there was movement above me. I don't know how I knew, but some part of me felt a head tilt, some part of me felt it like I was reaching out and touching this person. They moved just above me. And they spoke before I could open my eyes and see if it were real.

"Hey, shh, you're okay...still got that glove I left behind?"