...This time... It's my form that appears... I see.
...I finally understand that dream...
... the one that destroys Reploids...
...I'm sorry, X... But I see it now...
...if I die...
then...
...everything will come to an end...
- - -
Zero lay in pieces on the ground. His body had been blown in half; his pelvis and legs were in a thousand shards across the cold stone landscape, and what remained of his torso was a miserable wreck of twisted metal. A huge, gaping hole had been burned straight through him, millimeters below the secret heart that was hidden below his armor and now bare: a green jewel, engraved with a large gold W. His eyes were closed, his face slack; his formerly bright gold hair splayed out below his broken shoulders in wild coils.
A shadow moved above him, eclipsing the proud hero's remains.
"A hero's death...? Pathetic."
The figure crouched, and collected Zero's torso from the ground. As the stranger began to carry the body away, a faint purple light enveloped them both. Violet energy effused with darkness began to lick at Zero's parted mouth, as if it were trying to crawl inside.
...I hid myself while I repaired myself...
Out of the darkness rose a small, shivering spark of light.
"I'm not doing this for you."
Zero heard the words before the spark unfolded into consciousness- and when his eyes cleared, he found a series of coldly glowing tubes, pale white, suspended from low fixtures above his head. He couldn't move at all, nor could he feel any part of his body. The world felt hazy and distant. He understood, but there was nothing he could do. Hands were moving over him: cold hands, threading wires, screwing in bolts.
He struggled to speak through numb lips and a frozen jaw. He spoke without sound; it was only because the other was so close to him that he could be heard.
"...why?"
"I'm not done with you yet."
A power drill pierced Zero's right temple, and the world collapsed in around him once more.
- - -
It was a week later that Zero regained full consciousness. He found he was in a lab- quiet, dark, with a signal baffler embedded in the walls that pulsed and made his head pound. It effectively masked all trace of his functioning; no one, he realized, could find him this way. X- if X was even looking- wouldn't be able to, either. He was unrestrained, but a weight was in his body that made him feel sluggish, almost sick; nothing stopped him from moving, but he didn't have the strength to lift a finger.
At the other end of the room, wiping his hands on a cloth and turned away from him, stood... himself.
No... Zero narrowed his eyes slowly... not himself.
The other.
The one that destroys Reploids.
It was a parody in lilac and purple, with cold, hard eyes. He turned and moved toward Zero. "Don't look surprised. You knew this would happen."
"... You're the virus," Zero whispered, moving his tongue over dry lips. "...you escaped my body when I died."
"I'm more than that." The virus leaned forward above Zero, staring down at him. Idle strands of purple energy flicked over Zero, making him feel sick. Lavender hair snaked down over is shoulders to brush against Zero's neck and chest. "I'm everyone the virus ever touched... I'm you. I'm Sigma. I'm X. I'm Wily. I'm Iris."
The hallucination pressed closer. Whispering. "I'm the will of this world to die from its wounds."
Zero stared in horror at the mad lilac eyes above him as the other-Zero, the viral Zero, gleaming with dark violet, began to straddle him. Began to touch him here and there, and he couldn't pull away; not his eyes, not his body. His body felt completely unresponsive, inanimate- like all of his vital parts had been ripped out and he only inhabited a thin layer of skin. Which was ridiculous; his core throbbed, and how could an empty shell have a pulse? But the nightmare's touch made him feel drained, powerless... made the empty feeling in his body grow harder and harder, a broad-spreading ache moving across his conduits until he moaned with pain at the depth of his hollowness.
The not-him silently stroked his hips, watching Zero closely. As his anguish began to crest, a dark resonation built like thunder between them.
"I know you want it. Your body was built for this purpose," The parody's hands continued to move lazily, making Zero burn.
Something moved in the corner of his eye, at the edges of the world. The Virus paused to lift its head and frown, its hands pressing down on Zero's chest.
White hands and chest loomed over Zero, visible in a flash that was here a moment, at his feet the next, at the other side of the room three seconds after that. A hand touched his forehead, cool, steady. Red eyes gazed down, keen and frustrated. A glimpse of white beard. "My Zero. To have to use your power as crudely as this..."
Zero felt a shock that moved through his entire body, a deep jolting. "I know you."
But the white reploid was gone, dissolved into noise. The Virus was there instead.
I'm losing it...
The Virus looked back into Zero's eyes and, then, leaned in and bit gently into Zero's throat.
Squares of multicolored static flashed across Zero's vision, and the world unhooked into three distinct layers of red, green and blue pixels that blurred wildly along the horizontal plane. Zero clung to the only thing that remained solid, the lavender serenity of the Virus, even while it drank his blood.
Who am I?
There's something inside me... kill it!
"X!" He heard himself sobbing. "I want X!"
A competitor, hm?...
..the strongest robot ever made...
The one who destroys Reploids...
"No! Never say that name! Never again!"
I won't allow this.
The one who destroys -everything-.
NO!
Kill it!
"NO!"
Zero screamed for X, but it was useless. The Virus had him. His strength melted away, and he slid into a feverish daze of heat and pressure. Time shrank and expanded. The world twisted through him, and memory swirled around him.
He was in the ruins of Eurasia, sinking down and bleeding; he was in a temple, dashing up a hill; he was in some old factory, dodging a compactor; he was straining to jump forward over icy land as slick as glass. He saw X and rushed to him, but couldn't connect, couldn't hear, moved straight through him. It was all so vividly real, but none of it was real; he wasn't there, and yet... he was.
He could feel fear blowing through the world, a dread wind of terror, pain and madness; a wind that stirred in the dead air he left in all the places he passed through. He - the Virus, himself- was doing this, churning up sickness and despair, darkening the world by stages. And he couldn't make it stop.
The Virus's lilac-colored mouth drifted across Zero's lips and its fingers carressed his throat, leaving streaks of inky purple stain on his skin. A sine-wave of energy rose, fell, was lifted out of him and pulled through him. His chest contracted tight and released. His legs raised, and his knees slid apart. The fever spread into his neck, face, and temples, draining the light from his eyes. He moaned, lost and low, and the world groaned under his weight.
---
A/N: An aborted take on figuring out some of the mysteries of the Zero Nightmare and X6 in general. I like the ideas here, but it's still missing something, and it never quite felt like it properly matched the images in my head. So it's here as an incomplete drabble.