Alex tapped his foot quickly beneath his desk as he hunched over the terminal, eyes darting above his glasses to those nearest to him. Fellow scientists indeed. They were all jackals, the lot of them, sniffing around his discoveries and just waiting for him to 'unexpectedly resign' like so many others in recent weeks. Alex knew better. He'd done some digging, even went so far as to track down that needy little sister of his and got her to poke around in Gentek's security files. People that were 'changing careers' and 'leaving the city on business' were, in all actuality, being silenced. The facts proved it, and data does not lie.
They knew too much. They were all his closest research partners; the best and the brightest that Gentek had to offer. Anyone and everyone that had their fingers in DX-1118 B were vanishing into thin air without so much as a body or a goodbye to their name.
And Alex Mercer was next.
He knew the signs. Oh yes. Everyone avoided him like the plague, averted their eyes when he stepped out of the elevator, shuffled aside like cowering dogs when he approached them… they knew. They knew and they did nothing. These men and women he'd called friends… they were just biding their time, waiting to pick apart his brain and steal his work. Them with their grubby fingers, just waiting to get their sick all over his projects.
He wouldn't let them. No. Never. Alex hunched lower over the terminal, shielding the keys with his body as he glued bloodshot blue eyes to the screen. Alex was clever. More clever than the others, the ones that had been stupid enough to get caught. They wanted DX-1118 B? Let them have it. Let them keep their petty Redlight virus and their pet project, Greene.
Oh yeah, he knew all about Hope, Idaho. Dana wasn't the only Mercer who knew their way around a firewall. Alex knew he was smart. He knew he was destined for greatness, for something extraordinary. It didn't matter what that bitch Laura—he would gag himself before calling her mother—said, didn't matter what the professors at university told him.
He wasn't crazy. He wasn't. He was a little sociopathic, sure, but who wasn't? Anyone with enough sense would put their needs above everyone else's. Alex snarled at the computer screen, cursing the numbers scrolling too fast for a weak-minded brain to recognize.
This was his project. Gentek had given him Redlight and told him to make it better, and he had. He had made Blacklight. His child. His vision. His one success. And now they wanted to take it away from him?
He would die first.
Alex giggled a little hysterically to himself. Die. He probably would die first, if things turned out how he suspected they would. The others eyed him nervously as he lowered his head and laughed, clapping a hand over his mouth and staring wild eyed around him from beneath curly brown hair that hadn't seen a shower in far too long. He snapped up ramrod-straight, staring around him through crooked glasses, and everyone quickly looked away from him.
That's right, he seethed quietly, if you can't see me, I can't see you. Shit. Alex ran shaking fingers through his hair, bracing one elbow on the desk as he trembled. It would happen soon. He knew it. He knew it as well as he knew his own name.
Get it together, Mercer, Alex hissed in his own head. It was the only place where no one was listening, the only place that was safe.
He stood jerkily from the desk, sending the chair rolling back and crashing into the wall, and ignored the stares as he jammed his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat to disguise their trembling and all but sprinted into his office, locking the door securely behind him.
He had to be fast. He had to be quick. He had to be quiet. He closed all the blinds and hurried towards the safe, the one that took three separate passcodes—of which only he knew them all—to open. With meticulous care he entered each code and gently opened the door to reveal the chilled vials beneath.
Keep it cold; keep it dormant.
He ignored the ones marked DX-1118 B. Their precious 'Redlight' virus, mutated into a weapon of war, was nothing more than the common cold compared to his creation, his insurance.
DX-1118 C.
Blacklight.
The real bioweapon Gentek had paid him to create.
And he had the only vial. No one else in this worthless company could do what he could do, could recreate what he could make in his sleep. If Gentek and their Blackwatch overlords got their hands on this, Alex was as good as dead. But so long as he had this, had this in his possession, they couldn't have it. They couldn't take it.
They couldn't kill him. They needed him. They couldn't make any more Blacklight without him; it would be impossible. His strain was unique, self-sustaining. It couldn't be cured. It would adapt, it would evolve. No cure would keep it down before it would change something insignificant that couldn't be traced and mutate.
It was the perfect virus, and he was its creator.
He looked at the thin sealed tube and smiled at it. It was so beautiful. So innocent. Like a sleeping tiger. He slipped it into the deepest pocket he had and locked the safe, calmly unlocking his door and smoothing his coat. No one looked up at him. No one even registered that he was alive and breathing.
Let them rot, for all he cared.
"Alex?" a soft voice asked, hands going to his shoulders.
Karen. "Don't touch me," he hissed, shrinking away from her, eyes darting wildly over her face. What if she was with them? What if she was spying on him? He snarled at her and turned and ran for the exit, subtlety be damned.
Alex kept one hand closed tight around the vial in his pocket as he slipped out of Gentek and headed to his apartment. He needed to leave town. He needed to leave now, before they realized what he'd done, what he'd walked out of the building with. They wouldn't kill him if he had the vial. They wouldn't risk him breaking it. He carefully laid his coat over his bed and darted into the shower. He'd change his name, his face, his clothes. They'd never find him. He'd disappear in his own way.
He would not let them win.
He laughed to himself as he slammed the closet open, staring at the clothes within. He needed something obscure, something easily overlooked, something a respected Gentek scientist would never wear.
He pulled out a grey sweatshirt with a hood and tossed it onto the bed, digging through the clothes for more. A white tee followed it, along with a black leather jacket he hadn't worn since high school. Some faded jeans completed the disguise, and Alex grinned madly at the gathered items. No one would ever suspect the great Alex Mercer would wear something like this. He pulled on the clothes and made sure the hood was up to hide his face and his hair.
He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a hoodlum or a thug.
A thug with glasses.
He snarled and ripped the glasses from his nose and threw them against the wall, the world blurring slightly out of focus. He looked back at his reflection and leaned in closer to see it clearly, smiling.
Perfect.
He checked the pockets of the jacket, frowning at how shallow they were. He'd have to keep a hand around the vial so it wouldn't fall out. Wouldn't want it to break, now would he? Alex laughed as he grabbed his keys, but paused at the door. What if they did catch him? What if they made him disappear? No one would know about what he'd made, the genius of what he'd done. He grabbed his laptop from his desk and shoved it under one arm as he hurried out of the apartment.
He threw the laptop into the passenger seat of his black corvette and screeched out of the parking garage, almost slamming into a sedan that had been in his way. He slammed to a stop outside the post office and snarled as he shoved the laptop into a box, scribbling down Dana's address in almost indecipherable doctor's shorthand. Whatever. She'd know who it was from.
That accomplished, Alex hurried to Penn Station. He'd catch the first train out of state and be gone before Gentek knew he had left. They wouldn't get him. He was too clever for them. His disguise was perfect. Flawless.
He stopped dead in the center of the station. Men in black with rifles. They were waiting for him. Someone had tipped them off.
Karen, the manipulative little bitch. She must have told them he had left. But how did they know? How did they find him so quickly?
"Dr. Mercer, put your hands behind your head," one of the masked men barked. Alex tensed, fingers closing tightly around the vial of Blacklight in his pocket. They raised their guns and aimed at him.
This is it, Alexander, Alex whispered to himself, letting the tension bleed from him. They had found him. They would kill him, and they would take his precious Blacklight and twist it into something unrecognizable. Something tainted. He couldn't let that happen.
His life was meaningless if they got their hands on the vial. His death would be meaningless. He pulled the vial from his pocket and held it up with two fingers, and the men tensed visibly, some jerking back in alarm and yelling into their radios.
Alex smiled. He had never been more at peace.
"Hold your fire!" one of them yelled, pulling down the barrel of the nearest Blackwatch soldier. "He's got the virus!"
Now people were stopping to stare, forming a crowd. Alex smiled wider. He always did love being the center of attention.
"You want it?" Alex asked conversationally, jiggling the vial in his fingers. He laughed, throwing his head back and raising the vial higher. He looked back at the fuzzy Blackwatch men and grinned. "Come and get it."
He threw the vial with as much strength as he could. He watched it shatter onto the ground. He saw the glass skid in all directions. And while he couldn't see it, he knew what he had done.
"Be free…" he breathed, staring at the shattered vial. His child. His creation. It was free now. They couldn't capture it. They couldn't cage it. They couldn't contain it. Now they would be witness to the perfection that he had created. Alex Mercer would go down in history as the man who created the Blacklight virus.
They should be in awe.
Something slammed into his chest and he jerked back, stumbling. Several more followed, but he felt nothing. He crawled towards the shards of the vial, collapsing beside it, reaching out with a hand and touching the broken glass.
My creation.
He saw fuzzy black boots step beside his head and heard the cock of a rifle. Alex smiled and closed his eyes, breathing deep. He felt the rifle barrel press into his head and he choked out a weak laugh, coughing up blood.
He heard the weapon fire. Felt it jerk against the cloth of his hood.
…Mine.
A/N: This has been done before, of course, but I just got to thinking about it while watching The Stand tonight, and had to write it. Pre-Prototype Alex is apparently just as fun to write as Prototype Alex, in my opinion. Glasses make everything better. And I always wondered what a Gentek scientist was doing wearing a hoodie and a leather jacket, so I answered that.