Food Chain
I own nothing
Annie slowly opened her eyes and saw an unfamiliar ceiling over her. Glancing around she noted that the room was relatively small and sparsely furnished. She failed to get Eren...that was bad. But that wasn't a priority now, returning to the Inner Wall was. When she removed the cover from herself a scowl appeared on her face. She was naked...that means someone removed her clothes and gear including the 3DMG.
Looking over the place she concluded that she was in some kind of metal structure, since all the walls were made from metal. She stood up and walked away from the bed towards the metallic table, on top of it was her uniform clean and nicely folded.
Annie shook her head. The last thing she remembered after getting out of her titan form was walking to the nearby stream...since she was still exhausted from the two transformations and the battles she slipped in the river and fainted either from the fatigue or from the impact.
She quickly dressed herself and approached the door, they opened up easily giving her the hint that she wasn't a prisoner.
"Awake I see" came a masculine voice from the other room.
Annie glanced at the speaker. The man was siting and looking through some kind of device. He was dressed in a black leather jacket with a gray hood covering his head.
"Who are you? And how did I get here" she asked.
The man leaned back "My name is Alex Mercer. And you are in my secret laboratory, I emphasize the secret part. One of my water pumps apparently caughed you while you were in the river."
She didn't react in any way at his words "I presume I was naked because my cloths were wet and nothing else?" there was a clean threat if he took any liberties with her body.
"I took some blood samples" was his response.
For a second she panicked wondering if her secret can be exposed by her blood..she was no doctor "And for what purpose did you take my blood?"
"To satisfy my curiosity" was his monotone reply.
The answer wasn't what she expected or hoped... "Where are we? And how long was I unconscious?"
"Eight hours and you are still in the same forest you were before passing out" was Mercer's reply, the source of the river was inside the forest so it was a safe guess.
Annie glanced around herself "I'm grateful for saving me, but I have to go."
Alex stood up and silently proceeded down a corridor "Follow me."
She was skeptical but did as he said. It was a metallic, cold corridor...but surprisingly not damp.
"This is some installation you have..." she said as he followed the hooded man "do you live alone here?"
"Yes, only me and my pets live in the installation."
Annie was usually a pretty good judge of character..and this person was as suspicious as one gets "How long did you live out here?"
Alex tilted his head "Around three thousand years approximately."
Her step faltered...is that a joke... "you look good for you age."
He ignored her and continued walking, until they reached what she could describe as a elevator...in a strange, metallic sort of way.
As soon as she stepped inside the small alcove, the doors closed and she felt the thing move up.
She was actually ready to give him the benefit of doubt "So you were here when the first titans attacked...must have been bad, seeing humanity get destroyed by them."
That made the hooded man actually chuckle "You think the titans destroyed the human civilization?" he turned to her "it wasn't the titans who did that, it was humanity itself."
That actually surprised her "What do you mean?"
"Guess this requires some back story to piece together..." mused Alex.
"Three thousand years ago two powerful creatures fought for dominance. One of them was named James Heller, a soldier that served in the armed forces of his country. Heller was victorious and he vanquished his opponent, saved his daughter and ended an epidemic. All looked like a happy end...but it wasn't. Heller was a monster, a monster with a very poor handle on his emotions, especially anger. All was good until one day his granddaughter was raped and killed by some unknown assailants."
Annie listened at the story, and though she didn't like where this was going it was a pretty usual occurrence even now.
"Naturally Heller, the idiotic berserker that he was went on a rampage, attracted more problems and concluded that humanity was corrupt, evil and had to die. Using his monstrous powers he created a new species, they were similar to humans but much bigger, dumber, without genitals, without the need to eat and able to regenerate."
"Wait?! This Heller thing made the titans?!"
Mercer nodded "Yes. The things were horrible inefficient, but what could you expect from him...In any case, because the thing were easily killed by air units and tanks, so Heller went a step further and made them reproduce by using humans as a base."
"What are air units?"
"Machines that fly through the sky, from what I know of your technology, primitive as it is, you should at least have balloons or airships. Would be far more effective for transport, colonization and combat than wasting gas on those silly devices" commented Mercer as he glanced at her 3DMG.
"For tanks you would need a steam engine since I don't know if there is any more oil around here. In any case tanks are...you could say armored chariots with a cannon on the front. An armored division, supplied by airships, possessing good cannons and speed could easily punch through the titans, encircle them and then target their necks...honestly, the only reason you are losing against them is because you try to fight them physically instead of using your heads to solve problems."
"So you used those tanks and air units to fight off the titans...so how did they win?" asked Annie skeptically.
"As said Heller started to turn more people into titans and those titans attacked badly defended human settlements to increase their numbers. Under Heller's command the things spread quickly over the continent...the other nations fearing that the things will spill over to them launched their nuclear weapons..."
"And those are?"
"Not important. They managed to do their intended purpose, but the nation that suffered from the nuclear Armageddon launched its nuclear arsenal at those who fired on it. I don't know why they did it, spite, one of Heller's titan infiltrators...could be anything. In the end the whole world was engulfed in nuclear fire. The sky darkened from the ash and radiation and a nuclear winter broke out."
The elevator made a noise and the door's opened, revealing a forest. The lift was somehow masked to look like it was a part of the cliff, she concluded.
"Most of humanity died from the winter, there was very little to eat and most of it was irradiated anyway. A few enclaves survived in underground shelters, only emerging after the winter disappeared, some hundred years later. The humans tried to start from scratch...wasn't easy, most knowledge was forgotten or destroyed in the Armageddon. Like the bloody middle-ages..." muttered Alex.
"In any case humanity was making some progress and then...titans reappeared...few in numbers and disorganized without Heller's leadership but still enough against the sword swinging savages that humanity has regressed to. As the titans ate, so did they number increase...the results you see today."
"Then the wall insanity started...I don't know why people bothered, building small, narrow tunnels would have been far better against such moronic and over sized opponents."
Before she had the time to think about what to do now a sight of a nearby titan made her decide. Using her 3DMG she moved up on a large tree.
Annie glanced down at Mercer that watched the titan approach without any concern, it was very bizarre to say the least.
"And to think these things are the mortal threat of humans..." the man said in a monotone voice.
She scowled "They are the ultimate predator, humans are not" she saw that the titan finally reached the man and simply grabbed him in its hand.
Annie scowled, the man didn't struggle or anything...does he want to be eaten?
"Ultimate predator? This? Not even close" Mercer said with in a bored voice, as the titan opened its mouth to devour him whole "didn't your parent tell you not to put things in your mouth? You could get sick."
The titan didn't even blink at the words and in one move swallowed Mercer whole.
Annie watched disinterestedly at the drama, if humans were this foolish perhaps it was better if they died.
She was about to leave when something unexpected happened.
From the titan numerous tendrils erupted, she watched as more tendrils started to dig through its skin. The titan's form started to shrink until it revealed only the man called Mercer standing with no titan in sight.
"This is your ultimate predator? Pathetic" he repeated.
"How?! What are you?!" she asked in shock.
He spread his arms, and the next instant they were transformed into razor-sharp claws "I'm evolution personified! The top of the food chain! I am Blacklight!" he said, the next thing she saw was right out of a horror book.
The grass around him withered as more tendrils spread out, huge worm like creatures burst from the ground, the holes they left behind allowing countless other twisted monstrosities to emerge.
Some of them leaped from tree to tree, others actuality flew in the air.
"I spend the last three thousand years in hiding after my defeat, perfecting the virus, creating new mutants...and what does humanity do? Bombs itself to the stone age..." he stood as more strange people emerged from the holes left by the giant worms like monsters.
"Since humanity is unable to hold this world, then the Evolved will take it for themselves"
"You can't defeat the titans, there are too many of them, some with skin as hard as diamond" Annie said trying to present a strong front at the scenario that was playing out in front of her eyes.
"Irrelevant, the titans very blood and flesh will allow us to infect and consume them" and true to his words she saw a titan being attacked by the giant worms, it struggled against the things but it was futile. His flesh started to dissolve as the virus entered its body, the regeneration only giving more biomass for Blacklight to infect.
In minutes the body of the titan was no more, in its stead was a mass of tendrils that soon dissolved into more worm like monsters that quickly dug themselves underground.
Her terrified face shifted from the sight back to Mercer "W-what are you?"
"I told you, I'm Blacklight...and this world is mine now!"
Annie did the only thing she could she had to warn the others, she had to get away. Using the 3D she ran, she ran as fast as she could...
THE END
A/N:
Normally in Prototype stories it's Mercer who starts Armageddons (hey it's canon, he did it twice) but personally Heller is much more of a loose canon than Mercer. A person with that short a grip on his emotions will definitely go on a rampage when humanity messes up..and we all know humans are masters in that field.
Also humans from AoT don't really need any super powered nonsense to win (one thing that really made me disinterested in the show - Titan shifters), human ingenuity would have solved the titan crisis easily with the level of tech they have...instead they throw simply more bodies at a problem...the Red Army would be proud. Honestly I'm more astonished where they get all the iron for weapons in that confined place, mines do run out and smelters need a lot of coal or wood.