(A/N: Not certain if I really need to say this, but I don't own any copyrights to anything; at least, not today.)


The room was clean. So immaculate that even one speck of dust on the floor would have seemed out of place. The walls and floors were segregated into tiles with black lines running between them. The door was the same immaculate white, with a window slot at the top for observation. There was one camera in each corner, each covered by sleek black domes. Perpendicular to the wall at the opposite end of the room from the door lay a bed. The bed was made of a reflective silver metal, and didn't seem to have much in the way of padding for comfort. On top of the bed was a man. He wore a white button-up shirt under a gray sweatshirt, which was in turn under a black leather jacket with a red tribal sign on the back. If one were to walk up to the bed, they would see that he had multiple bullet wounds on his chest, but the flesh beneath the wounds wasn't quite right. Not torn or ripped like a bullet wound would be, but the wounds were almost glossy.

As he laid there, his body began to inhale. His chest slowly rose as his eyes blinked open to see the sheer whiteness of the room. His headache grew worse as he attempted to change his position to lay on his side, but he lost his sense of balance and tumbled onto the floor.

He took in the silence of the room and tried, tried, to remember how he got there, but no matter how hard he tried to think he couldn't remember anything about himself. He shook his head and stood up to open the door, only to see that there was no handle. He may not remember his own name, but he knew that cameras in this type of room meant he was under observation, and he was going to make his displeasure known.

"Hey! What's going on here, you can't keep me locked in here!"


Dr. Raymond Mcmullen liked being in control. It was something that he loved just as much or even more than knowledge and science.

Raymond Mcmullen couldn't tell if he was in control.

Ever since Randall and his damnedable Blackwatch contracted them for Project Blacklight, Gentek had been put under an unprecedented level of scrutiny and oversight. Randall was so obsessed with the project that he inserted one of his little tin men, 'Specialist' Cross, as oversight of the project.

Not that that hadn't worked out, but the point still stood.

Of course, they were allowed to work on Project Blacklight, so maybe it was worth all the small annoyances.

Mcmullen had always had a unique perspective on Alex Mercer. Mcmullen saw Dr. Mercer's intelligence, his scheming nature, and his narcissism. Mcmullen saw something impressive in Alex Mercer. Mcmullen was smart; he wouldn't ever trust Alex Mercer, but he had to privately acknowledge that he found the young man intriguing, a younger version of himself.

That's how Raymond Mcmullen knew that Alex needed to die.

Mcmullen knew that terminating the scientists was necessary, but now he found himself wishing that they slated Mercer as the first, not the eighth. At least Mcmullen had the foresight to include Cross on only Mercer's assassination. The boy was too paranoid for his own good; he took the sample and ran, and they still hadn't found his laptop.

And now, now he was a runner, a male runner.

Raymond watched it inhale and open its eyes, and thought about how Alex always seemed to know what was best for the virus's evolution; even now, it seemed. It tried to stand up, and for a moment Raymond held his hand over the purge command button. The button wasn't necessary, the runner fell on the floor and didn't try to stand up. Raymond made sure his notes on its behavior were impeccable.

It spent several hours closing its eyes while on the ground, just like MOTHER, simply in a different position. The chest elevated and depressed, and every now and then a finger would twitch, but that was the extent of things for some time. Mcmullen was glad he brought his paperwork and research files into the observation room.

And then Mcmullen was brought out of his mountain of paperwork when it moved again. He briefly wondered if it had more in common with PARIAH than MOTHER, but he wasn't yet at a juncture where he could tell.

It stood up and moved for the door, but it stopped when it noticed that there wasn't a doorknob. It looked around the room in a startlingly human way, and looked straight into one of the cameras.

"Hey! What's going on here, you can't keep me locked in here!"

Mcmullen nearly had a heart attack right then and there.


Specialist Robert Cross had to deal with a lot of bullshit. It came with the territory, really; he did work for the government. Cross knew that he wasn't told everything, but he still tried to keep faith with the system. It may have a darker side, but it was America, it was his home, and he knew that it was worth saving.

Robert thought about the operation he had just completed as he ate in the Gentek cafeteria. They were serving fucking lobster today. Sometimes Cross thought that rich people bought expensive things just so they could brag about it at their 'charity' events.

Cross truly hated the having to kill Mercer. He could at least take comfort in the fact that Mercer was an obvious sociopath. Cross has had to do worse things than kill a rouge scientist with a damaged sample. Cross still couldn't understand how Mcmullen's efforts to cure Redlight had made the disease worse.

It was a miracle Cross noticed what he did, though. They were going to take Mercer to a Gentek morgue for disposal, but as they were about to move Mercer into the examination room, Cross saw that Mercer's eyes were reflective. Cross knew that runners typically received several microevolutions to go along with their title, and he knew that human's eyes were not supposed to be that reflective. He made a quick judgment call, and had Mercer moved into containment instead.

The eggheads got so excited that Cross was surprised they didn't drool. Those were the hardest kind of people to deal with. The ones you knew were evil on the inside, but worked with you anyway. The kind of people that always seemed to surround him.

Cross's pager beeped, and he left immediately to see what Mcmullen needed him to 'consult' on.