Subject details:

Name: Alexander J. Mercer

Gender: M

Height: Unknown

Status: At large

Living Relatives: Dana A. Mercer (sister)

Affiliations: Unknown

Threat level: SEVERE.

General description: When unalarmed the subject will portray a normal male, usually seen in a leather jacket, hoodie and jeans. If startled and/or threatened, subject exhibits superhuman traits and can form weapons through biological means. Subject is known to disguise itself through the consumption of military personnel or civilians.

Last seen: Los Angeles, California

ooo

Dreams aren't such unusual things. For someone who sleeps regularly and healthily, there should be at least one dream or two a night, even if their significance and details are forgotten the very next day. Oh no what was different about this dream was first, infected don't dream, and second, it wasn't a hallucination of my mind in distress or whichever of the conflicted emotions I was feeling. I had seen, along with the eyes of many, many others, of the calling to order.

The cell was reflective glass on one side, and then solid and dense concrete everywhere else, with metal plates just for the added effects, if only visually, of a maximum security prison. A single fluorescent light was attached to the ceil, its cleanness belonging in a hospital. The light easily illuminated the small, ten by five yards room. A bed was placed in the corner, though from its untouched smoothness the current occupant had no use for it.

The woman sat cross-legged on the ground. Her short, spiked hair was ruffled and uneven, like a bird's feathers should it fall from the sky. Her clothes were too casual, a mini-jacket over a easy shirt and jeans, as though she was a civilian from the streets for a quick visit. Her eyes denied all possibility of that, as they burned an unnatural orange deep under the blue. Her lips were drawn in a faint smile, almost like she was so happy to see the shifting wardens on the other side of the glass, even if they knew in their hearts she could not see them.

She cocked her head to the side, as though listening to a world where only she knew. Her smile widened.

The hoarse voice guttered. "He has returned." Heads were left scratching and brows furrowed in response to the cryptic words. Then, suddenly, she stood up, and with a seemingly impossible move in the form a flick of her hand upwards, the light above her shattered.

"What the–?"

"Hey! Somebody get security in here!"

"Hit the alarm!"

The one-way mirror now had the opposite effect. From the outside the cell was in total darkness, save for the occasional shadow which darted from wall to wall. Each shower of sparks announced a shattered security camera or recording device, until finally, there was darkness once again. A small legion of armed men rushed through, past a shivering group of lab coats and took up positions around the empty observatory room. Guns cocked to fire.

"Gas, comin' through!"

A big man, clad head to toe in a ridiculous WWII-era gas mask, shoved his way through a pair of armed soldiers. Strapped to his back was a large canister, which was attached to a barrel in his hand through a tube. He looked awfully silly.

"Let's get ready, boys. If this bitch escapes the whole city's done for!" Frightened eyes darted. A few nodded here and there. Red lasers dotted the glass. Tick, tock. A tense moment passed. When only nothing happened, a man dared to chuckle nervously into the silence. "Well, this ain't–"

Crack! Something flew out of the darkness and hit the glass with so much force it now featured a spider web of broken shards. The man who laughed almost dropped his gun at the new development. "Hold positions!" an authority cried. No one moved.

Crack! The web expanded greatly. A metallic-like spike, attach through a long chain of ragged and uneven appendage, prodded from the center of a second web. It cut deep enough to sear through half of the six-inch bullet-proof glass. Then the spike was gone, dragged lazily back into the dark. The team shifted in disquiet.

Smash! A blur of red and grey burst through the window. The man with the gas gun was the first to go, a hole where his face used to be, burned cleanly through his helmet and mask. As his lifeless body tumbled down to the ground, it was only picked up again by a nest of swirling red, which devoured him in half a second. In the mean time, three more soldiers had died and were sharing the same fate. Gunfire lit up the room. A high-pitched alarm rang somewhere deep inside the compound.

"Fire!"

Body parts flew, though none escaped more than ten feet as lightning arms darted from within the ball of death and drag them back in. Despite the heavy mutilation, very few blood was actually being spilled. Most simply disappeared. Someone fired a grenade launcher, the flight time of which allowed the blurred figure to duck under the explosive and cut the man cleanly in half. His upper and lower bodies were sucked in like a giant vacuum cleaner.

"Retreat and regroup at Sector A2!"

More people ran about, and more people died. It was no longer a fighter, rather a massacre. Through the wall of blood and flailing tentacles, two eyes of blood red stared out from a pretty face so pale it belonged to a vampire. Bullets ripped into the distorted body and out the other side.

"Heads up!" Another grenade blast, and another miss. "Shit! This thing is too fast!"

"Cover fire."

"Subject heading towards Hanger B! Requesting aid for takedown."

More yelling and more sparks of automatic fire. A chunk of concrete flew at the soldiers at terminal velocity. Many ducked. When they rose again, the creature was already gone, leaving in its wake poor stains of red. It had vanished into thin air. "A cheap magic trick," proclaimed the present officer, who had emerged from hiding behind a desk.

The out of the five surviving soldiers who had direct visual on the target, four were diagnosed with infection of Blacklight within six hours, while one showed extreme head injuries, delirious and unable to answer questions regarding to the subject. Though perhaps the doctors present were oblivious, through the sight of the Hivemind link, the last soldiers smiled in such happiness when there was no one looking that one might think he had found heaven.

ooo

Through a fog I swam, and together with me hundreds and thousands of others. Sometimes, those close to me disappeared into the fog, and then were replaced by others. Minds together clinked like fancy wineglasses only to be lost and found anew again. In the blindness we were free, and in the light was our prison. When it was my turn, I did not resist, instead let the fog carry me far, far away.

The sun peeped too strong into my eyes. I sat up.

In the bare room there were only grey walls for the scenery. Scorch marks dotted the emptiness, painting a horrid expression of figurative warfare, within which there was only the giant of smoke, its blackened mass casting a shadow of doom over the demolished city. A tiny window once provided a passage outside from this confined sanctuary, but now an entire side of the wall was gone, leaving a wide and clear view at the decimated fires below. From a hundred feet up, the faraway great fires were visible in the distant skyline. Helicopters the size of birds chattered around. One leg of the bed dangled dangerously outside of the safe flooring, leaking a series of ominous creaks. I quickly scrambled back, wildly. The chasm was too close for comfort.

"Took you long enough to wake," a voice by my side said, dully. I jumped again in surprise. The bed only creaked further. "I was almost thinking the military might level this part of the city before you got to your senses." The man wore a loose jacket with black pants and combat boots. I would have applauded his style if not the situation. He strode to the missing floors without the least of worries. "Well, come on now. We can't stay forever. If the military finds us, they might make this hell look like sweet heaven."

"Where are we going?" The shock might have made my logical senses decide they needed a break from this freaky life. As I stood up, I felt a bit too light, the world was too bright and time too slow. My limbs were too stiff and weak. The ground bobbed up and down.

"Quickly," he urged, with a worried glance to the skies. I wonder what he saw there that made his face so pale. In fact, he had never told me.

I tried in the least to delay him just a bit. "You haven't told me your name," I managed. My voice sounded terrible.

He looked amused. "Ethan Purcell, here at your service, ma'am." He bowed, so low he might have touched his toes if he reached down. My cheeks might have burned, and the lights might have danced in his eyes. Then he cleared his throat, and pointed down to the streets. At my confused look, he cleared his throat again. "Let's go."

"Down there?!"

"Yes."

I frowned. He gave me an exasperated look. "Fine. If you don't want to jump, I'll carry you." And that is the story of my first experience of a bridal carry. It would have felt embarrassing, if we weren't falling to our deaths. But for *cough *cough integrity purposes I will not go into the details of exactly how I learned to run as fast as a racehorse, or how I closed my eyes when Ethan insisted he needed to push me from the tallest building he could find to overcome my fear of heights. Who knew acrophobia was such an issue when you're infected? Absurd!

ooo

We headed farther South.

The infected zone was already slipped past layers and layers of military quarantine. In a good five hours somehow the virus had mysteriously leaped the fence twice. But even as the baffled military leaders scratched their heads, they didn't fail to deliver truckloads of men and crates of aerial bombs.

The soldiers frightened me the most.

Even late into my teens, the sight of black hoods and blue visors on the brutes of soldiers in Blackwatch uniform gave me creeps. Sometimes I wondered if they were even a legal organization, though since their separation, no more news were heard of again. At times they were shown as peacekeepers on the TVs, shooting down the misshapen creatures as they waved the civilians to safety. Other times, more anonymous sources told of different stories, of their brutality and stringency. This was only months ago, somewhere in the hell we call Manhattan.

And these looked just like them, except for they weren't the size of champ wrestlers and they didn't wear the Blackwatch logo, an image forever imprinted within my childhood frights.

They carried with them armaments of war. Machine guns mowed down moving targets through bushes, walls, fleshly deformities. Grenade launchers packed high explosives into tight crowds; body parts flew. When bigger things came knocking, tanks easily bombed them away with high caliber cannons while the helicopters launched sizzling fireworks in aerial support. Bomber jets dropped like vulture onto painted targets; blocks disappearing in seconds. It would be quite a show to watch, and then a tank turned its gun at me.

At a height of six floors, the ballistic shot like a rocket at me. Wait, no it was a rocket. The shell ate away a chunk of the building and threw me, hard enough to crack walls, against the far door, which I promptly crashed through, splintering the wood to needle points that harmlessly bounced against me. Ethan was beside me only seconds earlier, and then proceeded to climb out of a caved in part of the wall, both fuming and worried.

"We have to go," was all he said.

He didn't wait for me as he sprinted the other way when the second shelling was heard from below. I had only escaped to the next hall when it hit, obliterating the rest of the room. The military seemed satisfied we died, as they fired no more rounds. That was, until we leaped out of two windows on the other side of the building, the shattered glass raining upon the streets below. I landed heavily on an infected, crushing it beneath me.

"Targets three o'clock!"

A wave of bullets slammed hard into the ground around me. I ignored them in favor of keeping pace with Ethan as he leaped over the heads of a second tank convoy. I did so too, except I landed on the roof of one if only to rattle its inhabitants.

"Two evolved located in sector twelve. Requesting air strike. Targets heading east." Evolved?

In my short, cursed life, the exhilaration of running is perhaps one of the greatest joys I have ever experienced. Imagine if you can run faster than helicopters, or leap so far the world blurs. It is one of the small moments where I truly feel like a god in my own might. Imagine the invincible grace with which you can dodge the standing cars, or the evasive rolls you need to escape explosions left and right. When distance becomes only a number, and time just another object, life is your playground, and you become truly invulnerable.

Boom!

That had been a little too close. Homing rockets were annoying as a swarm of pesky mosquitoes on a summer night, insufferable crowd. They beeped the most irritating sound as they locked on, losable only by turning abruptly, also losing precious time in the process.

"Approaching large in sector eleven! Immediately support necessary! Heavy firepower–" Approaching large?

Suddenly all but two helicopters disappeared from our trails. The rest were so insistent, prodding after us with bullets and warheads which threw up lights so bright they could outshine the setting sun.

"Jump!"

Ethan's command came too quickly that I did not think as I jumped, one, two, three, four stories into the air. A homer crashed into the spot where I was only moments ago. My eyes widened as I fell straight for him, and his arms waiting to catch me.

"What do you think–!"

Then he threw me.

I was laughably ungraceful as I sailed into the air. It was such a high I thought perhaps I had finally escaped the bounds of humanity. Running as quickly as a racecar, yes. Flying, why not? The pilot had such a scramble of panic as I crashed awkwardly through the wind shield, shattering it and smudging a dark stain against the pilot seat, which was sent somewhere into the back of the helicopter. Beneath me were smashed controls and panels. I started to lose altitude.

Uh oh.

I cried out as I leaped from the cockpit, leaving the failing wreckage behind. In midair somehow I had learned to straighten myself to avoid being upside-down. In front of me Ethan leaped from the other aircraft, though with much more control. Whereas I rolled when hitting the ground, he made a small crater and stood calmly, as though it was a daily exercise.

"Not hurt?" I shook my head. "Good, because we really need to get out of here. Thankfully whatever monster they found in sector 11 is keeping them busy." A distant roar was heard, and then more explosions. He cast a glance in that direction. "Come on, then. We haven't got all day."

ooo

"–spotted in infected zones." A grainy image showing humans, or rather humanoid creatures. Their arms ended in strange, bulging appendages. Three stood on top of a burning building, while a fourth one was already falling down, onto a squad of ducking soldiers. They reminded me of something, something close. "Military reinforcements have already been transported from San Francisco." Flashes of an interview of a commanding officer, whose large mustache bristled in anger.

We kept to ourselves as we strode like every other person along the grey asphalt, which led onto itself endlessly forward like fate, on its banks the refugees huddled around small fires for warmth and comfort while a few others braved its adventures. A group was crowded around a live TV, playing a station on the newest reports of the outbreak.

"In other news, infection has broken out in Houston, Texas, following the escape of a dangerous prisoner, whose name the government has not yet released. Infection levels in New York City has grown in response to the conflict between the military and the Followers of Evolution. Quarantine has been set up in Houston and New York." The reporter looked stunningly calm as she droned on, aware that it was her defining moment in her career. Then I saw something in her face. No one else noticed, so I pretended I didn't, either. But there was a slightest of pride in her voice when she said "Followers of Evolution." Her eyes lit with strange light, which faded away too quickly. These Followers sounded like a cult. How strange. I turned away.

"So what happens now?" I founded myself asking, eyes drifting over the countless pitiful and lost. A small child looked back at me with curiosity, while a muscular man stared dejectedly into the ground.

"Now we survive, and lie low. They will know we escaped, but hopefully there are others to distract them for the time being." I swore he looked wistful for a second. Maybe it was a trick of the moonlight. "Then we need to get out of the city. There's something in New York last I heard that will grant shelter to the likes of us."

I only nodded as each step carried us farther into the darkness. It was then I would have wished the rest of this hell away for a life of quietness and peace. Sometimes all those drums and yells, and only later you find you forgot what it was to feel safe again.

A/N

Well, here's chapter two. I would really appreciate any reviews, whether be appraisals or criticisms. Actually, especially criticisms so then I can improve my story more to the tastes of my lovely readers.

Chapter 3 is 25% complete. Be ready for more adventure soon!