It did not take long for Alex Mercer to realize he was not in New York City anymore.

'Not long' consisted of about two seconds. One to blink and another for his jaw to go slack at the sight before him.

Sand. It was all sand and rock, a dusty expanse that stretched as far as his sharp eyes could see. He stood in the middle of a chasm, a natural corridor of rock that stretched up on both of his sides. Behind him was that cramped, abandoned bunker he had just escaped from, and ahead… a wasteland.

He'd lived his whole life among towering skyscrapers and neon lights – no wasted space, no empty ground. Everything within the walls of the bay had been saturated with the pulse of human life. Buildings spiked towards the sky in an uneven canopy in a vain attempt to create room for the throbbing masses of people that flocked to the city like moths to a light. There was Central Park, of course, but any illusion of being away from the city was shattered by the screech of car horns and the constant crowds struggling through. Never before had he seen such a vast expanse of nothing. There was the ground, a tannish mix of sand and rock. Cliff walls, a deeper and less faded brown. The occasional stone, jutting up from the dust like a snaggled tooth. And then there was the sky, a tired blue plane pierced by a bright sun.

Back in Manhattan, he'd often cursed the endless crowds under his breath, wishing for a reprieve; open space and freedom that the city could never provide. Now, watching the wind tug trailing motes of sand up from the dusty ground, he felt a strange sense of discomfiture. Too open. Too alien.

There was nobody here.

He shivered despite himself. No prey for regeneration, no anonymous faces to hide behind. No shelter from assault. Just himself and the languid breeze.

Of course, that meant that nobody was around to hurt him, so he could do himself a favor and chill the fuck out already. Alex groaned. He did not like mysteries. Knowledge was power, and the only way he could stop it from being used against him was to have it all. Being left without the full picture of events always left him frustrated and edgy. But panicking over nothing was beneath him. He could do better than that.

He guessed he could get used to empty space, but the issue was that he'd never liked being noticeable. Tended to happen to a person when being noticed meant anything from obnoxious pointing and whispering to a battalion of tanks and elite air support coming after his ass. There was nowhere to hide out here, and nothing to divert attention from him. For all the various ways they pissed him off, at least Manhattan's crowds had served a purpose.

But he was losing sight of the immediate problem. If some enemy had placed him in that bunker, then it was in his best interests to get as far away from it as possible, in case they showed up again. That they were currently nowhere in sight was deeply suspicious, though; he was too jaded to believe in good luck. There had to be a reason. Why had he just been left in a desolate facility? He would have expected some measure of containment, or an attempt to kill him – firing squads, chemical cocktails, poisons, hell, maybe another nuclear device. He wouldn't put it past Blackwatch. But nothing at all? The place had been sealed, but then it had let him as soon as he'd approached the door. It made no sense.

He tried to remember something, any uncovered recollection or snippet of information, but trying to poke around brought on another wave of nausea and left his head throbbing. It was like somebody had taken a cement mixer and swirled all of his memories into a jumbled, churning mess.

Information or not, it didn't seem like a good idea to stay in the bunker. There was nothing to eat down there, and there was a chance his captors might show up again if he hung around. Besides, the fresh air outside felt good to breathe in, even if it tasted like dust and grit rather than the tang of pollutants he'd grown used to over the years.

He rolled his shoulders. That damnable feeling of malaise was slowly fading. Maybe it was the sunlight and fresh air, or maybe it was his body patching up whatever damage he'd suffered. It didn't matter. Looking over the endless landscape, Mercer felt his biomass coil with a burning desire to run.

It felt great – the remaining lethargy was swept away in a rush of wind and primal joy. Running through the wastes felt weird at first; it wasn't pure sand, like he'd thought, but a layer of fine dust and dirt over rock. But even though it gave under his feet more than concrete and asphalt ever had, it was difficult not to enjoy. Nothing in his way to slow him down, no patrolling helicopters or pointing pedestrians or the sudden line of the bay. Just himself, the wind, and the speed.

He could have used a few more rooftops to leap across, but the sheer freedom felt amazing. It was enough to keep his mind off of important things for a few minutes, anyway. He was still in the dark about whatever was going on here, and he needed to fix that before Blackwatch got the jump on him again. This didn't feel like their usual tactics - hell, this whole situation was just wrong - and that was worrying. What was he up against? He slowed down to a jog, keen eyes raking the passing desert for any signs of life.

There were none.

There was nothing alive here.

If he was completely honest with himself, he'd have admitted that he was unsettled. This wasn't Blackwatch's usual game. If they had managed to capture him, they would have kept him alive - they needed something to make their little bioweapons out of, after all. As much as he loathed Greene, he doubted he'd have held onto his sanity after forty years as Gentek's petri dish either. He knew what would happen if Blackwatch ever brought him in; that much fit. But they were professionals; if they'd taken him down, they'd have made damn sure he stayed that way. The bunker had been sealed off, but that was it; no personnel, no traps, no security systems, nothing. It was an awfully light touch for them, ignoring the fact that the system itself had let him out. And that made even less sense. Was somebody working on his side? There was only one person in the world who didn't want to see him on a slab, but he wouldn't put it beyond her.

Still, that bunker had looked civilian, more than anything else. Bedrooms, not laboratories. Why?

He didn't have any answers, so he scowled and pressed himself harder - if not to find a clue about his enemies, then at least to find something indicating his whereabouts. The complete lack of anything noteworthy went on for a damn long time. He stopped once, finding what turned out to be a half-buried human skeleton and a sand-worn pack. More out of curiosity than any actual need, he had checked out the guy's supplies. Money had never meant much to him, and any leftover food and water was equally useless, but a wallet might have an ID, and that had a chance of telling him where he was. At least, he had to have a map... but there was nothing of note. Instead, he found some unused scraps of paper and a pistol, which he tossed aside. If it couldn't pierce a tank's hull, he didn't want it. A bit deeper, there was… what the hell?

He picked up the pack and upturned it, just to confirm what he was seeing. Yeah. Glinting in the sunlight was what looked like a collection of bottlecaps. He shook his head in disbelief. People. Dana had attempted to teach him about hobbies a few times. He'd tried his best to understand, but the notion didn't make much sense to him, and this really wasn't helping. Why the hell would somebody carry a bunch of junk around instead of something useful? And what was the point of this collection anyway? They all looked the same to him.

Besides an apparent bottlecap-collector on a suicide voyage into the ass end of nowhere, over an hour passed without any change in scenery, and that was worrisome. Alex could cover a lot of ground in an hour. His other senses weren't picking up much, either. There was nothing loud enough to hear over the roar of the wind in his ears, but he wasn't interested in bugs and wildlife anyway – he wanted civilization. Or something big enough for dinner, anyway.

He revised the thought about bugs when he collided with something black, orange, and definitely organic.

He screeched to a stop, kicking up a plume of sand. There was nothing left of whatever he'd hit; just a distasteful smear on his jacket. He frowned, wiping it off with one hand while looking around. Something was buzzing; it was a muffled whine, faintly reminiscent of a distant helicopter's rotor. But the sky was empty but for a wisp of cloud and the burning sun.

He got his answer when he checked behind him. There were several fast-moving blurs zipping across the rocks in erratic patterns, quickly enough to make him to waste a few seconds trying to figure out what they were.

He lost another second in blank-faced disbelief once he finally made them out.

Giant wasps. Giant giant wasps. There were five of the bastards, black things with bright orange wings and bulbous eyes. And while the extent of any wildlife he'd ever seen didn't reach anything stranger than a stray cat, he had eaten people that watched Animal Planet, and as far as he knew, wasps the size of large dogs were a stretch even for… Africa, or something.

His fingers were halfway through the process of becoming claws when the first one impacted. It wasn't heavy enough to do more than stagger him, but almost instantly afterward, there was a stinger buried in his gut.

Alex swiped at the bug, but it had already flitted away, well out of range from his talons. Since when was anything fast enough to dodge him? Hell, he could target a streamlined helicopter gunship with a highly trained pilot inside and snap-kick it out of the air. And then bounce off of its burning wreck and launch his foot into its partner, if it had one.

He leaned forward to dash into pursuit when he became aware of a sharp pain in his stomach. He glanced down, eyes widening. An angry red weal was spreading across his belly, standing out sharply against the grey material of his sweater. Biomass writhed and coiled around the edges of the expanding sore, each tendril a little prick of fire as it was melted away. Shit. These things were more dangerous than he'd thought.

Steeling himself, he ran a claw through the front of his shirt, carving off the poisoned area before it could spread further. After Blackwatch's parasite, he took no chances with foreign toxins.

He felt rather than saw another wasp darting at him, and he dropped to the sand, barely evading its pass. As he did so, dark, chitinous plates crawled over his vulnerable skin.

Let's see them pierce this.

Three of them were on him now, but he'd been right; their stingers crumpled against his armor, no more effective than stabbing a tank with butter knives. He managed to nail one with a wild swipe, crushing it underfoot when it fell, but the others managed to retreat, hovering a safe distance away with the last two.

If his armor had possessed facial features, he would have frowned. They were too fast. His claws were the quickest weapons at his disposal, unless… His right arm bunched up into a tightly-wound coil, claws melting into three smaller, hooked barbs.

He drew it back. When the next rush came – all four this time, perfect – he swung his whip to the side, letting its momentum pull him around in a full circle.

A second later, a series of wet slops hit the ground, in the form of bisected mutant wasps.

And still, one had gotten away! They were… well, they sort of moved like himself, zigging and zagging at ridiculously high speeds, except with wings. He scowled and snatched the last nuisance out of the air, reeling it back to him within the second. It was an ugly thing – how the hell did those wings carry such a bloated body? Did they have something similar to his own airdash mechanism? He wasn't really in any place to question how, given his own track record of kicking physics in the balls and tying it to a flagpole with its own boxers, but it didn't seem possible. And how had it gotten so damn big in the first place?

He glanced at the struggling, half-crushed bug in his grip. He could feel the tentacles wriggling inside, yearning to break through his skin.

Well, why not?

He regretted it. Oh hell he regretted it. He wasn't sure if it was the poison, trying to consume something so far from a human, or something else, but his body had something against this abomination of nature and it was letting him know it.

He doubled over almost immediately, palms flat against the warm sand as he gasped for breath. Every inch of him below his neck was heaving. His tentacles were thrashing wildly, his biomass churning as it forced out its latest addition. With how quickly he assimilated new mass into his whole, his body ended up flushing a good bit of what he already had.

It dimly reminded him of that time he'd looked after Dana when she caught the flu. Except with her, there had been more throwing up and less of her whole body messily rearranging itself. Roughly the same feeling, though, if her complaints had been anything to go by. Shit, if this was what being sick was like, he was glad he wasn't human.

At last, the violent reaction trailed off, and he regained enough control of his shape to pull back the tendrils and shift back into his clothes. A few more seconds and he was able to stand, if not a bit shakily. He glanced down at the puddle of half-dissolved wasp and grimaced.

Ugh. Okay. Living in New York hadn't really lent him much opportunity to experiment with his diet, given that the majority of all living biomass on the island was pretty strictly human, but he'd fed on a few stray dogs and cats before, and they weren't too bad. Apparently, gigantic arthropods from hell were pushing it. Best to stick with the safe stuff.

He'd gotten rid of most of it, but there was still an uncomfortable feeling in his biomass. He couldn't tell what it was – it didn't hurt, but he knew it was there and he didn't like it. Just something distinctly off. He might have said that it made his skin crawl, but since that happened to him on a regular basis and he was completely used to it, the figure of speech didn't occur to him.

Damn it. He'd been fine before, but now he was actually hungry. And there was a distinct lack of anything edible around.

What were those things? He'd reduced the five after him into so much paste, but doubtlessly there were more around. Creatures like that… they couldn't be natural. Could they?

Gentek had done plenty of crazy experiments – hell, he was a living testament to that. But most of the real Mercer's memories were his now, trickling back with less and less frequency over the few years since the Outbreak, and the man had known nothing about giant wasps from hell. And whatever he'd tasted in that anomalous thing, it wasn't the virus.

He had to have covered a lot of distance from the bunker he'd found himself in, so it didn't seem likely that they'd been put there to hurt him. Was it possible that they, too, had escaped from the facility? The place had been deserted when he'd woken up, and everyone being wiped out sort of made sense… but no, the door had been sealed until he'd left, hadn't it? He pressed his fist to his temples. Whenever he tried to think about it, a spike of pain shot through his head.

Well, nothing more to do than keep running. He frowned. He didn't tire, not like normal people, but tired was the best way to describe how he felt – unease was sapping the raw joy he usually felt at the prospect of running free. The sun was already low in the sky, the clouds lit orange by the sunset. Had he really spent the whole day on the move? He hadn't been holding back in speed, and there was still nothing to be seen. Where was he? Everything about this situation just seemed unreal, the more he thought about it. None of it made sense. He was starting to wonder if there even was a way out of this place, or if -

Wait.

There was something. Something bright, almost lost amongst the sky's orange glow. It was tall and thin, barely a stick on the horizon. He squinted, unable to tell if he was imagining it or not.

He probably was. Hah. The great Monster of Manhattan, stranded in the middle of some godforsaken wasteland, desperate enough to wish on illusions and shadows. Pathetic.

But something held him back, and Alex Mercer waited. He waited as the sun bowed and slipped under the sky, waited as dusk crept to claim its place.

And on the horizon, he saw a tower. It was lit in gaudy red and white, slightly thicker at the top. Brighter than the faded stars that slowly sprinkled into view. It was alone, and that was strange – it looked like something that belonged in a city.

But buildings meant people, and neon lights meant civilization. And for as many problems as humanity brought with it, that lone tower was one of the most welcome sights he'd ever seen.

He needed answers. But first, he needed reassurance. A cell phone, a computer. He could try to contact his sister from there. Somebody had to know their way around – he could get directions. Maybe even find an airport, if that was necessary. He didn't like the idea. But there were worse things he'd do if they were necessary to get home.

And if she wasn't home… people were going to die.

Sand flew and rocks shattered as a viral tornado tore a path through the wasteland.

Dana, I'm coming.