Disclaimer: I do not own Prototype.
Note: set post-game, follows on from the first and second drabbles. Really I should go ahead and find a title for this thing because I don't think it still qualifies as a drabble. So yeah, part the third, wherein I attempt to write action!

Walls and Falls

Her neck had a crick in it something awful. Blinking sleep out of her eyes, Dana massaged her aching neck. What-?

Oh. The bathroom. Right. She must have fallen asleep at some stage. Eying the small window blearily, she judged that it was late afternoon. She glanced towards the bath. Alex's biomass still rippled slowly, evenly. Here she'd been freaking out for the past two days and her brother was taking a nap. She took it all back, that was Alex through and through.

Urgh, she needed to pee. NOT in here. The apartment across the hall was still deserted, maybe she could use the bathroom there.

She staggered out of the cramped little room, yawning and scrubbing a hand through her hair. Man, even her scalp ached. She undid the chain and stuck her head into the hallway, more out of habit than anything else. The hallway was empty, except for some shlub leaning against the wall a few doors down, ipod earbuds firmly in place and bopping his head in time to unheard music.

Dana pulled back, closed the door and locked it, then secured the door chain. The Infected were being systematically eradicated, sure, but that didn't mean it was safe, not by a long shot. Nobody went around oblivious to the world anymore, not when the Infected could still be anywhere, anyone.

"Ugh, stop being so paranoid," she groused to herself. But the feeling persisted. Irritated, she marched over to the window facing the street five stories below. She knew she was being ridiculous, but…

Black vans stood parked here and there , interspersed with a broken down SUV and a taxi or two. Another van pulled up right in front of her building. Nobody got out. The streets were empty of people.

Dana stared in mounting horror. Black-clad men started to slip from the new black van, moving quietly an efficiently into her building.

"Alex," she said as she kneeled by the bathtub. She kept her voice even, but urgent. "Alex, you need to wake up. You need to wake up right the fuck now because I think Blackwatch found us.

A knock at the front door. "Ms. Mercer?"

"Alex, damnit!" Dana barked, grabbing a toothbrush off the sink and poking her brother sharply with it. "Alex wake up!"

Small white flecks like congealed grease scattered and shifted over Alex's surface as biomass clutched the plastic hilt of the toothbrush in a swirl of muscle, and Dana yanked as hard as she could, "Alex!"

Someone banged on the door.

The biomass shivered, and somehow Alex was just there, his top half at least, the bottom edges of the jacket still melting into the red-and-black mass. "Wh-at?"

"Blackwatch is here!"

The door broke open, yanked to a stop with a clink of chain.

"Shit!" Alex grabbed for her, hanging on to her shoulders as they both staggered upright. Alex was still unsteady, his face showing strain as he literally pulled himself together. "We need to get out."

"How?"

Something slammed into the front door, sending it crashing open. Voices roared.

Alex punched out towards the small bathroom window, arm twisting into strands that shot deep into drywall, plaster, and exterior brick. With a grunt, he yanked back, bringing a large chunk of the wall into the bathroom with a crash and a cloud of dust. "Come on!" Alex pulled her towards the gaping hole.

"What?" Dana shrilled, almost frozen with fear. They were five stories off the fucking ground and there wasn't a fire escape or even a damned ledge, where the fuck were they supposed to go?

"Trust me!" Alex yelled as he dragged her forwards, and then he was collapsing onto her again, dissolving into biomass and flowing around her, hot and heavy and clammy. For a moment she was completely frozen, deaf and blind in an airless prison, then Alex pulled back from her face and moved her forwards.

He was covering her like a suit of armour, but this armour moved her, instead of the other way around. "Alex!" she screamed as the armour launched itself out the hole, bullets thudding into their back and pushing them forward. "Aleeeeeex!" she screwed her eyes shut as they burst out of the building, felt one arm move and catch the wall and then they were off, running up the side of the goddamned building.

They pushed off from the brick at impossible speed, and Dana screamed instinctively, doing her best to curl up into a protective ball but the suit fought her, making her limbs move, flipping her in midair to land feet-first on the roof of the building across the street, but her struggling had had some effect and they landed poorly, going into an awkward roll and skidding over ten feet of gravel before coming to a breathless stop.

"Sstop fighting me," Alex's warped voice came from somewhere as the suit stood up, starting to move again as bullets bit the ground around them. Snipers?

"Let me go," Dana said, forcing her voice to steady. This was insane!

"Can't. You'll be a sitting duck. Just do what I tell you and you'll be fine." The suit started running again, and Dana could just tell they were going to start jumping buildings. "Oh goooooohhhhhhhddddddd!"

"Pretend you're Wonder Woman!" Alex snapped, and then they were airborne.

Dana swallowed a scream as they jumped, trying to pretend it was all a movie or a video game or a really fucked up dream. She didn't know if that worked, or if the terror just couldn't go any higher after a while, but about ten buildings later she found herself getting into the rhythm of it. Unfortunately, the black helicopter she hadn't even noticed had caught up to them by that time. "Left!" Alex yelled, and if Dana didn't help, at least she didn't fight the sudden swerve to the left. An explosion boomed behind them and the suit was jumping her out into empty air, tilting her forward and then- something happened with the planes and angles of the suit, Dana could see it out of the corner of an eye, and they were moving forward, moving faster – they were gliding!

Not for long though. Three seconds later they hit the side of a building and Alex was horizontal and running again. Up and over the building they went, then down, slipping past a bunch of buildings and finally slipping down into the subway. It was almost sunset outside, and with night coming the station was deserted. Trains stopped running at sundown.

Alex fell away from her, collapsing heavily on the cold cement floor. Dana had grown almost used to Alex's burning heat, leaving the cool evening air an icy shock to her skin. She sat down hard. For a moment neither of them moved.

Alex was still human-shaped, although he was shuddering violently. Dana had about a million questions and decided to start at the top of the list. "What the fucking hell is going on!"

"Poison," Alex groaned, flopping over onto his back and giving her a weary, worn-out look. "Some new thing… Blackwatch pumped into me. S'like… a really strong base."

"What?"

Alex's eyes closed. "Base. Basic and acidic. Like in chemistry. It's another virus, but they've engineered … engineered it to make a base. To be a base. Like. Super soap. Dissolving me from the inside out. "

Dana grunted in realization. "That white stuff, the white flecks on you-"

Alex nodded once. "I can fight it, I can win… get it out of me and kill it… but I can't do anything else at the same time or… or it gains on me."

Dana felt cold. Every moment Alex stayed.. cohesive, human, whatever, was another moment he wasn't fighting this thing. "We have to find somewhere to hole up."

"Yeah." But he wasn't moving.

"Come on," Dana said, getting an arm under his back and pulling. "Get up, we're moving."

"Can't be too close," Alex said weakly, "they'll track us. Go right from here."

"Whatever you say," Dana agreed, anything to get them moving. She got them up the stairs and two whole damn blocks away before she judged Alex to look about as bad as he had two days ago. There was an apartment building to their left that looked deserted. She steered them towards it, made it up to the third floor in an elevator that miraculously still worked(she took it as a good omen) and into the first unlocked apartment she could find.

Two minutes later, Alex was puddled in the bathtub again, and Dana was curled up against the inside of the bathroom door in a nest of towels. Not much of a warning system, but paranoia insisted she try.