Chapter Four: Playing For Keeps

A/N: Okay, here's chapter four, in which there are yet more cameos and the first appearance of Ed's powers.

Also, thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far. And to Nano, who reviewed anonymously, Inky is an OC, and that sentence choice was deliberate. Dana "growled" independently of actually trying to talk because, if she hadn't, she would have sounded like Alex.

Well, that was fun. I guess Mercer's ex already has him running errands for her. She smiled to herself at this, remembering that she had made new friends among the Marines while Mercer was off tearing up the city. Sgt. Jackson was nice, which she had never found before in a soldier, and even though Pvt. Johnson was still a little unnerved by her, he had joined them for coffee. It was frankly horrible stuff, but somehow the smell had then attracted Lt. Vasquez and Cpt. "Deadly" Pelayo. They were both equally awesome, and had even offered to have someone escort her home despite the rampant danger, or at least show her to a shelter where the displaced were living. She had refused, though.

It was a pity that Mercer would probably end up killing them all.

She decided to contact her network of minions as she headed toward the Brooklyn Bridge, even as she faded into an alleyway. Her body was always more adaptive in darkness, where she could utilize her abilities fully.

Elizabeth Greene was indeed active. Several of her beasts—Hunters, Mercer had called them—had destroyed entire packs of shadow-hounds that had been snooping around the new Infected structures, called Hives. The woman's mastery of her army was very nearly poetry in motion in the shadow-queen's eyes. It was terribly beautiful. Greene was fighting a war on a dozen fronts and winning.

She was fascinated by the idea of a full-scale war with a worthy opponent such as the American military—clearly Greene was malevolent and intelligent—but she found herself wondering at her rival's motives. There hadn't been anything left in the woman's eyes except for a single-minded intent to kill. To kill, to infect, to control. The shadow-queen sighed. Well, not much left to negotiate with.

She couldn't use the same tactic as Greene anyway, not with her devastating weakness to sunlight. Maybe Mercer could, if he had the right reason to and a psyche that was slightly less human, but she doubted that he would ever pursue Greene's goals, whatever they were. Though he and Greene seemed to be cut from the same cloth, the apple had not only fallen far from the tree, it had rolled down the hill and off a cliff.

Admittedly, she had only Greene's ambiguous comment (and a few guesses as to why Mercer seemed to set off every virus detector within eighty meters) to go on, but it seemed like a decent theory at the moment. Anyway, she'd give Mercer a bit of time to fight his own battles. There were some things the shadow-queen was just flat-out incapable of pulling off despite her powers and flattening an entire brigade in five minutes in broad daylight was one of them.

There was a pause. Then she abruptly remembered her many, many duties as self-declared ally of Alex Mercer. Namely, actually acting like one. Oh, shit. Forgot. This'll take forever…

It was hard to tell if Karen had been unnerved by the speed in which he'd managed to steal an APC, but they decided not to discuss it. Even if he knew how, the muscle memory wasn't fully developed yet and, as a result, he tended to run over overturned cars and sometimes even Hunters whenever he wasn't paying attention. After the first couple of times that had happened, Karen had just shaken her head and stopped talking.

Still, Alex managed to drive her all the way to her East Harlem lab with minimal casualties and relatively little property damage.

While she went inside, he dropped the vehicle off in a hot zone and left it for whatever Marines cared to pick it up for the massive machine gun on the roof. With Karen safe inside a building with walls so thick dynamite couldn't damage it, he certainly didn't need it anymore.

When Alex came back, she was already going over files on her laptop with the same nigh-religious attention that Dana had. For a moment, he wondered if he should tell her that he was right here, thank you, but she turned around before he had been waiting for more than a few seconds.

"We know a few things about the outbreak." Karen said, almost to herself. "There are two genetic strains at work."

Two? Oh no…

"I need samples from both types to be able to treat it. You'll need to locate samples from Infected water towers and then collect samples from a full-blown Hive." She gestured to a map on her computer screen and Alex recognized most of the hot zones highlighted from the map on Dana's safe house wall. "The water towers are prevalent in these areas. Get there, destroy them, and collect the material, then head uptown and get the material from the Hive."

She brought up yet another screen. "From what I can tell, most of the water towers will spawn fully-grown Hunters, much like Hives do. If anything gets too close, they hatch and start attacking. If you can destroy them before then, you'll probably have an easier time."

He agreed, but wasn't willing to leave it as just that. "Whatever's happening here," Alex warned her, "this is only the beginning." And he knew it was true—whatever else was going on, Greene was free and even without her army of Infected, she was at least as strong as he was. That alone was enough for concern.

Karen smiled faintly and nodded. "I know. But hopefully we can still stop it."

Dana had woken up at about noon and had spent most of the hours since then going over the files on the computer. It wasn't like there was much else to do, not with Ed growling at her every time she even thought of going to the front door and the news reports saying that a zombie apocalypse had started. She didn't have a gun anyway and as far as she could tell, the plague hadn't spread to her apartment complex yet. Besides that—and this was the most important thing—Alex had told her to stay put in case the military was after her, too. Since her initial encounter with BlackWatch, she was inclined to listen to him.

"This sucks." Dana said to Ed, who sat on one side of the screen. He crunched the can of cat food she'd given him and started to clean his antennae, like a cat washing its face.

Dana sighed. Ed wasn't much of a conversation partner. Then again, that cat that had apparently once lived here? It probably wasn't much of a talker either. She was starting to remember why she'd never wanted a pet.

Bing! She jumped and looked at the screen. She hadn't just heard that, had she? Click. She brought up the little obnoxious icon in the corner that indicated that an internet chatroom was open.

Shadowgurl11: Hey Dana! You there?

What. The. Fuck. "Who in hell is—?" Dana started to say, but she was cut off by another bing.

Shadowgurl11: It's Inky, duh.

MissionCtrl: How the fuck did you do that?

Shadowgurl11: Do what?

MissionCtrl: Never mind. Where are you?

Shadowgurl11: Queens.

MissionCtrl: …wait.

MissionCtrl: WHAT.

Shadowgurl11: QUEENS.

MissionCtrl: How the fuck did you get across the Brooklyn Bridge? There's a military barricade on it! WITH TANKS.

Shadowgurl11: Your point is? I'm Inky. I do this sort of thing for a living.

MissionCtrl: …

Shadowgurl11: Anyway, I'm hanging out with this delivery—sorry, bike messenger—guy and he helped me find a library with decent Wi-Fi and I think he's got LIGHTNING POWERS and—what do you mean you don't?—his girlfriend is this scientist—okay, doctor—lady and I'm going to go shopping soon, so what do you need?

Dana stared. Her mind was still slightly behind events, stuck on the sheer ridiculousness of what she'd just read, so she responded slowly. Apparently, it was too slow for Inky, who seemed to be high on a combination of caffeine and speed.

Shadowgurl11: And buzzboy's girlfriend isn't going to let me buy stupid things for you anyway.

MissionCtrl: …If you can find, cat food, milk, canned soup, and cereal, that'd be nice. I think rationing is starting over here.

Shadowgurl11: OK! And give me your size so I can get you some new clothes. Trish will help!

MissionCtrl: …Medium on shirts, size two in most jeans, that kind of thing.

Shadowgurl11: Got it! See you in a day or two!

Collecting genetic material. She'd said it like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Long story short, it wasn't. First, Alex had to find a water tower that was incubating a Hunter. That was actually an easy enough thing to do—after all, crows tended to circle overhead, waiting for something to drop dead so they could descend and feast.

That wasn't really the problem. Finding a tower was the easy part. The problem was the other Infected that surrounded it. Once the Hunter inside the tower was disturbed, it tended to die, but the mid-level human Infected would invariably try to kill him as soon as he approached. It necessitated a lot of slashing on his part, which would inevitably slow him down long enough for some dumbass to call a strike team.

Then he'd spend the next five minutes or so trying to kill a helicopter with rooftop air conditioners and by the time he was done, someone else would call another one in, and that would be the pattern for almost an hour, or until he managed to hide for long enough that they assumed he wasn't in the area anymore.

Next tower, repeat pattern.

Stabbing the premature Hunters' bodies with syringes for their blood was a hell of a lot easier than killing the fucking strike teams. Were it not for them, he wouldn't have even cared if a dozen hulking Infected had declared him their unofficial punching bag. Hell, he'd rather go up against three fully-functional Hunters at once than yet another minigun-equipped Apache Longbow. If only for some variety.

Still, that was three filled syringes. Now it was just a matter of finding a Hive…

He looked down from his current rooftop perch, all the way down to street level where, of course, the military was mounting an assault on a Hive. Not again… Alex groaned mentally. But then, some things needed to be done. He had no idea how long it would take him to find another Hive barely a day after Greene's escape, and if he waited until a more convenient one appeared, it might be too late to stop the virus. This would have to be the one, despite the tanks.

Alex just sighed inwardly and leapt off. In midair, his arms morphed into claws again and he hit the ground slashing. Three Infected civilians died in the instant after his landing, one crushed and two torn in half.

He backhanded another and tore its head from its shoulders as he ran up to the Hive's outer walls. He could already see the mid-sized Infected drones spawning from the red patches on the concrete. Alex narrowed his eyes and jumped, twisting in midair to land on a car just as a Hunter—the first real Hunter he had seen all day—tried to bring its fists down on his head. Then he reached down and grabbed the frame and again spun in midair.

The taxi crashed into the Hunter's torso and it went down gurgling. Okay, what next?

Alex ran his claws down one of the red blobs, ripping it wide open. The Infected inside—another of the ones the size of a football player on serious steroids—flopped out onto the red-stained cement, unmoving. Well, well, well. I guess they can't come out early at all. He shifted one arm back to normal and swung wide with the other, splitting the skull of the Infected civilian that had been charging at him. Then he drew blood from the one lying at his feet.

That should be almost enough… Alex turned at the sound of tank treads and caught a 5.56x45mm NATO round in the sternum. Oddly enough, it didn't hurt. It didn't even punch through the bone. Alex looked down and absentmindedly fingered the bullet hole, then looked up at the hapless soldier who was continuing to fire on him.

One swing of his claws split the Marine's legs from his torso.

Alex didn't think past that point, not with the two tanks on the block choosing that moment to open fire. He was running entirely on what reflexes he had trained into himself over the last few days. Then there were the Hunters, descending from the building in ever-greater numbers. After his first encounter with them not too long ago, he was getting better and better at avoiding the dreaded mob attack. As an RPG exploded against his back and the shrapnel seared his flesh, though, he reflected bitterly that he couldn't fight a war on two fronts. Not yet.

He picked up some ancient sedan and tossed it in the general direction of the nearest tank, then went after the other one. He understood enough about armor to know that the greatest threat to mechanized cavalry was infantry. Tanks couldn't fire effectively at close range, and the M1 Abrams that were following him around like angry pit bulls couldn't afford to use anything larger than their machine gun if he was too close to an allied vehicle. Everything on the Abrams aside from the machine guns (and canister rounds, admittedly, but Alex wasn't worried about those) was designed to kill other tanks, and it was practically carved into the minds of most soldiers that friendly fire was a Bad Thing.

Of course, he thought as the soldiers all around him were cut down by a sudden spray of what was essentially a shotgun round built for a tank, BlackWatch would be an exception to that.

Still, other than leaping inside the hatch of the tank—which he didn't think he had enough time to do—he could, at best, scratch the paint off and try breaking the treads. His claws had hardly made a dent in the Hunters before, so how could they possibly get past heavy armor?

Alex ducked behind a Hunter, which stupidly stared at the place he had been for long enough that it caught a face full of RPG-7. Okay, what the hell am I doing? Then he felt his arms throb again and blinked. Maybe…

This would be tricky. He hardly knew how he had first pulled off a weapon transformation, only that it had happened immediately after he had fought, defeated, and consumed his first Hunter. There had been a sudden surge of…something… Almost out of reflex, Alex grabbed the nearest mid-sized Infected and tore its throat out with one set of claws. This time he forced the tendrils out, and they fed off it—he fed off it.

There was another throb, but this one went all the way up his back and into his shoulders. Then he knew what he was doing.

It was all rather simple, really. He needed the ability to beat a tank into submission. It just so happened that he couldn't do it with claws because there wasn't enough power behind them. Well, there would be plenty of power once he had enough mass. And to gain more mass, he needed to consume everything on the block that was not a tank or a normal human.

It didn't take long. Alex wasn't any slower despite the fact that now his weight could stall a car, and he ran up to the nearest tank from behind. He shifted his arms back to normal and concentrated until he felt a deliberate throb of his mass shifting, then swung.

Then there came the sound of metal groaning and denting under the weight and power of the club-like black limb. He swung again with his other heavy, heavy arm, collapsing the rear of the chassis and twisting the treads outward. Soon enough, something would catch fire.

Alex Mercer smirked and went for the second one, stopping only to flip a Lexus up into a nearby attack helicopter. Now he had a way to fight armor.

Two destroyed tanks and dozens of dead Infected later, Alex returned to the Hive with an "abandoned" recoilless rifle. Okay, now he had to finish up collecting the samples. It would just be a lot easier if he flattened the building first.

Is everyone being good? A chorus of yips, barks, trills, and one deep-throated roar sprang up in her mind. The shadow-queen smiled to herself and found a waterfront view on the riverside park. She couldn't be bothered to find a better spot to observe the besieged island across the way, but she supposed it didn't matter.

She'd seen two or three groups of tanks and other armored vehicles cross the bridge since she'd arrived. It had been interesting, to say the least, but ultimately it didn't matter much. She was constantly getting reports from her minions in the city, and all of them were saying that the Infected were far from easy targets. Sure, they died in droves, but they had an uncanny ability to increase their numbers.

What had "official sources" said before? She wracked her brains for old statistics about a virus she hadn't cared about much at the time, and came up with something like "99.99 percent fatality rate." Well, that couldn't be right. If that was true, there would only be approximately one hundred thousand Infected running around Manhattan, and no civilians.

Something went funny somewhere, and she was sure Greene was somehow behind most of it. Damn it, if only she could remember what she'd heard years ago, it would have been easy! If only, if only…

The shadow-queen sighed. Almost idly, she waved for her flunkies to tail McMullen and General Randall in case anything new came up. As an afterthought, she also ordered one—another mini-nightwing, but not quite as smart as Bat—to track down Mercer. With Ed looking after Dana, one of her bats looking for Mercer, and two separate sets of shadow-hounds following the conspirators, she had most things covered.

It's not like it's hard to figure out what's going on now. She said to herself. BlackWatch's command post is in Battery Park, GENTEK is in the middle of town as far as I'm concerned…what am I missing? General Randall is already in town if Bat is anything to go by, and there—oh, is McMullen even in the city yet? Anyone?

She didn't get an answer for that question, but she was abruptly sidetracked anyway. At that moment, Bat did something that was very unusual. It called out to her. Hm? What is it, my little minion?

Bat gave a sort of mental shrug and projected an image into her mind. The shadow-queen paused, digesting it.

Sometimes I really hate having idiots for pets. She paused, thinking. Did I ever even tell Mercer that GENTEK was a front for BlackWatch? No? Shit, not again. Now I have to go back early.

Sometime later, Alex balanced on the edge of a rooftop overlooking Battery Park. It hadn't been planned—hell, he'd been on the way back to Karen's lab—but something about the place had distracted him. It most likely had something to do with the sheer number of BlackWatch troopers going in, out, and around the massive compound. If not that, the security detail—which included tanks (For Pete's sake, they called that subtle? Alex thought.)—would have tipped off anything with a rudimentary brain.

Shit, this is a fortress. He had no idea how he was supposed to get in. All he had was an idea—a face that came to him in a memory and did nothing else—and his strange abilities. Well, I've done something like this before.

He didn't even have a reason to risk horrible dismemberment by going inside, aside from his burning need to know what the hell was going on. At the center of everything seemed to be one Raymond McMullen, his old boss, and if nothing else, finding the man would get Alex the answers he craved. He knew it was stupid and dangerous to be this obsessed over his missing memories when he had Dana to look after, but that didn't change the fact that he had to find out. Anything to fill the aching void in his mind. Someone here knows McMullen. And they're going to tell me everything they know.

Without really even thinking about it, he started down from the rooftop while transforming into one of the BlackWatch soldiers he had recently killed. After everything that had happened recently, it wasn't even something he needed to concentrate on.

He landed just out of sight of the nearest guard, cracking the pavement just as a helicopter passed overhead, masking the sound. After that, it was just a matter of walking up to the compound and slipping in.

Jesus Christ, this place is bigger than I thought. Alex ducked around most of the soldiers, not interested in starting a fight in a hundred men's' crosshairs despite the fact that he would most likely survive. There was a certain level of insanity he wouldn't start, but he would finish, make no mistake.

He passed several soldiers—not BlackWatch, but Marines, and slowed a little. Do they use this place as a training facility? BlackWatch is supposed to be the best of the best or whatever… If they were trying to show the Marines how to deal with Infected, Alex almost had to laugh. He'd killed nearly twice as many BlackWatch soldiers compared to Marines, and that was just because they were too stubborn to run when he was in the middle of fighting something else. The Marines were starting to learn that it wasn't a good idea to get between him and a Hunter, and dutifully stood back to shoot while BlackWatch marched right on in and got decapitated or dismembered by the truckloads. Irony, then.

Shaking his head, Alex started to jog toward the main building, noticing that the soldiers seemed jumpy today. He wasn't sure why exactly, but figured it had something to do with him. He only had to watch the way the soldiers moved for a while before he figured out the pattern. He couldn't hear the orders being given, but everyone seemed to move out from one man's position near the far wall of the compound. That man was a BlackWatch officer, dressed in white unlike the shock troops' black, though Alex couldn't be bothered to figure out his rank. He's in charge. He's the one I want.

There were dozens of soldiers around still, but suddenly it didn't matter much. Alex walked up to the base commander with a level of casual ease that would have been utterly alien to anyone who knew the man he pretended to be, completely certain of what he needed to do. He followed the man into the corner of the base, then—

Alex had used this technique once before on a Marine base commander, but this time there was absolutely no feeling of regret. He, for lack of a better term, "crunched" his target. He wasn't at all surprised then the memory flared in his mind and momentarily stunned him.

"We know that ZEUS has been spotted multiple times in this area and we're breaking out some new tech to pin him down. This Unmanned Aerial Vehicle can detect the virus at less than ten parts per million in open air. With it, we should be able to box ZEUS in and destroy it."

Alone, it might not have meant much. After all, Alex had already demonstrated his ability to outrun everything short of a (thrice-damned-by-everything) Apache, so it wasn't as if they actually had a chance in keeping him stuck in one spot for very long. He was already starting to pick up the patterns of his own transformations faster than they could come up with new ways to kill him. All in all, it wasn't much of a threat to him personally, or to Inky (who Alex still wasn't sure could be hurt by gunfire).

But with the UAVs, they could find out where he'd been. They'd find Dana, and Alex would not allow that to happen. Not after the first time that had happened.

Okay, first things first. Time to get the hell out of here. Alex broke into a run, not caring if anyone commented, freaked out, or started shooting. If he played this the wrong way, Dana would be dead before he managed to get out of here if he tried acting normally. Problems on top of problems, threats on top of threats…he was starting to really, really hate BlackWatch.

Alex leapt over the concrete wall and sprinted into a park before he even thought about slowing down. He only stopped and removed his disguise when he realized that, if the military planned on boxing him in, he couldn't allow them to go on patrol at all or else they might find Dana instead and kill her. He would have to play the bait. Clenching one fist and seeing the tendrils of black and red run up and down his arm, just to see that his abilities remained at the ready, Alex turned and ran for the nearest building. He needed a vantage point.

He shot up the side, scaring several groups of civilians he couldn't be bothered to care much about, and climbed the last few feet onto the roof. Thankfully, no one with any actual authority seemed to have noticed, or else Apaches would already be on the way. He couldn't hear any chopper blades yet, which gave him something like five minutes before he ought to be worried.

Alex looked down, watching as the first of several tanks began to roll out from the base, and tried to think of something. He could destroy one tank, possibly two, if there were actual distractions around. Without a convenient Hive or something else for the military to shoot at instead of him, he was in for a dangerously lengthy fight. Unless…

Alex almost grinned to himself. Kill tanks with tanks. If they could take down Hunters, who he knew could be tough bastards from his own fights with them, he wouldn't be surprised if the only timely way to kill an M1 Abrams was to shoot it with another one.

At least he had a plan now. Alex picked a different disguise this time—that of a Marine he had killed on the second day he could remember—and dropped out of sight, away from the patrols. He'd need to approach this group differently. With his luck, horrible as it was, the UAVs could see right through his disguise and point him out to the gunners. In that case, he'd just have to be quick.

It was possible that the last thing the patrol had been expecting was a one-man charge, straight at the lead tank. About two seconds later, though, as the camouflage-clad soldier vaulted on top of the first Abrams and ripped the hatch off, they realized their hesitation was the worst mistake they could have ever made. Then the man dropped inside.

Alex didn't think. He reacted—as soon as the crew started to draw their weapons, he lashed out viciously, splattering the four of them all across the inside of the tank until the blood splashed up out of the hole where the hatch had been.

He also didn't have to think as his arms twisted into impossible shapes again to allow him to take control of four different battle stations. All he had to do was figure out where to fire. The turret swiveled and suddenly depleted uranium rounds were flying through the air. Alex tightened his grip on the controls (he…didn't want to think about the nature of his fingers at the moment) and almost laughed, because now he had a way to fight. And he never would run out of tricks, thanks to them.

Almost idly, he shot down the annoying, hovering UAV pair before moving on to the rest of the convoy. At least the squealing things couldn't attack.

He went on to destroy two whole patrols before he accidentally ran through a Hive-affected zone and a Hunter got in a lucky shot, destroying the already-damaged treads. Shit, shit, shit! There is no way in hell I'm getting bogged down here! Alex fought his way past the mid-level Infected who barred his way out of the disabled tank, slashing wildly with his claws and shredding a dozen or so, before he ran into the second major snag in his plan.

Yet another fucking flight of Apache Longbows. Okay, regardless of anything they had ever done to someone who was not him, he hated BlackWatch now. There was just no reason they could afford to waste half of the choppers in the entire fucking city on him while their men were being attacked from fifty different directions at every single Hive. This is just fucking unbelievable!

As he hefted a taxi on one hand and flung toward the lead chopper, he reflected that it wasn't the worst possible outcome, just pretty high on the list. At least there weren't any Hunters—he'd managed to escape the affected zone. And, given how durable his body had proven so far, he wasn't so worried about being killed, at least. He just hoped that he'd be fast enough to take out every one of the patrols. Or else loud enough to take them off Dana's trail. Either outcome would be fine with him.

Besides, there was a certain black humor to how BlackWatch reacted to one of their own vehicles turning on its fellows—namely, they didn't. Maybe backstabbing was just ridiculously common there, but Alex filed the information away for later. It could be useful.

"We burn our own to hold the Red Line"…yes, now you will.

BOOM. BOOM. GATTAGATTAGATTAGATTA—BOOM! SCREEEEE—BOOM!

Dana almost fell out of her chair in shock. What the hell was wrong with the world today?! First there was whatever had exploded at that military base two nights ago, and now this! Only this wasn't a fuel-to-air explosion, like last time. These explosions, the sound of screaming metal…they weren't accidental. It sounded like urban warfare.

Dana ducked behind a table as another blast rocked the apartment and Ed, along with the can of cat food he had been stalking, fell off the table. She heard the plaster start to crack as Ed collapsed into a little puddle and started to wail. It only lasted a second, though, before he grabbed the cat food again.

"Ed, get over here!" Dana hissed at the little black monster, who had paused to swallow his food whole. Then he slunk over to her knees like a scolded puppy, if puppies were made of liquid blackness, and dropped his big head on her thigh. Dana barely avoided growling. "Stupid little…"

Then the apartment shook again and Dana forgot what she was going to say in favor of ducking as plaster and bits of wall showered over them both. She could hear the sounds of gunfire getting closer, even through the brick. "What the hell is going on?"

Ed latched onto the table leg with his huge jaws, still somehow managing to screech with his mouth full. A second later, Dana covered her head as the little creature's body melted into a puddle that almost instantly rose all around her like a cage. She barely managed to keep from panicking.

"Ed?!" But he ignored her and the cage bars widened until almost no light crept through and, as the blasts from outside grew louder, Dana suddenly realized what he was doing. He was protecting her. "Please, get the laptop!" We can't afford to lose it.

Ed growled, but about ten seconds later, the laptop appeared, unharmed, within the black bubble of safety. Dana grabbed it and settled back, trying to think as the walls continued to rattle and Ed kept up his high-pitched growl.

Ed was a lot smarter than Inky had suggested. But she had said he was strong enough to make sure she'd be safe, no matter who or what came after her or Alex…Dana gave a shuddering laugh. God, this is insane. My big brother's the military's number one priority, I'm friends with a woman who deals in shadows that think, and now everyone's fighting in the streets with tanks and helicopters? Did I make a mistake and turn off the exit that said "Twilight Zone"? But…It's thanks to them, all three of them, that I'm still alive.

"Thanks, Ed." Dana murmured, patting his head. "For…looking after me."

Ed purred. He also drooled, and Dana just had to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.

A/N: My version of Alex sure does a lot of complaining, doesn't he? :P He's such a whiner. BUT THERE WAS NO ANGST. YAY. Just Nathan Drake-esque mental ranting.

The bike messenger? Cole McGrath. Yes, that guy from inFAMOUS. It's kind of obvious the Ray Sphere hasn't gone off yet…so no lightning powers. Not yet.

Also, I'm completely making up the parts where Alex is controlling a tank, and where he is gathering genetic material from the water towers. There is, frankly, no in-game explanation for those mechanics, so I had to make one.