Step. Breathe. Put one foot after the other.

For a while, that was all Alex could focus on – a constant rhythm above the churning malaise his body had become. Somewhere along those lines, he managed to fit in 'don't eat the guy in front of you' and 'keep the tentacles hidden', if just barely. He was only dimly aware of what was going on, and the distant part of his mind that occasionally made plans instead of just acting was convinced this was all a terrible idea, but the rest of him was so clumsy and sick and bleary that he couldn't cough up a coherent counterargument.

Being at somebody else's mercy was a concept that filled him with dread. It was well earned; he'd spent his entire life being hunted by those who sought to kill him and use his body for experiments, or their worse cousins, the ones who sought to keep him alive and use his body for experiments. He had no illusions on what Blackwatch planned to use him for if they ever got their hands on him. As far as he knew, there was a grand total of one person on the planet that gave a shit whether he lived or died, and this person wasn't her. Right now, the only thing Alex had in his favor was his anonymity.

But as things stood... maybe this dizzy feeling of falling apart at the seams wasn't giving him much room for perspective, but it was hard to imagine anything worse. And there had been something familiar in that voice, something that tugged at his notice long enough to hold his jumbled thoughts in one place. 'I'm trying to help you.'

It was a different voice – nobody could match hers – but the inflection was identical. Dana had used those very same words on him, several times, when her everlasting war against his antisocial tendencies came to a boil.

Those words often followed long arguments about terms he'd come to detest – trauma, psychology, socializing, proper goddamn hygiene – but he knew that she always meant well. She just didn't understand what he was, how he needed to live. And he never blamed her for that; it meant the world to him that she tried as much as she did. Those were frustrated words, angry words, but they cared.

And so he'd taken a blind leap.

Focusing on the simple, repetitive motions helped. It was quick, constant. As long as he could feel his footsteps, he knew where the ground was and the dizziness couldn't completely have its way with him. He still hurt like hell, but he was used to hurting. He had survived the parasite, digging its tendrils into his back as it slowly ate him alive – he could endure this.

He did lose his balance and pitch forward a couple of times. Thankfully, the guy he was following didn't get irreparably crushed. He was pretty sure that would have been a bad way to express gratitude. But nobody had died, and his mystery savior even managed to help him back to his feet. Embarrassing, but coordination was in short supply at the moment. He'd take what he could get.

...This really didn't speak well for how much biomass he had left, but Alex just didn't have the space of mind to worry that far ahead. Too abstract. Here and now.

"Oh. Oh, my."

Words. They were a little clearer, now that he had something else to hold as a reference point to the world. He still had to struggle to make them out, though, turning them over and over in his head until the sounds coalesced into meaning. Words meant something, and something entailed the possibility of change. He could use some change right now.

It was a different voice, higher. Female. "That looks…" The man he was using for support shifted, and had he been in any state to, he'd have been ashamed by the way his legs nearly gave out at this. The sudden movement caused his already-heaving biomass to give a nasty lurch, and a good portion of whatever was being said was lost to him. "…happened?"

"I don't know. I found him on my way back." That was the first voice, the man who'd led him to wherever he was. He sounded agitated.

"I see. And what did the Garretts say?"

"You know, Farkas, there might be more pressing concerns right now. Like the mostly-dead man that's using me as a walking stick. He's definitely pressing me."

They weren't moving anymore, and the nausea was rising over his head again. His eyes refused to focus any further than wavering smudges of light and shadow.

A sigh. "Arcade, this really isn't the time for your attitude – "

"And this really isn't the time for your lectures," 'Arcade' snapped back. "Help."

He pitched as his support started moving again. That made his head pound even worse, and he gave up trying to pick out words for a while. Just step. And breathe.

He was vaguely aware of being coaxed down, and really, the idea of curling into a self-pitying ball and suffering alone for a few days was looking pretty appealing. He flopped onto something soft and firm. He probably could have identified it if his brain was working, but it really wasn't. Everything was just a disconnect of touch and sound, linked together by the tide of his rolling fever.

He heard words now and then, understanding floating in and out of the pain.

"Prop him up, then take…"

Something cold was touching him. Despite the fact that he was practically burning up, it didn't feel good against his skin, and he would have swatted it away if only his arms would listen to him.

"This can't be right… I think this one is broken, can you get me another?"

Another touch from something cold.

"…readings are all wrong…"

Poke, prod. Breathe.

"I don't know what the hell is going on here..."

"…what are you going to…"

"Give me that…"

Another prod. He clenched his fingers, trying to keep his form coherent. Tentacles were kind of conspicuous.

"Just give him the goddamn Rad-Away, it can't hurt him any worse at this point."

"This isn't radiation sickness, he's…"

Now they were getting louder, too loud. It was making his headache worse, and he was dealing with enough shit as it was. He would have reached over and shut them up the way he knew best, but his arms didn't want to move.

"So you're just going to…"

"…hope it works out?"

"…any better ideas?"

Blissful silence! Maybe he wouldn't have to kill them later.

A sigh. "Fine."

A few seconds later, he grunted as a sharp, thin point pierced his side. His body tensed, muddied thoughts flashing back to Cross and the parasite. Was he being attacked? He blearily opened his eyes, trying to make out the two dark blobs that hovered over him. Damn it, he still couldn't see, and it took him a few tries to simply lift his head.

The female voice was saying something, but his attention was elsewhere, turned inward. His biomass was churning, but it wasn't the sickening, swimming lurching that it had been doing for the past half hour. This didn't exactly feel good, but it didn't hurt either; it was a little closer to how he rearranged himself when he changed forms. There was some kind of purpose to it, although he had no idea what it was doing. But no, he could feel streams of biomass flowing towards the point on his hip where something had pricked him.

And then he realized that he could actually feel it – that his awareness was no longer blocked by a pounding headache and fever. He blinked; color and clarity had reentered the world at some point in the past few seconds. His sight was a bit fuzzy around the edges, but even that was clearing up.

But as the feverish heat faded, he became increasingly aware of a painful point on his side; the same spot where all his mass was flowing towards.

His whole body throbbed around it. And he desperately wanted it out.

He jerked upright, eyes darting across surroundings that were finally laid bare. White cloth, steepled overhead – some kind of tent. Makeshift shelves, a few beds. Two people hovering over him. Damn, he'd almost forgotten about them. He had to keep playing charades around them if he wanted any kind of help, and splitting some poisonous blob from his side was unlikely to go over well. These were probably the voices from before; there was a blonde man with rimmed glasses and a woman with a brown mohawk, both in lab coats. Lab coats. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with his illness – and a desperate churning that did. Lab coats never meant anything good.

The last time he'd woken up to two people hovering over him, he'd been on the verge of being vivisected. He struggled to pull himself into a sitting position, tangling and then ripping the bedsheets that clung adamantly to his legs.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Now the woman was leaning over him, too close – he pulled away, nearly falling over for his trouble. He stumbled, legs swinging over the edge of the bed. "Don't exert yourself!"

The male doctor just pointed to the right. "The bathroom is over there."

Alex had never used a bathroom in his life, but if Dana's reactions were anything to go by, it was a place nobody would bother you in – and that suited him just fine. He practically bowled over the mohawked woman in his haste to get out, tearing the tent flap a few inches wider. The man had pointed to the side; he turned right immediately and saw the corner of thick stone wall, a single door next to the junction. It survived its encounter with the hasty viral abomination, if barely.

Now he was in a building; a set of stairs directly in front of him, and two open doors leading to rows of dark green stalls. These, he recognized, and he hurried through the closer door, the one marked with a triangular stick figure.

Somebody shrieked, pushing past him in their haste to get out. He didn't have the space of mind to wonder about it. His skin was crawling with tentacles the instant the stall door swung shut behind him. His body was positively writhing, and his side burned like Blackwatch's cancer parasite was lodged in it.

His tendrils thrashed, midsection becoming more of a formless blur than anything recognizable. The parasite had latched onto him by seeding his biomass with its god-awful taint and wiring its tendrils through what felt like every inch of his body, to the point where it was impossible to tell where it began and he ended. This, though; he could feel where this thing began and ended. It was like a concentrated chunk of poison had gotten stuck in his body.

And that made it simple to get rid of. His tentacles carved around it, pushing out the afflicted biomass and anything in close proximity to it. In the end, there was a fist-sized chunk of discolored flesh at the end of one tentacle. It was unusually warm, and it made the tendril he gripped it with prickle uncomfortably.

He dropped it in the bowl, snarling when the resultant splash of water caught him in the face.

But… huh. Just like that, he felt absolutely fine again, his biomass busily re-knitting itself over the last of the damage. No dizziness, no burning up, just the wholly explicable sharp and prickling pain that faded as he scraped at his wet face. He felt perfectly normal and it was possibly the most glorious feeling he'd ever experienced.

He cast an apprehensive glance at the blob of biomass. Somehow, he'd managed to force all of the toxins or infected tissue – the latter idea brought a brief flash of amusement – into one part of his body, and gotten rid of that. But he'd only managed it after being treated with... what, exactly? And that in and of itself was strange. Since when did human medicine work on him?

Then again, human medicine tended not to make humans slough off parts of their bodies, so 'working' was probably subjective. Still, it was a lucky break - not something he had any right to rely on. But was it wholly because of whatever he'd been treated with, or was it something he was capable of doing on his own? He had full control over his biomass, true, but his whole body had been a mess up until just now, and that worried him. Even if he'd known what to do, he wasn't sure he would have had the control to hold everything together.

He didn't want to have to rely on anyone the next time he got… sick, or whatever the hell had just happened to him. He didn't want to get sick again at all, but he had a sinking feeling that he was going to be dealing with a good bit of misery until he figured out what was wrong with him.

There was a jagged scrap of metal in the expelled biomass. Upon closer inspection, there was a thin pool of something bright green around it. His scowl deepened further when he realized that it exuded a faint glow. He racked his memories for clues; a minute later, he was still just as confused as before. None of the numerous scientists he'd eaten had any idea what this glowy green stuff could be. If anything, the memories of a few sci-fi enthusiasts likened it to something out of an alien movie. Which didn't help him at all.

…and what had been with that woman, anyway? This whole situation was strange. He hadn't even started eating people yet. Maybe his tentacles had been showing.

He made to open the stall door, then glanced back at the toilet. There was a way to make it get rid of things, he knew. The relevant memories did not take long to locate, and he prodded at the handle above the seat.

It didn't seem to work properly, though; the machine hissed, and the water level rose, but not much else happened. The blob of unknown-substances-not-good-for-Blacklight rolled around a bit as the water swirled, and bits of it came off, but for the most part, the disappearing part wasn't happening. Nothing noticeable had occurred by the time the water settled, and the chunk of... something was largely unaffected.

He pushed on the handle again, backing up when the contraption gurgled and hissed. The water level was higher, now, but the current wasn't as strong this time. Must need more force.

He mashed it a third time; the handle came off in his fingers. Fuck. The blob was doing little more than lazily spinning around. And… oh.

He hissed as water rushed over the bowl and began to pool on the floor, burning the biomass of his shoes. On autopilot, he leapt upward, positioning himself between the top of the stall walls and the ceiling – one hand spiky and anchoring him above, one foot braced against the stall. Logically, he knew the defensive pose wasn't exactly merited, but his instincts treated water as a much-hated enemy, and by the time he got a grip on himself, he didn't see any need to move.

One arm crawled into a spiky whip, ready to strike out if the thing fountained up again. But it was just burbling, spilling water onto the tile. He scowled, reaching out tentatively when the tide appeared to have receded.

Another swill of water washed over it, soaking the tips of his tiny claws; he snarled and drew the tentacle back, slashing through two stalls and rending the toilet in half.

He regretted it almost immediately. Water practically fountained up from the pipes, blasting him square in the chest; he fell from his perch, landing on all fours in a fighter's crouch. Except the floor was wet, and he was clinging to the wall a second later with human hands, snarling at the gushing water.

By the time he'd escaped the trap and slammed the door shut behind him, there were a series of curiously spiky handprint-shaped depressions on the walls and the room was thoroughly drenched. Water was trickling through the crack under the door, soaking into the carpet; he hastily stepped away.

Okay, Mercer, he told himself, feeling faintly like an idiot. He could practically hear Dana laughing at him, and resolved never to let her know what had just transpired. You know absolutely nothing about what just happened in there.

Doing his best to look nonchalant, he headed back outside. His hand closed around the next door's knob, then hesitated. He heard voices. Angry voices. He lingered at the door, curious.

"…was moving around just fine!" It sounded like the male doctor's voice from before.

"What were you thinking, telling him to get up? The man couldn't walk without assistance. He could have gotten hurt!"

"And he didn't."

"I don't care. Next time, get a bedpan. I'm not going to have patients injuring themselves because you don't want to do your job properly."

"Yes, well, I seem to recall this not being a part of my job. I've done enough doctorly things for the night, wouldn't you say? I'm going off to bed. Good night."

"Arcade!"

Whatever the second voice had called out 'Arcade' for, the first didn't respond to it. He waited for the footsteps to fall silent before finally opening the door.

"Oh!" The mohawked doctor was waiting outside the door, apparently startled by his appearance. Her face was visibly redder than it had been a few minutes ago. Alex's lips twitched.

"How are you feeling? Here, I'll lead you back to the beds…"

Alex took a step back instinctively. "No thanks."

"Are you sure you should be up and about right now? You just had a bad spell."

He shrugged, dismissing her. "I heal fast."

The doctor gave him a shrewd look. "It's possible that you might be feeling better right now, after purging all that nastiness, but your body is still recovering. People don't just walk off these sorts of things. You need rest."

"Yeah, sure." This woman was starting to get on his nerves. Lab coats rubbed him the wrong way to begin with, and there was a grand total of one person in the world allowed to try to mother him. This mohawked doctor was not her. Though... if there was anyone here that was actually worth his time, it was the doctor who had 'saved' him. Hmm.

He looked up. "Where's the man that brought me in?"

"Arcade? I think he's in that camp over there." She waved towards one of the tents near the middle of the enclosed fort. "Before you go, though, I need to ask if we can take some bloodwork, or at least a physical. You had some very erratic – hey! I'm not done speaking to you!"

Alex was. He'd stopped paying attention after the 'camp over there'. Arcade, right… he dimly recalled that name from his fevered observations. Huh. So the guy's name was Arcade, then. Unusual name, though he'd heard stranger. (And consumed stranger.)

By 'bloodwork', he was already halfway across the enclosure. Hurriedly. He wasn't sure what they'd found, but if it was anything incriminating, he'd have to get out of here as soon as possible. Definitely before they got too audacious and discovered that a 'blood' sample from him might just try to eat them. Even if they somehow didn't manage to get themselves killed and start a new Outbreak at the same time, Blackwatch had eyes everywhere - the last thing he needed was to leave a physical trail. Wherever the hell he was.

Now that he was actually lucid, he could get a better view of the area. Four long stone walls surrounded an enclosure filled with white tents and very old machinery. Everything was washed-out and dusty – even New York City had been greener than this.

He stopped at the indicated tent; it was taller than most, and he could see bunk beds through the flap that fluttered in the dry breeze. He ducked in, peering at the occupied bunks. None of the heads really matched up to the glimpse he'd caught earlier.

"You're looking fairly sharp for somebody who was half-dead a few minutes ago."

Alex startled. He'd managed to tamp down the transforming reflex over the years, but the urge to sprout claws was by no means gone as he whirled, looking to pin the voice. It didn't take long to find – sitting in a chair in the tent's corner was the blonde doctor.

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said dryly, once he was sure his arms were under control. "Are you Arcade?"

"Julie handing out names again? Seems confidentiality is a thing of the past." He stood up, stretching. "Arcade Gannon, at your service. Resident researcher, part-time doctor, and apparently, I make a serviceable walking stick by your standards. What can I help you with? Julie's the one with the supplies, not me."

What did he want? Alex was much more used to taking than he was asking, and the question threw him a bit. Consuming would have told him everything he'd need to know... but consuming the person who'd chosen to help him out of misplaced altruism was off the table. "Information," he decided. "I've got some questions."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but it's two in the morning," the doctor said dryly. "You'll have to forgive me for not wanting to get into an extended Q-and-A session at the moment. I've been waiting on sleep for a few hours now."

Alex didn't want to wait. He could practically feel the noose closing around him; an invisible clock counting down to when Blackwatch showed up. "Listen," he enunciated carefully, doing his best not to snarl out the words. "I really don't have time."

"You're surprisingly pushy, given your position," Arcade noted. Alex tensed, eyes narrowed. If the man wanted to imply he was weak, he could easily remedy that opinion. Would it be wise? Probably not. Satisfying? Extremely. But the doctor just sighed. "A few questions. I hope you know what that means. And first things first, let's take this outside. I don't want to wake up those fortunate enough to be allowed sleep at this hour."

He followed the doctor outside to a spot with a fire pit and two chairs. Arcade offered one, but Alex remained standing.

"All right," he finally asked. "What is this place?"

"The Fort?" Arcade gestured around. "This is the local Followers outpost. Followers of the Apocalypse," he supplied at Alex's uncomprehending stare. "We're a charity organization. There's plenty of people that need help in the Wasteland, and most of them can't afford it, so we try to fill in the cracks. We do a decent enough job, I suppose, given that we're critically understaffed, undersupplied, and the NCR lets us know they don't want us around at every turn. While we're on this topic, I should ask a question of my own here."

Alex's body language must have been distinctly uncomfortable, because a second later, the doctor amended his words. "Nothing personal, I assure you. Strictly medical interest. What exactly happened to you that left you in such a state?"

"I… ate something that didn't agree with me."

Arcade snorted. "Such as? A steak grilled over a nuclear reactor? You looked like you'd been practically swimming in radiation."

Alex paused, then slowly turned back to look at the doctor. "Radiation…?" The only time he'd ever encountered such a thing was five years ago, and he'd been rather preoccupied with the thermonuclear blast that accompanied it. Radiation was not a common thing to encounter. Where was he, the Ukraine?

It was Arcade's turn to look perplexed, but there was a shade of suspicion around his narrowed eyes. "Yes, radiation…" There was a long pause. "Your lack of comprehension worries me."

Damn. He was definitely missing some key part of a bigger picture here, and the more he showed his ignorance, the more he invited questions.

Act fast, the recollections of a long-dead Blackwatch spy informed him. You don't want to stand out here. You'll need a veritable excuse to write off not having what's apparently common knowledge.

Retrograde amnesia, supplied a doctor in a slight Boston accent. If you appeared fatally ill, brain damage would be a distinct possibility to consider.

It wasn't in so many words – Alex had long since realized that the voices in his head were all memories and no actual brain activity. All 'conversations' seemed to be fabricated by his own mind in an attempt to process and retrieve relevant information. It was a relief to know, really – that as much as it seemed otherwise at times, he carried around recordings rather than a legion of trapped souls. He still felt their personalities, their hopes and fears and unanimous disgust of him, but at the very least, he could tell himself that the voices that shrieked in hatred weren't truly there.

They also happened very quickly; enough so that Alex replied without pause. "I… can't remember." A carefully crafted frown spread across his face. "Is it important?"

The doctor had a strange look. "You could say that." He appeared to consider his words for a bit; when he spoke again, it was slower, like he was speaking to a child. "Do you know where we are?"

Alex almost said Freeside, but he thought better of it. "No. I just… I was just running. Walking. Walking for a long time. I don't really remember anything before that."

"Great, just great." Arcade sighed. "All right. What do you remember?"

Alex shrugged. He still wanted his questions answered. "Not much. Definitely nothing about radiation."

"That's fair enough. Listen up, because it's rather important if you don't want a repeat of whatever happened last night. Nearly everything is irradiated." He paused. "You do know what radiation is, right?"

"Yeah." Pretend amnesia or not, Mercer was not a patient virus monster.

"Good. That would have been a lot to explain. Like I said, everything's irradiated. It's not just the food, it's the whole landscape. Some places are worse than others. This part of the country's relatively clean, or so I've heard. It's worse out east. Still, though, it's not a good deal. Everything you eat, everything you drink, you're taking in negligible bits of radioactive material. That builds up. And the human body isn't built to handle it, hence radiation sickness. You got a spectacular taste of that.

"Some people have devices with inbuilt Geiger counters, but they're in limited supply. The rest of us have to make do with the old fashioned way. You're going to need to learn to recognize the symptoms, and flush yourself when you start to get sick. It's best to do it as frequently as possible to avoid lasting damage, but at the same time, medicine isn't everywhere. We can supply you with a bit of Rad-Away, but we're low on stocks here, so you'll need to get your own. There's also Rad-X, which helps you avoid absorbing more rads but doesn't do anything for what you already have."

Alex frowned. When there was a slight break in the conversation, he voiced the question that had been on his mind for a while. "Why is everything irradiated?" He was pretty sure this wasn't the Ukraine, or whatever that place in Europe was that Dana sometimes talked about. He didn't know of anywhere else on the planet that had suffered such a wide fallout, and everyone was speaking English here…

Arcade sighed again. "Now there's a pleasant story. See, a few centuries ago, the Pre-War government decided that leaving the world habitable and safe for future generations just wasn't worth bothering with. For that matter, they must have also decided that they were bored with their continued existence. So the United States and China played chicken with several hundred nuclear weapons. And nobody backed down. Invasions, espionage, tensions reach a boil, the whole song and dance. Just like that, entire world's population gets decimated, alongside with civilization, luxury, common sense, and nearly all life on the planet. We'll get back to you when we're finished picking up the pieces."

"The war? What war?" A horrible sinking feeling was beginning in his chest. "What… what year is it?"

It was Arcade's turn to shrug. "I'm not sure how that's relevant, but twenty-two eighty-one."

Alex's world splintered.

He was dimly aware of the doctor's lips moving. Saying more? He didn't hear it. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered, not after that.

Year… 2281. How? He couldn't wrap his head around it. He had been in 2014 and now he was not. It was too much of a jump – it didn't make sense. Whatever had happened to him hadn't incapacitated for a night or even a few weeks. It was… two hundred and sixty-seven years. Not incapacitated. Defeated. Two and a half centuries. Gone. Unremembered and unnoticed.

It made no sense, but it did – why everything was so different, why this world didn't match up to the one he knew. A war, some cataclysm or whatever where humanity had finally decided it was sick of itself and rained down fire. Everything he'd seen aboveground had been dead, destroyed. It fit.

And time… he could survive that long, apparently, if being unconscious for over two hundred and fifty years was living. He'd often wondered about his mortality or lack thereof, when age was something he could change at will. This answered that question. But…

His biomass lurched.

He had to… go. Get out of here. Go before the realization hit him, before the impact shattered him into a thousand jagged pieces. It was dawning fast.

Legs, moving. Felt strange. Stumbled. Weak, but not because he was hurt. Not in the way he could fix-
He didn't even know where he was going. Just… away. Outside. Not caged. Walls, too high – he wanted to get out, and it was only through a combination of numb detachment and willpower that he didn't spring over them and hit the ground running. Something in his chest was pounding, hot and frantic, and he might have let himself believe it was a heart if that word didn't have so many connotations for him – ones he couldn't touch, not now. He struggled to keep his breaths even, struggled and failed.

His quick stride turned into a lope. The street split and cracked under his feet, shattering outright where the foundations were already weakened. He was deaf to the hollers and yells of the few passerby as he plowed through whatever was unfortunate enough to be in his path. A garbage-can-turned-torch was knocked over; a wrecked car was run through. People screamed. He ran.

He could feel the snap coming on, and only dimly knew that he wanted it to be far away from anyone else, for her sake –

For – her –

And he would never see her again, never get to make up for all the hell he'd put her through, never make her smile never listen to her voice never never do anything for her anymore because she

was

dead.

The sound that tore itself from his throat was more animal than human; something caught in a trap, screaming shrilly, mangled flesh torn on spikes. But he'd been through that before, and it was nothing, nothing!

By the time he ripped through Freeside's gate, he was in a flat sprint. But the truth bit into him even as he tried to outrun it, feet flying across dusty rock. It was a void; a hungry, furious nothingness that ripped him apart from the inside, piece by piece, and he was too close to the edge to fight it, to even think-

His hands clenched into fists, grinding against themselves so hard that his biomass squelched and split – and from those perforations, tentacles rippled out, arcing and thrashing up his arms with maddened violence as his fingers split into razor claws, convulsing with the need to hurt.

It no longer mattered where he was. Who was there to see him. Who was there to be hurt by him. He was up to his neck in nothingness, moments away from being swallowed entirely by the pain, and he was beyond caring. This was too much. Nothing could matter anymore. Nothing but –

He threw his head back and screamed up to the grey sky.

"Daaaanaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

His next cry carried no semblance of meaning - a raw, anguished roar that howled across the open expanse, only a helpless fraction of the overwhelming emptiness that he felt. It wasn't enough.

A feral snarl escaped his throat as he lashed out suddenly with his claws, all semblance of humanity gone. He needed to kill, needed to rip the life from something and watch it die. But there was nothing to slaughter, nothing but emptiness and unbroken desert for miles. So he clawed at that, got down on his knees and swung, tearing vicious gashes into the ground again and again and again.

The sand didn't break enough, didn't shatter and scream and hurt. So he made it scream, shrieked along with the splitting rock as his spikes plunged into the ground and ripped and ripped and ripped until there was nothing more but ruined gravel. He scooped up a clawful and threw it with all the strength he could, but it was too light, too pointless, clattering to the ground like little shards of glass. After a moment's frenzied panting, he clawed out a great boulder and gave it the same treatment. That was a little better. Just keep the adrenaline flowing and feel the resistance, the tension, the strain, feel anything besides the truth–

With another roar, he whirled around, one set of claws conjoining into a spiky, vicious whip. He slashed it across the sand, its full length tearing across the rock in a massive arc. It pulled him around and around until the air was choked with sand and the ground was scored with more gouges than he could count.

But it wasn't enough, and his arms melted again, forming stronger, thicker, stonelike fists. All he could think of was the need to crush, to destroy, to funnel out even the meanest fraction of his own agony to the world beyond.

He hauled his massive fists back, then slammed them into the ground. And there was pain – meager pain compared to the rest, but real pain, pain he recognized. He blinked, vague awareness brought back more out of shock than anything else.

His hammerfists were fractured. He could see cracks running down the joints. On a closer look, both hands seemed discolored – the normally smooth biomass was uneven, and the color reminded him more of necrosis than the usual stony dark grey.

And they had broken. Why were they so weak? He'd never…

He slumped into the sand and ruined rock and moaned. Oblivion was simple - shredding and tearing and destroying, all those things he'd been built to do and exulted in doing. He'd almost reached it. Almost. But that damned shock had snapped him back into reality, and reality pressed down on him like heavy fog.

He could not run from the pain and he could not fight it. And he still could not face it.

But it refused to be ignored.

Two hundred and sixty-seven years had passed. Yes, he'd been captured… and held. And stored. And when he'd at last woken up, the world he knew was dead, the way he lived was dead, the only thing he'd ever had besides revenge and rage was dead; the only reason he had to keep on going was dead.

The entire life he knew was dead.

He was the only part left. Somehow, he still persisted. But he felt dead. Maybe he'd never even really been living. He wasn't a real person, just a parasite wearing a dead man's face; did he have the right to feel like one?

Any attempts at deep breathing left him coughing and spitting sand, and why couldn't he stop thinking? How the fuck was he supposed to calm down when every single method he knew had been a suggestion from her?

Where was he supposed to go? What was he supposed to do?

He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky, one hand halfheartedly shielding his eyes from the sand. Colorless, a weak sort of grey. Not light enough to be dawn and not dark enough to see the stars. Just… empty. Like everything else.

And he needed something. Maybe to cling to, maybe to crush. He didn't know if either would help. Tearing something apart piece by piece sounded good, but there was nothing here. And the only person he'd ever been close enough to confide in, well... that wasn't an option. Not now. Not ever again.

He bitterly wondered if he shouldn't have bothered fleeing Freeside for the moment. It was already destroyed; fuck, it looked pretty close to how he felt. Close. A few minutes with his claws and he could fix that gap. Take out a fraction of his pain on the rest of the world, make the rest of these idiots feel his rage. But no… that was exactly why he hadn't stayed and couldn't stay, but right now, putting that old promise into thought hurt too much to bear.

Morosely, he looked back to the broken city just barely over the horizon, and that single tower above it. A slum of that size… This was just the sort of place Dana would have a field day writing with. He could picture it, plain as day. An evening in their apartment – sheaves of paper snapping up and down in the breeze from her desk fan, her fingers dancing over the keyboard in her haste to write down every single word of the million thoughts that were always flying through her head. He'd lie back on the couch and watch, letting her bounce lines off of him from time to time. He'd plunge into his churning mess of memories if it meant finding a word she wanted. She'd always smile at him, usually with some joke about him being Wikipedia or having no idea what 'context' meant. And he'd smile back, and forget – for just a second – that outside those walls, Blackwatch hunted them. Dana…

His fingers clenched.

Dana… his little sister… was… gone.

He howled.

[Achievement Unlocked! Face The Facts (5pts) –Hate to break it to you, Dorothy, but you're not in Kansas anymore.]