Viral Chapter 4: Exhausted


"Frank, to be honest, I don't think anything could happen to those kids. They're invincible." Carl Tennyson to Frank Tennyson, e-mail, 12:32 PM


"Can this thing go any faster?" Gwen hissed once again to the driver although she was clutching the sides of her seat.

Kevin managed to snort and smirk simultaneously. His sarcastic response audibly brought out his New York accent. "Watch it. You cussed me out four hours ago for breaking the speed limit trying to get your zombified cousin to the hospital. This time, he's not gonna die. Trust me, it's actually the opposite."

Gwen pouted and punched the driver in the shoulder. Kevin playfully pushed it off; had it been anybody else on planet Earth, he probably would've ended up breaking her knuckles by making his shoulder all metallic in a millisecond.

But it was Gwen, so he didn't. Consequently, Kevin pushed down a little bit harder on the gas. The speedometer crept over one-fifty.

The passenger sat backwards in her seat, crossing her arms and smiling. The debate team was obviously a good investment of time.

The mood inside the car had, obviously, improved since the most recent phone call.

After all, they were under the impression that Ben was dead.

Rightfully so.

Meanwhile, twenty miles away and closing fast, Ben Tennyson walked swiftly up the interstate. He pondered his situation, and was pretty satisfied to find that they're wasn't that long a list of people who would be happy to discover he had died. That's good news.

Julie certainly wouldn't be happy.

Ben grinned at this, and cheered alone to the desert around him. He enjoyed everything that was going on, despite his surroundings. It was the dead of night, the temperatures was frighteningly cold, the air was bone-dry, and there wasn't a thing in sight for miles. But it was great!

Except for one thing. Just one thing. It had bothered Ben since he... um... "woke up." The Omnitrix, of all things. While he didn't expect it to be totally accepting of the whole coming back to life thing - or his death in the first place - he had expected it to, you know, work. But it wasn't. It still had that same orange glow that mimicked the single street light from over six hours prior.

And now it began to speak. This stopped surprising Ben weeks before, but what it said made him pause.

"Genetic anomaly detected."

Ben rolled his eyes and looked around quickly. After all, nobody was around, so it must've been referring to him. And, since he was alone, he decided to talk back.

"Oh, really?" The teenager tapped it, although all of the buttons and twists and turns he could think of had no effect.

Meh, whatever. Ben continued walking.

"Genetic anomaly detected."

"You're telling me."

"Genetic anomaly detected." As it turned out, the soft modulated voice got annoying only on its third attempt.

"Shut up." Ben smacked the side of the device. Its sleeker profile - resultant of a little prying and tinkering with a screwdriver - was just as confusing as the original model. Go figure.

This time, it responded differently. "Attempt repair?"

Ben immediately didn't like the idea of the Omnitrix screwing around with his genes. Well, not any more than necessary, he firmly decided. He pointed at the wristwatch-like toy as if it was a misbehaving dog, as if to scold it. "No. Absolutely not. Never. False. Cancel command."

He looked up from the unchanged piece of alien technology, hearing a noise. His face lit up; he saw a large black box with headlights emerge from the darkness. More accurately, it was Kevin's car, and Ben flagged it down wildly. The vehicle slowed to a stop, and the window nearest him rolled down.

The driver leaned over his cousin and grinned out the window. "Hey, dude, I usually don't pick up hitchhikers... but get in. I heard on the radio that there's some zombies roaming around here."

Ben rolled his eyes and headed to the back door. It was locked, but he heard Kevin's voice drift out the window right before the mechanical click of the lock: "Naw, man, I was thinking you could ride on the bottom!" He got in and promptly flopped on his back.

Gwen spun around and stared at him, suddenly unsure if this was real.

"How's your legs?"

Ben gave her his signature 'What are you, nuts?' look and bent his knees up and down. "Just fine, thanks. Yours?"

She shrugged. This certainly was Ben, rudeness and all. Kevin turned the car around and went back the way they came once again. Gwen filled him in on what happened after he got knocked out (as it was referred to).

The car lapsed into an awkward silence.

"Well, not a very eventful evening, I would say," Ben broke it.

Even with Kevin driving, both teenagers in the front seats reached around to smack Ben.

"Okay, hey, just kidding! Ow!"


Yawn. You have to be tired if your thoughts even interject yawns.

Ben Tennyson had been sitting in the exact same position for, I don't know, ten minutes. He was on the edge of his bed, shirtless and in a pair of boxers, holding on to his sheets as if they were holding him up. For the twentieth time in five minutes, Ben yawned.

Put simply, he was tired. Note to self, he thought.

He pushed himself off his bed, staggered a little, and stretched for a minute.

No more late Sunday nights.

If it wasn't the second to last Monday of the ninth grade, Ben and Gwen would've opted to not go home, get in their beds, and wake up for school four hours later. But even when you're a superhero, teachers get suspicious when you're not there with ten days left of school. Moreso with parents at four in the morning.

Apparently, the stretching had been just too much for him. A rolling, throbbing headache shot around inside his head. Fighting the urge to crawl back into his bed, he stumbled out his bedroom door and baby-stepped the two feet's distance to his bathroom.

No matter what he was actually doing late at night, Ben secretly enjoyed having a late bus. It allowed him to wake up a half hour before school, jump in the shower, scarf down a quick breakfast, and walk outside to his doorstep and have the bus in his face. As a plus, both of his parents left for work by the time he even woke up. This morning, it seemed a stretch to even do his simple routine.

Ben woke up slightly when he accidentally stepped into a hundred-degree torrent of steam. Hand-eye coordination is not exactly improved with sleep deprivation. Scalded but refreshed, Ben leaped out of the shower to turn the cold faucet on and got back in.

Minutes later, he stepped out of the shower, waved steam out of the air, and toweled off. He then wrapped the towel around himself and walked back to his room.

The boy pulled a fresh outfit from his closet and threw them on, then walked over to his standing mirror to check his hair.

What he saw, though, made his blood run cold. His skin prickled with goosebumps.

No, he thought, that can't possibly be right.

His eyes stared right back at his. That was the problem.

Ben continued to stare, leaning in closer to the glass.

Something was wrong. He leaned in closer.

He was, specifically, looking at the color of his eyes. Or lack thereof. His iris - usually a starburst of lime green - was entirely missing. Gone. No whirls, curves, nothing. Just a curved, white cornea that was just a bit bloodshot toward his nose. His pupils were oddly small for the dimness of his room.

They were just empty pinpoints of blackness.


Fifteen minutes later, Ben Tennyson walked out of the front door of his house. He made sure that the door was safely locked up behind him. Then, Ben flipped a pair of dark sunglasses up onto his face and looked up just in time to see his bus finish turning out his neighborhood fifty yards up his street.

He uselessly began to dash after it while cussing and screaming, but a voice stopped him.

"Need a ride?"

Twenty feet away from his driveway already, Ben spun around on his heel to see Kevin leaning lackadaisically on the driver door of his car. The late high-schooler heard characteristically apt music drifting from the rolled-down car window.

"I set your alarm clock five minutes late."

Ben's brow furrowed. "Stalker, much?" He looked off to the distance for a second, vaguely remembering how Kevin had pretty much tossed his fatigued self onto his bed after the three got back into town earlier that morning.

"It was Gwen's suggestion," the ex-con replied sourly.

Figures, but I'll ask anyway. "Why is that?"

"I dunno, she wants to 'talk'."

He groaned inside his head. "You mean command me to do something?"

Another voice spoke. "I heard that!"

Ben bobbed his head surprisedly for a second, bit his lip, and looked at Kevin, whose expression returned to his 'Ha-ha. I made you look like a retard!' smirk.

"Oh, she's in the car."

The guy in black sucked his teeth. "Really using that brain of yours, huh?"

Ben fought the sudden urge to sock him in the jaw, but that meant he'd probably have to walk to school. Sighing, he flopped onto his accustomed back seat.

"Shades? Really, Ben?" Gwen laughed.

Improvisation was not Ben's thing. He shrugged. "It's the... end of school?"

Gwen waved it away. Phew.


A/N: Hope you like it. I can't appreciate your reviews enough! And yes, while alert adds help me, they don't help nearly as much as a review does. :-D

BTW... While some of you think this may have the characteristics of one, Viral is not a slashfic. As I wrote to one reviewer: Trust me, if I ever write a slashfic, you and all of my other readers have my personal permission to come find me and chop my fingers off. Practically: I'm not very creative at describing Kevin's harassment of Ben - or any bullying, at that - so it might end up sounding a little... strange. Like a slash. But it's not; I'll leave it at that. Thanks.