Chapter Seven: Damage Control
A/N: Well, after this…off to the bits with Dr. Ragland?
And a lot of trust issues need to be resolved, pronto.
This is a very talky chapter with a lot of short scenes. The killing part comes up in the next one.
Alex kicked Cross halfway across the roof. The man rolled to a stop eventually, trying to get up by using his grenade launcher—long since out of ammo—as a sort of impromptu cane. Alex stood back nonetheless, wary, pacing carefully out of range of Cross's baton.
"You think you've won, Mercer?" Cross snarled. He leaned back almost as if he was trying to get away, and Alex approached in a roundabout manner, his blue-gray eyes narrowed. He could hold off on his rage for a while, but not forever. Cross probably wasn't the most deserving target on the planet, either—just a soldier following orders, unlike General Randall—but at the moment Alex didn't care about that either. "You don't even know what fucking game you're playing!"
Alex said nothing, barely keeping himself from lunging forward and taking Cross's head off with a swing of his claws. Curiosity went to war with rage in his mind, neither gaining any ground. Cross was clearly at least relatively-low on the military totem pole in terms of simple rank, but with his skill at avoiding death—hell, fighting me and surviving—would probably mean that he was more respected than he appeared. He could know something that the foot soldiers didn't, but it was a bit of a long shot. Even as he brought the thought up, though, rage bubbled in his veins again, trying to fight off the impulse toward mercy. It lasted all of two seconds, because then Cross started talking again.
"Well, I can tell you all you need to know," the BlackWatch captain said, and there was something in his tone that made Alex put off killing him for a few seconds longer. Just maybe…just maybe this is the break I've been looking for. He reached back with his right arm and pulled something from his back pocket, Alex backed away a little more as Cross added, in a much lower voice, "about Penn Station."
There was a single, perfect moment in which Alex realized what was going to happen a second before it did. Then the pain hit.
Images arrived in massive bursts of confusing color and distorted sound, always accompanied by a wave of skull-splitting agony that drove Alex to his knees. He clutched his head, biting back screams, as he felt Thor's hammer strike his temple again and again, as the assault of impulses and forgotten pain continued. Men in black suits, all with guns…a red-filled test tube—RAGE…blind, desperate anger…fear…nothing left to lose…PAIN. Alex gasped, trying to force them all back. "Gah…gah…no…" Fuck, not now, why now?
"I feel sorry for you." Who said that? Cross? I can't… He couldn't really hear anything over the screaming in his head—voices he could remember; faces he knew, could imitate, people he had killed… But Cross had sounded…sad? Regret? Why? You're only killing a monster…hah…isn't that what they tell you…? Then there was a battle cry, and Alex suddenly knew the earlier waves agony paled compared to this. The last thing he felt was something thin and sharp digging into his shoulder, touching bone, and an abrupt biomass shift. Something's wrong… He blacked out.
Cross sighed, tossing the syringe aside. "ZEUS is down. Bring in the containment device." He couldn't imagine what in all of creation could hold him—hadn't Greene, the weaker of the two monsters destroying Manhattan, been able to break free of the top-secret, highest-level-security-possible facility she had been in? The only thing Cross thought could contain Mercer for any amount of time was a steel-and-carbon-fiber-and-titanium box that was both welded shut and located at the bottom of the ocean.
That was the problem, wasn't it? Though as far as he could tell Mercer had been an accident of chance and extremely bad luck, Greene was something else. From the reports he'd gotten from the few BlackWatch soldiers who had survived her jailbreak, she was much less active than Mercer and, if anything, more of a reaction-based hostile. She would wait and wait for however long it took for something to trigger her aggression, and then it was all over.
Mercer took the exact opposite route and seemed to be the cause of most of the non-Infected-caused losses the military as taking.
He almost didn't want to look back—he knew exactly what Randall and McMullen would do to ZEUS once they had him—but jumped when he heard a rushing noise.
He almost managed, by virtue of a lifetime of military training, to turn in time for a counterattack. Almost.
"HEY, CHUCKLEHEAD!!" Something big, black, and very fast swung in a dangerous arc and caught Cross in the side. He blinked once, before the pain registered, and realized that it was basically a long black whip with a cinderblock on the end, swung by a shadowy…person who stood over Mercer—and that was about when he went over the edge of the roof.
The only thing that saved Cross from ending up flat on the ground—which was five or six stories below—with even more broken bones than he already had was a small, jet-black hand that shot out of the side of the building and caught his wrist. It still hurt like a bitch.
Alex blinked and jerked to his feet almost instantly, stopping when he realized that Cross was nowhere in sight. Though the haze of pain centered in his right shoulder, he realized that, instead, Inky stood there in her human form with her shadow armor rapidly boiling away in the sunlight that made it through the clouds. She crossed her still-armored arms and a cinderblock dropped from one of her hands, punching a jagged hole through the roof of the warehouse. She was glaring at him.
"I…" Alex had no idea what to say, and beyond that, wasn't really sure he wanted to talk, either. He'd trusted Karen more than he'd trusted the redhead—mostly due to Inky's own testimony of her unreliable nature—but now her betrayal burned so deeply that Alex hesitated. He didn't want to have to go through this again, not so soon.
"Alex…do you remember what I said about liars?" Inky asked in a surprisingly quiet voice. Her shadow armor had disappeared completely.
And…she'd never called him by his first name before. It was always "Mercer" this, "Mercer" that, and indirectly as "Dana, your idiot of a brother." He stared at her, not willing to believe that she had changed her opinion of him at all.
Unable to reconcile the two contrasting images—the playful, devil-may-care side of her and the concerned, almost motherly aspect she was showing now—Alex did his best to ignore her comment. It would probably pass. "Come on. Let's get out of here," he said gruffly, wincing internally as his shoulder throbbed viciously.
Inky's eyes narrowed, but she nodded and disappeared over the side of the roof. When Alex didn't hear a crunching noise or a scream for a few seconds, he followed.
He should have known that she wouldn't just leave it at that.
She should have been angrier, she knew. He was being stupid and showing it by trying to hide the fact that he was dealing with a betrayal. She was far too perceptive to fall for that lie. And on top of that, attempting to brush off the fact that his fight with Cross had left him severely weakened…it annoyed her, but she could understand why he did it. He didn't trust her—which was good considering that she had told him to—but now it was becoming a hindrance. She understood that Parker had thrown him to the wolves, but considering that, even among those wolves in BlackWatch, he was like a fox in a henhouse, she didn't really see why.
Except…well, he's only got two people to depend on now. Between Dana, Karen, and me, he almost had something like a functional support group. She frowned as they made their way past a BlackWatch patrol that was missing both of its UAVs. Thank you, Bismarck. The soldiers paid no attention to the Marine and redhead walking in the opposite direction, thank goodness. At least his become-anyone-he's-eaten ability still works; otherwise we'd be completely fucked. Between my weakness to sunlight and his sudden-onset ability-crippling condition, we'd never make it past those guns alive.
And come to think of it…I probably should tell him what was in that syringe. Even though it's not my fault that his top speed is like six times faster than mine and I couldn't reach him before because he'd ditched Kafka, I owe him that much.
"You know, I don't think I've ever met someone as stoic as you pretend to be," she informed him, walking ahead a little. They turned vaguely in the direction of Dana's safe house, taking a roundabout route to be sure they weren't being followed.
"Who said I was pretending?" he replied, and she thought it odd how he could be so childish. Petulant. Something like that.
She shrugged. "I've seen you snap in the middle of a fight. If that isn't pent-up rage, I'm the great nephew of Abraham Lincoln."
"Given how many secrets you have, I wouldn't be surprised if you were." Mercer replied scathingly.
Oh, do you hate me because I insist that some things are private? "Well, I'm not. And anyway, I'm not mad at you for it. I'm just a little annoyed at the woman who put you in this situation, I guess."
She could practically hear him blink. "Karen? Why?"
"Well, she did backstab you," the shadow-queen said mildly, baiting him. "If I ever see her, I'll probably give her a real talking-to. By which I mean she'll be on the wrong end of my bad mood." And maybe I'll understand why. Up until I found out she was passing the samples on to Cross, I thought she was legit, too.
"Not if I get there first," Mercer growled. Then she saw him wince and realized that his extra powers—the claws, the heavy fists, the black bludgeons; everything—were all sealed up tight inside him and every time he tried to access them caused him pain. I should have known. I knew BlackWatch had some sort of parasite to use on him, but I didn't think they'd design it to cripple, not kill him. Or that he'd be paralyzed like that from just a memory… And they called it "the cure"? Bullshit.
"Maybe later, after you're recovered. Then you can go after her," she conceded. You probably won't, though. There's a lot of activity on BlackWatch's end, and even though I don't know quite what's going on, I think you'll be too busy to care about Parker after a few days.
He gave her an incredulous look. "What are you, my mother?"
No, but I'm starting to get an inkling of who is. "Shut up. I'm only trying to help," she snapped. When he started to open his mouth, she said in a low voice, "No, you listen to me. You can't afford to get in a fight with the military now. There's nothing you can do but head home and go see Dana. Talk to her. Tell her everything if she asks."
There was a moment of silence broken only by the sounds of a dying city all around them. Then, "I can't."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Dana…she's innocent in all of this," he said, waving a hand around as if to indicate the entire city. "If I tell her…"
"She's not." Alex stared at her. "Look, a whole lot of people in this city are completely fucked because of a decision by one or two people. There's like a million dead bodies all over the place already." She held up a hand to stop him from interrupting. "Whatever "innocence" this city had is pretty much gone. Tell her. She already has to deal with me, you know. I don't think that knowing what you do will make much of a difference."
"You haven't killed anyone, though." Alex replied, but without any sort of venom. "My hands…"
"Are covered in blood, yes," she said dismissively. "But you did most of it to protect her, and besides, just because I haven't killed anyone here doesn't mean I haven't before." She shrugged again. "But I think it might be time for a bit of soul-cleansing anyway."
Alex gave her a sharp look.
"Don't look at me like that. It's not like I'm going to bare my entire life's story for you, but I might tell you a bit," she said with a wink. "Come on. Let's go home."
Dana sat back in the swiveling computer chair, trying to come up with an answer to Inky's first question upon entering the apartment. "What do you want to know, then?" Well, a lot of things. But it was probably better to start small. She'd probably tell them more if she was eased into it.
Alex leaned on the wall, apparently sleeping upright, but Dana knew better than that. She could tell that he was in pain, somehow, and that he wouldn't tell her why no matter how she pried. It wasn't how her big brother dealt with things. He internalized them until the situation exploded.
Looking back at the grinning redhead, Dana finally asked, "Where are you from?"
Inky winked. "I can't tell you the specifics, but it's a city a lot like Amsterdam. Like the Sin City of the north, you know?" She was starting to mime something with her hands, but damned if Dana had any idea what it meant. "Drugs, sex, violence, but the city worked. There weren't any tall buildings, and a lot of it was surrounded by a cross between farmland and tundra, but there was a pretty big shipping area for supplies to come in from the south during winter. I grew up there."
Dana was trying to visualize such a city and came up short. It sounded like someplace in Canada.
"Anyway, I lived around there until I was about fifteen. Then I left. Anything else?" Inky seemed rather pleased with the line of questioning and smiled at both of them.
"Why did you leave?"
Inky looked up at the ceiling as if she was remembering something pleasant. "I had to. Turns out most people didn't like it when I stole stuff from them." At Dana's surprised look, she added. "You've seen what I can do. It's obvious that a thirteen-year-old version of me would think of stealing things first. I stole from a lot of people in those two years, fought a couple people 'til near-death so I could keep my loot... And, the other thing…well, I left because I was following a guy."
Dana had to stifle a giggle. Between Inky's apparent embarrassment and Alex's look of flat-out disbelief, it was nearly impossible. The redhead colored brightly and scratched her head, looking away. Seeing Inky now and then trying to imagine her as a boy-crazy fifteen-year-old was just too funny.
"It was a long time ago, you know." Inky said petulantly, trying to stop Dana from laughing at her expense. "But I couldn't help it, really! I've always had a thing for hoods, so… Gods, looking back on that makes me feel like such a hormone-driven brat…"
"It happens to everyone." Dana said, smirking.
"Probably not to you." Inky muttered, absentmindedly twisting her hair into ringlets. "I was curious, I admit. You don't get far in the docks by trusting people, just by bribing or threatening them. I wanted to know why he'd saved me from the mob coming to lynch me for stealing and pawning off their things, and then I found out how screwed up he was."
"'Screwed up'? Like how?" Dana asked, frowning slightly.
"Psychologically broken." Inky said flatly. "He was the sort of person you never wanted to send out on a battlefield because you'd never know when he'd snap or break down. I saw that and…and I thought, 'Well, isn't this perfect? But I can do this.' I really did. I was sure I could make it work—still crushing hard, remember—and for a while, it did."
To the silence of both Dana and Alex, she went on calmly, "It took a few months before our pasts started catching up to us. I got chased around for a while by some asshole for skipping bail—like hell I was going to prison—and he…well, I decided I had to stay out of trouble long enough to rescue him from whatever ring of hell he'd gotten himself dragged to. I was stupid then, figuring I could handle everything myself." She sighed and shook her head. She was smiling again, but Dana wasn't sure if this was a genuine one. "I met more people I could trust. They helped me get him back and helped us get settled down where they were from. It was almost like a happy ending, except for the ending bit. And that's where I was before I came here."
Dana shook her head. "You sure did go a long way for him."
"I know." Inky replied, suddenly grinning. "But we're both better now, and we got married a while ago."
"…you're married?" Alex's voice sounded rather…shocked. Got a reaction out of him, Inky? Good for you.
"And you're not. So, nyeh." At the last bit, Inky stuck her tongue out at him. "And now you know where the hoodie comment comes from." Oddly enough, while the flip between silly and serious seemed to suit her, but the shift from resignation to playful scheming did not. And Dana couldn't tell if any of them were for real or not. She's a good actor.
Well, so much for the foray into the realm of maturity. Dana thought. And all of that was deliberately vague.
"Your turn." Inky said to Dana, smiling even with her hands clasped in front of her face like some James Bond villain.
…Oooookay then. "Not much is really happening here." Dana replied. "I read the news sometimes, try to keep Ed from eating everything that isn't nailed down or on fire, and do research on the side." And I've heard and read a lot of things I can't…I won't believe until I hear it from him. "Alex."
He shrugged.
"Oh, come off it." Inky said, sounding annoyed. Dana glanced at her, surprised—She has to be bipolar, she thought—and Inky growled. "Either you tell her or I'll throw you out the window and do it myself, and you really don't want me to tell her." We don't even have a window.
"No." And Dana could tell that Alex was uncomfortable with the idea of telling her whatever secret there was and, for better or for worse, she was almost sure she knew why.
He didn't have to say anything, but she wanted to hear it anyway. Not from the reporters, not from the military, not from Inky. From him. Whether he would tell her or not remained to be seen, but she already thought she knew. It hurt a little, but she guessed shrewdly that it hurt him a lot more.
He was a mass-murderer. The number one threat to the United States military in all its glory. And he was still her brother in spite of that. She'd understood it days ago, when Inky had brought up the philosophy lecture she'd given him. She'd defended him because…because she was his sister and he was her big brother, and that was that.
Inky stood up. "Well, fine. If you're just going to sit here and mope, I'm going out to find out what the hell is going on. And I'm not going to tell you what that thing Cross injected into you was. Figure it out yourself."
"Inky, what the hell is wrong with you?" Dana demanded.
Inky rounded on her. "What's wrong is that all of us are keeping secrets from each other for stupid reasons! I know why I am—because pretty much none of it is relevant and won't help us succeed in whatever the fuck our goal actually is—but seriously, you two are supposed to be brother and sister! What the hell is wrong with you two?"
Dana would have shot back with something twice as scathing as anything the redhead could ever dream up—she was an acclimated New Yorker, after all—but she was distracted when Alex abruptly grabbed his right shoulder with a noise that sounded like air escaping a pipe. While she knew Inky was starting to move, trying to get to her brother before he fell or screamed or something, Dana didn't care.
She eased her brother down until he was seated against the wall, still hanging onto that shoulder in a death grip, but then Inky roughly shoved her out of the way and scrambled over to his right side. While Dana also wanted to see what was wrong with her brother, Inky looked like she'd give her a black eye if she tried to look. Ordinarily Dana wouldn't have cared and would have just punched right back, but something in the redhead's expression stopped her.
"Dana, what did you have on your computer that you wanted to show him?" Inky asked coolly as she poked and prodded between Alex's whitening fingers. Now she was all business, dealing with the situation like…like a soldier.
"Y-yeah." Dana said, pushing the thought aside. She went back to the computer and brought up another page. By doing so and looking away, however, she missed the bit where Inky tested Alex's pain reflex by slapping him across the back of his head, hard. While Alex didn't snarl and try to strangle her, it did snap him out of the immediate reaction to the flare-up of whatever was hurting him.
But Dana didn't know this part, only that both Alex and Inky were crowding around the monitor a moment later. Dana blinked rapidly and gave the redhead a surprised look, but chalked it up to Inky's eccentricities and her brother's resilience and moved on. She was getting the impression that asking too many questions would just make both of them uncomfortable.
"They're watching someone for McMullen." Dana explained, neatly cutting off any questions they may have had about why the picture or the report was even halfway relevant. "It's this doctor called Bradley Ragland. He's a good guy, and if we're lucky, he'll help us get to McMullen. He's uptown at St. Paul's Hospital. He runs the morgue there."
She caught a brief frown from both of them—she suspected that Inky already had a way to reach McMullen, given her powers, and that Alex, for whatever reason, didn't like the word "morgue." She'd have to ask him later.
"And I'll be able to run distraction duty if you go see him." Inky told Alex, smirking a little. "Hell, I could have Kafka or Ed or someone wreck the local scenery for a few hours and come along for the trip. What do you say to having me annoy the military?"
Alex gave her a flat look, shaking his head. "Better them than me."
Dana had the odd feeling that she was missing half of the joke.
"Okay…well, anyway, I did some research on Hope, Idaho." Oh, now she had them interested. "It was an Army town. On July 21st, 1969, it vanishes from the map. The "official word" was that it was an anti-government gun-nut standoff. The militia killed a bunch of people, and the Feds killed the militia." She brought up a graying, faded picture. "Notice a girl, second from the left?"
"Elizabeth Greene." Alex muttered. "What's this, the class of '68 or something? She could be a grandmother by now."
"Hey, watch the age quips." Inky said. "She's still younger than I am."
She was met with two flat looks of disbelief. "What? I aged gracefully."
Dana rolled her eyes and turned back to the photo. "Looks a lot like a college student these days. Not bad for fifty-five years old."
"Pshaw. The lady I used to work for is way older than that and looks around thirty." Inky muttered, but the comment went ignored.
"Hope, Idaho was an experiment…" Alex murmured absently, apparently not even noticing that she could hear him.
Dana spun the chair so that Inky had to jerk upright to avoid being flung to the floor and stood up. She faced her brother, tilting her head curiously. "How could you possibly know that?" Please don't let the rumors be true…
Alex looked away briefly, his mouth twisting. "The people I've killed…" No… "They're in me. I can hear them, see the things they've done—"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Dana asked fiercely, grabbing his arm.
"And could you put that any worse?" Inky demanded, crossing one leg over the other while sitting on the desk. "You sound like a schizophrenic."
"You don't understand!" Alex whirled and snapped at both of them. Dana backed up out of reflex, but Inky jumped up from the desk and her dark blue eyes flashed as she placed herself almost directly between the two of them. "I understand it all. I have to do these things…that it's right…I can feel it."
"You don't have to do a fucking thing." Inky snarled, and Dana saw the corners of the room begin to swirl in and out of focus. Shit… "But you will stop threatening either of us nonverbally right now or I will find some way to murder you!" On the word "murder," her voice had echoed from all around the small apartment, apparently amplified by the presence of her minions.
Dana backed into the desk and braced herself there, shaking. She was horrified to find that she had no idea which side she wanted to take—her brother the confirmed murderer, or Inky, the woman with the past she wouldn't elaborate on. She'd seen the desperation, the anger, and the burning need to know in Alex's face then, and it scared her. She could barely remember the time she had been this scared before. It had only been a week since Alex had been forced to kill that BlackWatch trooper to save her life, and yet it seemed so far away… "Go find Ragland. Both of you." She looked away then—didn't see the shock that coursed through her brother's body as he took it as a flat out-rejection—and, when Inky murmured something, added in a near-scream, "Get out!"
When she opened her eyes and looked back, both of them had vanished and Dana sank to her knees. Fuck. Why did it have to turn out this way?
I saw what this was costing him—what this was costing them both to come clean…but it's just… She buried her face in her hands. God-fucking-damn it. Alex…
They had barely gone half a block in surly silence before Inky said abruptly, "Go back."
"What are you on? She'll—!" And Inky's blue eyes narrowed right before she whacked him upside the head. "What the fuck was that for?!"
"I'm telling you, explain why you weren't saying anything and the rest of the situation or she'll carry a grudge like nobody's business. I'll go ahead and bother Ragland for a while or shoot squirrels or something." Inky said hotly. "Just don't let her stew on it or you'll live to regret it."
"How?" How the hell was he supposed to explain that he didn't know what he was doing half the time and had only even found out she existed from killing one of the men trying to kill him? That every person he'd killed was either in the military or a BlackWatch sleeper agent, and that he was spent most of his time terrified that they'd find Dana and kill her? That everything in Manhattan seemed determined to kill him for something he just could not remember? That maybe, just maybe, he was responsible for unleashing the viral outbreak a week ago and definitely was guilty of setting that fucking monster Elizabeth Greene free?
"I don't know! Just don't ruin one of the few decent relationships you have left." Inky said, biting her lip. And she just hit me. You wouldn't think so with an act like that. "Start from the beginning. Tell her why you had to kill BlackWatch thugs originally, then work your way up from there. Chances are she suspected at least some of it to begin with—no one stays deaf and blind to all the shit going on in town right now. Let her ask questions. Do something.
"Easy for you to say." Alex growled. "You didn't—"
"Shut up and just go see her."
After a bit more arguing—and a minor fistfight in which Inky smacked him a couple more times and Alex had to hold back his strength to an annoying degree—he did.
Dana was surprised to see her brother back so soon and nearly threw him out again, but eventually allowed him to stay to give his side of the story. She'd come so close to believing everything the news reports said about him, but he allowed her to ask her questions this time. It gave her a bit of hope.
It took a long time to pry the truth from him. Dana had turned the office chair around so she could watch his expression as he paced and talked. Sometimes he stopped, trying to fill in the blanks as he went along or else wincing as his right shoulder throbbed again. Alex didn't ever seem like he wanted to stop, though. He wanted her to know.
He told her about waking up in the GENTEK morgue and how his first memory consisted of only a few things—the names, the fact that he had worked on Blacklight (whatever that was), and pathologists screaming while running away from him, even though just a moment before that they had been preparing to cut him apart. Being shot at by BlackWatch after seeing the hazmat suit-wearing pathologists gunned down execution-style.
How his first kill wasn't long after that and then, after the second, realizing that she was in danger, but having no idea how he knew, only that she was going to end up dead if he didn't hurry. Then there was his third kill upon finding the BlackWatch thug that had been ordered to "purge" her.
Meeting Inky at the same time as Dana did and forming a partnership with the flakiest, most unpredictable being this side of Hell.
Releasing Elizabeth Greene. The military base being destroyed as the apocalypse was unleashed on New York again.
Finding out what resources BlackWatch was willing to throw against him, and then the process of exterminating the teams sent to track him down. Adding yet more deaths to the total, all in the name of defending either himself or her.
Meeting Karen Parker for what felt like the first time and starting to find components for a "cure." It was nothing but a pretense for yet another attempt on his life.
Being betrayed by Karen and running headlong into Cross, unprepared, and the subsequent fight. Being injected with something, if Inky's testimony was worth anything.
Dana said nothing for a long time after Alex finished. Then, as he was starting to leave, she said quietly, "I don't hate you." Then he was gone.
One of the first things he noticed was that the military didn't seem to be out in force today. Though Alex could hear shooting from about a dozen blocks away, no one converged on their position. Sighing, he nonetheless took a civilian disguise—well, more like plainclothes-BlackWatch agent disguise—before he entered an open area. He felt his body shift mass and structure a little and as he did so, he reflected bitterly that if it hadn't been for sheer desperation he would have never taken a human life to begin with.
But looking back on his list of victims, he couldn't deny that, almost down to a man, they had deserved it.
He walked the entire way to St. Paul's Hospital like a normal person. There were no virus detectors to sabotage, no UAVS to lead strike teams to him, and no BlackWatch troops to shoot at him out of sheer paranoia. Aside from the entirely-rational feeling of uneasiness he got from the situation, he reasoned that half of the virus detectors—airborne or not—were out of commission thanks to Inky's minions and that still more of those black creatures would probably have everyone in the city jumping at shadows for months. Though, considering that Inky's minions could win against even Hunters through a seven-to-one majority of numbers, he supposed he was probably not the worst thing that could have happened to the military.
Well, maybe he was, but not by much.
Alex didn't have to work very hard to get into the morgue, mostly because any virus-detectors Inky hadn't already torn apart were useless here and the hospital was so overcrowded that no one cared if one more man wandered in. He wasn't even sure the receptionist had seen him. Certainly no one seemed to mind him riding the elevator down.
He shifted back to his normal body and winced, feeling the swollen mass that marked the thing that had infected him. He didn't fully understand what it was, only that he was sure it was eating him alive from the inside out, it hurt like hell, and that it was Cross's fault he had it. All in all, it was a poor checklist.
He found Dr. Ragland looking over a corpse warped by infection and displaying giant welts and sores not unlike the one Alex was sure was attached to his own shoulder. The medical examiner was a black man on the far edge of middle age, probably closer to fifty. He was had deep-set lines on his face—laugh lines or stress marks, Alex wasn't sure—along with thick glasses, a high forehead, and hair just starting to turn gray from age. For all Alex knew, he could be someone's kindly grandfather, but he was steady despite his age and the stress that was no doubt part of the job. Alex had seen enough people snap under similar pressure, though he wasn't sure where.
Inky stood behind him, sitting on one of the exam tables and watching what he was doing. Occasionally she'd hand him a scalpel or something, as if she actually knew what he was doing. She turned her head to face Alex and smiled, pressing a finger to her lips for silence.
Alex shook his head. He didn't have that much time and Inky knew that. No matter the good doctor's feelings on the matter, he needed to get this over and done with.
Inky nodded. "Okay. Dr. Ragland, this is the patient I was talking about."
Ragland looked up and blanched.
Alex couldn't blame him.
A/N: And that's the end of chapter seven, the introduction of another major character, the dropping of a minor one, and the solving of a few internal problems in their little group.
And if you'll excuse me, I feel like dropping dead of exhaustion.
I hate school.
And below is an omake, or bonus (irrelevant) section, for those who want to know how the opening scene would run with Inky in it.
Omake—What In Hell Does Inky Do When Alex Does The Planning?
"Aaargh! OhshitohshitohshitohSHIIII—!" Of course. Of course the one time I ever listen to him there's an Infected horde right outside. It's like some godforsaken law of drama—nothing in a horror movie can ever be done without risking horrible maiming and/or brain-munching. Why did I have to watch Night of the Living Dead before coming out? Granted, it wasn't my apartment and I was just looking for stuff Dana would be able to use, but still. Bunch a' zombified assholes.
And why the hell did I decide to wear heels today? Okay, first thing, ditch the shoes even if there's broken glass everywhere…wait, not, screw that. Even if a heel breaks there'll be better options than that.
Okay, between the wrecked cabs, over the hood of that ugly Impala, hope to heaven and hell (because it's hard to say at this point which one is more relevant) that they aren't as—ah, fuck, they are fast. Damn you, Romero! You and your stupid misleading shuffler-type zombies are going to get me killed!
Oh hey, lights. Lights mean people, so…hey, maybe I can get them to eat someone else instead! Woo!
BAM! Fuck, car. Okay, head hurting, owowowow… "Hey, you're BlackWatch, right?"
"What the—where did you come from?"
Um. "That way? Oh, and I'm being chased by crazy people. Help?" Oh, again with the roaring and the screaming. Always with the screaming. Time to get off my ass, then. Okay, up and away while they're distracted. To the sound of automatic gunfire, one, two, three…I think I'll need a big head start.
"Halt!" What, the shooting's over already? Like hell I'm stopping, you gas-mask-wearing, goose-stepping, Combine-rip-off motherfucker! And exit stage left, pursued by a bunch of Nazi rip-offs and the extras from 28 Days Later. I would rather live. Well, usually. Maybe not here, anyway. This neighborhood's gone downhill fast.
"Screw you, BlackWatch!" Well, now they're shooting at me. What, scared I'll bring your precious disease too close to someone else? Hah. I hope you appreciate this, you crazy hoodie bastar—! "WHAT THE HELL?! That was my knee, you—!" Oh well. From the sudden screaming back there, it won't matter much. Doesn't look deep, anyway.
"You could have just taunted them into shooting each other." A sigh. "Why do you always try to make things more complicated?"
You godsdamned idiot. "Oh yeah, like they'd waste bullets on me after that debacle at Times Square. Did you not see them try that and run out of shit to shoot? Hell, they'd probably think—"
"That's not what I meant. I mean, also, why didn't you just escape with whatever the hell ability you did before?"
What. The. Hell. I forgot my own powers. Excuse me, Manhattan, as I try to knock some sense into myself using this wall. Bonk. Ow. Okay, that's enough.
A shrug. "Thanks." Gravelly-sounding as usual, Mercer. Well, you look okay, considering that you seem determined to take at least one RPG to the face every time you get in a fight.
"Yeah, yeah. Find what you needed?" Don't be polite. It only encourages him. And it doesn't suit you or me anyway, Mercer.
"Mm-hm. It should all be over by tonight."
"Okay." You're a liar, 'cause it won't be over until everything damn well burns, but you're too blinded by optimism and stupid that you can't see that and…well, screw this. "Get moving, then." I want to go to bed.
And I am never agreeing to any of Mercer's plans ever again.
