A/N: Surprise, surprise. I'm BACK! I've decided to make LaDCC my NaNoWriMo. ;D Hopefully I don't utterly murder this story.


Ragland lifted his gaze from the lenses of his microscope, looking straight ahead as he let his eyes rest. It was then that it occurred to him how quiet the apartment and makeshift lab had become. Looking about told him how stiff his neck had become, and he winced as he soothed the muscles there with an equally stiff and cramping hand. A brief glance at the clock on the microwave told him that it was three in the morning. With a sigh and a groan he stood, casually swiping the slide off of the microscope tray and tossing it into a sharps container. In an orderly world that made sense, this was by no means a properly maintained lab space. That had only just occurred to him when his tired gaze rested on the two children lying on the couch in an exhausted and deep slumber. With a sigh, he looked at his meticulously ordered and clean work space in the kitchen and knew immediately that now was the time to relocate. He glossed about until he found a relatively decent plastic container, and began tucking his tools and samples into it. He had spent most of his time down in the morgue anyway, but knew that he'd miss the natural light that would pour in through the sliding glass door as he worked. There had been many benefits to moving his work upstairs, but with the arrival of these children he knew he'd have to move. He figured he might as well get it over with now.

Unplugging the microscope, he eyed all he'd have to move and figured it best to carry the microscope on its own. The last thing he needed was to have the lenses shift out of alignment. Lugging his materials downstairs, he fumbled for a light and started when he looked up and saw Blacklight hovering over the prone body of Dana. Most would guess the creature was asleep, his eyes closed and his form slouched over the girl in a coma. But Ragland hadn't ever actually seen Blacklight sleep. He cleared his throat, crossing the threshold to place his box down at an empty bench and begin the tedious process of unpacking and re-organizing his work space. Zeus didn't look up. He didn't even flinch. Something about that worried Ragland.

He wasn't wrong in the direction of his thoughts. Alex still held his phone in one limp hand, forearms braced against his thighs where he sat on a tall stool. He didn't feel the need to acknowledge Ragland. His thoughts, though interrupted by Cross calling with a mission he really couldn't care less about, were wallowing in the conversation he'd heard hours ago upstairs. It was made glaringly apparent how much of a weakness Dana was to him, such that even Morris thought it prudent to use her as a means to control him.

Control.

He thought he'd been tired before of people attempting to control and manipulate him, as though he were a mere tool to be used and applied. A cure. A weapon. It had long defined him, whether he wanted it to or not. The act of being, he was beginning to realize, would not be allowed any sliver of simplicity. The mere right to exist would not be without some form of trade. For humans, it arrived in all the simple difficulties of every day life. For him? What did that entail? What would it have to entail?

"Alex..." Ragland said softly, his voice implying that he knew the virus was awake. He set down a few boxes that contained sterile pipettes, swabs, dishes, and slides. Alex barely cracked his eyes open to look sideways at the good doctor. It was just enough to let him know that he had his attention, divided though it may be. Ragland cleared his throat once more, not just for the sake of phlegm but clearly out of nervousness. It was apparent Alex was sulking, and that he was making it clear to Ragland in such a way that he could not help but dread the conversation with Morris had indeed been overheard despite his best efforts. He could only guess, however, and wasn't sure if he should tell Mercer exactly what he thought and felt less he be wrong and the virus had heard nothing of it. He sighed, rubbing his face with exhaustion and looking down at his bench. He wondered if perhaps this would be the end of their philosophical conversations. Perhaps it was a fraying end to their tenuous friendship, and his opportunity to see the direction in which Blacklight developed. It was what he feared. He dropped what he was doing and slowly moved toward Dana. He was aware of those predatory blue eyes as they followed him, narrowed on his movements. Ragland checked her pulse and temperature. He gazed down at her sunken face. They didn't have the amenities that a hospital had. They lacked the proper life support that would keep her alive long term. He could not wipe away the exhausted sorrow from his face as he gazed down at her pretty and youthful face. So many lives had been torn apart, so many cut too short.

"She's going to need life support," he said gently, holding Dana's hand lightly in one of his own. The silence in the room was tense and charged, and he looked up to see Blacklight, not Alex, not a human, but very much a human face, eyeing him back through a hooded gaze. Ragland opened his mouth to say more, to say something. He inhaled a sharp breath, and then closed his mouth and sighed through his nose. "She will die. Here. On this table. Of starvation," Ragland uttered with as much patience and control as his tired brain could handle. It was this fact that redirected the virus' gaze back to Dana, and it was in that gaze that Ragland had several epiphanies into what was happening.

He was disconnecting.

Ragland hadn't survived this long with the virus without being a very perceptive man. He had a knack for reading people and handling the situation accordingly in a way that inevitably dragged out his time alive on this planet. Once the virus was invariably tied to him and his every day life, this ability of Ragland's was the only thing that kept him alive. He could read these scenarios, anticipate them, and direct Blacklight's thinking accordingly. Yet, he was beginning to realize that he was running out of time, and in turn, they all were. Blacklight walked a very thin line between benefitting and saving the people on this island, or ripping the human race apart entirely. Ragland knew that nothing could stop Blacklight from crossing to the mainland. Nothing could stop it from spreading. The entire situation would be child's play, and the weight of his own influence on Blacklight was staggering. He was certain that the virus had heard them, that he was currently weighing his options. Let Dana pass and grieve now, or find life support and place her on it with the intention of maintaining hope that she may wake up. She was his last tie to humanity. She was the last niggling corner of doubt in his mind that stopped him from his true imperative.

The good doctor felt his stomach twist at the reminder. Any day now, Blacklight would come to terms with his true purpose. Ragland was racing against a clock to find a cure not just because of the people on this island, but because of what the future would hold. Not even a nuke could get rid of Zeus. He had to turn this moment around. He was aware that the future depended on it. If he didn't confront the conversation that had brought this line of thinking around in Blacklight, he would watch things dissolve very quickly. He was very certain of his hypothesis when Blacklight stirred, sitting a little more upright and drawing in a breath. It, no, he, stood and shoved his hands in his pockets, heading for the stairs.

"Are you...?" Ragland started, watching his departure.

"Yes," was the only reply he received as Alex bounded up the stairs. The doctor stared at the door as it swung shut, loud enough to wake the whole complex. Something had snapped between them, and it was more than a missed opportunity at friendship. It was a matter of Armageddon. The weight of that realization was one he thought he always comprehended. It was only now, feeling certain that he'd lost his place as friend and advisor, that the realization was becoming very real.


Jonathan stirred on the couch, always a light sleeper despite how tired he may have been. The ten year old shifted a little, slowly realizing that he didn't recognize where he was laying or even the way his pillow smelled, nor how the blanket he was wrapped in felt against his skin. Everything was alarmingly different, and it hastened the process of waking. He peered upward in time to see the source of the noise that had awoken him. A man was rooting around the kitchen, placing odd items into a large plastic box. Jonathan didn't dare move as he watched, trying to appear asleep any time the man may have looked in his direction. He faked his slumber long after the man carried his box away, waiting for any other signs that someone else may walk in and discover that he wasn't asleep. The boy took that time to try and recollect how they had ended up there. A series of pictures helped him piece the adventure together, and the reason why they had moved.

Mother.

Jonathan sat upright and hurriedly looked about the living room space. He spotted his sister likewise wrapped in a scratchy blanket just like his own, yet she was still deep in the throes of sleep. He made to wake her when a loud slam made him jump and his sister stir. Quite the opposite to himself, she could sleep through an explosion. Mere seconds after the sound of a door slamming, a strange man walked down the hall. He threw Jonathan a cursory glance, and in those strange eyes lit with a cold fire Jonathan saw an unfettered anger he'd never seen on a man's face before. He froze, unable to look away. This didn't seem to bother the man. He had a purpose, and he was gone as quickly as he'd entered. Jonathan stare at the door to the outside long after he'd left, attempting to piece together what was happening to him. Ten years alive wasn't nearly long enough to give him the processes necessary to make sense of things, but he tried long into the rest of the morning from his place in the corner of his sister's couch.


Did he care? It seemed petty. One fragile human life held him back. But what, exactly, did it hold him back from?

Alex had shoved his hands deep into his jean pockets as he skulked his way down the stairs from Ragland's residence. He ignored the bitter cold, the silent hum of wind as passed between hollowed buildings. The sound of glass and litter crunching beneath his boots went ignored when it offered helped him find a distraction from the tumult of voices and memories, and his own conflicted thoughts. A downward spiral of doubt carried him beyond the moment, tarrying past mistrust and disappointment. A wayward newspaper fluttered by him, the headlines announcing the first outbreak of the virus. He ignored it as he passed, eyes directed to the pavement and yet seeing nothing. A rage simmered beneath his skin, just below the boiling point. It wouldn't take much.

It wouldn't take much to what?

He thought he could trust Ragland. The doctor had looked passed the oddities of Blacklight, had worked with what he knew, with what Zeus told him. Ragland hadn't even flinched in giving him direction toward how to deal with the hunters. A lesser man would have flinched in telling the virus how to consume the beasts. No, Ragland was not a lesser man, but could he be trusted? Could anyone be trusted? Alex couldn't see the grey area. He didn't know how to confront the middle ground. He didn't stand in the middle. He did not even know what it was that he wanted.

Blacklight stopped outside of the charred remains of a Manhattan hospital, staring up at it with a blind gaze. What did he want? He imagined Dana wasting away on that slab down in Ragland's morgue and he tried to find sadness. There was nothing. A hollow hole widened inside of him, grew and engulfed a part of him he was not aware he was losing. It terrified him, and he couldn't understand why. He felt weak and free all at the same time. Starting toward the hospital, he found his actions in conflict with what he felt. There was a time, not all too long ago, that he would have wept and raged at the thought of losing Dana. Yet now, a small voice all his own, tugged at that worry and set it free. It spun at his fear and set it free. It tore at the last dregs of his humanity and set it free. Yet he did not stop in his course to gather what Ragland had asked for. He would bring the good doctor these things.

And then he would leave.


A/N: I know it's not very long and I'm extremely rusty. This is certainly just a start. It's been a very long time since I've written anything at all, and so I apologize if it's impossible to read. My goal is to just keep writing. To shut the inner editor up with material. So here's to hoping it works! (and you guys get to finish the story!)