Chris had hated him, at first.

He needed to catch the apostle. Containment hinged on it, and containment was the crux of his mission. It had been going as well as to be expected, given the sprawling chaos of the asylum. Some others were helping him, not on purpose, but in their own broken and misguided way. It was important vessels be separated from their heads: the Walrider needed the head, needed it above everything else, and others did not understand this, but dead was dead and he would have time to double back and clean up sloppy work once every single life was extinguished.Especially the apostle. Chris had known there was something the Walrider was seeking. It wouldn't be wandering the asylum, hunting, if it wasn'tseeking something, some way to improve its situation. Some way to break its shackles. When Chris had flung the little pig with his little camera away from his sacred place, when he had seen Father Martin cooing at him, he had realized his mistake. Rage overtook him, sometimes, rage beyond his control. The memories flooded his brain, a tide of blood and screams, and only after it had washed over him and receded would he come back to himself. He had been committed to Mount Massive to be rid of the bloody tide, but they had turned it into a tsunami. Chris did not let it lay him low, not anymore, but he was unable to control it.

The apostle was what the Walrider sought, he had learned. And so it was the apostle that needed to die. The apostle needed to die above all others.

He would contain this. He was the only one who could, the only one who saw.

The apostle could see, too, but not all of it. Only what Father Martin revealed to him, a trickle of revelations, a series of gospels to make him a better host, a perfect vessel. Once he had seen enough, Chris knew it would be too late. Destroying the other vessels hadn't been a futile pursuit, and he would resume that task later, but the apostle had become his primary concern. And the apostle was a quick piece of shit with as much desire to evade Chris as Chris desired to catch him. He was quick and small, slippery, a nimble little shit that got better and better at slipping the net. And though the apostle was only a man, and though he rejected the sacred purpose Martin had assigned him, he was not without one. The apostle possessed the most sacred purpose of all.

Survival.

Chris embraced his own purpose. He understood what he had to do, and he understood that only he could do it. No one would help him, not on purpose. Most only got in his way. They were all fools, all blind to the truth, to reality, seeing only their own constructs.

There were moments when he had been able to taste his triumph. He could feel a strange charge in the air, and if he'd had any hair left on his malformed body, it would have stood on end. Catching the apostle, ending him, it would be containment. Not full containment, that requiredextermination, but containment enough. There would not be another like the apostle. The Walrider would have to settle for something else, something not optimal, and some of those that evaded him had already been rejected. Minds too shattered, too selfish to be suitable hosts. That would be all it could choose from.

But Chris would always swipe at air. The apostle would jam himself into a vent, or he would squeeze through a space Chris couldn't even dream of getting one shoulder into. He would grasp after him, and though sometimes he might shred his coat or make him yelp, he never got him.

It was becoming a problem. His lungs burned and the tsunami of blood dulled his perception, made him sloppy. Though he had peeled away the useless flesh that blurred his vision, he had not been able to fully repair the fractures in his mind. Fractures that had been turned into a great, yawning abyss by the 'doctors'. Meant to control him, to control the Walrider in turn, but they had not counted on how little Chris cared about pleasing them. He had realized his mission early, and he had overcome hardships before.

The mission, containment, that was everything. It was the only thing. Everyone and everything was depending on him.

Chris had hated him, but the further the apostle got, the less Chris was able to justify his hatred. It wasn't the apostle's fault that Chris couldn't catch him. Chris knew what it was like, to know in his heart that survival depended entirely on him. That nobody else would help him. That he would die if he stopped to breathe, even for a moment. And so even though the apostle made him gag on his own breath, made him vomit a foul accumulation of phlegm and bile after every near-miss, made him back track and loop around and physically tear himself a new path to get to him, Chris respected him. He was desperate to kill him, desperate to contain the Walrider, desperate to stop what nobody else cared to, but he respected the apostles grim determination to survive.

Chris might have helped the apostle, if things had been different. And Chris felt like a fool when he all but chased him down into the belly of the beast. He was ashamed that his fear of the Walrider kept him from pursuing right away. Chris paced by the elevator, coughing and spitting (a messy, inefficient task without lips), telling himself he was just catching his breath, building his strength for one last chase. He had no choice but to catch him, now. It had come down to this.

"Even the Soldier fears the Walrider."

"Yes."

Chris had never seen them so close before. Normally they kept out of reach, talking about him or to him from behind bars or a few levels above him. He ground his teeth together and growled. Any lackey of Father Martin deserved to die.

"He will be at peace soon. That will be his reward."

"Does he know it?"

"He does not known peace. Not as we do."

"I pity him."

"As do I."

One of them, the bald one, summoned the elevator. They had him flanked, and Chris didn't know which one to go for first. He'd seen them in action. They were fast, and if he went for one, it was a good bet the other would be carving him up from behind. Best wait for them to make the move, use their respectable aggression against them.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

"The Bible?"

"Yes."

"Amusing."

"Very."

The elevator chimed and the other twin, the one with more hair, pulled the gate open. Chris didn't move. Did they think he was an idiot? They'd slaughter him if he boxed himself in like that.

"You should hurry, Soldier."

"It won't be long now."

Chris wanted very badly to end the two of them, but they were making it difficult. He knew time was of the essence, now. Every moment he delayed was a moment that brought the apostle and the Walrider closer together. Every moment wasted risked a breach, a catastrophic breach. Everything he had done, everything he had sacrificed, years of suffering, it would be for nothing. And Chris had already experienced that. Chris had been destroyed by it.

It was what had brought Chris to Mount Massive in the first place.

The two men backed away and Chris stomped onto the elevator, jabbing a button with a meaty finger and smearing blood on the panel. For once, they didn't say a word as Chris slid out of sight. They only watched. Chris would kill them later.

Returning to the basement made his guts turn over, but Chris ignored the feeling of dread. It wasn't just the Walrider that haunted the sterile white halls, but memories of what had been done to him. He had fought them at first, fought them violently. Just because he large didn't mean he was stupid. Chris had known jamming tubes up a man's ass and down his throat and into his goddamn dick wasn't how you worked through PTSD. Immersing a man into a pod full of fluid, making him watch images that shredded his mind, none of that had anything to do with healing.

It had helped him become what he was now, the only thing standing between the wide world and the Walrider, and he had eventually capitulated, but... the ghost of his struggles still haunted him. Vividly. Alarms were going off. Things were locking down, but he was unsure if it was automatic or if more useless security had arrived. Chris quickened his pace. It wasn't too late. Not yet. He had to find the apostle, had to end him. Not even Chris could batter down the doors on this level, and in that regard, the Walrider now had the upper hand.

As it happened, he and the apostle reached for the same doorknob, and it was the apostle who won out. He barrelled straight into Chris with a cry of dismay, and Chris had reacted on instinct, using his momentum to throw him further down the hallway. Back the way he had come. It was a straight shot. No loose vents, no open doors, no escape. Containment was in his grasp. The apostle turned over onto his back, sliding backwards, his eyes wide, his maimed hand scrambling for his camera. Some people thought cameras were truth tellers, but Chris knew better. Cameras lied, just like anything else.

It wouldn't matter soon.

He saw something strange on the apostle's face as he towered over him, grabbing for his throat. A strange sort of fear. Not of Chris – he was afraid of him, of course, but that was a grim and resigned fear by now – but for Chris. Chris was only confused for a moment before he understood. No one picked Chris up, not easily. Not since he'd been a child. He was too tall, too heavy, an immoveable object.

Not for the Walrider. For the Walrider, Chris was a ragdoll, a flimsy puppet, and oh how the Walrider relished making him dance at the end of his strings. Bones shattered and blood flooded his lungs, and Chris scrabbled desperately for something, anything to hold onto. He swung blindly into the air, and the Walrider buzzed all around him, shredding his nigh-impenetrable hide, turning him into a bleeding sack of crushed bone and pulverized meat.

For a moment, a tiny fraction of a second, his eyes met with the apostle. Chris saw something he did not expect, and it went with him into oblivion.

Not pity or vindication. Not fear or disgust.

Respect.

Credit for this chapter goes to BizarroVeR of ffnet, who requested Chris's impression of Miles as he pursued him.