Note: Yes, this is a repeat of an earlier chapter, 8 to be exact. If you've read/care you might have noticed that it ended rather abruptly. This was the original version, the one I like more. I had reasons for not posting this version, but I don't care about those reasons any more.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

o0o

Dana scrolled through pages and pages of information that she gathered from all corners of the internet, trying to decide if any of it was worth anything. Most of the leads she had been following during the outbreak had dried up as her sources vanished, either dead or taken into custody by the government, forcing her to fish around for new ways of getting what she wanted.

The majority of what she came across was either blatantly wrong, or not worth her time. The general consensus was that Alex was dead, with only a few diehard conspiracy theorists saying otherwise. Alex was alive of course, he was still visiting her regularly, but Dana understood that they were both safer if everyone thought Alex was dead. Later on, if she found someone she thought she could trust, she might hint around that Alex was alive, just to see if that angle got her more information. For now though, it was something she had to keep quiet about.

Hell, even she was doing her best to play dead, keeping hidden and trying not to do anything online that would let anyone who knew her realize that she was still out there somewhere.

Alex still came to her for help and information though, and come his next visit she wanted to have something to give to him, even if it was just another name. He always seemed happiest when she told him where to find someone who had been involved with Gentek. Determined to get something for him, she took stock of her remaining resources.

Several of the nameless little sites and mailing lists she had been a part of were obviously being monitored so they were right out of the question.

The loss of one digital meeting place in particular bothered her since she sort of knew the guy who ran it. A college classmate of hers, he was the one who got her into the whole hacker community thing. She really wasn't all that good with computers, she just knew how to make good use of the programs other people had given her and how to cover her tracks when she was done. Now everything having to do with the guy's site and the circle of people who used it to communicate it was gone, like it had never existed. She missed the resource that it represented and felt kind of bad for thinking of it like that when there was a good chance that at least some of the people from it might be dead. The might also be alive she reminded herself, she just didn't have any safe way to find out.

Of the people she knew elsewhere on line, a good number of them had gone missing at ominous times, like when they started talking about Blackwatch or infected being way too close for comfort. The last email sent out from one of them was so disturbing that she had no clue what to make of it. It had been a long rambling confession containing apologies to people she had never heard from, observations on how wrong things could go, lists of regrets and ending with the statement that 'The streets are swarming with the zombies now, I've got to end it on my terms. Love you all'.

With all her usual methods of getting information out of the question she was frustrated with the insular nature of the hacker communities she had managed to work her way into. She was forced to look elsewhere and when that failed, she had started taking shots in the dark.

WikiLeaks was a catastrophe, had been since she had woken up in the hospital with Dr. Ragland. The doctor hadn't been happy about her wanting to use his computer, but she had wanted to get as much information as possible for Alex when he came back for her. Once she started poking around in the files he had on the computer Ragland had gone and changed the password. Lacking the resources to crack it, she had been forced to wait until Alex came back and took her to a new safe house and got her a new computer. Ragland's response to her digging through his personal information was a mark against him in her book. If he had nothing to hide he wouldn't have gotten upset. Since then she had been keeping an eye out for anything she could find about him. So far she had turned up nothing, but that was probably due to her lack of resources.

Twitter had started out a good way to get names and incidents when people, who had been inspired by movements across the world, started posting as much as they could to take control of the situation. The problem was the people who had been most prolific with Tweets tended to be in the most danger from Blackwatch as well as the infected. Now most of the best sources were either gone or had managed to evacuate the city, while the ones that remained were the last hangers on, repeating conspiracy theories and posting their day-to-day gripes.

She even tried YouTube, though that was only to get some background noise and maybe watch a few funny videos. As was the nature of such sites she found herself clicking link after link. From watching videos of cats doing silly things she went to watching ones of large bugs eating, then stupid office pranks, occasionally listening to music in between. She managed to kill nearly an hour this way before she started feeling restless again.

On a whim she typed Blackwatch into the search function of YouTube and was pleasantly surprised to find results. Some guy had recently uploaded a bunch of videos supposedly hacked from Blackwatch's files. By the looks of it they had been taken by UAVs. Curious she opened the first dozen or so in tabs.

The first two she clicked on had been Blackwatch troops shooting people who were clearly infected. It was brutal, but if someone was ignorant of what they were really like, they might mistake Blackwatch for the good guys.

The next few were nothing more than aerial observations of infected moving around in the streets.

The one after that was very short, compared to the rest, barely five minutes. It started out the same as the previous few, an overhead view of infected wandering aimlessly in red stained streets. The UAV recording it rose steadily higher for the first minute and a half, then a shadow passed over head, causing the floating camera to rock violently. Dana leaned forward, hoping that the thing would stabilize.

She had her nose inches from the monitor, when –

"Holy shit!"

Dana pushed back from the computer so violently that she fell out of her chair.

Something massive and red streaked had filled the screen before it went blank, the camera no longer recording.

That one hit a little too close to home and she spent several minutes hyperventilating at the memory of the thing that had burst through the wall and carried her off. The frantic flight through the city was crystal clear in her memory, every impossible climb and heart-stopping jump, right down to the stink of the monster and the way it wheezed and snorted with every step it took. What happened between that and her waking up with Ragland was a mystery, though both the doctor and Alex reassuring her that she wasn't infected was enough to make her glad it was a mystery, especially since Ragland hardly seemed able to believe it himself.

Eventually she recovered from the shock the last video had given her and got back in her chair. Her hands were shaking when she closed that tab and started the next one.

This one was better, starting out much closer to the ground and following a bunch of Marines on patrol in a pretty bad looking area. There was no audio, but just looking at them was enough to tell that they were nervous, not that she could blame them. The streets were covered in red matter and something ropey was growing on the sides of some of the buildings. Occasionally the UAV would fly up a little higher and focus in on one of the buildings before going back down to the Marines. They kept looking up at it, giving her a good look at their frightened faces. The date in the corner of the screen put it shortly before Alex took out Greene, so they had good reason to be nervous.

It went on like that for several minutes, nothing more than a bunch of guys walking around looking scared. Proving how fucked up the whole situation was, one of them looked barely out of high school. The fact that the kids like him enlisted was a sign that, even before this whole mess, things were pretty fucked up. Hell, the guy was probably younger than her. With shit like the virus, Gentek and Blackwatch brought to light Dana wondered if he was regretting the choices that got him into the situation he was in.

Her attention went back to the computer when all of the Marines looked up at the same time. The UAV started to rise back up, the camera focused on a blur making its way down the side of a building. Several stories up the blur fell away, pushing off the building to land in the middle of the patrol. Dropping lower the UAV focused in again, giving Dana a perfect view of her brother.

Red and black strands, not entirely unlike the stuff trailing off the sides of the buildings, rose up on his arms, stretching out and spreading wide before tightening back in. When it was over Alex's arms were bristling with spines and ended in massive claws.

"Shit," she let out a soft gasp. Still frames and short clips from blurry security footage around bases was nothing like this. Dana had known what Alex could do, but this was the first time she had really seen Alex in action and he was only getting started.

The Marines opened fire, Dana could see little sprays of gore where the bullets struck Alex, but he hardly seemed to notice. He grabbed the nearest Marine by the neck and threw him at another, before pouncing on the next closest Marine. This one he gutted with one swipe of his claws and used the momentum to carry him into the rest of the group. From there it became a slaughter, blood spraying everywhere ad limbs were severed. She even saw what could only be a head hit the ground and roll out of sight of the camera.

Suddenly there was a break in the fighting. Alex was holding the Marine Dana had figured to be the leader of the patrol while the few other that remained looked on in confused horror. The patrol leader was yelling something, not at Alex, but at his men. They raised their guns uncertainly and Dana wondered what was going on. There was no way they could shoot Alex without killing their fellow soldier in the process. Was the leader telling them to hold their fire or to start shooting?

The red and black strands rose up from Alex again, thicker this time and originating from his torso rather than his arms. The Marines opened fire, but it was already too late. Their leader was engulfed and…

Dana closed out of the window, clicking the mouse with far more force than necessary.

She had not needed to see that. It lined up too well with what Alex had told her right before…

No, she had worked too hard to put that day and that conversation out of her mind. Dwelling on it wasn't an option, not when Alex was her brother and her survival depended so heavily on him.

Getting up from her chair she paced the room nervously, wishing that she could go out and get some fresh air. She wasn't stupid though, she knew that as Alex's sister and known accomplice that if anyone recognized her she would be in for a world of hurt, probably attacked by the first asshole who felt brave enough to beat up a defenseless girl out of some twisted sense of justice.

The last time she had been outside was when Alex had brought her to the new safe house and the memory of that trip was still enough to make her sick to her stomach. Alex had taken her to a part of the city that was still abandoned and had actually carried her up the side of the building, punched through a window and then left her to wander in the dark until she found a room that she was able to break into. Between then and now Alex had brought her everything she needed, food water, a generator that she kept running in a room down the hall so she could use her computer without worrying about suffocating.

She had no idea how Alex managed to sneak around without being recognized, but it was something he would have to teach her, and soon. Dana had been tracking the city's recovery and it would not be long before the area she was in was going to be cleaned out and cleared for people to move back in.

It was too much to cope with. Unless she found something big, something to bring the whole mess tumbling down she and Alex were going to be on the run forever. Maybe Alex could manage it, but there was no way in hell she could. Once they took down Blackwatch and Gentek she could prove to the world that they were right, that they were the heroes. Then they would be safe.

Taking a deep breath she went back to the computer and tried to open YouTube back up, only to discover that the site was down. Cursing, she rocked in her chair and tried to recall the name of the guy who had posted the videos. His stuff had been good, obviously stolen from Blackwatch, and if she could find more, or even better, get him on her side, she was sure that she would be on the right track again. If she could find him, or find out more about him there was no doubt that he would be able to get her the information she was looking for, even if she had no clue what that information was. The problem was, the bits of his screen name that she could remember most clearly were random numbers and the word 'beer'.

Several false starts and one rock band fan site later, she found exactly what she was looking for. A person, or perhaps an organization, who used various permutations of 'Cully's Stout Beer Fan' as a screen name was famous, or infamous for his collection of files on Alex. People claimed that he was an Anarchist, a libertarian, a Communist, a Blackwatch plant, and a pedophile. All in all it sounded like 'Cully' was exactly the sort of person she needed. With that kind of reputation, with that many people badmouthing him, he had to be onto something big. The only thing that puzzled her was that she hadn't found out about him sooner.

Knowing what she was looking for did little to make it easier though, since guys like 'Cully' tended to be very careful.

On one site she found a collection of what people were calling his better works. There were dozens of images, all attributed to 'Cully', and they were uniformly horrific. Photographs and still frames from videos showing Alex with claws, blades, wiry tendrils like those in the video, smashing tanks with his hands transformed into blackened bone clubs, and those were the most tame of the pictures. The vast majority showed things like Alex dismembering infected, decapitating Blackwatch soldiers, ripping Marines apart with his claws, tendrils exploding out from Alex, impaling soldiers and infected alike, and worse.

Then there were the comments, people asking if anyone had images of 'Mercer turning into a Marine, 'Mercer eating a woman', 'anything with tentacles lots of tentacles and blood'.

"Fuck this," she said to the empty room, "These guys are assholes anyway."

Somehow this reassured her and she decided to keep digging.

Pictures and still frames were abundant, but videos were decidedly lacking.

Against her better judgment she ended up joining a rather questionable little forum to view the members only content, which supposedly had in it a number of videos.

What she got when she went to the nonpublic pages was far better than she expected. A thread titled 'Hurry before they pull it!1!1' contained what was supposedly a link to 'Cully's' current video gallery.

Not fully trusting the link, she double checked that all her usual security precautions were in place before following it.

It was legit, at least a thousand video files with descriptive titles.

Scrolling down she found several titles that jumped out at her right away, one labeled 'Blackwatch slaughter civilians', another, called 'Marines and dead child' was directly above 'running over civilians in tank'. It seemed like 'Cully' was a kindred spirit, dedicated to exposing just what Blackwatch and the military was up to under the guise of containing the virus.

Curious to exactly what she had found she scrolled back to the top and began reading the video descriptions in order.

'Mercer eats Marine'

'blackwatch are dicks'

'Decapatated marine'

'Mercer rips the fucker's arm off'

'armored drop on tank'

'Thrown blackwatch soldier helicopter crash'

'tank road kill'

'Mercer tentacle rapes Marine'

'gunning down infected'

'snake thing throws tank'

'mercer vs big monster'

'Mercer runs down guy then eats'

'armor Mercer takes out 12 blackwatch'

'Mercer claw Kills'

'big hands dismemberment'

'best blade kill ever'

'marine vs big monster'

'big monster eats civilian'

It was gore porn, all of it. 'Cully' was hacking into Blackwatch files and stealing footage from their UAVs just to post the worst of it on the internet. He had plenty of videos of Blackwatch doing terrible things, but they were far outnumbered by videos featuring her brother.

Again she closed out of the internet and got up to pace.

It was biased by the source. Footage from Blackwatch, stolen by a pervert for fap fuel, of course it was going to be skewed. Some sick fucks out there got off thinking about Alex killing people, that was their problem not hers. She knew Alex better than anyone, knew there was no way it could be true.

The people I've killed…they're inside me…I can hear them

"No fucking way," Dana again spoke to the empty room, her voice small and shrill in the otherwise silent apartment. This time it did little to reassure her, "I've got to stay focused."

What she had to stay focused on, she had yet to figure out, all she knew was that she needed some project to occupy her time. Waiting and doing nothing would kill her.

Just to have something to do she sorted her food supplies for the umpteenth time, noting that she was running low on water. That meant Alex would be back soon. He dropped food off at least once a week, more if she asked, and between the supply runs he would come to her to see if she had found any new leads for him to follow, or to give her names to look up. Once he got back she was going to sit down and talk to him, have the conversation she had been putting off since the time in Ragland's lab.

Alex was going to tell it all to her, tell her why he was the good guy and why all the things she had seen and heard, not just today, but from the start of it all, were bullshit.

Until then she had to keep busy, to do something to pass the time.

Weighing her options, she went back online and just started looking up whatever random idea crossed her mind, most of which had to do with the virus, since that was the one thing she had been focused on for so long.

The global response was expected, an equal number of outpourings of sympathy and condemnations for allowing something like the Manhattan outbreak to happen. Often the two were mixed together, thinly veiled insults and jabs at the American government for being so militaristic and looking for terrorists in all the wrong places.

Conspiracy theories abounded, doomsday cults were springing up everywhere and the internet was as full of bullshit as ever.

In the end it all came back to Alex though, whether people were celebrating his supposed death, claiming that he was still out there somewhere, insisting that he was just a scapegoat, or saying that he had done was only the start.

She knew him better than anyone else, or so she liked to think, but there was so much that was still a mystery to her. Like the videos and pictures that were out there. Hell, she had firsthand experience of his ability to run straight up the side of buildings. That sort of stuff was supposed to be impossible, but Alex took it all in stride. The things that should have bothered him never even registered, though he would dwell on insignificant things for weeks at a time.

His latest pet project had sent her on countless wild goose chases, trying to find as much as she could about Gentek researchers who worked off Manhattan. Specifically he had wanted to know if she could find ones that had neither families nor close friends. To use his exact words 'the sort of people no one will miss'.

The people I've killed…they're inside me…I can hear them

That one insane, impossible statement kept coming back to her. It was unbelievable, yet it matched up too well. There were times when Alex knew way too much, knew things about what the military was doing that would have required him to be there when it went down. She had seen, with her own eyes, a video of him eating someone, there were people asking around for videos of Alex turning into other people. So what was he doing, trying to find a new disguise? What would he do with her then, would he leave Manhattan and be done with it all, start a new life like he had before, only coming back when he was in over his head and needed her help again?

No, that wasn't a direction she wanted to go in. There were all sorts of reasons it was nonsense, even if she was unable to come up with any at the moment.

It was the time alone that was getting to her, giving her too much time to think. Lack of new information was causing her to dwell on random shit, over thinking it until she worked herself into a panic. Once Alex got back she was going to talk to him, try to get him to visit more often and bring her some books to read.

Reassured, she shut down the computer, deciding that she had already spent enough time searching for information with nothing to show for it.

Without the light of the computer monitor casting its glow upon the room she realized that it was getting dark outside. A quick bit of thinking about when she had first logged on and she realized that she had been going for at least sixteen hours. That was the other problem with spending so much time anxious and alone on the computer, her sleep schedule had gone to shit.

She needed sleep, that was what had her on edge. Picking up the flashlight she kept on her computer table in case the generator failed, she made her way out of the apartment and down the hall to where the generator was kept. When she wasn't on her computer she kept it shut down to save fuel and to keep from drawing any unwanted attention to her safe house.

Thinking of fuel, she wasn't sure how much she had left. The gas was kept in another room, even farther down the hall to reduce the risk of an accident, and she started heading towards it, her footsteps echoing in the empty hall.

Without the generator running she could hear everything, the building settling, what she hoped were mice scrabbling in the walls, even the sound of the wind blowing into an apartment where someone must have left the window open.

Her flashlight dimmed slightly, as they were prone to doing. A good shake had it back to full brightness, not that she was afraid of the dark.

It was the stuff it might be hiding that scared her.

Half way to the room where she kept the gas she stopped, except stopped was not the right word. She froze, not even breathing.

There had been an out of place sound, something that didn't fit the normal building noises. It was so fast and different that by the time it registered it was already over. Keeping her breathing shallow she listened, wondering if she would hear it again, or if it had been her imagination. Silence again and then…

Yes, it was there. An echo coming from the stairwell at the end of the hall. One note and silence.

Six racing heartbeats later and it happened again, louder and closer this time. It was a two note impact, like the start of a drum roll.

Her first thought was that there was someone else in the building with her, but that made no sense. The sound was coming from above and she doubted that someone would have been able to walk all around the building without her knowing it.

Another impact, closer still.

Footsteps did not sound like that, especially not coming down stairs.

Again, maybe two floors away.

No, that was not completely true. If someone jumped the last few steps their feat would hit the bottom like –

One floor.

– something was jumping whole flights of stairs.

She started to run.

Her floor now.

Could she make it to the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall in time?

Behind her she could hear the door to the stairwell open.

It was coming after her in bounding strides that shook the hall. It moved one step to every three she made, but it was going so fast, its strides so impossibly long that it was gaining on her.

She could practically feel it at her back as she slammed into the door and managed to fumble it open, which was what saved her.

It hit the door at almost the same instant, flinging it open wide and sending her tumbling to the floor, where it loomed over her. If the door hadn't already been part way open, her pursuer would have slammed into her, crushing her. Instead she just fell to the floor, her already outstretched arms breaking her fall. The flashlight hit the ground next to her, shattering and plunging her into darkness.

"You shouldn't have run."

There was a hint of worry in Alex's voice.

"What the hell Alex?" she gasped, or maybe sobbed. There was something warm and wet on her face, but she had no clue if it was blood or tears, "Why the fuck did you do that."

She rolled onto her back so she could look at him, or at least his silhouette, a patch of deeper darkness in the gloom of the hall.

His shoulders slumped, "You ran."

"Yes, I fucking ran," she licked her lips, then spat when she realized her mouth was full of blood. She must have bitten her tongue when she fell.

Alex looked down at her, taking a moment too long to offer her a hand getting up.

Dana pushed his hand away and wiggled until she had her back against the wall, "I fucking ran and you fucking chased me down the hall. What's gotten into you?"

He was looking at her, that much she could tell, but there was something about his posture that was unsettling. He started to lean down toward her, then took a step back and leaned heavily against the wall.

"You're bleeding."

His non sequitur struck her as the dumbest thing she had ever heard.

"Yes, I'm bleeding. I'm also pissed," she started to get up, "What's wrong with you?"

"You ran," he repeated his initial statement as though that explained everything.

Dana was ready to scream at him, when he continued.

"I just reacted, you were running so I chased you. I wasn't expecting you to do that and I started without even thinking. After the day I've had…"

What had that one video been called 'Mercer runs down and eats a guy'? That started her down another unpleasant train of thought.

"How did you know I was bleeding? Can you actually see it?" Dana squinted, hoping to make out something more than just a more solid blur in the darkness. Even with her eyes adjusting there was not quite enough light.

"I can see you, but it's not just that, it's…" he trailed off, gesturing helplessly, "Not exactly smell. Something to do with chemoreceptors? Like how the infected don't attack each other or early stage carriers, but anyone uninfected…"

"What?" she started to ask, then shook her head, "Never mind. We need to get back to the room and talk."

It went without saying that Alex made it there before her and opened the door. He had been walking along like there was nothing out of the ordinary, while she had been trailing behind, one hand against the wall as she tried not to trip in the darkness. The little light shining in through the apartment's windows and into the hall was just enough to help her make it the rest of the way at a more normal pace.

Inside, the pair of them assumed their usual positions, she collapsed on the couch while Alex stared out the window.

Where to begin? After the scare Alex had given her she was pissed. She wanted answers, wanted things to make sense.

Alex kept looking out the window, even though it was too dark out for her to see anything, he seemed intent on something on the streets below. He had gotten steadily worse at small talk over the months and Dana understood that she was going to have to start things off.

"A lot of things have happened Alex, you're going to need to fill me in about everything," if she got the whole story out of him she was sure it would make perfect sense, "What happened after you left home? I mean I know what happened in college, you called me every Friday, or at least you did at first."

He turned away from the window and looked at her, his expression unreadable.

She continued, "But then you started to skip weeks, until the calls stopped altogether. It was like you dropped off the face of the earth, but then you came back to me, scared like I'd never seen you before and insisting that I had to help you. What happened?"

Alex laughed.

It was a sound the likes of which Dana had never heard from her brother. Harsh and more like choking, it bordered on hysteria.

Just as quickly as the outburst had started it subsided.

"I don't know, or at least not all of it. The project he was working on, Blacklight," Alex spread his arms, "Was being downsized, but that wouldn't have been enough. Supposedly some of the people involved were worried about getting killed over what they knew, but I haven't found anything to back that up. People were being transferred to other projects left and right and I think that was probably it. He couldn't stand the thought of Blacklight being handed over to someone else…What did you talk about during those phone calls?"

"What?" Dana stared at her brother, dumbfounded, "How could you forget that? I mean I know the amnesia and all, but you're getting better, right?"

Was that what had happened, he had forgotten so much that they had nothing left in common? That would explain why he seemed so much of a stranger now.

Alex shook his head sadly, "What I had at the beginning is all I have now, bits and pieces without context. I've just used what other people knew to piece it together."

"You've got to remember something, anything," she was desperate, "Like the time I nearly burned the house down when I tried to bake cookies. After she put the fire mom started to yell at me and you told her to fuck off. You ended up getting in trouble after that, but you didn't care. You've got to remember that, right?"

"Nothing," he said, "But believe me, I wish I did. Most of what I have is what happened at Gentek and I'd rather not have all that."

"Alright," she said slowly, carefully. Things were far worse than she had expected, "Tell me what happened at Gentek, you ran because you were afraid they were going to kill you? So what, they infected you with the virus hoping it would kill you, make it look like a lab accident or something?"

"No, he was too valuable – " Alex started, but Dana cut him off.

"Who? Tell me who was too valuable. Name names, tell me who did this to you," Dana's head was starting to spin. Something was going on, but it was going right over her head, "Who's the bad guy in all of this?"

This started Alex laughing again, the same hysterical, humorless sound.

"No one did this to me. There is a bad guy though, he's the one who started all of it. Knowing what I do now, I don't think he even meant to infect himself. He knew he was dead, breaking the vial was just a final act of spite. If he was going down he was going to take everyone with him," hands clenched at his sides Alex began to pace the room, his voice taking on a different tone, like he was talking to himself out loud rather than engaged in conversation, "It's all guesswork though. He was the only one who knew and he's dead now. Karen Parker didn't know anything either. After all this time I finally tracked her down and what did I get from it? Nothing, he didn't even trust her enough to tell her what he was doing other than making a break for it. She had her suspicions of course, begged him not to go through with it, but there nothing I couldn't have figured out on my own elsewhere. It was all a waste of time, worse than that, it just added to the whole fucking mess."

He was ranting now, pacing the room like a caged animal and for the third time in her life Dana was truly frightened of her brother.

"Blackwatch made it clear what would happen to her if she didn't go along with their plans, but you know what? In the end she was more afraid of me than them. That was why she did it, because right from the start she was sure that I would kill her, while with Blackwatch she at least had a chance. She was right about me at least."

Something rippled along Alex's arms and Dana considered making a break for it. Lost in his ranting he seemed to have forgotten that she was there. It would be easy for her to slip out the door and then…

She remembered the way he had chased her down the hall, just because she had run and he had said that he acted without thinking. He sure as hell wasn't thinking now, at least not clearly. If she ran would he come after her? Maybe it was like with a vicious dog, if she moved slowly and kept watching him she would be able to escape…

No.

No, Alex was her brother. He needed her help, now more than ever.

Taking a deep breath she tried to keep her voice steady, "Alex?"

He continued pacing and muttering, the rippling getting more intense, bits and pieces of something starting to rise up and stretch out.

"Alex?" she tried again, louder this time.

She started to get up from the couch, thinking that maybe she could grab him and shake him out of it, but she realized she was too afraid to touch him, not because she thought that he would hurt her. It was the movement that frightened her, the way things were squirming over his arms.

"Alex! Please!" This time it was a shout and this time it got his attention.

He froze, turned to face her. As dark as it was, she could make out nothing more than his silhouette, but she was sure that if she could see his face there would be no trace of recognition in there. His arms were partially raised, but they were all wrong, stretched out into spiky claws and shifting ropes of something that made wet sliding noises as it moved.

Dana tried to take a step back and fell back onto the couch.

Alex froze, shook himself and lowered his arms, "I'm sorry."

Maybe he was, but the claws were still there and when he reached for her she was unable to fight back the scream that rose up.

Alex recoiled as though he had been struck, "Stop it!"

Alex had never yelled at her when they had been kids. Sure they had their fights, all siblings did, but he preferred silent reproach and scorn. By not talking to her he had been able to reduce her to tears, make her apologize and beg for forgiveness. Back then he had known that yelling only pissed her off. It was yet another of the many things that he had forgotten.

Her screaming faded to a series of gasping sobs.

"Don't scream like that," Alex snarled. He was keeping back from her, claws still there and little wriggling bits on his arms squirming furiously, reaching for her then retracting. His breathing was heavy, ragged as though he had been running for a long time and his voice was strained, "Please don't scream like that."

This second time his voice sounded a little less strained, a little more concerned, but it was still wrong. Everything about the situation was wrong Dana realized.

She had been angry at her brother plenty of times in the past, but back then she had always made an attempt to keep her emotions under control to avoid alienating the one friend she had. Now, with Alex acting the way he was, she was unable to help herself, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice.

"Why the fuck not?" she glared at him, "I'm stuck here on my own while you're out doing whatever the hell it is you do. You never come by to just talk, only to drop off supplies or because you want something. I'm just about going out of my mind here and then tonight you show up and chase me down the hall like you're going to… Then when I try to talk to you, you start rambling and freaking out. Then to top it all off you have the nerve to tell me to keep quiet."

Her voice had been steadily rising as she spoke and by the time she was done she was yelling as loud as she could, during which Alex's posture had gotten increasingly aggressive to the point where he had been leaning towards her, claws spread wide. To her surprise, Dana found that she didn't care. She held no illusion that he would refrain from harming her because she was his sister, what had happened leading up to this confrontation had shown that he lacked such restraint.

It was too dark for her to see his face, and for that she was grateful. If there had been light, she was sure that there would be no trace of recognition in his eyes.

She could see it, in the way he stood, that he was about to pounce.

Then, as suddenly as it had all spiraled out of control, it was all over. Alex shook himself and laughed, a genuine laugh which only further frustrated Dana.

"What the hell is so funny?" If not for the claws and the writhing bits she would have gone over and smacked him. He needed it, badly.

"It's just…give me a second, I need to gather my thoughts. It's hard to concentrate sometimes," as he spoke the claws retracted, but the strands shifting over his arms kept up their restless motion, "Even with the virus dying out I can still hear it, but it's nothing compared to what I've done to myself. Everyone I killed is still there, or at least bits of them are and sometimes I have a hard time telling which thoughts are mine."

He had gone from hysterical to evasive to frantic to pleading and Dana had finally figured out what was going on. Alex was trying to manipulate her, acting like if he could make her feel bad for him she would forgive all the earlier craziness. It was a tactic she had seen him use plenty when they were kids and knew it well enough not to be fooled by it.

"Cut the bullshit Alex," and while she was at it, she might as well use the same tactic right back at him, see if she could bring things back to square one and end all of the stupid games, "You were never like this with me before. You're acting like mom used to."

"Are you sure? Because it destroyed me when I first found out. You want to know who did this to me," he spread his arms and the claws returned, if he noticed that she shied away at the sight he gave no indication, "Alexander Mercer, he was the one who made the virus, tried to steal it when thought he was going to lose control of the project and started everything because he was too arrogant to accept what was happening."

Dana wanted to believe that he had fallen back into ranting, but his voice was too calm, for the first time since he had arrived he seemed relaxed.

"Like I said before, I don't know why Mercer did it, though I know he was proud of what he did. Blacklight was his pet project, his baby, and I don't think he wanted anyone else to work on it. When the Blacklight project was downsized the most useful researchers were transferred elsewhere, the deadweight was terminated. He knew he was one of the useful ones and that made him cocky, he wasn't going to go quietly, shuffled off to work on some new project in some lab in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he was a bit too outspoken about how he felt about it, maybe he was stirring things up too much. All I know is that by the end of it all he was in deep trouble and furious about it.

"He ran, took a sample of the virus with him, but he didn't get very far. I don't think he planned to either. Releasing the virus wasn't an accident, I'm sure of that. He just didn't expect Blackwatch to be on him so fast. They shot him down and he dropped the vial of Blacklight," Alex stopped for a moment, clutching at his chest and shaking slightly, "When he fell he landed in the spilled Blacklight, and the virus went to work. That was something they had never taken into account in the lab, what would happen if a dying man was exposed to a quantity of Blacklight so far above the amounts tested that it boggles the mind. Mercer was infected as he died, and that's what did it. There are viruses that can survive in a dead body and Blacklight is one of them. Mercer might have been dead, but the virus that managed to get into him wasn't and the cells that had been infected were somehow kept alive by the virus. Against all logic it managed to spread, thrive even, and by the time they had his body prepped for the autopsy I woke up."

Silence followed, his story over.

Dana glared at him while she tried to gather her thoughts.

"So you're the one who released the virus?" She was surprised that she was able to ask something so calmly, but Alex's rambling, third person account of what had happened had made it all so hard to believe, "Even though you knew what it would do, how many innocent people would die. I could have died Alex. You could have killed me when you released the virus."

"No, Mercer did," his voice was pleading now and he approached to lean in close to her. In the darkness he was just a blot of deeper shadow, but she could feel the heat coming off of him, and the smell, "And I don't think that Mercer ever even thought about you as anything other than a resource to be used. Even if he had it wouldn't have been enough to stop him. He wasn't a very good person you know. He abandoned you, but I wouldn't do anything to…"

That was it, that was the final straw. She'd wanted to blame the amnesia, and maybe Alex did too, maybe that was the game he wanted to play, pretend that every shitty thing he'd done was someone else's fault, but if that was the case he had no right to talk like that. She'd seen the things he'd done. If that was the game he wanted to play she'd join in.

"Don't you dare talk about my brother like that!"

He let out a pained sounding noise, which only encouraged her.

"That's what you want, isn't it? You're not Alex, fine, that means you fucking killed him. You're not my brother, you're a fucking imposter. Get the hell out of here!"

To further make her point she kicked him hard in the chest with both feet.

It was like she'd kicked a brick wall. She screamed in pain and frustration.

Alex didn't even flinch. In a single fluid motion he grabbed her by the arm, yanked her off the couch and pulled her to her feet. When she started to fall he lifted her higher so her toes weren't even touching the ground.

"Stop it!" he growled like a wild animal.

"Fuck you!" she spat back.

He shook her, no words this time, just snarling. Things were writing along his arms, across his shoulders and chest.

The memory of what he did to the Marine in that one video.

The person, the thing holding her wasn't her brother.

The people I've killed…they're inside me…I can hear them

He'd already confessed as much to her. Her brother was his first victim and that was why he'd come to her. Alex had sent him to her because…

Because he'd wanted to see her one last time, because he'd been thinking about her when he'd died and everything that the imposter had said that went against that was lies. It was easier than to believe that there was any truth to that, even if Alex had vanished, even if he'd only come back to her when…

But he'd come back to her, sought her help when the whole world was against him, when everything was falling apart for him. If he'd gotten the chance he would have warned her.

"Don't scream," the imposter yelled in her face, "Don't act like that! You don't know how hard it is to – "

He had claws now, he was holding them up, ready to swing.

She squirmed in his grip, trying to get away as his grip on her wrist grew steadily tighter. She could feel the bones starting to grind against each other. If he kept it up he'd snap her wrist. Terrified she swung her free hand at his face with all her might.

Those claws were coming at her.

Inches from her face they stopped, his hand was shaking.

She followed through on her swing and slapped him across the face. This time he shouted and threw her. She half hit the back of the couch, half hit the wall, the impact enough to knock the wind out of her.

"Don't ever…" he staggered back, "I could have… If you'd…I…"

He stumbled towards the door, clutching his head, his hands still claws.

The door gave him some trouble and he ended up tearing it off its hinges with one swing of those wickedly sharp claws, leaving behind splinters and deep gouges in the metal doorframe.

By the time Dana recovered enough to roll off the couch he was long gone.

"I don't…" she gasped, winching when she tested her wrist. She was pretty sure it wasn't broken, but it hurt like hell, "I don't know you."

She slumped to the floor and started to cry.

More or less from the start she'd known that something was wrong with Alex, that he wasn't the same person she'd known, the same person who'd come to her desperate, frantic. He'd been strange, more concerned about her, more emotional in general, but at the same time detached in all the wrong ways.

Now she had to figure things out, was he just crazy or had he been telling the truth.

Which would be worse?