Anomaly Chapter 21, a Two Kinds + Prototype Crossover fanfic

Anomaly

Episode 21- Rebirth, part 2

Jay had been in pretty bad places before. Moldy apartments and medical shelters full of bleeding, screaming people to name a few, but generally he wasn't in that bad of a mood. A cage full of people scared out of their wits with no idea what was going on wasn't that worse then what he'd been accustomed to all his life, but the mood he was currently in was different than what he usually felt. Because right now he was feeling more anger then he'd ever felt in his life.

He sat crouched in the back of the cage, with Washi sitting right next to him. Hawke was a ways away trying to console his little sister, who was a sobbing mess right now. The people crammed into the cage with them weren't any better; they were as scared and confused as them. He couldn't even figure out why they were all being gathered, because he couldn't find a single pattern between everybody in the cage with them. Old, young, males, females, healthy, sick... it was like those soldiers were just plucking random people off of the street. Hell, for all he knew they were.

The thought of those soldiers only made him clench his fists in anger. They all thought that they'd come to save them after they drove away whatever it was that took the bus out, but then they had just shoved them all to the ground. All except Corvin- he'd been hit pretty bad by that car. He remembered seeing all the blood leaking out from under him and tried to help, but one of the soldiers shot the ground near his face when he tried getting up. Bradley actually did do something and tried shouting at the soldiers to help him, but all that wound up doing was getting him shot. Then they were all forced in this cage.

And Corvin... Corvin got left behind, under that car. And with all that blood he'd seen... well, Jay was optimistic, but even he had doubts he was alive. That alone made him furious, because those were two friends he'd lost. Bradley had been the one to save them all, and Corvin was... one of the best friends he'd ever made. Despite knowing him for such a short time, he'd been on the same level of friendship Washi, Hawke, and Robin had with him. And he knew Corvin felt the same way, too. Because of those damn words he'd told Jay right before he bolted from the clinic...

"Jay?" He looked over at Washi, who'd head was resting against her knees. She sounded so desolate that Jay almost broke down then and there.

"... Yeah?" he muttered back.

"Why is this happening?" she asked him. "Why... why is any of this happening?"

Jay let a slow breath out. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I don't know anything right now. Who these soldiers are, or why and where they're taking us. I don't even know how this all happened to begin with." He paused. "The outbreak, I mean."

"I know what you mean," she said. "Tell me this, though. I heard Bradley shouting before I heard the shot. Did he...?"

"Yeah, he died," Jay quickly responded.

"... I see. What about Corvin? I heard you, Hawke, and Robin shouting when we were thrown in here, but not Corvin. Where is he?"

Jay couldn't hold back the wince that formed when she asked that. She couldn't have seen how bad he'd been when they were taken. "Corvin was... he was pretty messed up. A car fell on him," he explained. "I think they just left him there, Washi. So... he's probably dead, too. You know how he was before all this started. And there was a lot of blood-"

"Stop," she muttered. "Please, Jay. I think I get it."

"Yeah." He heard her choke back a sob that started to form after he told her. From how he felt, he couldn't blame her. "He wasn't the best at first, but he warmed up after a while," he said.

"He was... really nice," she mumbled. "He always listened to what you had to say, always helped without a second thought. He was never even harsh towards us."

"I think he was a bit too mild-mannered to ever actually be mean," Jay said.

She didn't say anything following that. If it weren't for her eye injury, Jay imagined that she'd probably be crying for the loss of both Bradley and Corvin. Again, he couldn't blame her. They'd meant about as much to her as they did to Jay.

And then all at once, everybody in the cage were jarred to their feet when the truck is was in came to an abrupt halt. Jay had little time to consider what this meant before the doors to the cage were opened. The barrels of multiple rifles were poked into the cage as orders were barked into the cage, with more of the black-armored soldiers jumping in to direct people out. Jay, his eyes narrowed in anger, helped Washi to her feet as the people in the cage were lead out by the soldiers. He wouldn't leave any more friends behind if he could help it.

It was such a familiar pain- the sensation of each and every one of his cells being broken down and assimilated. It had started from the palm of Corvin's hand where he'd smashed the vial on the ground, where he had felt the glass cut into his hand. The virus had gotten in from that wound and slowly spread up his arm, the pain soon following. And right now he was feeling it across his entire body.

He remembered the last time this had happened he'd felt like he was legitimately dying. That's how great the pain had been. Maybe it was because he was already dying before hand, but the pain this time only felt as half as bad. Or maybe he'd gotten used to it from the first time it had happened. Didn't really matter in the end, as it was still very painful.

His clothes and skin start to blacken and melt as the virus assimilated his body, with large tendrils bursting from his flesh and swarming all over his body, twisting swirling over every visible part. The six soldiers who were left saw this, their expressionless helmets facing his body as shouts of shock emanated from them. They immediately raised their rifles and opened fires, the bullets tearing through Corvin's changing body.

He slumped forwards onto the destroyed car, all motion stopping and the tendrils freezing in place. The soldiers lowered their rifles, but soon raised them again when the tendrils started moving around Corvin's body once more. His hand, blackened and swarming with tendrils, clamped down on the top of the car, denting the spots he touched. Before the soldiers could do anything else the car thrown by Corvin, one unfortunate soldier being flattened by the vehicle.

Corvin slowly rose to his feet, his legs being bent back into shape and the bullet holes in his body slowly closing. All the soldiers managed to see was a vaguely human-shaped mass of black, swirling tendrils, with one visible dot of blue light visible on the head staring straight at them. They opened fire once more, ever bullet missing as the mass of tendrils sped towards them.

The second soldier died when Corvin thrust his hand through the faceplate of his helmet, penetrating straight to his brain. He could feel the strength spreading through his body, as well as the growing familiarity of it. Slowly but surely the pain was being dulled, and he was beginning to feel the same amount of power and control he used to have. The feeling of having every cell in his body under control. The overwhelming power in each cell as they morphed and shifted as the virus assimilated it. Slowly it was all coming back to him once again.

He tore his hand out of the soldiers face, the body falling to the ground. He raised his hand to his eye, flexing it and noting that coloration was beginning to return to it. Then he looked back down at the body of the soldier he killed. Perhaps not all of the power had returned to him yet. He'd meant to completely destroy his head, not merely the brain...

More gunfire tore through him as the other soldiers started yelling and firing. They died in short order as Corvin used his hand to bludgeon their heads to pieces. The last one slowly backed away from Corvin, fumbling with a magazine as he tried to load it back into the rifle. He didn't get the opportunity as Corvin's hand was thrust through his chest, the tendrils swarming around his body spreading to the soldier, who screamed as his body began to be broken down.

Corvin let out a deep, throaty sigh. He remembered this experience, too. The experience of breaking down somebody's body into pure biomass as it was absorbed into his own reserves. And with that biomass came the memories that belong to that soldier...

"All right! Knees on the ground, hands behind your head." Goddamn, he'd seen wrecks before, but this. He knew that Hydras had started to sprout up, but he didn't realize they'd be this aggressive so soon. Damn eggheads always got their estimates wrong on these things, he swore... Blackwatch didn't pay Gerald enough for this incompetency.

Oh, and then there were these people. A bunch of messed-up looking kids and an old man who looked like should have been in a home. What they were doing in the bus, he didn't much care. Orders were to collect any able-bodied research materials from infected zone. He didn't know if this counted, but they were breathing. Gentek boys wouldn't complain.

"What about him!?" Ugh, the old man. He got to his feet and started shouted and pointing frantically at the kid who got crushed under the car. "You damn Blackwatch goons can't just leave him under there!"

Why in the world had command decided them moonlighting as a "special forces unit" was a good idea? Sure, they could move around a lot more freely, but there used to be times where angry people didn't shout their names left and right. And if they did, they could always shoot them. That logic still applied here, but still... orders.

"Get down on the ground, idiot." He cocked back the chamber in his rifle for emphasis. "It's gonna be a lot harder to shove you in the cage when you have holes in your legs."

Unbelievably, this only made the man more angry. "What the hell do you mean cage!?" Some sense of realization flashed behind his covered eyes. Why, Gerald didn't know. "Where do you plan on taking us?" he demanded.

"You don't need to know," Gerald drawled. "The ground. Now."

"Not until you help him."

He slowly sighed. "Fuck it." He shot the codger in the head after that. They already had plenty of people they already picked up, after all. Eggheads wouldn't miss one subject.

The kids on the ground started screaming, but he ignored it. "Put 'em in the truck and drive them back to base. We're done picking up the trash." He signaled to the other Blackwatch soldiers around them, and they bent down to drag the teens to the truck. Of course, he wouldn't be able to leave. He still had others orders to clear this section out. Typical.

"Sir?" One of the soldiers gestured to the crushed kid. "What about him?"

Gerald shrugged. "Forget 'em. He's too broken to be any use. Just leave him to die, who cares." He sure didn't. He got paid to shoot freaks and on occasion anybody who looked at him wrong. That was the mindset pretty much every Blackwatch soldier had. They wanted people who got things done, not people who dripped sympathy everywhere they walked.

And Gerald had run out of sympathy a long time ago.

Corvin rubbed his head as the dull ache went away. He gotten use to that sensation the first time around, but he'd forgotten how vivid it was to relive an entire life's worth of memories in an instant. He tried not to pay attention to a majority of his life- he only wanted recent info, not his high school marks- and dug towards the end of his life.

Hmph. A lieutenant. Blackwatch. This one man's memories was enough to tell him unscrupulous the organization alone was. Memories of this man being in squads that mowed down entire streets of infected, burned down buildings holding infected and healthy alike. The man personally had killed people on the very suspicion that they were infected. Some were years younger than he was... enough to make him sick.

He pushed those thoughts aside. There was a base. Lots of bases holding troops, actually, but he only cared about the one Gerald was from right now. One housing not only Blackwatch troopers, but also Gentek scientists? Gentek? He knew there was some sort of collaboration between them and the company, but why at a base? And the reason his friends and everybody else were taken there... research materials? Is that what he saw them as? Not even people? Why would he even call them something like that?

Corvin shook his head, dispelling the memories. Another life to add to the ones in his head. Those were back, too. The ones he'd consumed in his previous viral incarnation. Ogre had said that those memories would still be with him even when he was human, just dormant and locked away. Now that he was back to being like this, all those memories were back. He didn't much care. They weren't important right now.

He took a single step forwards, then immediately stopped when he noticed his sense of depth perception had returned to a normal state. He turned to look down at a puddle of water near his feat, amazed at what he saw. The transformation was complete at this point, and the tendrils had receded. He looked so normal now, albeit a few shades lighter in skin tone than what he was as a human. The clothes were there, although they were just biomass imitations now. But what he most cared about was his arm and eye, because they were both back. Two deep-blue eyes showed in his reflection and blinked back at him in surprise, and he held his restored arm up to his face to inspect it.

Normal. Completely normal looking, almost as if it had never been detached. He flexed the hand, and found it moved just as good as the arm that hadn't been removed. Legs were healed, too. Everything felt so... alive. Healthy, which was ironic considering a virus had done this.

Well, he knew why. Every cell in his body was his to command: every single viral cell. Regeneration was just part of the package, as well as the overwhelming strength, the shapeshifting, the abilities he'd come to know the first time around. He knew what he was getting into when he slammed down that vial. Seeing as he was alive, he could really regret that decision, but still. He'd have a lot to think about when everything calmed down. But he had more important things to worry about than that.

Alpha one-three. Seemed like every Blackwatch base was named using some arbitrary system of military jargon, but Corvin couldn't care less about that. That was the base the memories were pointing Corvin to, the ones his friends were being held at, so he would go there and save them. The memories gave him a good idea of the numbers he'd be seeing- a lot more troopers than he was comfortable with, honestly. And if they told him anything at all, it was that they weren't just going to give them back if he asked. They'd probably just shoot him if he tried to walk up to the front gate.

Well, that didn't matter. He didn't have to ask. He had the power to do things differently now. He'd take him back by force, which, with all honesty, he'd likely have to. Oh well, it was their lives. And he didn't care much about those after what Blackwatch had done to him.

He almost took off to leave when he saw Bradley's fallen body out of the corner of his eyes. He relaxed, his shoulders going slump as a sense of grief flashed through him. He slowly walked towards the corpse, his eyes focusing on the doctor's face, which was frozen in permanent shock. The bullet hole dead center of his forehead was easy enough to spot. He'd died instantly.

Corvin crouched down with a sigh, casting a sad look over the doctor's body. "You deserved better, old man," he remorsefully said, his hand moving over his face to close his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I wish I could have. You did so much for me in the beginning, and you cared for me and the others for so long. Tried your best to salvage our lives." He rose to his feet. "You were one of the kindest people I had ever met. Thank you, Bradley. And goodbye."

It wasn't much, and Corvin knew it. He considered the words wasted since nobody would ever hear them, but saying them made him feel at least a little bit better. He couldn't even do anything for the body. It'd probably be eaten by a wandering pack of infected by the time he left, but what was Corvin to do about that? He needed to save his still living friends. So without a second thought he tore off towards the Blackwatch base, trying his best to forget that face.

But of course, he now had a perfect memory. So he'd never forget it.

Huh. Now that was interesting.

Two weeks since he'd started the Second Outbreak. At this point he didn't need to do much more. Manhattan would fall any day now, and then he could continue to the next part of his plan. Until then, Alex had some down time to plan those steps, so he'd been creatively thinking. That thinking had been interrupted when a Hydra crashed a bus next to the building he'd been laying on top of.

He ignored it at first. He'd heard the screaming of a Hydra, the crashing of vehicles, and gunfire, so he'd assumed a patrol of soldiers ran into one. He heard it die and, thinking that was that, laid back down to continue his thinking. Then he had heard shouting from a familiar voice followed by a gunshot.

This is when he actually looked over the top of the building to look down at the streets below. The first thing he'd noted was Ragland, of all people. He hadn't seen the doctor in years. The last time he'd heard his voice was when Dana was released from his care with a clean bill of health, and that had been over a phone call. He didn't even know he was still in Manhattan. And now he was dead, with a Blackwatch soldier standing over his body. There were others, too, transporting wounded teens to a carrier truck.

He scoffed. Figures. He'd planned for Gentek to start gathering subjects to experiment with Blacklight, but not this soon. Ah well. He supposed this sped up some aspects of the plan, at the very least.

The truck sped off, leaving six soldiers behind. He idly noted the crashed bus, and another teen crushed between a car and a bus. He managed to pieced it together pretty quickly after seeing that: Hydra had knocked the bus over, crushed the kid, and was killed by passing Blackwatch soldiers who took the survivors and killed Ragland for some reason. He wrote the kid off as a goner instantly when he saw the amount of blood he was losing.

He briefly considered consuming the soldiers down there. He doubted they had any useful info, but one never knew. Besides, it'd been a few days since he'd had a peek at their operations, and a small part of him felt a bit annoyed that they had killed Ragland like that. He'd been a good acquaintance. So he'd begun to jump down to the streets when he noticed the kid hold something up. With his eyesight, Alex was able to identify it the second he saw it: a vial of Blacklight. He'd know that dark-red coloration anywhere. He was made of it, after all.

That hadn't made any sense. He didn't know where in the world somebody like him got a sample of it. And he had no clue why the kid had crushed it on the ground and exposed himself to it. And he was utterly baffled by the fact that instead of just dying on the spot the kid regenerated his wounds, killed the soldiers, and consumed one.

That... wasn't supposed to happen. In fact, it was impossible for something like that to happen. Blacklight killed or made walkers, and Alex was the only exception to that. And the only reason he was an exception was because he was an exception was because he was never infected; he was the virus. What had happened to the original Alex Mercer hadn't happened to that kid; he hadn't died and spawned a viral clone that had used his body as a template. He'd... absorbed the virus. Or was it that the virus allowed him to control it? What?

Not possible. Not at all possible or feasible. Blacklight simply didn't do that. He would know. He WAS Blacklight.

And after everything was said and done, the kid looked fine. Better than fine, actually. Then he'd crouched next to Ragland's corpse, said some words, and ran off. So they'd known each other before his death. Interesting, but not the present thing on Alex's mind. He wanted to know what was in that vial the kid had smashed. And he wanted to know why he appeared to have abilities similar to his from the looks of things.

He jumped off the roof of the building, landing right next to where the kid had been pinned by the car. He stared down at the shattered pieces of glass on the ground, the remains of the vial, and was dismayed to see that there appeared to be nothing left; like the entire contents of the vial had been sucked up into the kids wounds. His vision of the world flashed multiple colors as he cycled through various vision modes to try and see if there were any remnants left, at the very least a few precious cells of the virus, but there was nothing. Disappointing.

He then turned to the pool of blood that had leaked out of him. That hadn't been absorbed when he'd turned, and right now looked very interesting to Alex. His foot brushed across the pool, tendrils briefly appearing to consume the cells that were present in the blood.

Hm. Well, he was definitely human, that was for sure. Though there was something... off by his genetic makeup. Not abnormal in any way like an unnatural mutation, just... off. Foreign, almost. The closest analogy he could think of was that his DNA tasted differently than any other human DNA he'd ever consumed. Even stranger and stranger.

He turned towards where he had run off. He was out of sight at this point, but finding a teenager in a blue hoodie performing super-human feats wouldn't be that hard. Blackwatch would likely be squawking over their radios about him eventually, and that was if he was careful. He was extremely curious about these turn of events, about what had caused something like this to happen. And as things were now, he couldn't form any conclusion on what it meant.

"Huh." He walked down the same direction he had run, briefly glancing at Ragland's body before shrugging off the sight. "Others with abilities like mine. I wonder..."

Another day. Another cup of coffee. Another botched batch of experimental materials.

Eugene sighed. It wasn't his fault- oh no, how could it be!? With how these Blackwatch muscleheads treated Gentek's subject, he was honestly surprised they lasted long enough to get through one experiment alive, let alone live long enough to start it. His fellow researches around him seemed to be in the same sentiment if their body composure had anything to say about it. It was hard to read faces past the tinted face-visors of the hazmat suits they all wore.

"Experiment E-twenty-seven, failure, subjects thirty through sixty-eight expired, experiment E-thirty-one discontinued... Christ!" Eugene exclaimed. The results he was reading off of this terminal was horrible. He turned to his co-workers wile feverishly pointing at the monitor. "At this point we might was well just start dragging in people from the medical shelters. These subjects are dropping faster than the infected outside."

"Tell me about it," another researcher said. "I mean, goddamn. We're at the front of the most important bio-research in human history here. Those meatheads can't get us subjects that stay alive for more than four hours?"

Eugene couldn't agree more. Gentek was at the front of groundbreaking research due to the samples viral material they managed to gather from the recent outbreak, and that alone was a godsend. That's why he was here! Why they were all here! The research potential in everything this outbreak had offer was revolutionary, but this! He could barely work in these conditions. Admittedly, it could have been worse. One couldn't ask for better research equipment than what Gentek provided, and the labs conveniently being located in a base surrounded and protected by Blackwatch did wonders for all of their nerves. If they actually had good materials it'd be a scientist's heaven.

Still... maybe today would hold some small amount of fortune. "Are the soldiers back yet with the subjects?" Eugene asked.

"Lemme see... uh, yeah." The scientist nodded towards the glass window they stood next to. Eugene looked through it at the room down below, where the subjects were kept. It was really just a room full of cages, to which those were full of the subjects, but space was limited. Besides, they never lasted long anyways.

"Huh. They're all full," Eugene noted.

"I think they loaded them all back up and hour ago," the scientist next to him said. "What do you think?"

"Nothing outstanding." Looked no better than the common riffraff they pulled off the street. Disheveled survivors and homeless, nothing special. "Looks like it'll be business as- oh, what the hell!?"

"Hm?" The scientist's covered head swiveled to look at Eugene. "What?"

"Look at that!" Eugene pointed at one of the cages which, to his complete and utter disbelief, held teenagers. Most of them wounded, what with the missing limbs some had. Four of them in total, all looking exhausted and worn out. "This is what I'm talking about," he grumbled. "We can't even get complete subjects anymore. It's just parts of them now. Might as well be picking trash up from off the street..."

"Yeah, they won't last long," the scientist agreed. "Want to just purge them? Make more room for more able-bodied subjects?"

"Eh..." It was honestly tempting, Eugene would admit that. But not. That'd just be wasteful. "No, hold off on that. Wait..." He glanced over on his monitor. "Subject eighty-eight hasn't seen much testing in the last couple of days, has he?"

"Subject eighty-eight?" the scientist asked. "The big guy?"

"Yes, that one."

"Um, uh, yeah, last test was two days ago. Why?"

"Throw them in with it," Eugene said. "I doubt we can get much more data out of it from throwing more bodies at it. Combat data and behavioral analysis's can only go so far with a mindless beast, but like you said, we need to clear more space for better subjects. Besides, we might learn something before we decide to just kill and dissect it."

"'Might' being the keyword here, Eugene."

Eugene only shrugged. "Hey, you never know." That was why being a scientist was so exciting. The most unexpected things always happened, especially when working on Gentek's payroll.

While running through the streets, Corvin noted two things. One was that all of these street corners looked the same; if not for his heightened vision he'd surely would've gotten lost from how similar things looked, but now he was able to spot minute details at a glance, so getting lost wasn't a problem. Another thing to note was how slow he was going.

Now, in human terms he was running extremely fast, probably faster than an Olympic runner, and not once did he feel fatigue. But compared to the speed he had on his first viral incarnation, it was slow. Unbearably slow. And, try as he might, he couldn't run any faster than that. But it wasn't just movement speed, either: the technique he'd rarely used to glide along the air by propelling an aerosol-type biomass through his limbs didn't work. This had come as a quite a shock when he'd jumped off the roof of a building only to fall straight to the streets. He just couldn't get them to work, not matter how hard he tried. Like his body didn't know what it wanted him to do, like it couldn't do it.

It was mildly concerning. Back when he couldn't punch all the way through that soldiers head, he'd written it off as him being weak due to being halfway through the transformation. But with his decreased in physical prowess and other abilities being missing, he couldn't chalk it up to that anymore, especially when he was full assimilated now. And looking at his own genetic makeup- always was a strange sensation, him just automatically knowing everything there was to know about his body's DNA- it seemed baser than it was last time. Simpler. There were even holes in his genome; segments of DNA missing, others seemingly underdeveloped.

It made sense once he thought about it. Ogre had said that the strain Corvin had just used was a prototype strain of the viral strain his father had modified. The one he'd used on Corvin back then was a different, finished product, whereas the one he had just now used was an older, inferior version. He certainly felt inferior, at least.

He didn't like the feeling. It felt like trying to move in a dream, or like he was trying to run underwater. Moving unnaturally slow even though he knew moving faster was possible. It didn't help the fact that his options for any scenario would now be extremely limited of he didn't have all of his old powers and his body was weaker. He'd have to do an inventory check when he had some time to himself and figure out what abilities he still had and what was missing.

He skid to a halt. That could all wait for later, because he'd finally found the base. "Finally," he thought. An hour of searching for this thing did nothing to ease his nerves.

Overall, not that impressive. What he was looking at right now fit the image in his stolen memories: a small complex completely walled in by large, concrete walls, with each corner of the wall housing a large spotlight that shined lights down on the streets below. There were two gates leading into the complex, and of course each gate was heavily guarded by Blackwatch troopers. The district was relatively clean from what he remembered, by every now and again the soldiers guarding would take potshots at an infected who walked down the streets.

With a scoff, Corvin went to a side of the wall that completely sealed the base from the outside. He didn't need gates to get in. He jumped up with the intents of managing to bound past the top of the wall, but only made it up halfway. With a frustrated growl he dug his fingers into the concrete wall and hoisted himself up the other half, landing on one of the top corners of the wall with the spotlight.

He looked at the spotlight for about two seconds before kicking it, anger flooding through him. It crashed right into the middle of the base, and any soldiers patrolling the are immediately snapped to the ready, their guns already scanning around the area that the spotlight had fallen from. Corvin, who looked down at all of them in contempt, had to shield his eyes with his hand when dozens of lights were shone on his body.

They were all shouting something at him, but he didn't listen to that or the base alarm that started to go off. His only focus was on the building in the middle of the base where, according to the memories, the scientists were. The Gentek ones, and their "subjects". People that they just grabbed off of the streets. His friends were in there.

And then there were these Blackwatch soldiers, who would under no circumstances allow him to take them. Corvin waited for the familiar feeling of his arms shifting to appear, but to his dismay it never came. He brought his arms up to his face, scowling at them. "What, I lost all of those, too?" he thought. At the same moment bullets started to whiz past his body, and a few passed right through him only for the holes to immediately close up. He looked down at the soldiers once more, his eyes twitching in anger. "Fine. I don't need claws to tear these people apart."

He was too furious at what they had done to care about them. And if anything the late lieutenant's memories said were true, most Blackwatch soldiers weren't really deserving of much mercy. He didn't know who they were and they were in his way. It didn't matter what happened to them.

He launched himself downwards at the nearest soldier, who was crushed into the ground by Corvin's foot. His gun, which the soldier had dropped and was still aloft midair, was snatched by Corvin and turned onto the soldiers. Yesterday he didn't even know how to fire one of these things. As it was now he was able to fire it with enough accuracy to kill all of the soldiers between him and the base, all with one hand on the gun. The only straggler left was quickly impaled when Corvin threw the rifle at him.

Wasting no time, Corvin sprinted to the door leading into the base. Pushing the door off its hinges, paying no attention to the electronic locks situated right next to it, he sighted an elevator that lead to the actual labs in this base. He ran in as fast as possible, mashing the button to go to the lower floors. Frustratingly, the elevator refused to budge.

Confusion came across his face briefly, but it soon turned to knowing look of vexation. "Right, the intruder alarms," he muttered to himself out loud. Only now did he register the alarms. "Elevator locks down if anybody trips that. Great."

Undaunted, he crouched down and tore his hand through the thin metal floor, ripping open a hole big enough for him to fall through. He hit the bottom of the shaft with a soft thug, spying the door leading into the labs in front of him. He wasted no time wrenching his fingers in-between the sliding doors and pulling them apart, with white light flooding into the shaft once he did so.

Altogether, it was a fairly small underground complex. Soldiers and scientists both were milling about, and various scientific machines and tables full of research equipment were strewn about everywhere. Everybody there stopped to stare at Corvin, who wasted no time in getting to work. They all went from staring to either screaming or firing their weapons when his hands sunk into the nearest person, only for their body to be broken down and absorbed into Corvin's own body.

He'd almost forgotten what this had been like. He may have been weaker than he was before, but everybody here were just so... soft. fragile. And they couldn't even do anything to him, because the bullets weren't doing anything to weather him. The biomass lost as what he considered pinpricks in his body was minuscule at worst, and was quickly replenished by the bodies he was consuming.

And then the memories hit.

Normally, this shouldn't have been a problem, but it was the content of these memories specifically that affected Corvin. The memories of the scientists he'd gotten his hands on specifically. He could care less about the soldiers he consumed. The scientists, however, deeply disturbed him.

Memories of scientists experimenting on living, breathing humans. Memories of watching captive humans, in some cases children, suffer as these researchers intentionally infected them just to see what would happen. Images of defenseless people being thrown into rooms with infected just to see what would happen while the scientists watched behind plate-glass window, with the only feeling running through them being curiosity and intrigue. Some cases even had excitement. Even more images of countless people with miserable and pained looks on their faces trapped in cages while scientists worked or even talked happily mere feet from them.

"W-what?" Corvin held a hand to his head, clutching it as he staggered. "N-no, that isn't... you couldn't have..." he didn't want to believe it, but the memories were there. They couldn't lie. His head snapped to a door leading into another room, his arm lashing out to destroy it. He stepped through the newly-made entrance, the scientists withing screaming and scrambling away from him as he stared into the room.

He gasped at the sight, his eyes going wide as his mouth hung open. Dissected bodies were littered on examination tables, with multiple bloodstained tools scattered to the floor in the scientists' rush to get away from Corvin. And they all looked so fresh, like they had only died within a day. Some of them were completely average looking. Others looked disheveled, like they had been homeless. The one image that really stuck to Corvin was the sight of a dead girl staring at him from one of the tables, with her entire torso cut and pinned open. She didn't look older than eight.

He stood there frozen in shock for only a few more moments before his hands started to shake in anger. He leaped on one scientist who attempted to flee and struck out at him, with Corvin's fist punching straight through his body and destroying the machines behind him. With his other hand, Corvin smashed through the glass visor on the scientist's suit, his hand grabbing and crushing the scientist's head as he furiously twisted it off. The memories gained from consuming this one only made things even worse.

This one had been around during the First Outbreak. And the atrocities Corvin was seeing in this lab, the utter disregard for human life... it had happened there, too. It's what all the Gentek scientists had done. They weren't treating these outbreaks like tragedies at all! They were... they were treating them like opportunities!

"What is... what is wrong with all of you!?" He screamed. "Why!? Why would any of you do this!? Why!? Why!? WHY!?" It didn't make sense. None of it made any sense. He tore at any living scientist he could find, desperate to find some answer in their heads that could satisfy him. But not matter how many he ripped apart for memories, no matter how many he killed, he couldn't find a satisfying answer. Some thought the virus could be weaponize, so they experimented with it to prove their theories, and already he had an appalling amount of ideas in his head about how it could be used. Others did this for scientific curiosity alone, for the chance to research such a unique phenomenon. Some did it simply because Gentek paid them a six-figure salary, and didn't care about the significance of the outbreaks or the virus that caused it. There were even some Corvin consumed that derived a sense of happiness from this work.

Not a single one had a reason Corvin liked for doing these things. All of them were selfish reasons. There was nothing altruistic or humanitarian about any of this, or anything that would help others here. Nothing but personal gain at the gross expense of others. Those were the only answers he could find from the memories of these scientists.

He flew into a rage, and his hands wrathfully destroyed any working machine he could find. It was all a sick reminder of where he had come from. His father- no! This was even worse! This was more than one person! An entire collective of mad scientists killing an uncountable amount of people for their own gains. It made him feel sick and terrible.

He didn't know how long he had been going, but by the time he was done the lab looked nothing like a lab anymore. There wasn't a single piece of machinery intact and copious amounts of blood were splashed along the walls. It looked less like an enraged person tore through the lab and more like a force of nature walked through. There was only one left alive- another scientist whose leg was pinned under a piece of debris- and he was soon consumed when Corvin's foot went through his spine. It was for was seemed like the thousandth time he stood still in shock as the memories went through his mind.

"Yeah, they won't last long," the scientist agreed. "Want to just purge them? Make more room for more able-bodied subjects?"

"Subject eighty-eight?" the scientist asked. "The big guy?"

"Yes, that one."

"Um, uh, yeah, last test was two days ago. Why?"

"'Might' being the keyword here, Eugene."

Eugene only shrugged. "Hey, you never know."

"My... my friends...!" His fists clenched in anger hard enough to draw blood that was soon drawn back into his body. "You... you...!"

The metal flooring under Corvin dented as he sprinted towards the testing chambers. They'd been treated even worse than any other subject just because they were wounded. Damaged goods. So because of that they wanted to throw them in a room with-!

His face twisted into a furious snarl. He'd never forgive them. Gentek for violating basic human right for their own twisted gains, or Blackwatch for condoning and helping. He would never forgive any of them for what they did, or for what they'd done. Never.

"No matter where I go, it's always the same." He briefly felt crimson tears fly away from his face as he sprinted down the halls of the labs. "No matter what world I'm in, there's always somebody ruining the lives of others. Why? It doesn't... it shouldn't be like this..."

The sight of a large, metal door ahead of him only spurred him forwards. On the other side was the testing chamber- a circular room they kept infected in purely for experimental reasons. There was a glass window near the top for scientists to observe the inside, but Corvin knew nobody would be watching.

He'd already killed everybody here besides whatever was on the other side of that door.

Jay coughed violently as his body was thrown against the ground, blood dripping from his mouth. He couldn't very well move; his body went into painful spasm whenever he tried to move, and he didn't even want to think about how many of his bones were broken. The others weren't doing so hot, either. He couldn't turn his head to look at them, but they likely took as much of a beating as he did. Enough that they must have been unconscious at this point. At least, he hoped that quietness was unconsciousness.

The lumbering footsteps drawing close to him drew his attention. He didn't really know what it was. The close he could come to describing it was a ten-foot tall and human-shaped monster that was really, really fat. And had hands made out of rocks. Or something rock-like. Also apparently very, very stupid considering the four of them running around had kept them intact for awhile when those people in the hazmat suits had thrown them in here with this thing.

It's square jaw let out a bestial, rumbling roar as it's stubby legs carried it closer to Jay, who only could sigh in resign at the beady red eyes staring down at him. There was no way he could get away from this thing, not in the shape his body was in. He was done for. The worst part was he wasn't even going to die in a cool way. No, he was just going to die in a cage with a monster. With most of his bones broken.

"Well," he thought, "at least I get to feel what Corvin felt before he died. Guess I'll be seein' him soon." The only other thing he could see out of his peripheral view was Washi, whose unmoving body laid several feet from him. "Sorry, guys. I couldn't do much in the end."

But just when it seemed like death was a few mere feet away, there was a terrible noise at the back of the cage where the door was. The large, fat monster turned its head to the noise, and Jay was able to roll his eyes to see that the metal door leading into the cage was folding in on itself. Then the door gave way completely when, to Jay's shock, a human-shaped figure ripped out the door with their bare hands and tossed it behind them. When they walked into the cage Jay grew even more shocked, as the very first thing he recognized was that the clothing the figure had on. Specifically, a familiar dark-blue hoodie stained with black hair-dye on the back.

"C-Corvin...?"

There weren't words to describe the mind-numbing anger Corvin experienced when he saw what was in that room. The only thing standing up in the room was a large, gray-skinned humanoid that stared at him dumbly with its gaping jaw that shined a red light from its throat. And on the ground were four bloodied figures that weren't moving at all, except for one that was staring at him.

Those four were the friends he had been looking for.

His body flew at the monster, his fist cocked back as he grew nearer. It was only when he was close enough did he leap up, his fist cracking against the monster's skull as it continued to stare at him in a dull manner.

It did practically nothing other than cause Corvin to stare comically at the monsters unharmed face. There wasn't even a scratch on its oversized jaw.

Then, with one of it's thickened and hard black arms, it punched Corvin with enough force to make him bounce against the floor two times and crash against the wall. He pulled himself out and fell to his knees, staring up at the monster as it fully faced him and let out a low-pitched roar at him.

"Okay. It's really tough." He staggered to his feet as the monster waddled its way towards him. "I hit it in the softest-looking part and it did nothing. Hrn..." Not at all ideal, but he wasn't one to be deterred by one bad hit, especially when this thing was the only one standing between Corvin and his friends. So he rushed towards the monster again, and struck as hard as he could against one of its massive arms.

This was a large mistake, as Corvin felt all the bones in his arm shatter due to the amount of resistance he felt when he punched the arm, which didn't give way in the slightest. The monster emitted a guttural roar and slammed one of its fists down, which Corvin made sure to avoid. Even that wasn't enough, as it struck the ground with enough force that he was tossed back by the shockwave it created.

He rose to his feet once more, his wounds already healed as he attacked it once more. He made sure to avoid its gargantuan fists as much as possible, but it was of little use when he was doing absolutely no damage against the thing. In a feat of desperation he dug into the memories of the scientists he'd consumed to try and glean some hint at what he was fighting.

The monster, subject eighty-eight as they called it, was apparently little more than a victim of the virus that ravaged all of Manhattan. That it was capable of something like this was surprising to Corvin, but now wasn't the time to think on that. The man-turned-monster was captured and held here for tests to be run on it. Evidently, the soldiers who captured it had a rough time doing so. Conventional weaponry did nothing to hurt the thing, so they had to bring in tanks just to subdue it. It had taken so much damage that some of the soldiers had jokingly called it a Juggernaut.

Based on the situation Corvin was currently in, that name wasn't too far off the mark.

He let out a grunt of surprise when his head was snapped back by its fist, causing his body to slide back as blood streamed out from his mouth and nose. He planted his feet down to stop himself, his head rising back to meet the thing in the eyes. "I can't hurt it," he thought, raising a fist in front of his view. "At least, not in this state. Just punching and kicking it isn't going to work, but that's all I got. There's nothing here I can use, either. So what?" He tilted his head at his own fist. "It's not invincible, just resilient. If a tank can bring it down, I just have to hit it harder than a high-ordinance shell." He hummed in realization. "Terrible idea, but I lost all my other tricks. Hope it works."

Jay was absolutely speechless at what he was seeing. He never once imagined in his life he would see Corvin, who he always pegged as a harmless and cold geek, fight a giant monster. Nor did he ever imagine what Corvin looked like when he actually had all of his body parts.

He was pretty sure he was hallucinating. Yep, that would explain it. Maybe he'd hit his head at some point and he was growing delirious from the blood flooding into his head or something. He couldn't find any other explanation for what he was seeing, and the fact he was losing feeling in his body gave credence to this theory. He still kept watching, though, too enraptured by the fight and the inhuman feats of strength to look away.

Corvin appeared in front of the monster once more, and this time he unleashed a flurry of blows against the monster, who retaliated by meeting Corvin's fists with its own. At least it looked impressive, because they both were going so fast that Jay couldn't see their arms, just blurs. Unfortunately, it wasn't working out for Corvin at all. Spurts of blood and bone kept flying from his arms, followed by actual, full arms. Amazingly- at this point Jay was sure he was imagining things- the arms only grew back and Corvin only kept up his assault, but why this Jay had no idea seeing as it wasn't hurting the monster in the slightest.

It seemed the monster had grown tired of this, and punched straight down towards Corvin. He dodged just in time for it to lodge its fist in the ground, causing it to grunt in confusion as it tried to pull it out. Than Corvin jumped back in and grabbed the arm with both of his hands.

As expected, this thing was heavy. Not that surprising seeing as how thick its skin and muscle was, but still, he had enough strength to rip that door down earlier. Bolstering his limbs with extra biomass he jumped up towards the roof of the room, dragging the monster up with him by the arm he had grasped. Wasting not time he turned around in the air, grunting as he threw down the monster as hard as he could against the ground.

It hit the floor with a mighty crash, tossing up anything around it- including the blood and discarded arms Corvin had lost earlier. When Corvin hit the ground he extended his right arm, and tendrils extended from his arm to wrap around the other arms tossed in the air. They were absorbed into the tendrils shortly thereafter, but he didn't recede the freshly converted biomass immediately.

Curious thing about consuming biomass: the cells that moved to assimilate any flesh he ate moved extremely rapidly. This created an enormous amount of friction, which created heat. Not enough to ever hurt him, or even enough for him to feel or notice it, but it was there regardless. So with this in mind, he mentally ordered all of the cells and biomass in those tendrils to move very, very fast. Fast enough that steam began to seep out of the tendrils as they began to glow with heat.

Satisfied, he receded the tendrils into his right arm, keeping the heat up while also pumping as much biomass as he could into the arm. Soon the liquids in his arm began to evaporate, and his arm began to expand with both biomass and steam. He stood like that for several second, with his arm only growing bigger as the Juggernaut rose to its feet. Fortunately it was so big that this took some time for it to do. Enough time that when it fully raised to its feet Corvin had all the time he needed.

He shot forwards, loaded arm outstretched. It impacted the Juggernaut's chest, and the second he made contact Corvin pushed everything in his arm out of a single point in his palm. Two things happened as a result of this: one was that his entire arm exploded with the raw power running through it. The other was that a high-pressure stream of steam and biomass was launched from the destroyed arm.

The Juggernaut groaned against the stream of pressure pressure against its chest. Soon even it gave out, and the stream of pressure burst straight through its chest and out its backside. It went even further, punching a hole through the roof of the cage. Seconds later the stream dissipated, the Juggernaut groaning softly as it wobbled on its feet. Probably dizzy due to the giant hole through its chest.

Corvin reached his remaining hand into the hole, tendrils extending to consume the flesh. The Juggernaut pushed him away seconds later, but a second was all he needed. Tendrils swarmed around his arm as the new DNA was analyzed and absorbed. Soon his own fist grew to monstrous proportions, a black and extremely hard chitinous and rock-like substance covering his whole arm. He swung the massive fist at the Juggernaut's legs, causing the knees to give out. It crashed to the ground with a pained wail, arms flailing uselessly as it tried to strike Corvin.

He stepped over its head while his arm regenerated and shifted to resemble his transformed arm. Its glowing red eyes stared up into Corvin's blue ones with a feral rage, while he just calmly looked down on it. Without a second'd hesitation he cupped his fists together and brought them down on the thing's head with a yell. Its head was crushed instantly, and its arms twitched feebly before they settled upon its death.

Breathing heavily, Corvin stepped away from its body. He was glad he had consumed all of those soldiers and scientists, as he'd needed to use almost all of his gathered biomass just to kill this one thing. He glanced down at his hands and flexed the bulky fingers, finding it difficult to move them due to their thickness. Curiously, he remembered this form. It was one of the old weapons he'd had the first time.

"Huh," he thought. "Never really used these much. Though... why did that thing have them?" He felt grateful at reacquiring one of his lost powers, but he couldn't help but question why this of all things had the DNA necessary to give him that.

He heard a groan behind him. Panic shot through Corvin as these thoughts abandoned him, and the only concern he had left was for his friends. He turned around and spotted Jay, red blood contrasting against his bright-blue clothing. Shouting his name Corvin ran to Jay, worry clear on his face as he looked him over.

Jay coughed, looking up at Corvin but not moving from the ground. Corvin's heart wrenched when he saw that some of Jay's limbs were twisted the wrong way. "Jay..." he whispered.

"Hey Corvin," he groaned. "The others... they're okay, right?"

Corvin looked past Jay, spotting the others. They weren't in any better shape than Jay was, but he could see they were alive. Dying, but alive. "They're not dead," he said.

Despite everything that happened, Jay managed to smile at that. "That's great," he mumbled. "So, uh... welcome back, I guess."

"Jay, stop talking." Corvin crouched down closer to Jay's level. "I-I'm gonna fix this, okay? You're gonna be fine, so just- just stop talking."

"Corvin..." Corvin's panic grew only more when Jay's eyes closed. "Man, you were pretty cool back there..." It was then he passed out, either from blood loss or shock. Either scenario was bad for Corvin.

He tried to spread his tendrils to Jay's body to heal his wounds, but to his shock they wouldn't do anything. Couldn't heal his wounds no matter how much he tried to will them. "I-I lost that, too!?" he hissed, wrenching the tendrils back into himself.

What was he supposed to do? He couldn't heal them, and there was nothing around that could help them. They would die of their wounds any minute now if he didn't do something, but what was he supposed to do!?

"Wow. You really made a mess of this place." Corvin froze. That was an... unfamiliar voice. A voice that shouldn't have been there because the last he checked he had killed everybody else in the base. He turned on his feet at the voice, raising his hardened fists in defense.

At the entrance of the cage was, by appearance, an ordinary-looking man whose only identifying qualities was a leather jacket and a hood covering his head. He walked slowly to the middle of the room, his gait calm and his arms swinging freely as he looked around. He took a few second to stare at the Juggernaut's corpse, whistling.

There was something wrong with him, that much Corvin could see. He must have seen everything Corvin had done to get here, but his walk was so... nonchalant. Almost like he didn't care about the carnage Corvin had just sown to get here. And here he was with arms made into large bludgeoning weapons, but he didn't seem to react in the slightest when he looked up at Corvin. He was taken back when he saw his face, or at least what was visible. The upper half was obscured by the shadow of his hood, except for the pale-blue eyes staring into his in a terrifying sense of curiosity. Terrifying because he just seemed so confidant despite what he was looking at.

"You must really hate Gentek if you're willing to go this far," the man mused. "So. What're you going to do now?"

Corvin leaped at the man in an instant. There was something very, very wrong with him, something that cast an air of danger around him. Corvin couldn't describe it, but he didn't like it. He didn't want anything dangerous near his friends. He outstretched one of his fists, the sheer weight alone carrying him towards the man with speeds that would be enough to crush a tank.

The man only shook his head and raised a clenched fist with a smirk. Then, to Corvin's extreme disbelief, the man extended a single pinky finger in Corvin's path. That wasn't the unbelievable part. That came when Corvin's entire body was stopped when his fist collided with the pinky, the man not moving an inch while the ground below them shook. Corvin barely had any time to register this before the man curled the pinky finger back, held it with his thumb, and released the finger to flick Corvin's fist.

The entire arm was obliterated. Instantly. That one single flick had been enough to destroy the same arm that had killed the Juggernaut, which hadn't even been scratched by Corvin's normal attacks. A spray of blood flew from his mouth as his body went sailing towards the back of the room, but he never impacted against the wall. He gagged when he felt a hand clench around his fist and hold him aloft in the air, his body growing slack from the whiplash. The fact the man managed to catch him at all came as a great surprise to Corvin, because he hadn't even seen the man move.

The man sighed and rolled his neck, looking up at Corvin as he struggled in his grasp. "Well, with that out of the way," he said, and then tossed Corvin to the ground, "I guess we should introduce ourselves. My name is Alex Mercer."

A/N- Gentek is what I would call "comically evil". In my defense you actually do see straight up kidnapped people in cages when inside of labs in the second Prototype game, so I'm not really embellishing the cannon much in that regard.