Episode 1: Incubation
Bored out of their minds, the three boys had taken to skulking through the trash-littered streets in search of some action. Most people on street in the Docks weren't worth bothering, since they never carried anything valuable on them. Out here, they were all just whores, drunks or homeless idiots. Not worth the effort.
The oldest of the three was "CC" Bota, twenty years old and the most familiar with the area. He pulled his hoodie up higher and took a good, long look around, wondering where to take his pals next.
That was when he heard the sound of trash bins falling over, coming from one of the alleyways.
Johnnie looked at him, a grin on his pale face. "Hear that? Wanna take a look?"
CC snorted. He'd been running with the Azn Bad Boys for a couple of years now. He'd seen his fair share of action. Once you got into a shootout with a rival gang over drugs, other things just couldn't compare anymore. What was mobbing some random junkie in a back alley, compared to that?
But Johnnie was a new recruit. Young and impulsive, he was always eager to cause some trouble to prove himself. Beating up some random junkie in a back alley was perfectly fine in his book.
"Dunno," Danh, Johnnie's buddy, replied. Serious guy, didn't say a lot. "Our quota's looking bad. Could be worth a look."
Rolling his eyes, CC decided to humour the two. "Fine. You go first."
The streets were unlit, so he couldn't exactly make out a lot of details, but the three ABB members managed to pin down the noise's direction. They walked into one of the alleyways between two apartment complexes. A stinking, dark passage where even the junkies wouldn't want to hang around.
"What the fuck!" Johnnie suddenly cried. "The fuck's that?"
He pointed at one of the fallen trash bins. It didn't take long for CC to notice what got the kid so spooked. There was something strewn out at next to the bin. It was black, even in the darkness of the alley. Black and streaked with veins of red.
Danh grunted. "Is that a man?"
The black mass was slowly pulsating, shifting back and forth. CC inched closer, slowly reaching for the Glock in the back of his pants. That mass looked disturbingly like a human skeleton. A sucking, popping skeleton made from some sort of…black goo.
But it wasn't a man. The details were off. No organs, no skin, no anything. It lay there, convulsing, as if in pain.
In agony.
"I would not do that…" CC quietly said as Johnnie approached the black –
Did that thing just grow red lines over its "torso"?
"Think a cape fucked someone up here…" Johnnie said as he brazenly knelt next to the mass. He reached into his pocket, dug around and pulled out a switchblade.
A large, red patch suddenly opened. The instant before it was stitched shut with blackness however, CC could have sworn that he saw what looked like a tongue.
And then Johnnie began prodding the shape. "Looks burned, no? Think Lung got him?"
That was when the thing suddenly burst into movement. An elongated limb with long, tapered finger suddenly seized the kid by his throat. He screamed, the black thing shrieked and blood splattered across the ground as Johnnie's entire neck and throat collapsed between those frail-looking fingers, blood and chunks of meat dripping past the blackness and pouring unto the ground.
Then, black tendrils erupted from the emaciated frame, stabbing into Johnnie's body. The skin around his wounds grew black, and Johnnie…
Totally paralyzed, CC watched as Johnnie's body broke apart, shrinking in size and disappearing into the black monster's body, tugged in by a mass of black tendrils.
Black ripples ran along the abomination's frame. For an instance, it looked like pieces of Johnnie's clothes appeared over his body, but they were quickly pulled back into the black mass again.
Horrified, CC pulled out his Glock and began firing at the shape. Danh turned around and for it.
Unfazed by the bullets, the black shape advanced upon CC now. He felt cold, barbed fingers wrap around his face.
CC screamed.
~0~
Heat. His world had been consumed by heat. His body had burned in a flash of the brightest light he had ever seen.
But now, he was cold. Cold, and in incredible pain. He couldn't see, couldn't hear. He could only lie there, heaving and convulsing, every inch of his body coiling and thrashing. He felt aware of something touching his body – something hot and alive – and his body instinctively reacted.
He felt warm flesh tear between his fingers. Blood sipped onto his body as he consumed every inch of the body, pulling into himself. A split-second later, a tidal wave of information assaulted his mind.
Johnnie Singh. Came to the United States ten years ago. Mother was dead, father pushed drugs at night. Joined the ABB for protection at first. After that, grew more and more immersed with the gang's activities. He began to like the attention and respect he got.
Alex was desperate to repair whatever was wrong with his body, but even as he added the biomass to his own, he realized that it didn't work. He was still cold, but his body felt like it was burning up. He felt nauseous to his core.
Something was definitely wrong.
Several objects slammed into his body with incredible velocity, tearing through his biomass and disrupting his attempts to repair himself.
Alex almost snarled as he blindly retaliated. His bladed fingers found hot, living flesh and he unleashed a mass of tentacles that speared his assailant. They snapped his neck, tore his throat, crushed his heart. Then, his tentacles began devouring the man, breaking down his entire body. He felt the sickening snaps and crunches through his tendrils for several seconds, before everything was still again.
Chuan Chen Bota. Born in the United States. Parents were killed by capes. Personally recruited by Lung.
Alex was snarling now, a whirl of conflicting memories battering his mind. His biomass lurched dangerously and he dropped to all fours again, retching. It was like his insides were on fire. Even as his consciousness reeled with foreign memories and echoes, his body began to shudder, and he curled up into a foetus position.
What the fuck was happening to him? He couldn't move anymore and it wasn't fucking going away!
The pain grew worse. It was as if his head was splitting open. He clutched his temples so hard that he could have crushed his skull, had his body had any semblance of strength left.
He had no idea how long he lay there. In time, as he attempted to regenerate himself to his normal form, he became aware of his surroundings. Sound came back to him in roaring echoes as his hearing came back to him. Vivid images of a dark, filthy alley assaulted his brain when his eyes grew back.
Alex had barely gotten his bearings when he heard shouts and…and more gunfire. A series of rapid thuds nearing his location.
It had to be Blackwatch. How had they found him so fast? How…how much time passed since the nuke went off?
Dana! Where was Dana?
If he had a heart, it would have leapt to his throat. His sister was all alone and he couldn't defend her.
Alex struggled to fight through the pain, slowly climbing to all fours. He shifted the biomass he just consumed, using them to imitate his clothes. If he could just get some distance, assume someone else's form…
His biomass churned within him, spiralling around…around something bad. The fuck? Something inside of him was doing this?
He didn't have long to swell on that realization. He heard a voice – or was that just inside of his head? It didn't matter, he had to move.
Alex managed to climb back to all fours. He braced himself against a nearby wall, clutching his sides. Movement blurred at the far end of the alley. He glanced over in that direction, saw half a dozen guys barge in. All of them Asian-looking. Armed with things like clubs, machetes, guns and a freaking ninja sword.
Definitely not Blackwatch.
"That's him!" Cried one of them, jabbing a finger in his direction. "That's the fuck!"
Alex all but snarled as he forced himself upright. "…get away," he growled, struggling to contain the sharpened tendrils that rippled underneath his skin. He wasn't sure if he could reform himself if he released them right now.
One of the assholes, holding a shotgun, lazily stepped towards him. "What you say? You not know who you dealing with?"
His biomass bubbled around his skin, warping his clothes with black spirals and tendrils. "I said…"
Rage fuelled his body, lifting the nausea and the pain. He could move.
"Get the fuck away from me!" Alex roared.
Gunfire erupted from the assembled gangbangers. He felt shotgun pellets and pistol rounds slam into his body, and he dashed forwards. He closed the distance to the closest gunman in three steps, grabbing his shotgun and tearing it away. One swing of his left arm shattered the man's skull, sending bone, brain and hair splashing across the floor.
A second thug tried to manoeuvre around his stricken buddy, fumbling with a pistol. Alex slammed his fist into the thug's chest, easily tearing through his chest cavity and spine. Several tendrils erupted from Alex' back and skewered the man as he began screaming. The screams didn't last long, as the tendrils crunched and sliced the man's biomass into Alex' own.
A surge of memories and thoughts assaulted his mind once again, but he ignored them in favour of the four remaining assholes still trying to kill him.
Alex lashed out with his leg, kicking one of the thugs hard enough to turn him into a red smear against the wall. Shattered bricks and detached limbs slumped to the ground.
Now they tried to run too, but he wouldn't let them. One, he grabbed from behind and broke his neck like a matchstick. Another he picked up and slammed face-first into the ground, pulping his face shattering his skull.
The last two died equally as messily, but making a lot more noise. Alex had barely broken the two assholes before his body crashed again, and he fell to the ground, groaning in pain as his biomass began throbbing like crazy. It felt like he had just consumed a canister of napalm instead of some nobodies in a stinking alleyway.
He now stood in some sort of open space in-between the buildings. There were a couple of light sources around him. Burning dumpsters, the flame of a lighter…
Alex made out several people staring at him from the other hallways, but his vision was too blurry for him to make out any details. That had happened before, but his vision didn't return to him this time.
Panic kindled as he realized that consuming several humans had done nothing to heal him. He wasn't getting better, and now he was in the middle of fuck-knows where, having just alerted the entire neighbourhood that Zeus was in their midst.
Was it that parasite again? Did it somehow regrow? Or had the Supreme Hunter somehow managed to poison him in one last attempt to spite him?
Shit, how long would it be before Blackwatch found him? Hell, he could barely kill six normal humans without falling apart. A couple of trained soldiers would be more than enough to bring him in right now.
Alex groaned, trying to control his sick body. Rolling waves of pain washed over him, but even that could not drown out the terrible nausea. His biomass was busy forcing something out, but the tissue around it kept getting sick, spreading the pain and nausea throughout the rest of his body. He couldn't force the bad tissues out fast enough.
He lingered near the edge of consciousness, darkness lingering in his vision. Eventually, he was shaken awake by the sound of voices.
Alex gritted his teeth and tried to scrape himself off the floor. How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? It was still night, so he had no way of telling.
But one thing he did know. There were more people coming for him. Two sets of footsteps, rapidly approaching. He struggled to get back to his feet, clenching his fists.
Fine. He'd give them the same he gave the others -
"Relax," a woman said. "We're not going to hurt you."
Fuck, that's close.
Alex had been so busy trying not to lose consciousness that he barely noticed them until they were right on top of him. He shakily rose to his feet, then straightened as much as he dared. He glared at the duo that approached him.
They didn't look like those Asian fuckers. One of them was a tanned woman with shoulder-length hair, the other a man entirely clad in dark-blue body armour. The woman wore a sash and scarf around her waist, patterned after the American flag of all things. She also wore form-fitting army fatigues, much to Alex' distress.
He tensed up as he realized that the man in armour could well be a Blackwatch operative, with the woman a Marine consultant or something. Neither of them wore gasmasks, but that didn't mean shit with Blackwatch.
"Get the fuck away from me!" Alex growled. No government would care about some thugs disappearing, but two armed soldiers was a completely different story. If he didn't kill these guys, there would certainly be more. He didn't need the heat – couldn't get rid of it right now. A low profile was what he needed.
Even then, there was still a nagging suspicion in the back of his mind that kept him from simply tearing these two apart. Blackwatch had a policy of shoot first, shoot some more second, perform an autopsy third.
So why hadn't they tried to put him down already?
The Marine and man in armour halted when he yelled at them. The woman slowly raised her gun in the air, as if showing him that she wasn't going to use it.
Then, the gun turned into a swirl of green and black energy, which then disappeared into one of her pockets.
The fuck-?
Alex took a step back when he saw that, stupefied. Even Blackwatch didn't have weapons that fucking teleported. "The hell?"
"Stand down," the man brusquely ordered. "We will not attack unless you force our hand."
He didn't seem to carry any firearms with him, but he did hold a halberd in his right hand. A halberd that looked a bit too advanced for Alex' liking.
"Who are you?" Alex demanded, raising his hands to defend himself should the need arise. These guys sounded a lot more sensible than the assholes he just took care of, but if there was one lesson to be learned from Manhattan, it was that looks could be deceiving.
"Armsmaster," the halberd-wielder said in a somewhat irritated tone.
A stark contrast to the tanned woman, who calmly said, "I am Miss Militia. We are local heroes working for the Protectorate."
Heroes? Protectorate?
Blackwatch would never use such stupid names. Whoever they were, whatever this Protectorate was, they weren't an immediate threat to him.
Yet.
"You should have known this if you were from around here," the man calling himself Armsmaster continued. "Identify yourself."
Alex took an instant disliking to the man. "Go fuck yourself," he growled. His vision wavered for a moment as another wave of dizziness and nausea overcame him. He wanted nothing more than to leave, preferably without having to worry about witnesses, but he couldn't. Not yet. The knowledge he gleamed from those thugs was blurry at best, and nonsensical at worst. Useless.
As much as he hated it, he had to do a little improvising. And that meant interacting with people without ripping them limb from limb. "Where am I?" He asked. "How long has it been since the infection?"
The two "heroes" exchanged glances.
"He seems pretty out of it," the woman quietly said.
"He seems like a nutjob," Armsmaster not-so-quietly replied. "We're taking him in."
Alex narrowed his eyes. He would like to see him try.
"Not yet," the woman – Miss Militia – retorted. "You are currently in the Docks, in Brockton Bay," she then told Alex. "There was an armed conflict between the Azn Bad Boys gang and an unknown cape. We are going to make sure you are unhurt, then ask you a couple of questions."
Brockton Bay…what the fuck was that? No, that couldn't be right. He was still in New York, he had to be!
And yet…as far as he understood it, that stuff about the "Azn Bad Boys" coincided with what he managed to learn from those idiots back there.
Alex felt the rising desire to just grab one of the two and consume them. Suppressing that desire was easy enough; the shit they just told him took priority. "Brockton Bay…I don't…I…"
"South of Boston, United States," Miss Militia dryly commented. "Do you have a name? Are you hurt anywhere? This infection you mentioned, where was that?"
"No names," Alex muttered. Boston? How the flying fuck did he end up in Boston?
Hell if it mattered. He felt like absolute shit. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to let someone look at him. Even if they meant to take him in somewhere, it had to be better than dying from some fucking parasitic disease in a shit-stained alley.
But then he saw Miss Militia's gaze glide over the bloodstains and the shattered concrete around him. Her expression didn't change at all, like she was used to seeing sights like these. She looked at Armsmaster, who nodded once and began approaching Alex.
"We have medics on the way. Your biometrics are all over the place. Do not resist," he proclaimed.
Biometrics? Fuck me.
That left Alex feeling unsure. He glanced around, trying to shift the tissues around his eyes into his thermal vision to spot these so-called medics.
It didn't work. He couldn't fucking switch to thermal vision.
Growing seriously annoyed now, Alex backed away from the two heroes. Then, he spotted movement from the corner of his eye.
White-clad soldiers stood in the alleyways surrounding them. They were armed, holding their weapons at low-ready. Weapons with large-nozzles.
Flamethrowers.
His instincts kicked in now. Miss Militia approached him now as well, talking about "necessary precautions" and "inconveniences" but Alex didn't listen. He tried changing his fingers to claws, but the biomass in his hands churned and shuddered. His fingers lengthened, but that was it.
Not just his thermal vision. His entire body was messed up. He couldn't shift!
"Just a routine procedure," Armsmaster said, approaching Alex with a pair of futuristic-looking handcuffs. "Do not resist – "
Alex didn't think so. He took a step towards the man and grabbed him by his throat, easily lifting him up in the air with one hand.
Armsmaster's response was immediate. He lashed out with his halberd, its head glowing with a vague hue of electricity. The blade struck Alex in his left thigh, slicing into his biomass.
Alex stiffened as electricity coursed through his body. Fuck, he hated electricity. Growling, he flung Armsmaster away. The man slammed into the ground, eight meters away. He was on his feet a second later, the head of his halberd reconfiguring into a ball attached to a chain.
That was some damn resilient armour.
And Miss Militia moved the instant Alex did, the swirling mass of energy turning into an assault rifle. The first burst of fire struck him dead-centre in his chest, but Alex barely noticed them. Was she using non-lethal ammunition, even now?
It didn't matter. He pounced on her, pulling her rifle out of her hands before grabbing a fistful of her uniform and dragging her up in the air. The fallen rifle dissolved into green-black energy. It lunged and arced around her, before materializing in her hands, now in the shape of a massive taser.
Another point in favour of the non-Blackwatch theory. Also, fucking hell.
Miss Militia was quick to fire the damned thing. Alex felt his body spasm as electricity coursed through him for a second time in way too short a window. Meanwhile, the white-clad soldiers rushed to their aid, their weapons at the ready.
Alex' mind was racing. He could have taken them, easily. Even if he couldn't shapeshift, his strength and durability were still there. He could kill and consume them all and nobody would be any the wiser.
Murder as the first solution. It was what Blackwatch would have done.
It was what the original Alex Mercer would have done.
After everything that happened – after all the people who died during the outbreak – he didn't want to start it all over again. Not when these people clearly had no idea what happened in Manhattan. Definitely not when they posed such a low threat to him.
Alex tossed Miss Militia aside and broke into a flat sprint. The apartment complex was about ten stories tall, proving him with both an excellent vantage point and means to escape.
He sprinted towards the building, gathering tendrils of biomass around his feet. He leapt against the wall, digging his hands into concrete. Black spirals whirled around his hands, anchoring them deeper into the building.
Alex smirked. At least something still worked.
Keeping one hand connected to the side of the building, he began scaling it. The black tissue that composed his legs was powerful enough for him to pick up momentum in no time at all. Within seconds, he was sprinting up the building.
Alex braced himself for Miss Militia's gunfire, but surprisingly enough, she didn't even try to shoot him off. His path was linear enough. Hell, her weapon was batshit enough.
He pushed those concerns from his mind once he reached the top of the apartment complex. He climbed over the edge and approached the other end of the roof. There, he found himself overlooking the city.
"Brockton Bay…" Alex reiterated as he took in the sights of the city's night life. True to the Docks' name, he could see the ocean in the distance. He instinctively recoiled upon seeing the massive, oily body of water. "What the hell…"
This wasn't Manhattan. There was no Blackwatch here. Only this…Protectorate and the "heroes" they employed.
Electrified melee weapons weren't exactly ground-breaking, but Miss Militia's weapon was a whole different story. It was almost like her gun had been infected with the Blacklight virus.
That made no sense, of course, but it was the closest thing Alex could think of.
Blacklight…
Alex looked down at his hands. His fingers were still black and elongated. Elizabeth Greene…the Supreme Hunter…Randall and Taggart…they were all dead. The largest source of the infection was taken care of. Maybe the US Marines had a fighting chance now. Maybe Dana could get out.
Maybe…
Alex sighed. He had torn a bloody path through Manhattan to find the truth. And now he knew. He wished to hell he could just forget it. He was to blame to everything that happened to the city…whoever Alex Mercer had been, he was still an integral part of who he now was. Something more than human. But also something less than human.
Alex was about to leap for the next building when he heard the subtle "twang" of ropes tightening, followed by the sound of metal striking stone. He glanced over his shoulder, only to see Armsmaster almost flying up the roof. His halberd jerked as he landed, the grappling book retreating back into the end of his weapon.
Mercer was reminded of a Hunter, chasing him up a skyscraper as he evaded their pack.
Armsmaster raised the blade of his halberd. His V-shaped visor concealed the upper half of his face, but Alex was pretty sure the man was pissed.
The moment he got into the right position, the blade of his halberd broke into several pieces, reconfiguring itself. He fired his grappling hook at Alex, who didn't bother to avoid it.
Might as well see how tough this guy really is.
The tines of the grappling hook slammed into his stomach like a solid brick. Any normal human would have crumpled under the blow.
Alex barely felt it register. He smirked.
My turn.
He charged at the self-proclaimed hero, but Armsmaster rolled out of the way and sliced at him with his Halberd.
Alex wasn't too worried. After all, his biomass could handle the claws of a Hunter, which were sharp enough to slice through a Main Battle Tank with ease.
He was surprised, then, when the Halberd passed clean through his chest, leaving him with a large open wound.
A little smirk appeared below Armsmaster's mask, but that quickly changed when the gaping wound on Alex' chest closed up again.
"A regenerator, then," the hero growled.
Alex didn't bother responding. Instead, he pulled his foot up and brought his heel down, hard. The tiles underneath his feet shattered under the impact and the building wobbled dangerously. Armsmaster struggled to stay on his feet. There was a brief window of opportunity, a split-second of weakness, but it was all Alex needed.
He closed the distance in a heartbeat, wrapping his arms around Armsmaster's waist and throwing him over his hips to the floor with enough force to shatter every bone in his body.
That armour of his likely absorbed the worst of it. Alex wasn't going to take half measures; he knetl down next to the man before he could climb back to his feet and slammed his head against the ground, hard.
Not "turning his skull into a piece of art" hard, but hard enough to ensure the man wouldn't be getting up the coming hours again.
Whoever this Protectorate was, they had access to some pretty crazy tech. Shapeshifting weapons, telescoping biomass-rending halberds…it almost lent some credit to their "local hero" claims.
Alex sat down again. His already-heaving biomass gave nasty lurch, turning inwards again. The badness within him was slowly pushed towards the surface of his stomach, forming a noticeable bulge.
Streams of biomass flowed towards the feverish lump of pulsating matter. Alex felt like hurling, and the lump lurched again. His body was positively writhing right now, turning his entire midsection into a whirring blur.
A tentacle slowly protruded from that mass, shoving a fist-sized chunk of flesh out of his body. It felt surprisingly hot.
Alex detached the chunk of biomass from his body and instinctively stepped away from it. Just like that, the dizziness and overwhelming nausea was gone. He looked at the piece of flesh with disgust.
The scientists he consumed filled in the confused blank left behind within his thoughts.
Radiation. The thermonuclear detonation blasted your body with an enormous dosage of radiation.
His biomass knitted itself together over the hole left in his chest. Slowly, his body reformed itself again. Without complications, this time.
Complications aplenty. Radiation degrades the DNA of any stricken organism. Mutations –
Yeah, yeah, whatever…
Alex knew that the voices in his head were more like echoes than actual brain activity. Knowledge and memories fabricated by his mind in an attempt to make sense of the vast storage of information swimming around his skull.
He carried around the last impressions of hundreds of personalities. He had consumed all of their hopes. All of their dreams. All of their nightmares.
And now, he was all alone.
He looked down at the unconscious Armsmaster again. An organization that could make such a bullshit halberd would definitely know about what happened in Manhattan. Even if Blackwatch someone managed to continue its communications blackout, this Protectorate seemed advanced enough to know at least something.
Alex certainly hoped so. He just needed to think of a way to…persuade them to share that intel.
~0~
Author's Note: Oh dear, a Worm fanfiction, what am I getting myself into?
I know, I know. A couple of ground rules to establish that, before the show really gets on the road.
1: As always, I welcome all forms of feedback and criticism on my work. If I say/write something demonstrably incorrect, I will revise it. English isn't my first language, so there's bound to be some grammatical mistakes, or weirdly-constructed sentences.
2: This is a character-driven story. There will be no character bashing or, blatant out-of-character moments.
I'll properly think of Rule number 3 in due time.
