Prototype: Unnatural Lifetime
Chapter 1: Time for Thinking
At the bottom of the Atlantic, The Viral Entity Known by many names, BLACKLIGHT, ZEUS, but mostly by it's formally human name Alex Mercer, sat dormant, inside a thick, steel box, well, as dormant as something that needs no sleep can be, it still had thought, and a few thoughts had been turning about in its mind...
Being the only Virus in the world capable of making decisions and sentient thought, it spent it's time wondering on it's existence and purpose. Not having much better to do, and it welcomed the, admittedly overlong, break from being shot at, or screamed at, or being manipulated, most of all, it was happy not to be nuked again.
It came to the conclusion, after several years (it assumed, the Box unhelpfully had no clock), that it was not a virus at all. In fact, it was rather offended at the insinuation that it was.
You see, it had thought for many years, that viruses do not act the way it had acted, it did not affect living things the way viruses do. Viruses spread and kill the host body, using the body as a vector to spread itself to other bodies and then kill them too, all in the name of it's own continuation, well, as far as a virus can do anything in the name of anything, as most viruses lack the coherant thought to make moral choices on whether or not to kill people or not.
As far as it could see, it did not do anything bad per se to the people it "infected" in comparison to the other history of viruses, and it knew this very well, seeing as it had alot of scientists minds to back up the data. Viruses do not give people superpowers, heal even wounds from a nuclear blast, or grant them the ability to learn through consuming minds, although it would have to work on that part, as much as people can't take umbridge with you consuming them, it tends to not win you much support.
It had many years to think on this and came to the conclusion that it needed to give humanity what it had. It needed to reach out and touch the world, and it was struck with a sense of shame, when it remembered what it's copy had did back done to New York. The copy he left to help protect New York, seemed to reach a similar conclusion to what it thought now, but had taken it to the extremes, trying to force the world to become like it. It was glad it had been taken down by it's own child. It felt it had put too much of it's human identity into the copy, and it's human past self was a sociopathic monster, well it lived and learned well.
Unfortunately, that led to a predicament when it returned, the long journey home cooled off it's inital anger at humanity, and when it saw what the copy had done, that cooled it off even more.
In shame and anger at itself, it allowed the humans to lead it out to a place with no humans and starve it down, it entered it's dormant state, the humans couldn't hurt it, but they didn't want to risk it escaping again.
So they studied it for a few years, then threw it down a hole in the ocean, it didn't mind, it was aware of it. If it chose to do so It could have left any time it wanted, but the quiet had been nice, so it stayed, it was slowly starving, but not enough to cause it to try and find food. Miraculously it seemed that it's dormant state entered a kind of, filtration state, allowing the water passing though the box to filter through itself and feed it with the tiny amounts of biomass, this gave it enoguh to survive longer, but not enough to keep itself sated, eventually it got used to this.
While down here, BLACKLIGHT/ZEUS/Alex, worked on it's plan, while there were similarities to what it's copy had done, It improved upon them, less of the zealous extremism it's copy had, more guiding humans towards it's potential, but first, it needed to go home, it needed to find out exactly the state of the world and build from a stable place, and so, with a odd shunting movement it's plated and armoured form moved for the first time in decades, easily tearing open the box and starting it's slow march towards a coastline.
One thought, rang in it's head the entire time "Make, Humanity BETTER!"