Chapter Two: TROJANS
It took few hours to get to where they were, transporting those BloodTox blowers down here and slowly pushing back the hives from reclaiming. The tunnel filled with the red mist of viricides, the construction lights installed throughout to light up the path behind them. It helped with the visibility somewhat. Night vision still required some light sources to make it work, and in a tunnel close to absolute darkness and closed off from natural lights, long-range visibility was reduced to the length of their flashlight's range. The uneven ground hardly made for a perfect road, rising and falling at random from either debris or unexpected drops. It would be a complete fucking nightmare if it comes to holding off the infected in these conditions.
Thermal imaging helped a little, the temperature of the tunnel was just as worse as the hottest time in a desert, where the temperature of the body was the same as the environment, but the difference was the air itself felt heavy and dense with moisture, and hotter… since the infected's body seemed to favor higher body temperature.
It felt like they were in the throat of a large monster. He could feel the droplets of water condensing on his suit.
They were beyond the established presence of Blackwatch, scouting the area ahead away from the lights and viricides fumes, in the total darkness of this tunnel surrounded by pulsating meat roots.
"Why the hell aren't we blowing this place up to smithereens?" a disgruntled soldier said aloud.
"Because it's no guarantee we'll be rid of them," Bryan replied to his squad as they walked alongside him. "Even if we cut them off, the Hydra could easily dig up around the blockades." Not unless they destroy the entire tunnel.
"So why aren't they attacking, sir?"
"Don't know," the D-Code drawled. "But we're going to take our chances while we can."
On the plus side, Thompson and his team had cleared out their obstacles if the worm-like large corpses were a clue.
"Man, I can't believe a peashooter did this," a soldier said as they passed by the dead Hydra. "I want one," he added to himself.
"The Hydra, or the gun?"
"Fuck you, you know what I meant."
Dull glints of carbine cases on the ground were found further ahead, and what came with empty bullet cases were corpses of Hunters and Walkers a few distances away. In these low-visibility conditions, he couldn't help but give grudging respect to the Lieutenant and the men with him for dealing with the infected… even if they were from a less experienced battalion filling in the severe losses Blackwatch felt here. As if he should be the one to judge harshly, the D-Code thought ruefully. He was a recently made sergeant as well.
What other times, if not now, could Blackwatch test and push the mettle of their future soldiers, to prove the worth of years of their training – soldiers who shall continue its creed and duties when time and age would force older generations to step down.
The band of soldiers continued their march, passing by the corpses on the ground slowly being assimilated back by the meat moss roots. The large vector of the virus wasn't the most troubling aspect of this infection, it's the persistence of the infected. Dead corpses may be useless in terms of spreading the infection, as the virus has no means to travel and grow without living cells to help it, but dead corpses can feed the infected microorganisms.
A symbiotic relationship that made it deadly, but one Blackwatch scientists were marveling at.
The small banter that had companied him had become grim silence. Weapons lax and ready in the arms were now raised. It was still far too strange to have encountered nothing hostile after walking for this long in a Red Zone. It was just not right.
Their lights pierced the total darkness, revealing the burnt charred remnants of the cavernous intersection. Fresh red roots were already reclaiming their place, spreading from the fluid spilled from a corpse of the Hydra that laid still on the ground, burying of what was left of the soldiers in NBC gears.
"Ah, Jesus," someone muttered. "What the fuck, th-they're still breathing."
Flashlight rested on one of the pulsating mounds barely hiding the living body beneath. The D-Code walked over and was still by the sight; his mind couldn't help but imagine the fate the soldier went through.
The victim had managed to dodge death by fire, but from the twist of his body, he didn't escape the force of the explosion. To be left barely alive and crawling from the aftermath, no one to hear his call, choking and unable to breathe, surrounded with an overwhelming presence of darkness, only to feel something worse creeping in around him. Consumed by the infection, he…it breathed and gasped at his feet despite the threads of this hive had weaved into its neck and riddled its body.
The men made no comment when the expected sound of crushed bones and flesh came, but even without the head, the body still moved and breathed, the rise and fall of its movements one with the pulse of the infection.
"We got a survivor, sir," a soldier spoke.
He turned towards a pustule that sat in the center, pulsating amidst charred, burnt flesh of its surrounding. Rifles behind him corrected their aims when the flashlights rested onto the small figure crouched against it.
He sat there completely nonchalant with an empty gaze, coated with a dark fluid of fuck-knows-what as he rested his head against it. His headgear discarded by the side of his lap.
A quick check through thermal imaging, there was no doubt this man was infected considering the glowing yellow form of his body matched the monstrosity pulsating behind him. His screen flashed back to night vision, the infected soldier just stared with a slow blink in reply, his eyes a pair of white gleams when he turned his gaze towards him. That was no typical Walker response. They tended to be vicious fuckers that try to bite and gnaw anything they could hand their hands on.
He knew this man, he was a survivor like him who had his previous platoon wiped out entirely when ZEUS destroyed the military base he was in. Blackwatch had managed to pull him out of those rubbles of dead men after hours of search and rescue.
"Private," he called out. "Private Carlos," the D-Code said again as he quickly gestured the no-shoot signal over his shoulder. He was not willing to risk triggering that self-preserving instinct, considering Gregory's speed reaction. At least, not within this distance.
"Help me," a hoarse voice slipped from the man and he rose up from the ground with an unsteady step.
His feet instead slid on some fluids and he collapsed back onto the ground, landing on all four. Slowly and carefully, he rose up again without the limp and unsteadiness that had weighed him down, his eyes wide and wild, flickering all over the place.
"Stay where you are, soldier," Bryan ordered.
He did for a moment, unflinching at the glares of the light.
"Help me," he muttered and moved towards them.
A gunshot thundered in an answer.
"Not one step-" The shout of command was not finished when he lunged, but a choked snarl of crushed windpipes spat right back when the D-Code side-stepped into his path and snatched him in mid-air by the neck.
Bryan slammed him down onto the ground, the loud crack and pops of broken bones came easily when he tightened his grip. His handiwork nothing more but mangled mess of meat and bones around the neck. A mangled mess that was still writhing and alive, resewing itself whole.
"Fuck, that's creepy."
He stared dispassionately at the mess on his gloved hand. It was like watching magnetic fluid in motion. A mind of its own, the thick trails of blood slowly dribbled and crawled down his arm. When he raised his hand, there was a brief slowness in its reaction, a small second of pausing at the change of direction of the gravity. It was quick to correct itself and head back down the path to the ground, almost natural if it weren't for the fact it was coalescing into some squirming fluid that crawled more than slid. Some of the smeared mess had already escaped, droplets that had slipped back into the fleshy roots of this underground hive system.
He laid his gaze back onto the ground, at the infected soldier by his feet. A dazed look stared back, eyes half-asleep in his gazing. The D-Code simply nudged the man's head with his foot, Carlos just took the foot-nudging without complaint. He seemed completely out.
"Motherfucker has the gall to sleep after that?" scoffed his squad mate.
With slight reluctance, Bryan took his eyes off him and rested on the trail of fluids that surrounded the pulsating pustule. Its outer flesh peeling and melted off, yet it was remarkably still alive despite how severe it had been burnt from fire and chemical.
"Open that thing up," he ordered.
Fort Detrick, Maryland, post Operation Ark.
When he thought about clinical psychopaths, the popular image always came to mind, someone like Dr. Mercer. Classic low-affect personality, disregard for others, self-obsessed narcist, low-empathy, sadistic and cruel.
People with criminal minds. Unstable with a history of misconducts.
Not someone like him. He toed the lines, but he was never serious enough to overstep them. He didn't give a shit about others and would be bored of their plights, but never took satisfaction with their pain. He was no product of poor environment, neither was he a child of bad parents, just poorly ill-equipped ones.
Twenty-six, returned from his deployment, accused of manslaughter, the Army made a proposal, either get his shit together and go visit the recommended specialists while they make their decisions, or get the boot and end his military career right there. So he took the former option, repeated visits to military psychologists and psychiatrists, being bored out of his fucking mind with their talks and their hours-long procedures with multiple doctors - brain scans, experiments, more questions before they could finally slap the ASPD diagnosis on his record.
So fucking what? Like slapping a label on it was going to make any difference in his life.
At first, he had given a scoffing laugh at his doctors and thought of them as crazy. He may not give a damn… but he wasn't one of those scumbags who goes off to hurt people. The thing about lacking emotional empathy is the incapability of connecting and sharing people's feeling, especially pain. It was an oxymoron to desire pain on another for that reason.
Sure, he could say he loved his grandmother especially, and he genuinely trusted her with his life. He could speak his thoughts with her, even ones he kept to himself without being judged. He could appreciate the value of his relationship with her and respect her for what she had done.
He was not an easy child and didn't play along. When his mind was set, he would not follow nor listen to anyone. If it was too boring, he would find a way to interrupt the class. In high school, he was known to just walk out in the middle of the lesson and straight out of school. Punishments didn't work on him, just made him resentful towards the source and rewards were purely superficial in his eyes.
He lacked an ego to feed with praises. No ego to bruise. No ego to shape into something acceptable in the typical dull mind of others. As a kid, he was impulsive, always up to no good and always managed to get other kids up to no good for his own amusements. Never needed anyone, never depended on anyone.
He always knew what he wanted and how to get it. A troublesome trait that put him firmly into the problem child category. In his view, people were the problem. If they couldn't deal with him, that was their fault, not his. No amount of guilt-tripping and emotionally-pulling was going to change that fact, though his mother had always gone out of her way to do just that and never fully understood him.
He learned quite quickly if he could make people smile and laugh, relax around him, they were prone to overlook some bit about himself. Still, even when he played nice, even when he fit himself in a hole, there would always be something unattainable between him and others. Sometimes, he couldn't be bothered and act without checks. It was a fast way to learn he was dealing with a mother who had a fragile ego, easily flew apart when shattered. It began the cycle of picking up those shards and putting it back bit by bit.
It was a source of annoyances throughout his life, an effort he had to constantly put in to make sure the gap between him and others didn't grow. All he knew it was simply the path of least hardship and stopped people getting all up in his case about something trivial.
When the doctors explained, gave their expertise on the truths, broke down the myths, it started to click. It started to make sense why he always felt different from others.
But it didn't change anything. He just wanted everything to be done and over with, his life back to the way it was.
When all things had simmered down, he still couldn't continue his military career with the Army. After months of questionings by his psychologist, he was given a proposition. He would be transferred into an entirely different division, lose all his rank, and prove his salt and his worth in training again. A new start.
You will be a BLACKWATCH personnel.
The best of the best, if he proved himself he was the best in his conduct and not just in his scorings. So he worked hard, trained hard, forced himself to be straight and narrow.
Loyal, never question, and willing to go beyond.
Now look where those five years in a military cult got him.
He heard the crisp rustles of the black scans pulled out from their folder, placed onto the table in front of him neatly, side by side.
"This is your scan six years ago." The doctor's gloved finger tapped the image on the left, his voice muffled beneath a layer of rubber, plastic and filter.
A cross-section scan of his brain from the side.
"This is you now, Brad." He tapped the image on the right then circle the area around the center on his brain.
"Is this some test?" he said as the light shone on the black sheets, the squiggles and patterns he paid no mind, but the center and front of his brain told a different story. "You sure you didn't mix up your scans?" he asked the doctor.
"I assure you not. That's why we did another scan just to make sure," the doctor said. "Your brain is changing, Brad." He circled the front lobe of his brain of the right image. "And the connecting tissue to your amygdala has grown, it would explain your recent burst of extreme emotions, anxiety for one."
The amygdala, tiny peanut-size brain matter said to be the emotional center. Something so small can cause a large impact on his life. Apparently, he had a smaller amygdala and in a situation of fear, stress, and anger, that part of the brain hardly lights up. In extreme situations, his body was noted for lowering his pulse rate below his baseline.
The mind and body of a typical person were the opposite to his. That area of grey matter in the back and in the center of amygdala lights up like fireworks when given positive or negative feedbacks. Hearts and breathing tended to flux and react.
But his mind wasn't typical, and he was known to underreact when situations call for the opposite.
"You're sure it's not a fucking tumor you're staring at?" he said softly as he stared at the images.
His left showed the man he was, the one who was said to have ice in his vein. On his right, he was staring at his future. A different person. A different man. One prone to aggression, bouts of anger, fear, and anxieties. Not the calm man who had never experienced the latter two, who was quick to adapt to situations of all kind, and today shouldn't be like no other he had experienced.
He was staring at the brain of someone's else, and that someone was him.
"The growths we're looking at isn't abnormal like tumors."
"What part of this not abnormal to you, doctor?" Brad raised his eyes from the pictures and glared.
He was changing beyond his control, and all because of this virus in his body.
One day deployed in Manhattan, the next day through delirious fever, recalling the sudden feeling of being torn from his corner of darkness and into the flashlight glaring at his eyes, waking up to the sound of voices and wheels running outside his plastic tent as they brought him down a hallway. He should've played dead, since giving the team of scientist a fright earned him this solitary dungeon. Most of his hours in here was spent half-in and half-out a fever dream, waking moments he could barely recall besides the intense feeling of deep-seated panic, vaguely remembering the estrangement of watching through someone's else eyes… in his own body.
Panic… what a strange alien feeling, but one he had to adapt and learn quickly to deal with – mostly through pain, pain to ground him back to reality, biting the side of his cheeks hard enough until he could taste the iron tang of his blood on his tongue.
At least it was preferable than having his body be dumped on those barges and ready to be burn. Better alive than dead, as they say.
When he felt like himself, he didn't mind solitary, boredom may be his monkey brain stabbing himself with pain to make him do something, but it was a pain he could adjust to. It was something he preferred, rather than dealing those times when he couldn't bear the walls standing around him. Times when their presences felt overbearing, the silence aggravating, when he felt like he was about to fly apart.
A parasite in his brain. A parasite taking over his body. A parasite becoming him. No, that was not right. It was just his monkey brain doing what monkey do, flipping the fuck out at every tiny little thing about this empty room he was stuck with.
Could they cure it? He sat there in the corner of his room, his back against the walls and shoulder rested on the adjacent, his eyes staring at the camera.
This was a virus that changes the genetics of its host. Could they reverse the changes?
Or did he have to live with this animal he was going to become?
He hated this.
"Can I have a magazine at least?" he asked.
The black round lens of the camera just kept recording.
Fuck, he was bored. He sighed and pulled himself up to pace around.
He thought about it. He was stuck in this room. They weren't going to help him. He certainly doubted they could cure him. If a cure to this virus exist than Blackwatch didn't have to do their job. He was stuck here. He was going to be stuck here. He was stuck in this forever.
His breathing went up a notch and his eyes flick right and left, at the walls around him. From this moment forward, he was going to wake up to these walls, the same ceiling, the same tiny little dots of cement's grains on the walls every time he opens his eyes.
Since when thinking about his future bothered him so much? He was never the long-term planner.
"Brad," a familiar voice scratched out from the speaker. "Your escorts are coming over. Would you kindly take your place by the bed?"
Heh, not subject trojan-two or some barcode numbers?
Out of all the scientists, Dr. Koenig goes out of his way to treat him with respect. The good cop in a facility filled with bad cops. He wanted to laugh at that. Good cop and bad cop routine only worked if the interrogated could sympathize, trust, truly believe the good cop understood them, genuinely wanted to help them, and was stuck in a bad situation like them – and it took a very desperate or idiotic person to believe that. All three was impossible to achieve in a bad situation when trusts were fragile, and the victim quick to label all their captors as only them.
If they weren't short of time and valued accurate information, Blackwatch would go through the length to build trust with their subject. Kindness and security, he had learned in his briefing was a far more effective tool than torture and bad cop routines. It was simple, kindness encouraged trusts, cooperation, compliance without their subject realizing. People were social creatures, instincts to get along overpowers distrust, could fool your enemy as your friend, make a bad situation look good.
Even the Nazi found this method more effective. Torture was just a quick and dirty way to make the interrogated do and say everything Blackwatch want them to say, even false confessions. It was not the most trustworthy method in information gathering for that reason, but an effective method for forcing compliance.
If Koenig thought being nice would make a better method to train a lab mouse to scurry for his cheese, then he should try harder.
Brad simply ignored the speaker. At the very least, give him something, anything to occupy him from boredom.
What was stopping him anyway? He could break from his prison right here and now. He has the strength. But did he have the endurance, the speed to outran and bear through the wrath of Blackwatch trained to face far worse than him? He may be strong, Brad looked at his hands as he tightened them into fists, his eyes glancing at the metal bed frame he had twisted in curiosity, but that didn't mean he was immune to the bullets and hellfire.
Outside his typical hit and run tactics, ZEUS only survived for this long because how quick he healed himself from the victims he sucks dry. Almost every time they cornered him, every time they were so close to getting him, he would always slip their grasp, find some meals then comes back and hit just as hard as before. If he had no immediate way to recover from his injuries, he would have been dead like all the other tenacious infected simply from pure brute firepower.
He was fast, strong, could endure, heal and recover from anything – except a nuke, of course.
While he, he was no ZEUS.
He stared at his hand as he twisted and curled, opening and closing it in an examination. At least, he didn't think so. He didn't feel like there were weird squiggly black-red eels inside him. He wondered what the trade-off would be besides being treated less like a thing.
On cue, the door of his room slid open, Brad just simply gave a side-glance at his hulking visitor.
"Sergeant," he greeted at the D-Code waiting outside his doorway.
The black rectangular box device he usually wore was for once missing from his face, in place of it were surprisingly a pair of brown human eyes surrounded with exposed white skin. Redlight was something they didn't want to take a risk with even with their super amped-up soldier, hence even the D-Codes were equipped with full-cover headgear. Exposed skin meant one thing, Blackwatch believed the D-Codes won't be infected by what he has, either from their resilient immune system, or the virus wasn't contagious unless transmitted properly.
"You know the drill, Corporal," Bryan spoke, his voice as always muffled beneath the rubber and filter of his mask.
"If I don't, will you pull me out by the ankle?" He gave a quick fake smile when he walked right up to him.
"Don't joke on that," the D-Code replied, and he stepped back, the rifle team behind him loaded with their guns raised, ready to shoot.
He stepped out and walked ahead, knowing where they wanted him. "What's the agenda for today, sir?" he asked casually.
There was a hint of amusement when the D-Code answered, "Testing and maybe CQC training."
Shady human testing was hardly as hair-raising or horrifying movies made it out to be. The ones he had were repeated psyche assessments no different from his previous experiences with a psychologist and psychiatrist. In fact, it was just mundane. The only difference this time, pain tolerance tests were involved.
Brad slightly turned and looked back over his shoulder, "And if I prove myself?"
"If you prove yourself," the D-Code repeated and shoved him forward.
Their footsteps echoed throughout the hallway as they walked under the timeless fluorescent lights lodged within the ceiling. Was it solitary, or had it always felt this jarringly empty even out here in the corridor? He neither felt nor heard any presence when he passed by the rows of doors, instead, he was led into an interrogation room, a plain empty room that lacked any visual stimulant besides two chairs, a solid steel table screwed to the floor, and as always, the observing two-way mirror that dominated one wall. Already the scientist was there waiting for him in his seat, recorder resting on pen and paper placed on the table.
Brad took his seat as the heavy door swung shut with a deep boom, Bryan took his place on the wall right beside it, his arms crossed over his chest.
"How do you feel, Brad?" said the calm cheery elderly voice from that yellow hazmat suit.
"Fine, I guess." He shrugged, noticing the recorder wasn't running.
"Even after this, after how we had treated you?"
"I expected less."
"You expected less?" Dr. Koenig laughed softly. "You're not our enemy Brad, the things we did were precaution we had to take."
"Precaution to what?" His voice was wry when he asked.
"We thought it would be a chance to study the progression of how Walkers are formed," the scientist confessed quite honestly. "Instead, to our surprise, we got you."
"Is that good or bad?" He was being rhetorical when he asked that.
"Good surprise," the scientist said. "Have you ever heard of Hope, Idaho?"
That was a familiar question, one his captain had asked him a long time ago. It was, Brad had come to realize, a test of loyalty.
He answered as he had before, "Yeah, everyone here knows or at least heard about it."
"What do you know about it, Mister Kirk?"
Brad gave an odd look before he glanced at the D-Code. Bryan's neutral gaze said nothing.
"It was a super-soldier program. First, they tested on monkeys. Then, they tested on a bunch of townspeople," he said and scratched the side of his neck. "I think it was… a military town filled with military families with a long history and tradition of services, I guess that's why they were willing to sign up for the experiment. The goal was to train the next generation as special soldiers. After all, kids from military family are more likely to join the military, especially when those kids grew up in a pro-military communal environment," Brad noted. "Then, it all went wrong. Sabotaged or something, it's why we do what we must," he said.
"You believed that?" Dr. Koenig asked.
"It's what my captain told us," Brad shrugged. "I'm less inclined to believe the wilder versions since it did a real fucking poor job at making dead people." He sniffed.
Koenig was quiet, the black visor of the hazmat suit still when he asked, "What's your perspective on Gentek?"
"A heap of screw-ups that we had to clean up after. Everything wouldn't happen if it weren't for that good-for-nothing company," Brad scoffed. "They were hired by the brass for research, but instead those assholes created an even worse virus."
"And they got what was coming?"
"They withheld information, they disobeyed the brass, and one of their own unleashed her into the city," Brad said. "If she had stayed in our custody, maybe none of this wouldn't happen. But instead, those idiots managed to move her into the city," he was frowning, clearly incredulous at Gentek's decisions. "Of course, they got everything they deserved, doc. They played with fire."
"What of our late General Randall?" Dr. Koenig asked.
"What about him, doc?"
"You said that Gentek managed to move the first Runner into the city, but have you ever wondered they would need the approval of said higher-ups to do so?"
"Like the General himself?" Brad stared at the hazmat suit. "If that was the case, then his mistake would have been not shooting them in the head sooner."
Dr. Koenig chuckled at that. "Your captain must be glad to have a man like you working with him."
"Glad is an overstatement when it comes to a Blackwatch officer like him."
He heard a mirthful exhale from that. "Tell me, Brad, would you still work for your captain even after all your experiences here?"
"If the alternative is solitary and staying as a lab rat forever, then yeah." Brad looked up. "I'd rather be out there fighting than in here."
"Are you sure you want this?" Koenig's voice was serious. "You would not be treated as an equal to your fellow soldiers. Your rights to your citizen life will be forfeited."
"It was already forfeited. You said it yourself, doc. I'm infected."
And that was death sentence.
"The fact I'm alive means I can still be of use," Brad muttered as he glanced at the D-Code standing by the door.
Bryan's brown eyes remained in their steely composure.
"Then we just have to prove them you still are." Koenig pushed the paper and pen into his hand. "Sign here and we'll get started."
He didn't need to squint at the black visor to know Koenig was grinning in his helmet. Brad looked down at the three pages of the contract. He skimmed through the lines, pausing on some interesting ones before flipping to the next page. On each bottom right corner, he signed with the last he finished with a flick on the mandatory signature spot.
With a congratulation and a handshake, Doctor Koenig send him off. The fireteam that escorted him gone when he stepped outside with Bryan.
"So," Brad began at the giant super soldier. Partly from genuine curiosity, and against whatever self-taught good judgment he had, he asked, "Did they ever made you sign 'no sex for life' in your contract?"
Bryan actually narrowed his eyes on him. "Corporal, you do realize you have CQC training with me after, right?"
Ah, shit.
AN: The problem with starting a new fic is that you're trying to get the characters voices right, the pacing right, and trying not to be impatient to get to the big plot points you always want to write and hope you don't get burnout by the time.