Dan's POV

Eyes stare at him through the mist. The condensation distorting the view of paling tan and diluted blood, making everything seem like a mutation. The wrong shapes the wrong lines, the wrong face. All hidden by the steam on the mirror.

And Daniel's stomach feels like it's an alien life form. Squirming and rolling in a thousand knots that can never be untied, tripping over itself in a rush of horror. His mind is filled with a million voices, screaming and whining and scratching at his temples. Tearing through his veins and pulling through his eyes. Choking him on thin-air. Driving him to the very brink of complete collapse.

xxx

It is like being sat in a pitch black room, for hours, days, maybe years. A room so dark he can't tell if his eyes are open or closed, so silent it doesn't seem real. Like floating on nothing. Like breathing black. Then a switch is flicked and everything comes crashing back like an atom bomb, bright and burning. Sounds leaking through of broken sobs. Shapes in the light gaining mass and definition.

Daniel blinks out the blood that he can't remember getting in his eyes, and wonders why he can blink at all when mumbling rings in his ears. It's distorted and he has no idea what it is, but it screeches like a fog horn.

Walter's hands pull at his mask, and blue eyes burn into him, but seem almost blind. Blind with panic, and infectious fear. With disbelief and... and repulsion?

xxx

Fingers squeak against the glass, clumsy and unsure, falling short a few times as he stumbles against the sink. Everything's too short or too long, too big or too small and it makes him want to vomit.

Wiping away the mist with alien fingers still veined and muscled by years of fighting. The glass creaks and he chokes on thin air.

He cannot believe what he's seeing. He cannot be seeing what he's seeing. He just can't. It's impossible. It's wrong. It's staring back at him covered in half washed blood. It can't—it just can't.

xxx

Daniel rights himself in a blink, all the blood that had pooled over his chest pouring out onto the floor in a series of guttural slops. He barely notices. He barely notices anything. Not the way his chest is too heavy. Not the way Walter scrambles back into a corner. Not the way he is too small in his suit.

What he does notice is the way his throat ripples like he's swallowed worms, and his skin crawls under the armour like there are a thousand bugs. Scabies. And the thought has him retching. Tearing at Kevlar, frantically pulling it open to spill on the floor. Stained red flesh is raw in the cold air as he runs. Scrambles up the stairs in a mad rush, and his voice is alien and high in his ears as he squeals.

"Get it off!"

xxx

She's out of place covered in blood, staring through bloodshot eyes, fingers shaking against the glass as Daniel fails to cling to reason. He doesn't know who she is but she's sliding against the sink as his knees buckle. Her eyes roll and he thinks he might pass out again. But he grips harder, so does she, and it makes his stomach tighten.

She's a disconnected image, a hallucination that has to go away if he concentrates long enough. It has to fade back to strong jaws and defined pectorals, not high cheekbones and soft bare breasts. It has to be a dream because nothing this unfair, this horrifying, this violating can happen. Not to him. Not to Daniel.

But there she is, retching as he retches, blinking as he blinks, and all he can do is watch it happen, because his mind isn't present anymore. It's gone on a long roaming journey to places unknown while his body stands mutated in a bathroom.

xxx

He vomits and shrieks at what he sees. Crawling little black dots scratching at the bowl, eating away the blood until its yellow and white, plasma and water. And as he grips the edges his nails begin to bleed, more black dots crawling through the mess.

["It's called a purge."]

He climbs into the shower before the waters even warm and scrapes at the stains on his skin as it crawls under his fingers. Black dots spiralling down the drain, like fleas with no fur to grip.

["Everything unwanted or unneeded gets forced out of the system. Only the essentials remain."]

They're pouring out of his ears and scratching out of his eyes whining through his senses like an overbearing sickness. Blinding him to everything. Making nothing real. And as his fingers scrape at breasts and thighs the world goes dark. Face against enamelled steel.

xxx

Daniel had awoken from a bad dream, and stepped into a nightmare. Pulling himself out of uselessly running, scalding water, and stumbling to the mirror. Staring at himself, staring at her and it can't be real. It can't.

It's all wrong. He didn't want this. He never wanted this. All he wanted was to stand by his partner and save the world one measly ungrateful victim at a time. And this is how fate repays him? No hero's death, no going down fighting... No, it just can't be real.

But it is. It's all so terribly real as his fingers find pieces that shouldn't be there, find a place where pieces are very missing, and in the mirror she finds the same answers. The same truths that were supposed to be lies, and he can't take it, she can't take it. The scream rips through his lungs, her lungs, like shattered glass. She falls as he falls and the screams don't stop as he watches his life crash to an end.

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