"The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before."
– John Green
"No."
The waves' hold on me deepened. It was angry. The light was suddenly shining, so brightly it cast away the darkness to the deep. The blackness fought back, refusing to yield, light against dark, to dominate the vast nothingness. It was then I felt the heavy pressure and its menace, to devour me whole. It was then I felt the grinning victory of the darkness, its insanity coiling around me. It was then I gave myself to the madness, and clawed myself away from the clutches of the water and swam upwards, to the light that didn't exist.
"We are all the same in this broken world, which is why we must stand together to bring it back together."
Then the darkness let out its terror. I felt slippery things grip onto my legs, to drag me back into the abyss. I kicked it away, but another grabbed on, then another, and another. The light was disappearing again! But in such a state of dementia I laughed, my precious air escaping away.
"No."
Someone threw a fishing line at me, and I held it tight. It was pulling me away from the jaws below. The devouring monster! It's eyes glowed red, rising to chase me. The light burned it as it left its darkness, but it was not enough. Even as the dark flesh blistered and fried in heat, even as its limbs turned to a distorted skeleton, it was rising. I saw a maw of whirling teeth and the skin of total chaos.
"In this place exist the holy–"
"No."
I was free! The monster lost its speed, and was now in desperation. The light was too strong here! I was free! In the distant blue flakes of white swirled. They were angels, thousands and thousands of them. They welcomed me away from the darkness, and then they returned to mere specks, the glowing dust settling on my skin. I was free, the light just above me, the surface now visible!
There was a loud crash.
"How–?"
"Wake up!"
"Kill him!"
I burst through the surface.
The archbishop was frowning at Ethan, who was kicking away a priest. Everyone but the archbishop had magically grown strange weapons. The abbot featured a large blade, while the priests had a pair of smaller ones. Ethan wore claws, their points shining in the dull light. The priest he kicked away flew across the room and cracking the wall opposite.
"Run!" He yelled at me, but the abbot had chosen that moment to backhand him ten yards away, almost casually. He sprung away to evade an attack from a priest. The priests were no longer priests. Their robes changed to black armor and hoods. Their faces disappeared under shadows. Their arms glistened red from where their arms became a metallic silver.
"An–!"
"Child," then the archbishop was there. He gripped my arms with unnatural strength. "That man is not who he says he is. He belong to the betrayers," that word he spat. I shied my eyes away from those demonic stars, but still I couldn't move. "Listen to me! You must–" He fell away when a set of claws nearly decapitated him, carving away the flesh around the neck in chunks. Then he tried to hit Ethan, but missed, and was forced to retreat when the claws kept on flashing at him. "Get rid of him!"
The abbot charged, and even when his blade was deflected away, he did not stop, slamming with the force of a freight train into Ethan's other claw. They both slammed hard into the walls, burying them in debris and dust. Then the abbot leaped away from the cloud, a set of ugly marks on his face, even as they faded away. Ethan emerged to sprint for the retreating man.
A priest tried to block Ethan's retaliation, but then took the blunt of the attack. He was swept into the air, then slammed down hard into the earth. The entire room shook. While the priest was down, another leaped into the air, and was batted away into the last, sending them both tumbling away.
The archbishop filled my vision again. "Child, please," he pleaded, "we must fix the ruin we are imposing on ourselves! Together, there–" A set of claws emerged from his chest, cutting his words off. His eyes glowed. "This is enough!" Turning around so quickly his form blurred, he grabbed both of Ethan's claws. His hands were cut apart by the sharp steel, though that did not stop him from squishing the claws into mush. The scream that followed was terrible, and the archbishop was terrible, and everything was terrible. I saw nothing short of a demon in front of me.
A priest took the opportunity to jump onto Ethan, who was slowly giving ground to the monstrous form of the archbishop. Peterson was tightly holding onto new claws, which cut into the old man's hands, but were halted by themselves as if the sheer density of the archbishop was unstoppable. By this time the abbot chose to join in. The four of them creating a brawl of blood and teeth. Death by dismemberment was something I will never forget, not in this long, long life. I could only watch as my only friend was cut away to pieces, quicker than he could regenerate, and into more pieces, until finally there was nothing left to regenerate. What the archbishop was holding finally was no more than a pair of bloody stumps, which he dropped and kicked away like rats.
It was then I truly fell to my knees, soaking myself in the pool of red blood and biomass. Chunks of flesh were everywhere, covering the priests, the abbot and the archbishop. Together they were demons, with only their crude weapons showing. I would have cried, but my body decided it was a waste of energy. I would have lapsed into forever silence, but my mind thought it was a pointless action. I would have devoured myself, but the virus demanded my life.
I was pulled up by my arms again. The archbishop was suddenly as himself only minutes before, clean and holy. He dominated my vision. His voice was boomingly loud, echoing off of the far walls of the chamber. I could not meet his eyes, which burned dark as night. "Why do you denounce us?" he yelled into my face, each syllable a thunder loud, each word the death of worlds. "We will bring you to the light. From us you can be great. From us you can be powerful. From us you can be free! So save yourself from the corrupt influences of these wild beasts." He shook my arms until my entire body racked lifelessly. "We will make you a saint from our stories, the saint who burned away the shackles of the creator! Join us in our path to bring peace to this rotten world!" Even still I could not hear him, not from the louder voice in my head. Blacklight pounded in my ears until the world muted itself.
What will you do now, it whispered, a poison in my mind. How will you live now, when your only attachment to life is gone?
I didn't respond. Instead in my mind I saw something terrible: Blacklight. It was a red, pulsing mass, and with each movement, it grew, and grew, until it took up all my vision, until everywhere I turned I would only see its fleshy surface. But I had no need to turn, not when I was speaking to myself. A face emerged in front of me: my own. It had my skin and my hair, but it was wrong. Its eyes were red, glowing in evilness. Its hair was a stream of frozen flames, glowing orange. Patches of its cheek were ashy crimson, and transparent, through which cracks I saw a beating heart, with vines of red latched onto its feeble beats. The blood it pumped was flaked with black dots, each of which squirmed in protest.
"Where is your strength," the other me whispered, its voice hollow and rotten. When it opened its mouth, there were only rings of sharp teeth and a tongue with rowed edges. "What is your life, if not nothing but a chain of turmoil?"
I shook my head. There was nothing to answer.
My deformity suddenly rushed forward, but I didn't not fear it and made no move to flinch away. Finally it saw I was not afraid. "Good. You should not fear yourself. But that was the easy part. Now you must embrace me, and together we will be you, and you will be your own god." It sounded too familiar for comfort, but this time there was no one to save me, from not myself.
The surrounding flesh pulsed, brighter and brighter until each was a day and night. Its masses shifted. In front of me the specter was pushing itself through the mass, as if a newborn finally experiencing the new world. The rest of its skin were more damaged than its cheeks, the glowing fire covered with ash everywhere. One of its arms emerged to be a blade, a thin piece, but no less sharper than anything else. Its other arm was weighed down, by a chain a flail that had had trouble been dragged out of the flesh. With a start, I realized it was taller than me, but its feet somehow sunk into the ground, and thus we were eye to eye. Its bright red eyes stared unblinkingly while its flesh dripped down in liquid.
"You must become all of you, not just your weak and pathetic human side," it spat. "A mortal has no place in the future, not in a future as dark as this. If you want to live, then know your power! We shall be one, and as one we will tread this world underfoot."
I might have been shaking or crying, or possibly even stoically staring at my death, at its marred, beautiful face and its deathly stars of life. I could not lift my head. My vision fell to my feet.
"There is nothing for you left, not from your friend. If you will accept that, then I shall join you." It sounded almost compassionate. I was surprised.
When I looked up again, there was a miracle. In front of my eyes the demon dissipated. First was its beautiful face, which smoothed and became colorful and lovely, then its hair, which melted into a pretty dark color. Its blade, when it raised it, defused until clumps of it fell into the liquid earth. All that remained was a child's hand, which was held out to me. An offering.
"Take my hand, and take your fate." From a pretty mouth emerged the words of the virus, a cloud of blight which corroded away at everything it touched. Yet as I looked, I saw nothing but myself. I stared at me, and I stared back. Finally, I took my hand. It held the grip until my hand was being crushed.
"And change the world."
Then it punched its other hand, a fist, into my stomach. I felt no pain from the blood that erupted like a red fountain. The crimson droplets rained onto us both, a coat of tasteless mortality. My knees were weak, but the hand that held mine kept me steady. The creature ripped into my insides, piling out the intestines, a deflated stomach, other nasty organs, until finally it found something. I let a scream as it was ripped away from me, and then I was looking at my own heart, in its dying pulses.
"Make us whole again."
It crushed the human heart.
Immediately I felt empty, dying. I almost slipped away, but still I was held tight by one hand, which never wavered, even while the bones in that hand were crushed to dust by the unnatural strength. My last vision was of the creature's face, once again deformed and monstrous, bearing onto mine, as though for a kiss. And I yielded to the insanity.
ooo
"I think we lost her."
I lashed out without conscious thought, catching a surprised lump of flesh in the center and sending it flying away. I opened my eyes, expecting heavy chains and armed guards, but instead saw something else. The archbishop was picking himself up from the ground, his expression of disbelief. His entire right arm was gone, though the empty air was being slowly reclaimed by appendages of red. His white robe was once again stained by red, though he did not notice it. In my hand was a cross, attached to it golden chains.
I stared at him and he stared back. I crushed the cross. "Vengeance will find you," I promise. Before anyone could stop me, I turned and ran.
The door we had come through offered no resistance as I smashed through it, and bowling into another priest behind it. The priest did not have time to react as I flew like a ball of teeth at him. He got as far as to cloth himself in red before he split in half, from to the head to the crotch, his remains disappearing in a slurp into me. I could yells far behind me, and a loud blare that echoed paired with flashing red lights.
I felt like I was losing myself in the labyrinth. Occasionally there were signs, signs which I smashed through without time to read them, and walls with craters in them as I was forced to stop and turn. I chose paths randomly, and did my best to skirt around people. Everything was the same: the empty walls, the dead fluorescent lights, the white tiles that blinded you if you stared.
And then I saw the pictures, the paintings of old people, probably dead, and photos of other people, none of whom I recognized, and they were a savior, because I did now know where I was. Down one way led to the chamber with the dead man, and the other to the surface and freedom. I chose freedom.
The entrance hall was exactly as I remember it, though people looked alarmed at the alarms. Men with security jackets ran about, their stun batons in hand and frantic voices over walkie-talkies. The clouds still loomed over the city and the world was still as it should be. Surely there was nothing wrong, unless you count how everyone stared at my glowing blades.
"Watch out!" yelled a security, as I leaped up and landed directly in front of gunman, who managed to pop a shot into my chest. It wasn't even laced with bloodtox, so I whacked him away for all his troubles. The locked glass doors proved to be bullet proof, but not superman proof. My first punch cracked the glass, and the second put a hole in it. After the third half of the door was gone. Spectators stared in shock; more than one person were not dialing numbers into their phones.
Somehow the world outside changed so much. I saw people, wearing their fears on their eyes, scrambling away. I saw animals, snarling at me before disappearing away to whatever nest they spawned from. I saw in the distance infected creatures, brutally taking apart a squad of outmatched soldiers. I ran to, from my memories, the closest air bridge off of Staten Island. Sirens followed me, though they had trouble keeping up as I danced from wall to wall, never touching the ground in a childhood game of lava. The pursuers gradually fell away.
As I actually came within sight of the air bridge, my heart fell. Neat rows of tanks were parked along the road, complimented by marines, lots of marines, turrets, heavy turrets designed to shred through solid metal. A shell flew my way, and I leaped onto a wall to avoid the blast.
"Evolved! Call for strike team!" someone yelled. Fearing attacks, I climbed, like spider man, except for I was more spider-like than man-like, skittering up the vertical slope ten yards at a time. Another missile missed me, blowing away where I would have been a second ago. Machine guns sprayed bullets en mass at my general direction. They had terrible accuracy.
I grunted as a bullet chipped me. The bloodtox had only minimal effect, burning itself away while I escaped another round of shelling.
Suddenly I heard an earth-shattering boom, its force enough to shake surrounding buildings. Half perched on the side, I took the risk to glance down. Firstly I regretted it, as vertigo was slightly discomforting, but soon I didn't, not as the slaughter began.
The hooded man dove at a tank like a cannonball. Upon impact the entire tank caved in, and then exploding out in a spectacular show of fire. Marines dived away while autonomous turrets sprayed bullets, but the man was already too far away, darting through the slow armors so quickly their tracking sensors could not get a good shot. He dodged a missile by flipping high into the air, and that was when I saw him.
Alex Mercer, the embodiment of Blacklight, number one threat in the North America continent, the infamous biological terrorist, looked very much like he did on TV. A stained hood that had once been white shadowed most of his face so that only two orbs of red glared out from under them. His jacket was too hot for the weather, and jeans worn. But he was beyond ordinary from that. There seemed to be a gravitational field around him, as if he dominated the entire block with his tiny figure.
And he landed, blowing up dust from the streets. From his back grew an appendage, which grabbed the nearest car and tossed it at a turret. It sailed so perfectly. The machine was not quick enough to blow it to pieces, and was instead smashed in a furious storm of sparks. The marines were in a panic now, retreating towards the bridge and hoping to defend it to the death. How silly their worries. If Alex Mercer wanted to cross the bridge, they wouldn't even know he was there until the other island turned into a viral zone.
"We have a visual on Alex Mercer. Repeat, we have a visual on Mercer, requesting–" the commander stopped yelling in his radio when he cursed and dove forward to avoid a screeching tank that Mercer had somehow kicked fifty yards off the bridge and into the ocean. The marines, however few of them left, scattered away.
A sudden barrel of rockets onto the streets, which Mercer gracefully avoided by dashing away, announced the arrival of the strike team. Three helicopters, carrying the insignia of elite US Air Force, blew away half the block to smithereens until they've exhausted their supply of rockets, then some more, as Mercer appeared again behind a dead tank. I didn't watch anymore. With a feral scream, I pushed away from the building, shattering the glass with my departure, and dove at the helicopter trio.
The first one I missed, but not the second one as I latched myself to its underside. I heard the panic of the men inside, but had no time to savor in their fear, not when one of the other pilots already noticed me, and was bringing his chopper around to get a good shot. I stuck a fist through the flooring and into the helicopter itself. There were several yells, as I forced more biomass into my hand, and with some pressure, made it explode. The yells were silenced as hundreds of fleshy strings hooked into exposed flesh and armor, and then began to devour the men from inside out. With my other hand I carved away the entire floor and hoisted myself up while the four men inside were busy dying. The pilot didn't stand a chance, his brains smeared against the windshield. The turning helicopter was too busy worrying about the conditions inside the one I had hijacked, and was rewarded with a pod of rocket I blasted at it. It was overkill, especially when half of the explosives didn't even hit, just doing more collateral damage, say carving out another chunk of a half collapsed building. The last helicopter was completely oblivious, and the fifty-cal was enough to shoot down its rotors, where it crashed to the ground in a ball of fire. It was quite an adventure.
When I looked down again, Mercer was gone, leaving behind him a wake of destruction. Out of the six tanks, four where wasted, a fifth one stuck three floors up in a building and the sixth one in the ocean. Out of thirty six marines, all were dead, though few bodies remained. Out of the two automatic turrets, one had been smashed apart while the other was simply missing, as if someone thought to remove not only the part that shot but also the entire pedestal it stood on.
I let my helicopter crash into the ground beside the other while standing safely away on a low rooftop. It was a waste, but the machine was practically inoperable, especially with the bottom half missing. Standing on the roof, the carnage below seemed rather excessive, especially when most of the asphalt was missing from the helicopter bombardment and Mercer's inefficient killing spree. I stood there a while, just staring.
"Would you betray your order for this monster?"
"My order never existed," I answered and turning around, angry that I had let someone get the drop on me, "I was just another casualty of war until someone found me."
Behind me stood three men, in black armor and shadowy hoods. Their hands were already gone, replaced by wicked blades. I eyed them warily.
"Then you shall be gone!" As one they charged.
It would have been a good strategy, attacking me all at once, but the one in the middle reached me first, and the other two were blocked. I lashed out with crude biomass, catching the man in the chest and blasting him away. The second leaped in an overhead chop, which dented the ground while it missed. The third spun at me, but I jumped high.
Far in the distance (and beside me), great columns of smoke rose into the air. Several fires illuminated remote buildings, and sirens were everywhere. The beast was rising. I fell back down.
An evolved attempted to make me land on a pair of sharp blades, but I adjusted my course and landed on him instead, sending him into the floor below. Another took a clumsy swipe at me and I ducked. The third one followed up quickly, earning me a slash across the back. I danced away in a cloud of shifting biomass.
On adjacent roofs I saw more of them, evolved people staring hungrily at me. On farther roofs I noted blurred shapes too big to be evolved, and too fast to be animals.
When the second evolved came at me again, I shoved him, hard, into the third, tumbling them both over the roof to below. When the first dug himself out of the disadvantage of a floor, I kicked him in the face and knocked him back.
Someone landed heavily on the other side of the roof. I spared a quick glance to find two more of them in a dead sprint for me. It was quite annoying how the Order somehow always managed to find more people to throw at me. Taking a chance, I jumped, or rather, fell, down.
The ground rushed quickly to meet me, and I slammed into it with full force. The asphalt erupted in a wave of disturbance, throwing up a nearby car. I booted myself away from my own personal crater and ran, with unnatural speed and agility, away from the deadly nest.
The virus had already taken apart several buildings, from which red blobs hung out of the windows and vines as thick as people snaked around the infrastructure.
A quick glance behind me told me seven of them were giving chase, and one of them was different. Not only was he bigger than the rest, but also faster, and more nimble. The razor sharp sign posts I threw at them cut into the evolved, whereas he whacked them away, even throwing one back at me. Ahead was the major infection zone. Clouds of red puffed into the air, along with the black smokes that dominated the city. Bullets began to fly at me as the military waged war against the infected. Brawlers bit off the heads of marines while helicopters blew them away to dust.
The big man, with a leap, caught up to me.
He had expected me to continue running, and by which he would either tackle me or run me through. Instead, I landed heavily on the hood of a car, flipping it into the air. While the man was distracted, slamming into the car instead, I ducked under him and slashed at him. His armor offered little resistance, but somehow he still got up after losing more or less the right side of his body. I saw him sway, but no time to celebrate. The six evolved had also caught up by this point.
The first one I impaled on a lance, and threw him away, cracking the stone foundations of a large building, already claimed by red veins. The second and third charged in quickly, and I was forced to give ground under their ferocious assault. The fourth stopped short, and when a marine thought to shoot at him, he attacked the marine instead, and acquiring an assault rifle. The other two were nowhere in sight, and that was bad.
A blade stabbed into my thigh, and I returned the favor by snapping the arm that held it. A series of pops shot at me, and I was forced to jumped away the avoid the bloodtox bullets. Instead they hit the another evolved, who collapsed and writhed on the ground.
I ran to disable the rifleman, but something slammed into my back, sending me tumbling forward and crushing the passenger side of a car. Groaning in pain and annoyance, I looked back to see the giant man again, his oversized blade raised in victory.
I scrambled away from the ruined vehicle just as the glowing building suddenly flashed too bright. The man stopped in confusion and glanced back, in time to see the side of the building collapse in an avalanche of stone and glass. An evolved wasn't quick enough and disappeared under the debris. The rest scrambled away from the ruins, me forgotten. Yet as I looked into the building, I had forgotten too.
The red viral masses had grown to such a large proportion that they covered the entirety of the inside walls. The flooring and ceiling were mostly eaten away, the only remainder thin ledges on the side of the walls, leaving the building a hollow shell. What had collapsed the wall was something else other than the corrosive chemicals the virus seems to emit. An oversized hand clutched at the side of the jagged edges of the not yet broken stone, at least two men tall. On its knuckles were sharp spikes of bone, each so wicked it gleamed in the dying sunlight. Connected to the hand by an arm of exposed flesh and bones was a giant, filling up most of the empty spaces inside the building. It bared a maw of jagged teeth and eyes of glowing yellow. When it moved forward, strange cords that connected to the red masses detached themselves and fell down, last in their final moments. Its every step shook the world. When it roared, I felt fear, genuine fear, not since when I was little, when my mother told me the story of the boogieman.
"Shit." I heard one of the evolved comment. That I agreed with. As the behemoth took a step forward, they began to back away.
The giant man suddenly seemed to remember something. He looked around frantically. "Hey! Where's the target?!" Too late. When he turned, a lamppost impaled him through the chest. Weakened, he couldn't remove it before I smashed the post until it bent out of shape, still imbedded with him. He stumbled away, cursing me, cursing the evolved for being so useless, cursing the creator for the apocalypse.
The evolved began to notice me, then stopped, as the goliath swung an arm, almost lazily, to remove a chunk out of not just one, but three floors. Falling stone and glass rained on our street. I took advantage of the distraction by hitting an evolved so hard he flew a block away. When the others caught on again, I had already chopped down another, his biomass disappearing into my own. The energy was instantaneous, as though I had drunk a gallon of concentrated caffeine. The other four didn't stand a chance, especially when the goliath stepped on another one as it turned to face a squad of incoming helicopters.
With one hand a thin blade and the other a set of animalistic claws, I took apart the first evolved with ease, whacking away both his blades and digging my claws from his throat to his stomach. While his dying form was absorbed, I knocked away the second evolved with a heavy slash, opening a large hole in his chest, and smashed in the head of the third. He dropped immediately. Then the last evolved was alone. Finally, realizing with his chest opening and closing like an angry clam, he was in no shape to fight, and so ran, up the wall and leaping away. Then it was only the large man, who still struggled with a lamppost bent like a spring through his body. He cursed some more when he saw me approaching.
"You spawn of devil! You will never win! When the archbishop gets a hold of you, you will be buried in the deepest level of hell!"
"Oh, cut me a break from your lunacies," I said drily, while giving him a good kick. He grunted in pain. "I already know I'm going to hell anyways. The only difference is, how many of you do I get to send to heaven painfully before I go?"
"There won't be enough pain in the universe for you!" he yelled, desperately at my approaching form. "You will never–!" He stopped when my suddenly elongated arm grabbed him by the face. I poured more and more mass into the arm until it bulged, and hardened like a rock. He struggled in vain. Annoyed, I grabbed the lamp and ripped it from him. He made a muffled scream.
"Know this, poor spirit: when I am done, your holy Order won't even exist anymore, much less return to bother me. I will search every inch of this world if I have to, until I know with absolute certainty that you cannot be alive, and then I will come for him, the archbishop, until he cries mercy at my feet."
With that I pulled him into me like an angry tide. The memories came, rushing into my head. I felt the futile voices of others that came with him. They were nobodies, failed experiments or just simply people at the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't care for them. They bought me nothing but misery. However, the original spirit, though, dragged brightly amidst the others. I focused on him first. I dug through his identity and a memory came. It was recent.
There the sky was grey, covered from the major fires which spread across the city. Huge columns rose from one particular spot, a compound of sorts. It looked like a factory, though oddly sets of turrets and camera dotted the roofs. Tanks were parked within a barbed fence, surrounded by military men. From the center of the compound rose something huge. It was a large bulb that oddly shone bright red. It reached above the rest of the facility, easily fifty feet at least. I heard a horrible whisper, powerful yet somehow childish, primitive.
Mother.
A/N
And thus shit went down in NYC.
So this is the end of Part 2, but it won't be the last time you see New York. Our narrator Annalisa here seems to have made quite a couple of enemies. Dangerous enemies, I might add. Anna has been given the powers of a Prototype, yet somehow Alex Mercer always stays ahead of his subjects. And remember: in this story, Alex Mercer IS Blacklight.
A main character death, as promised. I had originally planned to keep Ethan, but due to some outside influences, I have decided that Ethan is an unnecessary complication to the plot. It's quite odd to think that someone I was going to incorporate into the epilogue is completely useless to the events of the story.
My apologies about how action scenes look. I know the last part is a bit ... in a sorry state, but cut me some slack! My editor is on vacation, as per our initial agreements when he/she first started working with me. (JK I didn't really sign a contract with him and I don't really pay him. But he's really on vacation and will hopefully be back when I finish the next chapter.)
To Sano Hibiki:
(Review for Ch.1) Thank you very much! :)
(Review for Ch.2) I swear I didn't drop that many hints...
(Review for Ch.3) Again, thank you for your support. It won't be P2 Alex Mercer cuz we really have no idea about the true extent of Mercer's powers, so I basically upgraded him with some crazy stuff from P1. But yes, it will feature his known powers from P2.
(Review for Ch.4&5) Thank you! It's nice to know someone actually read Ch.5 cuz I'm getting no reviews from it! :D