Lucas was not fucking dumb.
Two years infected with molds chewing the inside of his brain, Lucas was not fucking dumb and hasn't been living under the rock unlike his family.
Fuck, he didn't need a wanted fugitive staying at his house right now. Hell, he technically had a dead woman in his hand according to the news. Something about a quarantine hospital and an explosion that left a hole in the ground. They made an excuse some angry mobs found out the sister of Alex Mercer had been staying there, having fallen victim to the same infection her older brother released onto New York. As if that detail mattered when people were that pissed off from the millions who died because of her brother.
She apparently died in that attack and the mobs were gunned down by the military that had been sent in answer of the escalation of violence.
That was the biggest horrendous horse shit ever fed on the news considering what he got on his plate right now.
But the biggest question came, why covered it up? He could acknowledge her being the sister of Alex Mercer would be enough reason to warrant a capture for questioning, but no official statement has been made on the hunt for Dana Mercer besides the declaration on her death.
But unofficially… there might be interested parties out there, and there were… with a large sum of money attached, but all leads to pursue the deal ended wipe or led to a dead end.
Like someone didn't fucking want anyone having a claim on Dana Mercer and aggressively hunting down any parties that had any interest on her. It made him paranoid enough that he immediately shut down his computer, wiped out any traces of himself from the network with a sudden urge to hightail out of here. He was less interested in the money, and more interested in what made her such a big deal.
The why kept repeating in Lucas' head. The interests in Dana had to be more than just the fact she was in Mercer's circle. Fuck, biohazard little girl looked underpriced when compared to a bioterrorist's sister. No person could cost that much not unless Dana knew or carried something from her brother that was worth a damn. Lucas was even tempted to contact the Connections, just to poke something out of them regarding what the fuck that would make Dana so fucking special. It made him regret just a tad bit on not bringing her to his lab. Those good-for-nothing squatters with a degree could finally be of use.
He had not even begun his research on anything about the boy she had locked up in her trunk.
Unless he was simply just a kid and she was into that sort of shit.
Who was he to judge? Lucas snorted and turned in his seat to stare at the boy in the wheelchair.
Eveline was absolutely obsessed with him, trying to get him to react and do anything. Even right now, she was playing with the boy's face and pulling his cheeks, flapping his limp arm and hand around as if he were boy-sized doll she could play around. She was getting perplexed and frustrated that her effort was amounting to nothing. Hell, the boy's brain could have been fried from being in the back of the car for who knows how long considering that dead expression he had.
Still, Lucas had to be honest with himself, he was a bit surprised. The kid had to be infected with Evie's stuff already, and he had shown no symptoms and no reaction at all. At least, not yet. It took Ma and Pa barely an hour for Evie to get them around her finger. Even the dead weren't exempt to this, they all would show symptoms of Evie's infection since the living tar would start eating up and replace the dead body's cells. The fact the kid had shown no signs and effects of Evie's influences intrigued him a lot.
Almost like he was immune. He wondered if it could be said the same if he injected the heavier stuff of Evie's mold into him. Maybe later, after he gives Dana Mercer her quiet end – well, as quiet she could get around here. He didn't need someone like her bringing more attention to this place.
Speaking of dead sister, Lucas flick his eyes back onto the black and white TV screen.
He frowned at what he saw.
When she was one and could barely walk on her own, Alex was ten and in fifth grade elementary school. When she was five practicing her math and grammar, Alex was fourteen and getting top grades in high school. When she was ten learning how to live alone with a narcissistic alcoholic of a mother, Alex was attending university somewhere far away in New York City.
He's never going to come back here.
It had always been her and him in that shitty place they once called home, and suddenly, at just ten years old she had to learn how to stand on her own. She told herself she would not cry, because Alex didn't cry. She told herself even if it was hard, Alex had it worse and had to take care of a baby sister, had taken the brunt of their mother's abuse at them, and he didn't complain about this to anyone.
She had to be strong like her brother.
Be smart like him.
Like her brother.
Her brother's sister.
Why would he want to? He worked hard to get out of this place.
His absence from home made her painfully aware of the nine-year gap between them, but she learned and appreciated him all the more for what he had to go through at that same age. At the very least, she had a few female relatives besides her mother that could be argued she was close enough to. Although, it didn't stop her from picking a fight with them when one had wondered if she even shared the same father as Alex because of the age gap.
After all, people said her mother had her behind jail and wasn't in speaking terms with their father. What are the chances her mother managed getting into the same pants ten years after Alex, the same year she was released from jail again?
She had asked about her father once with her mother, only to receive a disparaging short laugh.
Your daddy don't want you, and trust me, kiddo, your brother don't want you too.
She could recall that moment very clearly, her mother barely dressed in her rumpled always-messy bed, her face hidden beneath her morning hair, and the bedroom always smelled of cheap cigarettes. In hindsight, if she wasn't so caught up in the moment, she would have noticed her mother had been crying. Her vicious comment was made when another of her boyfriend had left her again.
It was strange, when Alex was away, a side of their mother came out that she only showed to her. She could be a fun person at times, told her if she wanted that shirt so much then she should just take it. She even made it into some kind of game, go to the mall, pick something and make sure never to get caught. Distract the guards even. A race how much you could get away, how much you can take, how fast you could escape. They would even go eat out at McDonalds after where she could eat hot food for once.
But it didn't stop the belittling comments and yelling when she screwed something up, and even drove away with the car, leaving her stranded behind in the shops when things don't go her way. Those days could get so bad Dana could scream at her mother back and accused her even worse. The dollars that always come out of nowhere, nothing more than the things she stole from the pockets of guys she slept with.
As if she was better, Dana thought ruefully, since occasionally she stole from their wallets as well when they were using their showers.
Her mother had slapped her so hard that night whenever she so much brought up that fact. She wanted to shove her back; she wanted to kick her mother in the guts repeatedly but then she always remembered how bad it was for Alex. He always had to wear that same crappy grey hoodie no matter how hot it gets.
You're the reason Alex doesn't want to come home.
Alex never yelled nor screamed, never lost his mind like their mother was prone to, but no matter how much she tried to be strong like him, she always managed to cry on the phone when she was speaking with Alex. She didn't weep and beg like some stupid girls in the mall do, but she couldn't stop the silent angry tears from spilling and the sniffles she always brushed off as a cold to Alex.
When are you coming back?
When he did come back, it was to pick up the stuff that he told her to find around the house. He didn't even stay around long enough to sleep in the house for the night. He would rather sleep in a car in some carpark than being here.
He told her quite bluntly there and then that he was never going to come back here.
She asked him where he was going to go then.
Manhattan.
Could she visit him?
When you're older.
"He's never going to come back."
"Who's not going to come back, baby girl?"
Dana shot up from staring at her empty plate. Her eyes blinked at the round dinner table that stood tall in front of her. Two empty chairs sat on the other side with another close seated beside hers. The smell of bacon cooking wafted up her nose with the sound of something sizzling in a hot pan, she turned to look at the kitchen. The summer sun shone so brightly through the windows, it lit up her pretty white dress and her long red hair.
"Mom?" Dana asked.
The red-headed woman turned from the sizzling pan she was attending to and beamed at her, "Yes, sweetie?"
There was a sense of something quite wrong with the picture in front of her, but she couldn't quite put her finger what exactly it was. Dana gave a quizzical look back at her mother.
"Nothing." She shook her head.
The smile on her face dropped as a concerned look took its place. "What's wrong, sweetie? You look so sad."
She walked over towards Dana and leaned down beside her, resting her hand down on her shoulder, their faces inch apart from each other. Dana uncomfortably looked away from her mother's warm green eyes and rested her gaze on the hand on her shoulder instead.
"It's about Alex," she muttered and looked down towards the floor, her red sneakers barely touching the linoleum floor with her mother's bare feet just a foot away from hers.
"What about him?"
"He doesn't want to come back."
"Nonsense," her mother said and rested her cheek on her head, her arms enclosing around her into a warm hug. "Your brothers love you; they wouldn't miss a chance to be with you."
Brothers. Dana stared at the two front empty chairs with two empty plates paired in front, she realized then Alex had left his black leather jacket behind as it rested over the back on the left chair. One of the sleeves swayed but then settled still again. The wooden chair right beside it didn't match the model and looked older, probably bought a long time ago before its sibling was replaced some time ago.
Five neat simple notches were scratched on the armchair.
"You want some hot pancakes with your bacon?"
"Yes, please." Dana brightened and was almost startled when she heard neighborhood dogs yipping excitedly outside.
"It must be those dogs you've been feeding; I think they want to play with you, sweetie." Her mother grinned from the kitchen.
An ominous loud blood-curdling howl rose from outside with vicious growls grumbling accompanied beneath the call.
Those aren't dogs. Dogs don't howl like that.
But wolves do.
Dana's hair stood on end as she stared out the windows only for her gaze to break again when her mother placed something very wet on her plate. She looked down, her hot three pancakes were there, her crispy bacon though were a mess. Hardly looked like thin cuts of bacon at all, wet and still had slimy red sheens on it, a crawling slab of meat-veins tangled together.
It was alive and squirming on her pancakes, looking right back at her as the howls and snarling of wolves could be heard not too far in the distance.
"Where have you been running, CHALICE?"
Blink. Blink. Blink.
She stirred, and she draped her arm over her eyes. Her head pounded uncomfortably when she slowly woke up to the rigged wooden beams of an unfinished ceiling and fucking loud blaring music that shook the insides of her ears. Lingering fresh sawdust wafted up her nose with unpleasant smells of strong paint followed it. Distantly, she could still taste the tang of bitterness in the back of her throat, beneath all the strong chemicals there was something rancid and rotten in the air.
She moved and the stiff plastic sheet beneath her crackle. Not even the time waking up in Blackwatch's facility was unpleasant as this. At least Blackwatch wanted her alive and comfortable enough to be compliant to their surgeries and daily testing, if not they left her be in her solitary until she was willing and ready to be approached.
Silence and loneliness were her constant companions and was a double-edged blade to her mind back then. It made her all too willing to seek out the alternatives. The minds of bored, frustrated, infected Blackwatch soldiers stuck in solitary were her only means from falling into desperation, even it meant knowing too well the men behind the mask that hunts down monsters.
A part of her was thankful that she could no longer listen even if it meant inconveniences like now, because she knew the worst minds to hear and see from weren't the minds of Blackwatch, but of his. It hurt to admit. She had seen and knew enough what he had done, and she didn't need nor want another damning first-hand view of it.
Right here, right now, she wasn't dealing with the cold indifference of a cultish military complex or the eerie but stiff politeness of staff members and soldiers. She was dealing with multiple unpredictable nutcases with a sadist of a son. Dana grunted and pressed her palms onto the plastic sheet-covered cold floor, dirt and flecks of old paints clung to her skin and clothes when she pushed herself up.
Why the fuck did she come here, again? Dana gave a crossed look at her surroundings as her head continued to pound uncomfortably to some shitty loud rock.
It was like one of those makeshift rave party, where all they did to cover the debilitating state of the building that was probably condemned and had dozens more safety hazards attached to its bricks, was to have white plastic wrap everywhere, on the floor and walls with neon paints and blue blacklights to set the mood. Perfect place to cover up a murder.
It certainly set her mood. A mood where she wished she could smash down the wall like Kool-Aid man.
"Fuck this place," Dana muttered as her eyes welled up, her chest began heaving at her internal screaming of frustration.
Nothing fucking goes right in her life.
She was not one to admit her own mistakes. She already had a hard time swallowing her own bitter pills, she just didn't need this added to that pile.
All she had to do was keep herself alive until Alex arrived.
If Alex arrived. He never really told her where he went, and he won't tell her why or what. All she knew was he had been a bit down and frustrated by something. In fact, if he could get away with it, he wouldn't want to tell her about anything. He was a bit absent-minded in a way, the wrong details would lapse from his lips and the need-to-know ones would slip past his need-to-communicate radar.
What if he was too far away? A dark thought came. He was fast, he didn't need to rest, but realistically she shouldn't expect him to come in the next hour or two. Not unless he was in Louisiana as well.
"Okay, Dana… moping ain't going to do you any good," she breathed this to herself and finally looked up.
Holding out was not an option she should be pursuing. She had to get out of this place. With that in thought, Dana started to slowly move but winced when the pain in her injured right leg flared up. Escape with a bullet jabbed in her leg. Easy said, easy done, she gritted her teeth. She needed to get to the boy as well. She was not going to abandon a catatonic kid in the hands of these nutso hillbillies.
When she gets to that little shit, he was going to get the scolding of his lifetime for stowing away in the back of her trunk and being a sneaky fuck. She was also going to have a long chat about his catatonia as well, and if he has been pretending all this time in front of her… that boy was going to get his ass chewed out. Right now, the thought of coming up several ways of punishing that creepy virus not-child made for an even better motivation than hope and revenge – on top of shutting this fucking atrocious music up.
She pulled herself up and stumbled towards the gaping wooden doorway, peering into the hallway as she pressed herself against its vibrating wall. It was dimmer and darker, the only light was flickering to the speed of half a second or more, blinding like a camera flash and would be gone before she could note any other details. In its absence, overwhelming darkness with no seconds to give her eyes adjustment before the flash of light ruined her chances again.
It would be like moving through still-frames out there with one frame of absolute darkness and fuck knows what could creep up to her quickly in between the flashes of light.
She couldn't even rely on her ears considering the deafening music.
This fucking game they were playing with her was rigged from the start.
What was she supposed to do?
Get out.
How could she defend herself?
Find something. Anything, she thought crossly.
Dana looked away from the flickering hallway, her gaze rested on the room she woke up to. Beneath the dim deep blue of blacklights, tall cheap metal and wooden shelving stood in rows, the clear plastic sheets obscuring the contents behind. She quickly rushed over and flipped the sheets up, her eyes searching through the empty shelves and found only a shoddily closed lacquer can that was probably hardened from ages of abandonment and a bunch of rusty loose screws.
Fucking useless. Crossed, Dana immediately looked up at the rods of blacklight that was her only source of light in here. A part of her mused if she wanted to rip the rod out using the shelving as her ladder to get up there on the ceiling, maybe the ceiling would be thin enough for her to punch a hole and crawl through its space. But one look at some black throbbing gunk that had managed to spill out from the cracks above stopped any of that plan.
She wasn't going anywhere near whatever that shit was.
With a heavy heart, she turned away from her room and walked out to the seizure-inducing hallway. One hand always resting on the wall. She moved slowly and carefully, the hair on the nape of her neck standing on end, her teeth vibrating from the loud drumming and screaming electric guitar, her eyes straining as the corridor repeatedly blinked in and out of her sight.
Dana froze when she saw a black humanoid silhouette shuffled into view from around a corner up ahead, but the shape of it was all kinds of wrong. How it moved was wrong. It shambled. It twitched and stumbled, and the smell… her stomach turned as her nose scrunched. The stench she smelled from it warned her enough. It lacked the strange sense of metallic sweetness a part of her almost expected. Only rancid bitterness greeted her.
Rot.
She had never seen Walkers up close, nor the other monstrosities nightmares Greene had let loose. The only one she had been up close was the monster that had snatched her and dug its claws into her belly before launching out of the safe house with her screaming in tow. She rather kept that as her only experience dealing with mutated monsters besides her brother, of course – and the creepy boy even if he didn't count since, apparently, he carried no virus – something her brother had stated with a scoff.
It walked like a Walker, it had claws of a Hunter, but it was more like walking tree branches molded into the shape of human bones and muscles with this black tar-like substance holding it all together. Its face held no human quality with the eyes being only sunken holes. It was blind. Its big, large black-rotten teeth took up two third of its head and whatever flesh it had was melted into this black tar.
Dana slowly stepped back and moved away.
It shouldn't hear her for the same reason she couldn't hear it. But can it smell? She hoped whatever tar-like infection it had overwhelmed its sense of smell and was not the senses-boosting kind. That was the one thing that made Greene's infected like Walkers frightening, they would eventually smell out its non-infected neighbors on top of whatever creepy hivemind driving them towards spreading or gathering. It was one of the reasons why she couldn't stay on the fringes of the Red Zones for too long even if it meant being safer from the military.
She kept her eyes on the twitchy molded as she slowly backtracked a fraction of a step at a time. Her heart made a jolt when the tip of her shoe caught the wrinkle of the plastic tarp on the floor, the stiff sheet's crackle unheard by the loud music. She slowly lifted her foot higher before setting it back down, her blue eyes flicked back to the molded.
It was twitching towards her, stumbling and shambling in its straight stride. Perhaps it could discern the difference between the vibration that ran through the wooden floorboard and the ones that ran through a disturbed plastic sheet at its feet. She didn't care enough to stick around and see if that was true or not.
Dana quickened her pace and simply turned her back to it, her trembling heart inside setting her nerves alive and on fire, her skin prickled against her clothes, the urge to flight begging her to burst into a run, her right thigh stabbing each time she used and put her weight on her right leg. She forced herself on a hurried walk, her shaky exhales drying her mouth and lips.
The flickering lights steady flashing above her was turning a headache into a painful migraine, her skull squeezing with the blaring of music becoming unbearable.
She just gritted her teeth through it. Her breathing rose up just a notch as she rushed down to a T section but halted to a stop when she saw three more of those rotten infected shambling around the hallway. Muttering a swear word, she spun around to the opposite end, wondering if she wanted to take the chance on what could be a dead end and hoped there was another corridor around the corner ahead.
She took her chances, but even the sight of another corner didn't relieve her.
Dana quickly glanced behind as she hurried over. From a glimpse, it didn't seem they were following her, but something snagged the foot of her right leg. The force quickly disappeared when she stumbled forward.
The music drowned out whatever cry of pain that came next. All she felt the blinding flash of pain when the air itself smashed every fiber of her body and shoved her against the wall hard, the air inside her lungs punched out of her as her insides broke. Her skull smacked against the wall, she crumbled and curled onto the floor.
The lights above just kept on blinking.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
In a haze of pain, she cried out and clasped the ground with her hand, flecks of dried paint and wood and debris dug into her palm. She lifted her head up, her vision wobbling and narrow, her ears were ringing, and her arms trembled as she struggled to pull herself up to gain her balance. Half of her body was entirely in intense pain.
Behind her, down the hallways, the molded stirred and shambled towards the explosion.
Her hand grasped for the walls when she pushed herself up from the floor. She slipped and almost fell again, her head swimming with pain.
"Your sister seems quick-footed," Eveline commented.
She was moving too slow.
He watched the live footage from the telly's black and white screen, watched as she struggled to deal with the rot. His hands resting on the armrest twitched. She was mother's chosen for a reason. Mother does not choose her daughters. His sisters were simply made by chance. But for her, mother had chosen. It meant she wanted something, expected something, had left something personally from mother to daughter rather than left it to chances. That meant something.
So why didn't she ask for him?
That made her different to all his sisters.
Why couldn't they hear him?
The rotten filths were catching up to her, and there was one scampering on all four ahead of her, faster than the shambling ones and was making its way down towards her. A ridiculous facsimile of a human spider, it launched itself as she finally got up using the wall.
It immediately knocked her down onto the ground, long elongated claws for fingers tear and rip through skin and clothes. She tried to fight it off, shielding the blows to her head with her arms, only to have the flesh and sleeves sliced off by its claws.
He couldn't hear her.
But he could hear her cry in here.
And felt only the familiar emptiness that he had felt for most of his life.
Could she hear him?
For four decades, he had watched and listened his sisters died as the humans hunted them down one by one. Their murmuring voices one day crystal clear, and then sudden silence.
Why didn't they come for him?
He had listened to the soft voice of a girl, that he had realized was his own mother slowly turning incoherent, distant and repetitive as the years and decades gone by. He had felt his mother's last cry on this earth when Zeus crushed her repeatedly with his fists in cold snarling fury.
Why didn't she call for him?
Hers wouldn't be so different.
He remembered, at least, it wasn't always like this. Once he had felt a stirring sense of something for them, but that had only reminded him the pain, and the vast distances between him and his family, which only led to frustration, then resentment.
Then impatience.
Mother had never liked it when he used their gift out of selfish anger.
Did she remember him?
He was a good son, he listened to her. She told him to wait. He waited, and waited, the cry of voice he once held inside him slowly dwindled into nothing. He had learned to be detached from it for her sake, he would not burden his mother with his pain, he would be strong like her. It was easier that way – content and less distracting even now as he watched his sister being torn apart by a monster. Her cries piercing inside his head.
Why did she told him to wait?
He was a good child, he was strong, he was patient, he listened.
She managed to kick the molded off, sending it flying few feet away and she quickly scrambled up, the adrenaline rushing in when her body straightened. It was clear, despite the poor quality of the screen and the flashing of lights, he could see the tears running down the corner of her face as her lips bared in frustration and defiance of her situation.
Out of all his sisters, she was the most emotional of them all, wrathful and simmering like Zeus. A complete opposite. He wasn't sure mother intended that. But that could change like it always had before.
She rushed past one of the slow walkers, a pathetic image of the blackened burnt corpses of mother's children, held together by this black tar infection. Except these don't cry out for mother.
Or for her.
There were just walking rotten filths, but much like walkers when suddenly aggravated by threat and sensed food, they could surprisingly burst into speed. It was a surprise she reacted too late when one lurched and shot its claws form behind her, slicing into her left ear just as she ducked under in time, its swipe left a large gash on the wall after her. Her cries inside his head turning into ones of righteous anger when her hand snatched the back of the molded's neck, moving so fast she used the momentum to send the creature flying to its other friends down the hall.
They fell like… like pins from a bowling ball.
"You said she wasn't infected, but she's clearly infected, Evie!" he heard the bald man snarled and spun his chair to face them.
"She's…" The little girl's bright voice turned curious when she frowned. "…she can't see me."
"What?!" Lucas snapped.
Evie only laughed at his anger. "You're being a frowny face, Lucas," she sing-songed.
"This isn't a laughing matter, Evie," Lucas snapped at them. "Tell her to stop."
"I told you, she can't see me," Evie snapped back, sounding annoyed. "Besides, she's slowing down." She pointed at the screen.
She was waking up.
That wasn't good. She needed to stay asleep or else her dogs would come for her.
A four-footed crawler had launched onto her back, tearing her flesh in its flailing and scratching. Dana smashed her back onto the wall, trying to crush it. It didn't deter it when it sliced deep into her neck and dug deeper into her shoulder, large teeth piercing right through with more blood spilling from her opened wounds down her arms and waist.
It didn't stop her, Dana stepped a few feet forward, her teeth gritting from the pain as her hands tried to grasp and pull off the choking arm hooked around her neck. She slammed her back onto the wall again, this time leaving a web of cracks. She did it once, then twice, the third time her head smacked against its head hard enough to crush it into a pulp against the brick wall, smearing its tar-like blood down the back of her hair.
She stumbled forward when the weight pressed against her slipped off before crumbling onto the floor on all four, the blood from her body curdling, stretching then retracting into solid familiar form of fleshy roots and throbbing veins meant for hives.
No… Pariah's back straightened.
Don't shut down here. Don't call them.
"What the fuck…" Lucas said.
From the ground of her own bed of blood, flesh and infection she stood up again. Without any struggle, without any pain, without any fear, a clarity with a simple purpose. He didn't need to see the colors on the screen to know that her eyes had turned green just like his mother's when she snapped her head and looked up. His gaze rested onto the floor, no doubt she was staring directly at him.
Pariah felt more than hear when he heard a young somber voice coming from the hive.
I know where you are now.
A sigh finally escaped from him as he knew what was to follow. The stirring vicious eagerness of a hunt back on and the dark chuckles of them.
Her dogs heard her, and they are coming.
AN: Crawling out of my hole after recovering from bad mental health and real life being ass.