ATTENTION! There is artwork of the chapter on spacebattles forums and AO3. Find me under silentcrusader (SB) or AO3 (SinStealer), under the same title/thread name!
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Chapter 8: Ils Ne Passeront Pas!/Heroism In Every Breath
Several Centuries Ago
The abomination screams, heaving with each monstrous birth, its agony echoing and its only midwife the brutal caress of bullets and rockets. Mercer sees how the flesh of soldiers is put to gruesome use. Vividly. Some of the malformed creatures are covered in bits of military camouflage. Broken Three King's patches cover the head of one like a crown.
Alarms ring out, sharp and high-pitched. The loud whine draws the attention of everyone else in the base. Inside, they're drowned out by the roaring of weapons in the cavern and by the death rattles of men.
The main growth expresses its misery onto others.
…Mercer does his best. He sincerely tries. But he and the soldiers are limited—by each other. They've never trained together. There is no single front to concentrate their fury. The abomination is screened by its progeny. They're punished. Brutally. The birthed creatures dart between squads, shadows in half-broken lights, daring them to kill each other in friendly fire. Or they dash to load-bearing pillars, where the soldiers on the technicals hesitate to damage the structural integrity of the complex.
When the D-Codes act, decisive with uncompromising speed, carrying turrets and rocket launchers in the darkness of their bulk, they hold no such compunction. In the first second, a squad of six good men is blown up alongside a creature the size of a dog. In the next, a concrete column is strafed with five dozen bullets, missing its elusive target. It's infuriating, Alex thinks. Wasteful.
Mercer takes charge of the D-Codes. He does it with yells and the threat of his tendrils. Together, they're able to stem the tide. They push it back, inch by inch. Alex has the D-Codes organize a cross-section of deadly bullets and explosions. Then he shields them. Any creature that gets too close is cut down by his claws. The other soldiers, half the number they were before, notice and pull back to the sides, clearing the killing zone and adding their efforts.
—Then the D-Codes run out of ammo. Their weaponry is spent. Their turrets are smoking with heat, barrels warped with relentless firing. But evolution has flourished. The main growth and creatures are mutating at a prodigious rate, adapting to heavy weapons fire faster than Alex could have ever done. The soldiers are a pitiful few. Captain Cross and Colonel Rooks organize the men as best they can. Everything is too quick.
One brave D-Code abandons standard doctrine for furious melee, stepping up to Mercer's left. His entrance is magnificent. He wields his empty launcher like a club, smacking with enough force to send creatures skidding back to the main growth. Others soon follow.
A V-shaped formation appears, Alex at the tip. They hold the line for ten seconds.
Then it breaks.
In the chaotic frenzy, the first D-Code into the melee charges with a manic laugh. The enemy focuses on him. The others regroup further back. He ignores the rips and tears into his body by the creatures, then by the tendrils of the main growth. He leaps, his launcher held like a spear, glorious in the dark, and stabs it into the closest thing the abomination has for eyes. He does so again and again, even as it sprays acid that dissolves his face—and only stops when his brain is half-melted.
The tanks—initially back to make space for the presentation and coup—finally move forward and act with the threat of friendly fire mitigated. They're firing near the entrance, by Mercer, the living D-Codes, and the squads alive since the start. Together, they make another stand. Another push. The enemy falls back. The tank cannons pack a punch the creatures haven't adapted to, turning organisms into red paste wherever they hit. When they unload on the increasingly large main growth—designated as Alpha Amalgam Abomination—it reacts with horrific, piercing screams.
Tendrils plunge into the earth, sounding like a dozen jackhammers going off at once. The ground shakes. Vibrations are felt under every foot. Seconds later, they uppercut one tank from below the concrete. Another is dragged back to the main growth by a team of malformed creatures. Mercer is too late to save them. It spits corrosive acid, eating through the metal and crew like the brave D-Code from earlier. They melt too quickly for screams, and no one besides Mercer sees them die like flies in the dark.
More tanks and men take their place with the human roar of boots and engines. Defiant. The only lights functioning are the ones provided by the equipment the soldiers use. It's enough. Hundreds of beams track and follow each malformed creature, their illumination a herald to gunfire. For the first time since the battle begins, Mercer knows that his forces are steadily overwhelming it. He's gotten into the rhythm of fighting with Blackwatch by now, and they operate like a well-oiled machine.
—Then the abomination reveals its trump card. Each old and new grotesque petal had steadily grown in volume over the fight, starting flat then rounding like a ball. Soft flesh had been covered by biological growth harder than steel. They bulge. Mercer hadn't thought to check what lay inside, doing what he could to stem the tide. He learns now.
The petals burst as the horrors inside claw out of their hardened wombs. So this is the result of the fusion, Mercer thinks, the most potent strains of Blacklight and Redlight combined—and the most stable.
Hundreds of flashlights and mounted beams shine on the new children of the abomination. It's a mistake for sane eyes. They walk on six arms, each one bent and jointed at random areas; their eyes bleed around the claws that pierce their retinas; their skin is akin to a flayed man; and when they roar in the pain of their birth and the bullets hitting them, Mercer sees that their teeth are the nubs of fingers, ending with misshapen nails. Though their bodies look riddled with tumors, they boast rippling musculature.
The hexapod abominations swing their ruined eyes around. Pause. They lock them with the opposing forces, unblinking through the blinding lights and bullets trained on them, and release a dozen screeches. The sound is joined by thundering hands pounding the earth, charging. The fat is damaged by weapons, but the veins and bones are unhurt. A moment passes. A shifting of flesh occurs. That meager progress is taken away from Mercer's forces. The hexapods had reached out and consumed from malformed creatures rallying around them. The borrowed flesh was used to grow carpaces. The new armor resists all but the strongest turrets available to the soldiers.
They're still defiant. The soldiers aren't entirely sane. Lesser men would have broken. They respond with rockets and cannons. And yet, there's a desperate air. The destruction of one hexapod sees the rest grab the last malformed creatures with them in a fury visible through any body language.
A quiet sound emerges. Mercer hears it first. Then it grows louder with numbers. A buzzing noise is dimly heard above the yells and guns echoing back and forth in the cavern. Little, flying creatures shoot out from the hexapods' backs. They're different. Weak. Unlike their parents, they do not try to fight. Instead, they ignore the gore and deaths of their fellows as they seek to escape the barricade. Mercer knows in his heart that they will never stop spreading should they exit the facility.
The abomination is learning.
He yells out warnings, D-Codes and normal soldiers snapping to the new threats. The former are tasked with killing the new abominations, alongside himself and the tanks. He's met with grim affirmations. The rest of Blackwatch is to fill the air above them with lethal rounds. The formation shifts. Men move to new locations. They don't lose their discipline even under the circumstances.
Behind the threats and deep in the dark, Mercer notices the pulsating main growth get bigger and bigger.
The first hexapod abomination reaches the line of D-Codes and Alex. Six hands pound the blood-striken ground in speed and challenge. He accepts. A savage smile crosses his face. Mercer pounces on it, ripping into its flayed torso, and severing its spine. Alex lets the bloodlust rise in him. He breaks apart the screeching, paralyzed hexapod with his tendrils. The prehensile limbs rip into its body with no regard for mercy, stretching from himself like the closing legs of a spider. Some of the tendrils reach into its mind and consume—
It's all wrong, wrong, wrong.
—The sickening taste and 'spread' of its constituent parts leaves him gasping for a breath he hasn't needed since Penn Station. The very genetics of the abominations are cancer-like to Alex's own cells. It's wrong. It's wrong. The DNA of the hexapods did not try to damage him—it emphasizes, instead, how every cell is the true him. It's disruptive. And it scares him. Alex doesn't need to use a brain. He doesn't need a spine or nerves. He doesn't have a centralized nervous system in control. His consciousness is the one in charge because his cells agree on it even through the transformations. But the abominations try to change that. Their consumed bodies give tools that encourage rebellion on the cellular level.
Left in the open air, those same, genetic tools would spread airborne. It would turn the bodies of everyone in the area against themselves. He can't allow that. Won't. Not on his watch. As Alex struggles to overcome the 'deadman switch' inside this one, confusion flicking on and off in him, he drags his tendrils to the hexapod blown up earlier. Consumes. Then reaches. He grasps those being bludgeoned to death by the D-Codes. Not a single one can be left unconsumed or not turned to ash.
Amidst images and colors swirling around his head, the viral product of genetic evolution, Alex tries to understand the creatures' next moves. His eyes swivel back and forth around the barricade. D-Codes fight furiously to put each one in the ground. They struggle. The hexapods are intelligent sapients, driven by a burning need to protect its parent. They dance and jump between the men, more agile than a dozen monkeys as their six hands grab any handle to push off of. Even the heads of soldiers, which burst into red blood and bone under the force of five fingers.
And each bit of consumed flesh births more of the flying creatures. A constant, black line of newborns pour from their backs—defying gravity. The swarms hide the roof of the cavern from beams and flashlights with sheer numbers. The hail of bullets are like rocks flung into a pond, causing ripples among them but never dispersing.
"They're behind us," a soldier says in panic, as the insect-like abominations suddenly fly past. The swarm flies coordinated. The realization hits Alex like a lightning bolt. The flying creatures are following the orders of the hexapods.
Alex slices into his enemy, severing all six limbs and consuming it with a migraine of daze, before stumbling back into the line of soldiers. He hears the coarse yells of Colonel Rooks and Captain Cross, still alive and giving orders. They live up to their reputations. Adaptable and competent. The two are stiffening the spines of the men, who have seen their comrades die gruesomely in countless ways since everything went wrong. That was one minute ago. "They're trying to pincer us," Alex says, shouting at Cross. "The flying creatures will spread growth in the facility, before breaking free."
"Colonel Rooks, we need to double-back double-time before they breach the containment gate!" Cross is quick to act.
"Hostiles at six o'clock!" Alex doesn't know who yells that. He doesn't care. His eyes sharpen, seeing what new horrors march towards them now. The dark shadows hide the shapes from the soldiers, but not from Alex. They're ugly. He sees four arms, ruined eyes, and flayed skin; the relation between them and the hexapods. Alex understands how. The flying creatures are carriers, and from the ripped clothing and coats dotting the monkey-like monsters, they have already hit the personnel located in offices and labs closer to the entrance.
More come. Fungal spores drop down from the flying creatures, landing in the blood of the soldiers torn apart by the new horrors. New growths form. Some are smaller, boasting two or three hands. Others, the sole incubator in a deceased body, grow to be hexapods. But the seed-like clusters that land on the barren soil of concrete, absent of fertile blood and meat, do not die. They grow into lesser malformed creatures.
The men curse. The veterans yell as they reshuffle troops.
One flying creature, buzzing like a mosquito, tries to latch onto the neck of Colonel Rooks. It seeks to inject its infectious payload into the man's veins, but he crushes it with one fist. "They must not be allowed to escape," he says, grim, "Not another outbreak on my watch."
Captain Cross nods. Then casts his eyes around quickly. Alex sees him assessing the forces they have left. "Mercer, we won't be able to make it without you. Escort us to the airlock. The D-Codes and soldiers here will hold the line. They'll last long enough for us to seal the facility—and have you confront the main creature."
Mercer takes a moment to digest the logic, still reeling from the disorientation in his body. His tendrils still act, several pulling back a soldier from certain decapitation. He lets instinct take him. It's easier that way. Alex pounces on a grotesque, oversized spider-like creature. He consumes it. When he finishes a second later, he nods at the plan. It makes sense. Blackwatch's sacrifices wouldn't be in vain. Too many soldiers were already dead.
He comes to a snap decision. "I'll guide you and your soldiers out of here. Prevent them from escaping. Lock the doors and call for aid. If I don't kill it, it's all up to you." Colonel Rooks' face contorts in fury, visible only to Mercer's eyes, stubborn, but the dire situation forces his acquiescement.
The colonel issues the orders on his radio. "…1st Rifle Platoon, support the D-Codes and lay down covering fire. 1st Tank Platoon, hold the entrance. 2nd Rifle Platoon, make sure nothing sneaks by them. Third Rifle Platoon, on me." His burning eyes tell of his conflict, as he orders most of the men to sacrifice themselves. Without joining them.
Mercer takes one last look at the shadowy barricade. Hundreds of lights shine from it, like stars facing down beasts from nightmares. It's beautiful in a certain way. A heroic way. The kind that only arises in the worst situations. The platoons obey the orders in grim determination, defiant to the end. If any soldiers were willing to abandon post, they were long dead. Third Rifle Platoon's withdrawal, battered but still combat-effective, is met with quiet cheers and promises to regroup in Hell.
They descend into the rapidly infested tunnel.
The lights of the soldiers swing back and forth, bright dots watching their front and rear. The exit of the men is steady, broken only by the pained gasps of some nursing wounds. The battle in the stadium-sized cavern had taken its toll. Their blood drips out of shallow cuts and purple bruises. They're the lucky ones. They can still fight.
And their eyes are watchful. Mercer can see clearly in the dark, but for a moment he entertains what they must perceive; what humans must perceive. Between the handful of steady lights pointing ahead and many more rotating, they notice growing tendrils on the walls loom ominously. And not what lurks behind. The growths stretch from ceiling to floor, thick and bloody, and create a grotesque, meat-like environment in the tunnel.
"Like walking into the belly of the beast," one soldier says, quietly to the man on his right side. Mercer hears him anyway. He thinks the comment is apt. Especially so when the first surprise attack comes—or would have been a surprise, if he hadn't shouted a warning.
There's no hexapod abominations, this time. Only malformed creatures. The group makes short work of them in a racket of sound. It's butchery. The bullets are as loud as they were in the cavern. If any of the men were to make it out alive, Mercer thinks, they'd have to worry about hearing damage for the rest of their lives.
When the next attack comes, massed with foes, Mercer gets final confirmation on what happened to the base personnel and civilian attachments. His last hope for them vanishes. There's no indomitable human spirit that could have saved them. The monkey-like abominations, few with six hands, most with two or three, are leading the charge like officers. They wear the ripped up clothing of humans as little insignias. The hexapod in charge is wearing lab safety goggles over its ruined eyes. It's pointless. And it's unsettling.
Merecer kills that one first. His strikes are furious and rough. It repulses him on a fundamental level, visually and cellular. His consumption is no less disorienting. He loses control of his right hand for an instant, and watches it contort and shift without his will. A rage overtakes him. Alex crushes the foreign will—his will, the DNA whispers—with prejudice, and helps the rest of the company mop up the battle.
Sustainable casualties are Mercer's focus. It's the humane thing. There will be more of those abominations—he's sure of that. And he'll need the soldiers to anchor him, in tactics and in humanity.
A little ahead, they see one more disturbing sight out of many. An infected person, body long distorted of features, is crawling mindlessly to the meat-like tendrils lining the walls. Their hands and knees make soft padding sounds with the layers of fat coating them. It's harmless. A hand reaches out, and the growths react. They rear up like ten prehensile teeth, and pull the body inside the flesh. A round bump forms soon after, like a womb. Bulging. Mercer destroys the incubation before another horror can crawl out.
More troubling are the destroyed turrets. The automated defenses are broken into pieces, warped barrels facing the long path down to the cavern. The tendrils lining the walls stretch towards them—or more likely, Alex thinks, the main growth.
…Half-a-dozen attacks later, Colonel Rooks and Captain Cross are nursing heavy wounds. They've barely made any progress. More surprise attacks and mass charges have whittled their forces down. It can't go on like this, Mercer thinks.
They need an edge, Alex decides. His eyes rove over the battered soldiers. There's less of them now. No one's chatting unless it's about hostiles and orders. Fingers twitch toward triggers, scared and angry. Some of them have dropped their long rifles, broken or out of ammo, and are holding pistols. They look small in their hands, and smaller when shooting at the creatures. A tough reality settles in. The handguns are ineffective, and those soldiers turn to holding flashlights or performing first aid. It's more useful.
Then Alex's eyes catch onto the viral growths on the wall. Still present, dangling like meat in a butcher's shop. Mostly undamaged. Stray bullets hardly grazed them. Heavier ordinances hadn't touched them—he and the soldiers had focused on more important targets. There hasn't been another incubation. And the consumption of that had been normal, compared to the hexapods. No disorientation or rebellion in his body. But there had been something else…
Alex reaches out a hand and rests it on one viral growth. When the tendrils rear up, shuddering, he 'taps' into it using the genetic key of the hexapods he's consumed. He sees madness. He sees a dense neural neural network. It's packed with more data and processing power than dozens of supercomputers. His mind traces it, mapping out the whole facility, and follows the 'wires' back to the heart of the hivemind. The main growth, the Alpha itself.
It towers psychically.
And yet. For all its speed and intellect, it's limited by its handicaps. It's naive and inexperienced. The concrete box miles under the earth isolates it from samples of intelligent thinking. Its lack of knowledge on human languages reduces its options further. It has no access to the internet, and the books brought with the soldiers and scientists are useless. The original mind of the mad scientist is so gone as to be functionally alien and illiterate.
Alex lets out a relieved laugh. The young main growth is mutating and evolving over every permutation, rather than picking the best traits and paths based on the data it has collected. Key advantages are found and discarded every iteration. It's endlessly reinventing the wheel.
It's still a threat, of course. The secret virus in Iya Valley combines the hive-mind power of Redlight with the infinite adaptability of Blacklight. But its own alienness has bought them a little bit of time—it doesn't understand humanity. And it needs intelligent brains to supercharge its growth with experience and time. So it cheats. It consumes. Using human brains as processors, it's able to keep several optimal choices throughout the generations. It isn't very good yet at choosing what, thankfully, like creating powerful abominations with all arms instead of any legs. Or other useful evolutionary paths.
If Alex can kill and consume enough samples of it, he'll be able to integrate his hive-mind. At the right moment, Alex could overwhelm its control. He could order the existing organisms to self-destruct or become inert. It's a simple plan. And if he fails, it'll spread across every ecosystem and area in the world.
The echoes of the conscious mind at the heart of the network reach him. Loud. Understandable. Some emotions are universal to any mind on earth. It's pain and anger is excruciating to feel. It's fearful, like a newborn bear crying out and hurting everything near it. It wants a mother long dead by his hands.
But with enough time, and brains, it will reorganize. Once when, not if, it escaped the facility, the world will be crushed under an avatar of evolution itself.
Alex sees the dreams of its goal. To connect all of Earth into a single super organism.
…The group almost makes it to the airlock. With Alex tapping into the growth network, he's able to gather foresight on every ambush and charge. Leaving the tendrils alive is the wise choice. Captain Cross and Colonel Rooks take the intel with a grim understanding, and they position their forces lethally again and again. Each engagement still costs too much. They're running out of bullets. The men aren't strong enough to fight hand-to-hand, even with knives and rifles wielded as clubs.
When the wave hits, the soldiers are ready, dozens of bright dots shining on the horde. They're defiant like an old man not ready for death. But their weapons reach a critical low-mark. They've fought too much. And too many guns are empty. The formation, lines and support for the front and back, falls apart. Then their morale does. Their screams give way to a rout. It's over in ten seconds. Men are sliced and smashed, swallowed whole, or ripped apart wholesale.
Mercer saves as many as he can, and mercy-kills those he can't. His tendrils and claws are flurry of wrath and hope to the soldiers—especially those beginning to turn, infected by the insect-like creatures. It's also a form of afterlife. They won't be forgotten in his body. By the time the fighting subsides, they only have seven men left, including Rooks and Cross. The two stoically boast heavy wounds. Mercer doesn't need to use the expertise of all the doctors and scientists he's consumed. He knows both men aren't going to make it.
His blue eyes lock with Cross. Alex's devastated expression is enough for the captain.
"Go. We'll do our best to make it out. We don't have enough firepower to help." Cross clasps arms with Mercer. Once enemies, now the stoutest of allies. "We'll close the doors behind us. Good luck. Finish the job, Mercer." Nothing more is said. They share a silent moment, then Alex squeezes Cross' arm one last time. Before letting go. Mercer nods and shoots off back to the cavern.
Pained, feral screams echoes from his destination.
Mercer soon learns that the rebellious DNA has spread to the other malformed creatures. He learns it by feeling he's eaten rotten, maggot infested food. Malformed creatures shouldn't do that.
The newer generations are increasingly evolved and mutated. Every abomination Mercer consumes now is a torturous endeavor. It aggregates. He's only felt pain like this once before: the parasite Cross injected him with.
"From bad to worse," Alex says, needing to hear a human voice. His mouth complies. It twists back into a human jaw. Some of his cells scream. For a second. Then the latest disruption is crushed.
It drains him, nonetheless. None of the consumptions have replenished him since the abominations adapted. He loses more energy each time. But he can't stop. Mercer needs as diverse an array of samples as he could get, to create countermeasures and resistances. The idea has two components. Part one is simple. Like a man injecting venom inside his body, increasing dosages, he needs to build up an immunity for the final fight. Part two is also simple—for a world-class scientist with access to the minds of dozens of peers. He analyzes twisted biology at the deepest levels. He needs to understand the genetic structure and abilities of every creation. A simple hypothesis is tested, and the results are as expected: any creature left unconsumed would eventually become a breeding ground for more of them.
…By the time he comes back to the dark, stadium-sized cavern, Mercer is half-drained from the fighting and self-mutations he's performed. And the sight also drains him, emotionally. It's what he expected, but being right isn't something he wanted. The rifle platoons are gone. Human flesh included. The remains of violent birth are scattered about. Their corpses must have been used as incubators for the hordes Mercer faced on the way. The tank and technical crews weren't granted dignity in death either. The vehicles are torn apart. Thrown around. Metal is ripped to make holes or smashed open like an egg. Some large pieces are scattered around like children's toys.
Mercer also arrives to see the end of the last D-Code. He's too late to save him. In a gloriously short spectacle, the man stabs the main growth with a piece of metal bent into a knife while tendrils rip him apart—like a child with an ant. Cruel. And gigantic. The main growth has grown to a size three times greater than the Supreme Hunter Mercer fought on the carrier. He sees how. Vividly. It had drained the nutrient vats and even sucked up the broken bodies of its creations.
The Alpha Amalgam Abomination had supercharged its maturity with every human brain consumed. To an extent. It's too big for borrowed time and experience to be more than drops in a bucket. It has no true wisdom of its own. It hasn't learned properly. That's the reason every creature starts out mangled, malformed, and tumor-ridden. Only after going through permutations, does it store optimal traits in the brains. Even so, it mutates rapidly. Generations of evolution are wasted.
In the pitch-black darkness, Mercer sees the horror look wrong, like all of its children. In the depths and surfaces of its body, cancers and warped developments have bloomed. The eyes are wrong. Bloody claws of chitin and bone rip out. The hair is wrong. Bristles and tendrils cover its body. The body parts are wrong. They're all in the wrong fucking areas.
It turns towards him. Sees with broken eyes. It roars, misshapen teeth-like tusks stabbing into its own mouth.
The first step towards Mercer shakes the earth. Then the abomination charges. A living earthquake comes barrelling at him, arms and hands replacing feet and legs. Then the arms shift. A mass of tendrils take their place, for a moment. Then they shift too. New and deadly configurations appear every heartbeat before the clash.
Alex takes first blood. He times his strike perfectly, and slices through the deformed tentacles shaped into a limb. Red mist sprays up. His force was powered by an upward leap, and as he soars over the creature, Alex creates a ball of volatile chemicals that shatter on its cancer-ridden skin. Mercer lands behind it, feet light. Exposure to air creates a fire hot enough to feel on his back. But it's neutralized quickly. Mercer turns around to see a waxy mucus oozing out of its pores.
A retaliation of harpoons fires upon him. Bone and gristle shaped hooks seek to drag him into its all-devouring embrace. Mercer tilts his head to the side. His hair swishes with the passage of a fast object. Then he jukes past the second and third harpoons. Graceful. Free. And caught. The fourth takes his left leg through the knee. It was hidden in the shadow of the others, and is colored black. The wire of bone tightens in the direction of a looming mouth.
So Alex detaches his leg entirely. A new one grows. As the limb is consumed, he adds large chunks of concrete and sharp metal to the chewing mouth. The ground is filled with indents of his fingers.
New idea, Alex thinks. He holds up a clawed hand and gestures at the creature. He signals it to come at him. It roars. The floor is cracked and the lighting dark, and it only gets worse when the living disaster charges at him again. Its hands continue shifting, adulating. Before the clash, they're replaced by bone claws, in imitation of him, and just as sharp.
Alex feints. It's an imitation of what he did before. He gets a foot airborne, the creature raising its claws above, ready to catch him, then he kicks off of the body. He touches it for an instant. Blood gushes forth. Both of theirs. And a length of meat is captured in his hand, still connected to the main growth.
He skids to the side, as the titanic creature halts its momentum. It turns broken eyes upon him. Then on the limb in his hand. Alex grins savagely. He tries to tap into its viral network, like with the tendrils lining the walls.
Its psychic presence nearly crushes him outright.
Its mind is so fast, so filled with alien thoughts, that Alex knows he can't hope to match it in his current condition. But—its strength is also its weakness. All that power cannot help a mind that has no proper direction.
Alex lets go. He has a plan.
…Every stab and slice into the Alpha Amalgam Abomination gives him more material to work with and analyze. The scientists in him are put to good use. Their results are unsettling—for what he must do. Alex shifts the deepest part of his genetic code to attune with the structure of the abomination.
Alex hates the last option available to him. For someone who fought so hard to be human, now to cast it off as a last ditch effort? He has staked his entire sense of self and uniqueness on one of himself existing, with no other copy or clone. Alex Mercer was the prototype, with nothing else like him in the world. But he has no choice. It's his only path to victory. Humanity and the world depends on it. Once, he had longed to silence the hive of own self, all of the countless consciousnesses, memories, and organisms. Now he counts on them.
Mercer dives, lifetimes deep, into his hivemind of one, and tears it into two.
He performs mitosis on himself, splitting his biomass in half.
Two Alex Mercers now exist in the world.
They stare at each for a single second, feeling decades, as time stretches with every emotion and heartbeat. The doppelganger nods. One is chosen to sacrifice himself. It's the only way.
No time is wasted hesitating. The abomination—tricked to buy that precious moment—charges back with a deafening roar. The sound comes from the top of its head, its forehead split apart for sword-length teeth. The current permutation shows intentional design, to favor it in new circumstances. It boasts another set of dental features below, like a normal jaw, and each tooth is ten feet long. And ten feet up. Its lower body is balanced on spiked tendrils, some stretching the length of the entire cavern, others smaller and more nimble. Several of those deadly limbs grow from the jaw on its forehead too, like a horrific version of nose and beard hair.
And dotted nearly everywhere, are bleeding eyes with baby-hand sized claws. They're wide with rage. And animal cunning.
The sacrifice throws himself at the abomination. His fingers shift into syringe-like creations, like needles from nightmares. He stabs at seemingly random parts of its body. Hundreds of puncture points are hit in seconds.
The original Mercer, surely, stands still despite the chaos. He prepares. His body heats up the very air around him, as he goes into biological overdrive. He looks inside. At the cellular level, the genetic factory within him makes every weapon possible to combat the rebellious DNA.
Seconds pass. It takes the Alpha only seconds to fully seize the attacking Mercer. He's dragged down by limbs the weight of heavy flesh akin to tanks. He doesn't struggle. The original Mercer wishes he did. Without fanfare, thousands of tendrils encase him and tear him apart on a microscopic level. Alex feels every agony of the copy through their rapidly failing link.
The trap had been set. At each point where the sacrificial Mercer stabbed it, an inert agent was injected amidst deadly plagues. Harmless and unnoticed, disguised as the cells of the Alpha itself, the excess junk DNA was ignored by the Abomination's immune system.
And now, the trap is sprung. The sacrifice's plan comes together. As the abomination consumes and analyzes the body, the 'detonator' inside blooms in every cell and vein. The hostile proteins fuse with the inert agents, activating them and beginning to paralyze and digest the creature from the inside.
The Alpha screams, tilting to the side. Tendrils fall limp with a heavy crash and its jaw droops like a man having a stroke. Then the sound cuts out, suddenly. But Mercer still hears it writhe in agony inside of its mind. The trap was multi-layered. The sacrifice also held the port for a hivemind connection, and through it, Alex can feel the panic. Its child-like mind, towering psychically and so very thin, shrieks for Elizabeth Greene—the woman Alex consumed and tore apart entirely, leaving nothing left for even his hivemind to integrate, at last battle for NYC.
It's left hopeless. Mercer grins, feeling triumphant. He burns away copious amounts of biomass for his final strike. Every limb is empowered beyond his limits. He bends his knees, crushing the concrete floor underneath him, before erupting in a single thunderous moment. Suspended in the air, almost touching the cavern's ceiling, he turns his entire top half into an enormous, microscopic-sharpened blade.
He swings. In one devastating crash, he bisects the goliath.
A keen wailing echoes, psychically.
Even so, the abomination is alive and dangerous. So he implements the last part of his sacrifice's plan.
Using every last nanometer of the blooming trap, Mercer forces one half of the abomination's body to self-destruct. It had been a simple, cunning idea. He had to paralyze and weaken it at the right time, and to infiltrate its cells during the chaos. Only then could he begin to consume. But only then. For now, the sacrificial Mercer, or what's left of him, will transform this half into a harmless vector for sporulation. That Mercer isn't strong enough to consume it—but that's acceptable. If they win, it will be 'disarmed' in a day. Playing it safe, the original Mercer also creates thin pustules on this half, forcing them to burst open and neutralize any last-ditch countermeasures or regeneration.
The other half…he must consume at all costs.
Its tendrils move towards him, thrashing in fury, and he obliges, letting the heady feeling of victory-within-grasp lend an extra strength to his blows. Their tendrils coil around one another, stabbing, slicing, and crushing each other for dominance. It's a substitute for screaming in fury. This abomination half still cannot use its mouth; it is still affected by the partial-paralyzation. And yet…
The confidence Mercer felt earlier begins to drop. A pit forms in his stomach. The drainage from the malformed creatures, the hellish fighting with the soldiers, the massive, necessary use of biomass—they all begin to catch up to him. One moment, he's fighting strong and fast. Feeling high on bloodlust. The next, he reaches a threshold his body can no longer take, and drops perilously in power. His concentration snaps back and forth.
He's had to split it between fighting the abomination, surviving, and hijacking its network to release spores in mass. And he can't stop any of them, especially the latter—he has to ensure the entire facility is made inert of any infested areas. Or bodies. The spores also dissolved the dead creatures around. He's wiping the slate clean, though the growths are dealt in a different matter. As the arteries of the network, they cannot be destroyed until everything else they reach is consumed first—so he's forced it into a harmless mutation. He essentially neutered and declawed it. Negating any possibility of its deadly potential, the growths become no more dangerous than the average toxic mushroom.
…They slowly fuse together with no clear victor. Like tsunamis crashing into each other, they are a mass of grasping limbs and tentacles, to the point where an observer wouldn't be able to tell what belongs to who. Alex can't, either.
He becomes It. It becomes Him. His ego, his sense of self,
slowly
falls
into
the
abyss
! & !-!#!###!#!
—But Alex has the biggest, most significant advantage. Time. Time gives him experience. Time gives him depth. Time gives him a hundred thousand screaming minds.
Alex Mercer is a hivemind of one.
With the last grasp of the lost and the damned, he devours it whole.
…It struggles within him.
Mercer feels it, trying to poison and rebel against him. The consumption of the Alpha's half produces a denser biomass than he's ever had before. He feels so very heavy. His every crashing step leaves impressions of stumbling feet into the ground. And there is a war going on in his body—the genetic weapons he had created with his inner factory barely hold the line. If he doesn't do something right now, it will turn the tables. He needs his biggest advantage again. Time.
Mercer's false heart beats hard. It's defiant against despair. His viral, infested muscles are trembling. They refuse to give up. His legs are weak, his eyes blurry with parasites eating away at every inch of him—and not a single cell abandons his mission. When he sees his salvation, a cryotube large enough to fit him, Mercer struggles on faster. It's at the far end of the facility; so Alex drags himself step by step, every stride a marathon, every second a lifetime of misery and torment.
…His dense weight shatters the concrete steps up. His hope nearly gives him flight. Alex has finally made it to his frigid salvation.
Using his expertise, taken from countless technicians, his trembling hands go as fast as they can. Inputting the proper codes and settings, Alex forces it open at the coldest possible option. In excruciating pain. The hundred pound opening had felt like the weight of the world. It forces him to take breaths he doesn't need. He falls inside, with grace worse than the drunkest soldier on leave.
Even now, it consumes him as he consumes it. The truth is unavoidable. If Alex dies, the Alpha will be absolutely unstoppable. So Alex raises a fist to the sky, and hits the freezing protocols. His hand, four fingers and thumb spread out, is left severed outside the cryotube—he wills it to activate the final procedures after the opening closes. He tries not to think about how easy it is, to give parts of himself sentience, even partially. The icy tomb helps. Mercer immediately feels its effects. And he feels the way his body tries to adapt to the freezing cold, mutations surging and cells shifting to resemble those of sleeping bears in winter. In a few moments, he and the Amalgamate Abomination will be semi-hibernating.
His other hand locks the cryotube from the inside. It's a last resort. Alex has no certainty of victory. He's…dying. His body struggles to overcome the Alpha's rapid spreads and attempts at partition, even as Mercer performs his last, conscious mutations to himself.
But he doesn't plan on going gently into the night. The organism is young and inexperienced, compared to him. With the freezing he's about to endure, he'll be able to adapt better to the surroundings. It was like cutting off their arms—but Alex knows how to fight with his teeth and feet. Or without a mind, in this case: without a guiding intelligence, raw instinct and countless mutations created in the fires of the Outbreak will see him to victory.
The freezing inhibits him and the Amalgamation Abomination's DNA. His own strain of Blacklight can overcome it. In time.
…In time. They will be waging a microscopic war for decades in that cryotube. The cold will slow them both down to less than sentiency. It will slow down the rapid permutations of the abomination's DNA. Alex knows he will have the upper hand here, knows that time and evolution favors him, and knows it is greatest chance of subsuming the Alpha Amalgam Abomination wholly. He also knows that it will be years or decades at the earliest before he wakes up…and he's content with that. He thinks how with this freezing process, with no one to unfreeze him, it might take even centuries. Then Alex thinks about his sister and the sacrifices that led to this event. His last thoughts are how worth it all is for all humanity—his adopted species.
He'll lay dormant until the power turns off—or some intrepid and foolish explorers unseal the hushed casket…
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Their bedraggled and sorry state is evident to anyone still alive to witness them. The platoon is down to six men, including Cross himself—and all of them are dying. His eyes flicker over his loyal soldiers. Some have lost legs, using their guns as a crutch. Others bleed out from partially-eaten arms. The medical kits are only enough to push their bodies across the final finish line, and they limp furiously, as the airlock doors come in sight.
There is no attempt to live past the mission. They only seek to shut the facility and warn the outside world of the disaster inside. Closing the doors behind them, Cross leans back against it, and watches with relieved eyes as the airlock cycles several times.
Then, they all hear a synthetic, automated voice. "Warning, unidentified particles detected. Contacting Command….Command unresponsive. Contacting High Command…High Command unresponsive. Falling back to Quarantine Protocols…Lockdown is in effect. Doors will be sealed for a minimum of one thousand years. External authorization required for override. We thank you for your sacrifice and understanding."
And just like that, it's over. Hope was gained and lost in equal measures.
The men utter their final words. One cracks dark jokes. A solemn ceremony, consecrated in their blood, is then held. Then bandages are undone, followed by sighs of relief and despair. The soldiers let themselves bleed out. The last of the painkillers are applied. They succumb to the blood loss and cold of the airlock room, drifting off to a peaceful death. Captain Cross and Colonel Rooks watch over them, refusing to turn away, as the officiators of their funeral rites.
The men, at least, knew their efforts were not in vain.
…Cross doesn't let himself go yet, and neither does Rooks. With all of the furious beating left in their hearts, they smear their own blood on their fingers in tandem. They'll create a single message. Bright red. One preserved by the cold, Cross thinks grimly. Among the high tech surrounding them, the two have resorted to the most primitive form of writing.
Colonel Douglas Rooks, the highest surviving officer of Blackwatch, finishes his side, puts his back to the wall, and finally collapses. With one arm, he slowly fishes out photos of his family. He stares at it even as blood drips down from the stump of his other arm.
Captain Robert Cross, a man who betrayed his own military to save a city and the world from certain disaster, collapses slower. He takes care to not agitate the deep gut wounds. He has done his duty. He begins talking, keeping himself occupied and awake, and uncaring if Rooks even hears him.
"I was one of the first D-Codes, you know? The precursor to all of them. It's why I survived when no one else did. It's why I was able to hunt Runners, all by myself when everyone else died. Enhanced strength, enhanced reaction time, and it made me a tough fucker." Cross coughs out large drops of blood. Some of them are solid, others are squishy. He continues, unhurried.
"It won't be enough this time. I've had a good run. And I'm proud to have been here—with all of us. My faith in God was always unwavering, and it seems He kept putting me in the right places at the right times. I knew we'd sacrifice ourselves one day. I knew that we would one way or another, no matter what high command or anyone else would say.
"It's plain to see why. Blackwatch, the actual soldiers in it, worked for the benefit of all. Even as tainted as it was. One for all, never all for one." Captain Cross acts like he's in a confessional. He checks if anyone is listening. One sweep of his eyes, and he sees everyone is dead. Colonel Rooks is glazed over, dead eyes still staring at the photo of his loved ones. And the two of them have already acted as confidants to the soldiers' confessions. They're all slumped over or huddled near each other.
"When General Randall made it about himself," Cross continues like their ghosts are listening, "To live, to benefit from it, to avoid the consequences he had sown, he lost. It was that mighty heart of Humanity that beat even within Alex Mercer, something—no, someone—who was no longer human. My faith in Mercer will never die, even if I die in this forsaken place.
"I am not alone. I am surrounded by those who reached out and clasped hands with me, to fight for something higher than themselves.
"Even if it was the harder way. It's plain to see why they committed. It was natural they'd help—it was their oaths, their mighty hearts that put them in the line of fire. Even half a world away from home, they kept their faith in Mercer and I. And even if Mercer fights alone, he is not alone. Our united purpose, even to the end, is a constant companion. Our combined strength will see us to a victory we'll never see.
"Victory is always about making sure the dark, terrible things of this world are buried or burned away."
And if they have to bury themselves, so be it. The Redline is the last line to hold. It has never fallen, and it never will.
Not all for one, not like men such as Randall and Taggart. One for all, for the people he swore to protect.
"We'll stay here, until the end," Cross says, whispering and hoarse. His voice is nearly gone, whittled away by his last words and the wounds he took. He struggles to breathe. Drops of blood drip from his mouth.
Cross…doesn't regret taking the hard road. He never will. Not for his training, his missions, or his decisions to ally with Alex. His heart has always led him true. When he places his faith in a person, that faith never dies or wavers. It's as natural as breathing. And he suppose, coughing out his last breaths, he and Alex are more alike than they thought.
He passes away quietly, his final duty at an end, as the last Blackwatch operative on Earth.