Chapter Text
Alex stepped outside of the safehouse. Previously, he would’ve been uncontrollably nervous—although, that was only a few hours ago—but with Dana at his side he felt a new surge of confidence. He didn’t have to go on alone. “They’re going to be waiting for me. They think they’re in control… but they have no idea what I’m capable of.”
Alex took a deep breath and began to sprint due north. The sun had risen on a new day. People were already out and about, going off to work and living their lives just as they did the day before. Something in Alex envied their nonchalant attitudes and how they could go on with their lives, but now that was a luxury he could no longer afford.
As he raced across the southern boundary of Central Park, he couldn’t help but watch the people walk by, minding their own business. New York is really amazing. The city was almost alive, the people were its lifeblood, and now there was some kind of threat, the threat of whoever those soldiers were and Alex was going to get to the bottom of whatever they were up to and put a stop to it. These people have no idea some psycho army’s on the loose…
Alex shook off the thought and made a sharp left turn, continuing on his way towards the Upper East Side. No more than five minutes later he skid to a stop. He didn’t know exactly where he was but it felt familiar. A name came to his mind. Renalia? He assumed that was the name of the building.
Taking another breath to ease his nerves, Alex slid down the side of the building into an alleyway. No one seemed to pay him any mind. Alex walked over to the entrance, so far, there were no signs of any hostile people.
“Home… my home.” He muttered to himself. He looked up at the building, the height seemed to be staggering. Alex did his best to shake off his nerves—which seemed to refuse to go away—taking another deep breath before entering.
“Ah, Dr. Mercer, right?” A young woman at the desk greeted him. Alex could only nod. “Your sister called and said you left the keys to your apartment at her place.” Doctor, huh? Of what?
“Yeah…” He sighed.
“Tough day at the office?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, plus my sister needed some help with a biology assignment she hadn’t done until now so we were both up all night working on that.” That was quite the lie, but he was still up all night no thanks to the military.
“Ouch. Well, if it’s any consolation, we have an extra set of keys available.” She held up a set of keys. Alex took them and began to walk over to the elevator and immediately stopped short. He laughed a little nervously before turning back towards the young woman.
“I might be more sleep deprived than I thought. Which one am I again?”
The young woman gave him a bit of a mock scolding look. “I think you should take the week off, Doc. That’s a pretty serious case of the stupids you’ve got there. I’m not the professional here, but you should at least take a day off.” She shook her head. “You’re in 1505.”
“Thank you, Miss…”
“Uh, Foster. Katelynn Foster.” The young woman gave him a bit of an awkward grin.
“Well, thank you, Miss Foster, you saved me from wandering around like an exhausted idiot.” Alex returned her smile and walked toward the elevator. As he got on, he heard the woman pick up the phone.
“Yeah? …He’s here. Just got in. Give it 15 minutes before—”
The doors closed before Alex got a chance to hear her finish. That doesn’t sound good. Was everyone out to get him? He shook off the thought. Now was not the time, he needed to focus. If the military were on to him, he needed to be quick. Who knows what stupid things they might try to pull?
The elevator soon arrived and Alex cautiously exited. He really was not in the mood to be shot… again. Surprisingly, no one was there waiting for him. Not letting this opportunity pass, Alex made his way to apartment 1505. He stared at the door for a moment before he pulled out the key he was given. Hesitantly, he enters.
The apartment seemed foreign to him. Alex had really hoped that by returning to his apartment he’d feel some sort of connection, or some sort of… well, anything. But instead he felt like he was breaking and entering into someone else’s home. There was a desk, a computer and a crapton of books as well as the basic necessities.
Alex turned to his left and there was a row of framed pictures. They were filled with countless people he didn’t really know. He saw Dana in a few, although much younger, and some of them with someone he assumed to be himself. One photo in particular caught his attention. He was with a woman, his arms wrapped around her and both of them seemed very happy, her name escaped him but she seemed very familiar. Alex felt himself reach out for the photo, trying to grasp a memory that wasn’t quite there, when a searing pain shot through him.
Images rushed through his mind, the woman in the photo, was talking to him, desperately trying to tell him something. Her desperate pleads turned to scrambled nonsense and Alex couldn’t understand what she was saying. Every time she spoke the noise became louder and louder and the memory became brighter and brighter. What did she want? Something told him she was begging him not to do something stupid, but the memory became more and more corrupted with each time it seemed to repeat, the pain becoming more and more unbearable.
Stop! He pulled himself out of his own mind and backed away from the photos, almost in fear. Maybe he should stop searching for the truth if all they brought him was pain.
Alex scanned the room for anything else he might want to grab but he froze. There was something wrong. An uncanny beeping was ringing out from somewhere. Before he could react, the room ignited in a massive, fiery blast. The explosion threw him out the window. Alex was too stunned to think. Instead he acted on instinct, twisting himself out of his prone position so he could at least land in a more optimal way.
The ground below him crumbled under the force of his fall. Fortunately, besides the fragile asphalt, there were no casualties. Alex forced himself upright and scanned the area. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Some people were quite stunned by what just occurred before their eyes but nothing seemed out of place, then he saw it. Down the street he saw a man in a suit being escorted out by some soldiers.
“He’s the one…” Alex couldn’t finish his sentence. More soldiers had arrived and the man in the suit climbed into a tank and fled. Coward!
“Goddamn, that thing’s still moving!” Alex heard one soldier shout. “Target in the open!” Giving Alex no chance to react, the soldiers opened fire on him. Can I go just one fucking day without getting shot at?!
Alex took a running start and sent an awkward flying kick towards the soldiers. He managed to take out a few but Alex was as good as surrounded. Alex began to throw wild punches, easily taking out several soldiers with his enhanced strength, but their onslaught seemed to have no end.
“Red Crown, we sighted a high-pri Tango, reroute Strike Team.” Alex heard a soldier radio in.
“Aww shit… here comes the cavalry…” Alex grumbled. He estimated that he had two minutes at best to get away as fast as he could. As much as he would love to give the Strike Team a taste of a flying kick, there’s no way he’d survive both a Strike Team and the present military forces as they were. As much as it hurt his pride, Alex turned and bolted down the street.
“Target is trying to escape!” Alex heard from behind but didn’t look back for even a second.
They’re going to keep chasing me. I need to get them off my trail… I think it’s time to test my acting skills. Alex made a sharp turn around a corner and down an alley. He skid to a stop and shifted his form to a commander from the other day. Alex began to half limp out of the alley, clutching his side as if in pain. He took no more than five steps out of the alley before his pursuers caught up with him. Several soldiers grappled down from the helicopters on cables and one ran over to him.
“Sir, what happened?” The soldier asked.
“Target… target escaped,” Alex said, pretending he was in pain. “I… he shoved me out of the way… bastard hits like a truck. He escaped and ran up the fucking wall.”
The soldier nodded and reached for his radio. “Red Crown, I found an officer. He reports that Tango Primary slipped the grid. Orders?”
Alex heard a voice over the radio, “Strike package return to base for debriefing. Over.”
“Roger, Red Crown.” The soldier turned to Alex. “Sir, it would be best you wait here for medical evac. For all we know Zeus could be at the commander’s extraction point, and you are far from a fighting condition.”
Alex struggled to stand upright, “Bullshit. I can still fight—Nngh.” He winced, although the mask he wore didn’t show it, and grabbed his side again. “Fucking… son of a bitch…”
The soldier guided Alex to the wall of a nearby building and helped him sit down. “Sir, we’ll call in for a medical evac right now.”
Alex gave a defeated nod and watched as the soldier rejoined his comrades and radioed in something. Moments later the Strike Team was gone without a trace, seemingly heading over towards Central Park.
Alex laughed under his disguise, “How the fuck did that work? I wasn’t even trying to fool them and somehow they bought it.” Alex stood up and shifted his form back to himself. “‘Zeus’, huh? Is that what they’re calling me? I guess that’s kind of cool. Anyway, time to find that bastard and give him a piece of my mind.” By taking some of his.
Alex moved quickly through the streets to Central Park. He vaulted over the wall between the city and the park. Alex looked around to try to pin down where the extraction point was for the guy in the suit, but to no avail. He was about to give up when the uncanny sound of blades chopping through air passed overhead. Alex looked up and caught sight of a few helicopters flying a lot lower than they should. Perfect timing.
Alex tailed the helicopters and found himself in a clearing with what appeared to be some kind of stronghold. Alex surveyed the area quickly. There was a tank, which probably had the suit-guy in it. Gotta get him outta there… Alex scanned the area again. He saw a rack of missile launchers. Those look useful.
Alex took a moment to plan. Okay, so the soldiers here clearly aren’t Blackwatch. Blackwatch guys wear the gas mask thing and the other guys… I don’t know who they are—the Army or something—they’re probably not going to obey my disguise since that commander’s Blackwatch. So that leaves me with only one option…
Alex took starting stance and sprinted in at full force. “Bring it on!”
Alex’s sudden entrance caught the entire base off guard, giving him a brief moment of opportunity. Alex leapt over a wall to a soldier with some sort of missile launcher and used the momentum to knee the soldier in the face leaving the rack of launchers mostly unguarded. Alex grabbed one launcher and slung another onto his back. At this time, the soldiers had rallied and had begun to fire on him.
Not taking any time to think on a formal plan, Alex jumped into the air and aimed at the tank the man in the suit had climbed into and fired on it. Alex did not anticipate the recoil to be so great and ended up getting knocked square on his back. Scrambling to his feet, Alex fired at the tank once again. This time, he managed to hold his ground, and the man in the suit desperately clambered out of the heavily damaged tank, just barely escaping a fiery grave and made a beeline for waiting helicopters.
“Got you now.” Alex tosses the two launchers aside and gave chase.
Alex stumbled his first few steps, lightheaded and fatigued from blood loss and all the bullets that had riddled his body, but he easily caught up to the man in the suit, grabbing the man by his shirt collar. “You blew me up and tried to kill me. I oughta return the favor, but I need your memories.”
The man desperately begged for his life, but it would be to no avail. Alex threw the man against a wall and drove his elbow into the back of the man’s neck.
Unlike previous times where he looked away, Alex watched what happened and immediately regretted it. Tendrils of some sort grabbed the man and began pulling the living biomass towards him like some kind of hungry monster. A violent chill ran down Alex’s spine but his feelings of fatigue and lightheadedness seemed to almost fade away. Soon after the all too familiar tastes of gunpowder, oil, and metal filled his mouth and the memories followed immediately blindsiding him.
“Doctor, try to keep the discussion high level. We need to know what we’re dealing with on the ground.”
“It’s effect is… variable. When it does manifest it makes the Idaho strain look like the common cold.”
“I don’t need to remind you gentlemen how close we came to the point of no return in Idaho. Mercer’s body is a bomb, filled with this weaponized pathogen, waiting to go off. And now it’s loose in the city. Bring it in, no matter what it takes. I’d say dead or alive, but I’m not sure those classifications fit Alex Mercer any longer.”
The memory faded, leaving Alex dazed. “I can see what he saw… I know what he knew… his memories are my memories—” Alex didn’t get a chance to finish his thought when he felt the bullets tear through him yet again. This is going to become some kind of routine, isn’t it?
Alex ran from Central Park and made as much space between it and him as he could, his thoughts still racing. Idaho strain? And what the hell did they mean by not being classified as dead or alive? Is what I have that bad? They must have done something to me. Why? Why me? And why do they want me dead now?
Alex cut down a corner and took the appearance of the man in the suit and watched as the helicopters flew over him and the soldiers run past him, completely unsuspecting of his appearance change. Alex couldn’t help but smile. Heh, that was too easy.
His thoughts still wandered as he made his way back to Dana’s apartment. They did something to me, they dragged Dana—and the whole city—into this mess, and now they’re trying to kill me. I don’t know what they’re up to or why, but I’m going to find out. I’m going to get some goddamn answers no matter what. Even if I have to pry the answers out of them by force.