Infection

Chapter 1: Contamination

Taylor awoke with a scream in a hospital room, her heart sending the monitors into a frenzy of electronic screaming. Panting hard as she came too, she focused bleary eyes, that without their corrective lenses rendered most objects into fuzzy blobs. Her focus fell on a man, taller and paler then her father, wearing a pair of blue jeans, a black leather jacket with strange lines leading onto the back that seemed to glow red, and a simple hoody that obscured most of the mans face in shadow.

Taylor winced, she couldn't see out of one eye, and her left leg kept send out twinges of pain so intense they sent static through her sight, making sure she couldn't see the mans face even if she didn't need her glasses.

"Who are you?"

The man smiled, his mouth seeming to stretch unnaturally, teeth flashing from pale, worm like lips.

"My name is Alex. Alex Mercer, and I am here to give you a choice."

Taylor squinted.

"What kind of choice? The last thing that I remember is…"

Flashback

Taylor screamed as she clawed at her locker door.

Destination

Taylor cried, as she puked over herself. Her vomit pooling at her feet.

Trajectory

Taylor's fingernails splintered, blood dripping down onto the rotting sanitary pads piled high in her locker.

Agreement

Taylor froze as an image of a awe inspiring, logic defying entity, vaguely resembling a crystalline whale looking at her with one gargantuan eye appeared.

Power

A tiny rupture in the fabric of the universe formed next to Taylors head, and out of it oozed a small red and black worm like creature out of it, the worm seemed to look around itself briefly before it dived into Taylor's temple, chewing, biting, squirming as it dug its way towards her brain. Taylor began seizing, and deep within her body, within her very cells, a change was beginning.

Infection

Flashback end

Mercer smiled, Taylor involuntarily shivered, the mans teeth were like gleaming tombstones, flashing and dancing in the stark light of the hospital as he spoke.

"Yes, in fact, exactly that. I, am the remains of a being called Alex Mercer, but what I am in reality is the most deadly bioweapon on the planet, your trigger as you put allowed you to bring what you needed most to you, only once, and it brought a small enough portion of me to only infect you."

Taylors mouth dropped open.

"I'M INFECTED BY A BIOWEAPON!?"

The blurry blob that was Alex Mercer nodded. The pattern on the back of his jacket flaring briefly.

"Exactly. You have the most important choice of your short life in front of you. The first is you can refuse the power, and die, but you will still die as a human. The second is you let me infect you, and you become the virus, what was called Blacklight, a mass of cells with all of your memories, but you would no longer truly be Taylor Hebert. Instead you would become a creature of unparalleled power and lethality. But you could also protect those most precious too you."

Talyor paused. She didn't want to die, but the prospect of becoming a literal bioweapon? Nothing but a pile of flesh held in human for by will? That did not seem nearly as appealing. What caught Taylor's attention however, was what he had said about being able to protect those she cared about…

Taylor swallowed, and then nodded. Mercer just shook his head.

"You need to say it."

Taylor swallowed again, her mouth suddenly dry, her stomach roiling with fear and dread.

"D-do it."

The shade of what used to be Alex Mercer nodded, and grinned just a little bit wider, and Taylor screamed.

In what seemed like days later, Taylor woke again, this time, a middle eastenr hero she recognized as Miss Militia was standing near her bed, a small hand gun holstered at her sighed.

Taylor coughed, and then spoke, her throat dry and scratchy, but with only one thing on her mind.

"Wheres my dad?"

Miss Militia's face fell, and the gun at her side flickered briefly before reforming as a sort of high tech taser.

"Miss Hebert, I don't really know how to tell you this, but your father was found dead recently."

"How?"

Miss Militia's face, hidden beneath her face scarf, seemed to contort briefly before coming to a conclusion.

"Your father was found dead with a crossbow bolt in his throat."

Something deep inside Taylor broke, and she stood up, and left the hospital, ignoring Miss Militias calls for her to stop, and as she went, her hospital gown shifted, becoming a dark leather coat with glowing red wings on the back, and a sweatshirt that obscured her face except for a pair of dull red glowing eyes. Her legs became clad in a pair of stiff jeans, and her bare feet morphed into a pair of simple black work boots.

Taylor took one final look at the hospital, and then slowly walked down, and into the city of Brockton Bay.