Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Prototype universe. All characters are property of those who own Prototype. If anybody tries to gain money off of this franchise - be forewarned. Alex Mercer will find you, and you may find yourself sharing the fate of Karen Parker.

Title: Infectum.

Summary: Blacklight is back. Toby Knight and Alex Mercer team up to uncover the source of the viral flare - and ultimately end up revealing more secrets from Blackwatch. Armageddon is a lot closer than anyone thinks. . . M/M, slight AU. Continued from Sanctum.

Rating: M. Finally upgraded it!

Author's Notes: Told you there would be an epilogue.

My, my, Toby. When will you learn? Alex isn't the man you want him to be, just like you aren't the man he wants you to be. It's an endless, vicious cycle, and you're just too addicted to it to notice. I wonder how you two are going to react to each other when he tries to take over the world?

Anyway, here's the epilogue, presented to you in full! Sorry it took so long, it's the end of the semester.

. . . and I didn't know so many people were so emotionally invested last chapter. ;=;

Please Note: FF still loves to eat my stylistic choices. And spacing choices. And a few other things, just so you know.

Warnings: No warnings. Besides the fact that there's going to be a sequel.

Say whhhaaatttt?!

It's the same old situation
I know
I know I can let go
I thought I should tell you
That I made my last mistake
I thought I should tell you

. . .

You're living a lie
You're living a dream
You're holding on so tight
You're living the way you think you should be

"So What If You Go" - Adelita's Way

Dying changed a lot of things.

Clinically, Toby had been dead for three minutes and forty-two seconds. And, to be brutally honest, he didn't remember most of his introduction back into life. One moment, he was in blackness, completely gone, and the next, he had been violently thrust into his body, writhing and thrashing. He had drowned and filleted himself so thoroughly, that for once in his life, Toby honestly didn't remember coming out of it.

He had officially "woken up" a few days later. He'd come to in an apartment in the Bronx, swaddled from head to toe in what seemed like a thousand mismatched comforters. His entire body had been bound tightly with bandages, his arms, legs, and chest proudly bearing the consequence of his insane plan at the Bloodtox depot center.

He'd drifted in an out for days, while invisible hands cared and tended to him. At times he heard voices, but they were always a nonsensical mumble in the back of his mind.

He'd had a dream, while he was stuck in his fever haze.

Alex had come to see him, although Toby honestly couldn't remember everything that he said. But Alex had sat down, and from what he could remember, had told him that he was leaving. It had been a very strange dream, and Toby hadn't liked it.

Eventually, however, he'd regained his mind. And the first thing he had woken up to was an exhausted Keres.

He still remembered that moment fondly.

"Hey, Toby. I was worried you weren't going to actually wake up." She said, her voice hoarse and cracking. He didn't need to see her face to know she was crying.

Wordlessly, he lifted his arms, and she wrapped herself around him gently. Toby held her for what seemed like hours, clutching him to her. He thought she'd been lost, when she had locked herself into Pariah's arena.

Toby cried too, relieved that the consequences of his actions weren't permanent. When he had seen her, laying on the asphalt, just and arm and a leg attached to a torso. . .

There wasn't quite words for the feeling that had shredded his insides.

Eventually, Keres parted, rubbing at her eyes and smiling.

"I was so worried about you. I couldn't the bleeding to stop. I thought you were going to die."

"Tougher to kill n' I look." He replied, voice gravelly.

Keres smiled softly.

"I'm glad."

"Where's Mercer?"

Funny, how two words had changed everything.

Keres's demeanor diminished entirely, and her eyes flickered with an untold pain. If he'd known how much change that one, stupid question invited, he wouldn't have bothered asking.

"What?" He prodded.

"He's gone. Alex. . . Alex left."

The answer, so simple and succinct, had left him in an emotional coma.

Well, really, Toby had just. . . He'd just run out of fucks to give. If Mercer could leave them all, just drop them like a five dollar whore - well. . . It certainly spoke volumes for their relationship, that was for certain.

It brought to mind a lot of questions Toby didn't want to think about. Like, what he meant to Mercer. How he really felt about the man. How Mercer really felt about him. . .

It was just easier to not think about those questions.

It really is funny, how I thought about being a small bird, trapped in a little cage. It's all so different now.

It was just him and Keres now, sharing an apartment she had filched. Areas surrounding Manhattan were just as bad off - primarily due to looters and the quarantine zone placed around the island. But it was a nice apartment, with a lot of space, set inside of a city with actual people, something he could get used to.

At first, though, he'd begged them to leave. To go someplace far, far away.

Keres had declined.

So, Toby had taken to laying around recovering from his brush with death, plotting and planning on how to leave. . . with Keres in tow. He wasn't about to give up on his last living family member. He just had to show her that staying near that cursed island wasn't the right way.

All of that time, however, gave him more opportunities to reflect on Mercer.

And that was something he didn't want to go through. As of right then and now, Toby had decided that that bastard could go rot in whatever place he'd settled in for his soul-searching.

In the meantime, however. . . he had bits and pieces of his life to cobble together.

A lot of things had changed, and he knew he was going to have to just deal with it.

First and foremost: he had been mutated. He could feel the virus in his body, mixing with his blood, crackling like electricity through his veins. Whatever Keres and Blackwatch had done to him, it had worked.

It was odd. He wasn't human anymore.

It was even stranger that that fact didn't bug him.

He knew he wasn't human. At times, he could feel Keres, could sense her like a blip on a radar. Sometimes, he even got strange mood flashes - and he'd found that it was what she was feeling. Upon realizing this phenomenon, Toby had worked at mentally bricking himself off from her. It had worked, but damn, it was hard.

A lot of his newly-found abilities brought tons of unforeseen consequences, most of which he had to deal with on his own.

There might have been instructors for hand to hand, manuals on how to break down and clean a gun, self-help guides for what war did to his head - but there was no guidebook on how to deal with viruses and the chaos they wrought.

Toby shook his head as an overwhelming pang of regret swamped over his mental barrier, and he rubbed at the back of his neck, getting to his feet. He knew where he'd find her, and he figured they were both long overdue for a chat about what happened that day.

It was hard to believe they hadn't spoken a single word about it during their time in the Bronx, nearing almost four weeks now.

Making his way through the nicely-furnished apartment, Toby meandered his way to the roof access stairwell. As he opened the door, he found the object of his search standing by the railing.

And he paused, momentarily taken aback.

Keres had radically changed her look. She wore combat boots, offset by girly short-shorts, and she wore a short-sleeved hoodie, proudly baring her arms to the world, and were completely free of the mottled red that had once plagued them.

"Keres?" He asked.

"Hi." She responded absently, her chin tucked into her hands.

Toby left the doorway and stood beside her, resting his arms on the railing as well. There, glittering in distance, laid Manhattan island. They couldn't have been more than twenty miles away from it.

"We can always go. Somewhere else. Far away from people. To the mountains. You wanted to go to the mountains, didn't you?" He'd begged her once.

It hadn't been one of his proudest moments, Toby admitted, but it had been an honest one. He was finally fed up with lying to himself. He was never going to love the plagued disease that Manhattan had become. And he wanted to move far, far away, find Alex (after punching him twenty times in the balls), hunker down in a house somewhere, and tell the world to go shove a stick up its ass.

He was just done. He'd played his part.

"Pariah's going to come back," Keres said, eyes never wavering from the sunset. "I have to stay here, Toby. To make sure I can stop him. . . and I'm sorry. But you can leave if you want-"

"We're family." He cut over her softly, "And I'm done leaving people behind. But that's not really what you want to talk about, is it?"

They were quiet for a moment, but it was a comfortable silence, something Toby didn't mind. He let Keres gather her thoughts.

"I was wondering if you forgave me." She answered after a few minutes, "I was so angry, I lashed out. Pariah gave me the chance, so I took it. I never wanted to hurt you, really. And now. . ." She trailed off, her voice wavering slightly.

"There's nothing to forgive. We can't change what happened. Besides, you don't know the meaning of fight. Once, Mark and I got into it, and oh, man, he broke my nose and I damn near gave him a concussion. We didn't talk for two months straight."

She straightened and turned to him, a smile on her face. And that was when Toby received a second surprise.

When he'd first met her, Keres had had one blue eye and one bloody red eye. Now, she had one blue eye. . . and a green one.

The same color as his.

She smiled a little more widely at the expression on his face.

"I hope you don't mind. I figured. . . it's uh. . as you know-" She stuttered, trying to find the right words.

"It suits you."

She beamed up at him, and then turned back to the sunset, smile still firmly in place.

"I'm glad you like it. I was hoping you would. I was worried you'd get creeped out."

Toby laughed, and roughly clapped his hand up against Keres's back.

"Nah, kid. After all the shit I've been through, this isn't even a blip on the radar."

They stood there, a metric ton of unsaid things lingering between them. There was a lot Toby wanted to ask about. If she'd had any words with Mercer before he left. Who had saved him. What had happened between her and Pariah. . . there was too much to even think about. Giving her arm a nudge, Toby gestured back to the door.

"Let's go get something to eat, yeah? Watch a movie or somethin' tonight."

Keres eagerly jumped away from the railing and bounced through the door. Toby took another moment to glance behind him, at the red that cloaked Manhattan.

Yeah. . . yeah, he was pretty much sick and tired of viral infections and that stupid island.

But, he mused, staring out at the bloody red hues of the setting sun, that was life.

Life's a bitch and then you die.