Chapter Nine: Blackout
A/N: In which Inky discovers the problems with bureaucracy and not managing manpower, Alex discovers that there is indeed someone who thinks of him as a friend, and Cross wonders why the hell he didn't leave when his tour was up the first time.
Alex knew he was in trouble. That wasn't really the problem. The problem was that Inky was acting weirder than she normally did and that prospect might have terrified him a little. At least her insanity was consistent. With her, he never had to worry if she got offended or disgusted by his actions because, frankly, she seemed to find massacring Infected to be the most entertaining thing in the world when she didn't have to be the one doing it. And whenever he killed ordinary humans, she brushed it off without much of a problem.
He hadn't wondered about that much before, but now he was starting to worry that he should have.
Unlike Karen and Dana, she mostly lectured him on taking unnecessary risks. Karen hadn't apparently cared, and Dana hadn't known, but the redhead was always insistent on it. She didn't care about moral considerations like a civilian would, only a risks-versus-gain axis that apparently formed the core of her motivations. If the risk was too great or she didn't stand to gain enough, she would ignore whatever anyone else said.
The part of him that was formed from the minds of dead BlackWatch soldiers insisted that she was no ordinary woman. This was the sort of thought that made Alex want to respond with extreme sarcasm, but he wasn't ever sure who to direct it to. Himself? "Them"? He wasn't sure anymore if there was a difference.
And now he was driving an armored personnel carrier for the fourth time that week, with Dr. Ragland and Inky also inside. If it weren't for the fact that he'd already driven Karen Parker halfway across the city in one, it would have been a much more awkward ride than it already was. Ragland didn't talk much, tactfully avoiding mention of how Alex had collapsed less than two hours ago in the morgue. Inky didn't say anything either and it was such a change from how she usually filled the air with meaningless syllables that he was actually slightly worried.
One of the voices in his head decided to pipe up then and, before Alex could figure out how to get it to shut up, he found himself saying, "Inky, why did you decide to help me?" He immediately squashed the impulse to ask something else.
"Hm…? Oh, that. Well…" He nearly heard her shrug. "I wanted to."
"Really." Alex said with all due sarcasm. The APC ran over a taxi and barely twitched, though metal screamed under its treads.
"Pretty much." Inky replied mildly. This time Alex apparently misread a cue and they ended up driving over the top of a one-way only sign. "And your driving sucks."
"I never did get time to practice with these." Alex snapped.
"I can't imagine why not." Inky said. "Anyway, I made the decision to help you destroy what we both hated. I knew that if you didn't manage to kill yourself doing something stupid within two hours of fleeing GENTEK that first night, we'd probably end up working together despite not ever meeting formally. Just not as closely."
"Someone we both hated?" Alex guessed. And up and over—is that a school bus? Shit.
"I have personal reasons for wanting GENTEK gutted and will probably come up with a few more by the time we get to McMullen." Inky said. "None of it has to do with you, but it's collateral damage I don't mind causing."
Alex didn't even have to think on that much. The BlackWatch voices were prodding at him again. They, out of all the voices in his head, were the loudest. It probably had to do with fanaticism. "I assume you work for yet another shadowy organization in the middle of Fuck-If-I-Know, Virginia, then?" Not as if they needed the competition, though. So, what is it? CIA? Something worse?
"Not even close." Inky replied, a laugh in her voice. "But I knew about BlackWatch and probably half their history before the quarantine, which may tell you something."
"That you're the sneakiest bitch I think I'll ever meet?" Alex suggested. "I wouldn't put it past you to break into Fort Dietrich and steal half their records for some light reading." Why is it getting easier to just…chat with her? It's like I know her better than I do…or I've met her before. But that was stupid. Of course he'd met her before—he hadn't been able to get rid of her for a week straight. But…
But it felt like he'd known her for far longer. He had to be told his own name, and the first time he met his sister after waking up in the morgue felt like the first time he had ever met his sister. But for some reason, she seemed familiar somehow. And that disturbed him. The only other time he could remember feeling that sort of familiarity was with another highly dangerous woman.
Elizabeth Greene.
Alex buried the thought almost automatically—No, I am not going to think about this now of all times. Not now.
"Well, that too." Inky said, apparently not noticing the pause at all. "I picked up most of it by osmosis and by tracking their movements all over the country whenever they were deployed." And yet you thought it was a good idea not to share any of this with me. What the hell?
"How long did you follow them around?" Alex asked, trying to avoid a group of BlackWatch soldiers who suddenly decided to leap in front of the APC and be popped like balloons under its treads. He had no explanation or comment for it, and made a mental note to never mention this to Dana. When even the exterminators were attempting suicide (and succeeding), the situation has long since gone to hell.
"…Six years, not counting the time I spent monitoring them from a nice, safe office on another continent before being sent here." Inky said after a moment. "I was forced to give up after I lost all my information and supplies nine years ago."
"How did that happen?" Alex asked distractedly, because now people were shooting at the rogue APC and neither of his passengers seemed to have noticed. God damn tank crews and helicopters. He kept driving, speeding up until the lone APC was like an unstoppable engine of death by crushing. Hang on one damn minute. She spent fifteen years hanging around in this country? What the hell did she do before?
"Got caught in a collapsing building while trying to assassinate an office drone with a pen." Inky said. She got up and peeked over his shoulder at the dozen soldiers already firing recklessly at the APC even if they were standing directly in front of it. "It seems like we're getting close."
"Probably." Alex said. Irritated, he decided to take the shortest route to their destination—namely, by going right over the guard post and flattening anyone inside. From there it was just a short, panicked jaunt into the building. Since it already seemed to be two seconds from being completely overrun by Infected anyway, Alex didn't see how the military would be able to do much to stop them.
"I hope this is the right place." Inky muttered as all three of them scrambled out of the hatch with Infected all around. She reached the door first—Alex was momentarily distracted by monsters and swung at a bulky Infected, caving its skull in to the sound of cracking eggshells. "Hey, mind giving a girl and an old man a little help here?"
Inky and Ragland had to scramble out of the way as Alex swung backwards and the steel-plated door was ripped free of its frame by the force of it. They all hurried inside—there was no point to continuing to fight off waves of Infected out where the military might see them.
The inside of the building was painted red with blood and Infected matter that marked Infected zones. There was no one inside, but that didn't mean there hadn't been. Inky stooped and picked up a severed finger. Alex looked up and thought he saw a body—or bits of one—dangling among the ceiling supports. Weapons were strewn everywhere and Alex thought of the huge crates of ammunition and firearms present in the other military bases he'd seen. Other than that, and the tiny area shielded by Plexiglas and steel, the base was like a Hive with its Infected troops all out to lunch.
"Bodies over there…" Inky was mumbling, and then she looked at Alex and said calmly, "Guard Ragland. This place looks like the Infected got here first and gutted the whole damn building without the guards knowing. I can take the first wave as long as the roof holds." Already her minions were fitting the door back into place, jamming it into the frame if necessary.
Alex glanced at the roof in question, which looked, in his opinion, rather weak. It certainly wouldn't hold his weight in places, and he knew from experience that Hunters outweighed him by quite a bit. "That isn't going to hold if a Hunter gets up there." He picked up a discarded rifle and pulled a dead man's hand out of it.
"I know that." Inky said, frustrated. "But even large-caliber rifle slugs don't work that well on Hunters. And if you try using a rocket launcher in here someone's going to get killed by the blowback."
Alex glanced back—Ragland had already entered the Plexiglas-shielded room and was looking over the bodies with interest. "Probably not. There are only three of us in here, and if Ragland stays in there he's mostly safe. It's just between you and me."
Inky sighed. "Fine. But you know that if one of those linebacker-type ones gets in your face you're going to spend a lot of time getting blown up by proxy, right?"
Alex rolled one shoulder, still wary of the other. It hadn't flared in a while, though. He just hoped it could stay as harmless tissue for a bit longer. "I'll be fine."
Inky gave him a considering look and said, "Be careful, Alex. Otherwise Dana is going to bite my head off."
As she walked away to start lecturing her minions in who-knew-what, Alex blinked. She did it again. She used my name. Then he shook his head at the thought and went to go find a rocket launcher. The assault rifle wouldn't cut it this time.
At the same time, the first of the Hunters returned by smashing a hole in the roof and dropping through, only to find intruders in its lair. It charged and knocked Alex flat.
RED CROWN was in a panic. That was the only way to describe it.
Cross could move, now, but not very well. At least his leg was responsive now and he could almost start breathing normally—or he would have, were it not for the fact that the steel inserts didn't mean his ribs were healed and the morphine dosage he'd been given wasn't quite sufficient to leave him pain-free, because a sufficient dosage for him would have amounted to what would kill someone else. They couldn't afford to have him unresponsive or hallucinating for too long, though he had heard the medics complaining that having someone with genetic modification in the ward was a pain in the ass. While Cross agreed privately, it was more for his sake than for theirs. He still hated hospitals.
Either way, it didn't really matter now. He was bruised from armpit to hip on one side and nothing but a week's worth of rest would make a dent in that, especially on top of everything else. Sometimes, though, he didn't have that time and he'd die before he sat aside and watched his entire team get slaughtered…again.
He sat on the cot he'd been assigned, with his spark rod within easy reach, and then he waited.
From the sound of the screaming, he wouldn't have to wait for very long.
Cross could already see the blood splattering the floor outside the open door. One of the medics, untrained in the art of staying alive in the face of Infected attacks, was already dead on the floor just outside. He probably never even knew what hit him.
Suddenly, one of the bulkiest soldiers Cross had ever seen barreled through the opposite door, charging straight for the other end of the area—that was where the screaming was the loudest. He was huge—eight or more feet tall, bulging muscles all barely kept inside the white uniform of an officer and steel bindings all along his spine. Just from looking at him, Cross knew who he was.
One of the new weapons. Redlight variant DX-1120 mutated BlackWatch soldiers, colloquially referred to as supersoldiers by civilians and Marines or "D-Codes" by the men. Oh yes, Cross knew who they were. They were what, had he been born twenty years later, he could have become. They had to be young—most of BlackWatch wouldn't have survived the massive invasive surgery that gave them resistance to bullets even without armor by putting the armor plates under their skin, not even with twice the recommended dosage of the mutagen. There just wasn't enough growth left in their skeletons to deal with that. A lot of the early ones died under the knife.
But if you got them young enough, you could make monsters.
If you didn't, there were always people like Cross, who were slightly enhanced but not overly so, who had a higher chance of surviving clashes with the Infected. They died like humans, but for a while they could be more than that. They could fight anything the Infected could throw at them, toe to toe. They were the Wiseman team.
Or rather, they had been. Cross was fairly sure that the rest of his team had died under Mercer's claws. Now he was both the oldest member of the team, and, as of two days ago, the last.
There weren't many of the modified soldiers, of either type. There never really had been. The Wiseman team had only ever had about twenty members at once because the death toll was rather high even at the best of times, and it was hard to find soldiers willing to give up any chance at a normal life while undergoing drastic surgery and gene therapy, even in BlackWatch.
Maybe, with a "human" opponent running loose in Mercer, they were getting more applicants. Loose Runners always seemed to inspire fanaticism.
The D-Code rounded the corner. He was about to say something, probably a warning call or a taunt, and then something much smaller hit him at top speed. The D-Code's uniform began dripping red—whatever this new Infected was, it was red, smaller than average, and apparently had claws and teeth and no problem with using them.
There was a lot of gurgling. The D-Code was trying to pry the newcomer's teeth from his throat, but it wasn't working. Cross, still stunned, watched as the D-Code tried to break his opponent's back in a bear hug, only to have the monster jerk once, sharply.
Blood splattered the wall. It was a lot faster than Mercer. Reaction time sped up by a factor of three, Cross thought blankly as it turned to face him. Male. About twenty years of age. Naked, breathing heavily. Covered in blood and panting, but not slowed. Shit, what is that thing?
He wasn't mutated as far as Cross could tell—Infected always looked like twisted mimicries of whatever they had once been. This person was, well, normal. Aside from the blood and apparently having all the tact of a rabid animal.
Cross grabbed his shock prod and waited for the enemy's next move.
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Eventually, Cross saw the other man tilt his head a little, almost like a curious dog. "Я…потерялся."
Cross blinked. "What?" Okay… Infected couldn't talk, either. Even if he didn't recognize the language, he did know that the other man was trying to communicate. That was a point in his favor, though the dead staff and soldiers were definitely not. Why he had decided to attempt to talk to Cross of all people was slightly lost on him, though.
There was a longer staring contest. Then, without warning, the blood-covered mutant simply folded up in place with a sigh and fell to the ground, unconscious and knocking a bedside tray over on the way down, just as the assault team arrived. Cross was left staring in bewilderment at the place the strange psycho been standing, even as the heavily-armed and armored team dragged him away.
I'm getting too old for this shit.
"How are you holding up?" Inky shouted from the ceiling as Alex ducked a Hunter's vicious swing and was promptly bowled over by two Walkers who jumped him at the same time. A moment later, Alex reappeared from under the flailing limbs, launching a Walker skyward with one punch and sending it through the ceiling.
The shadow-queen sent one long tentacle out and grabbed the Hunter's neck as it was about to go for the kill, hurling it through the air into another nest of her minions, who pounced and instantly tore into it. Alex couldn't help but think that she was cheating somehow by using her shadow armor continuously.
Alex kicked the last of the Walkers off and ran, scooping up a grenade launcher as he went. Behind him, Inky was sweeping up the Walkers that had managed to get around him and mashing them into bloody pulp in her grasp. He noticed, though, that she hadn't moved from her place on the ceiling, and he found himself wondering why even as he pointed the business end of the weapon directly at a Hunter that had just landed on the floor in front of him.
The air was flooded with smoke and heat as the explosive-tipped ammunition left the barrel, smashing into the beast and slashing it with shrapnel and fire even as Alex fired again. The Hunter roared and screamed, lashing out blindly as Alex's second rocket struck it in the face, blasting part of its thick skull away and leaving its sensory…organs exposed. Blood went everywhere.
But the black creatures under Inky's command didn't need to see to fight, and if they did they could see past smoke easily. They leapt on it and one even managed to burrow into the Hunter's exposed brain. There were a series of horrible squelching sounds as they chewed it to bits from the inside out—they apparently enjoyed eating softer internal organs before getting down to the bare bones.
Alex decided not to think about it too much and concentrated on killing the Infected in front of him.
For a while it was like they fell into a rhythm. It was Inky on the ceiling and Alex on the ground, with her snatching up anything he couldn't kill quickly enough and him scything Infected down with any weapon he could get his hands on. She worked easily around him; without pause, she never allowed her minions too close to his line of fire and deftly abandoned anything he'd already splattered across the room in a trail of gore.
That didn't mean they had it down perfectly, though. He missed a Hunter once, twice in a row and then the grenade launcher was out of ammo. And unfortunately it was a lot faster than Inky or her minions. Swinging one massive gorilla-like arm, it knocked him through the air until he smashed into a wall. Dazed for a moment, Alex stumbled when he tried to get to his feet immediately. Meanwhile the beast was already moving on to its true goal.
"ALEX!" Ragland screamed—the Hunter was trying to pound its way past the Plexiglas barrier and, given the six of it and what he knew of Plexiglas, it would succeed shortly. "Jesus, get these things away from me!"
"Got it!" One of Inky's black tentacles shot toward it and curled around its rear left foot, flinging it toward the opposite wall. Alex grabbed another projectile weapon (he didn't care what type) and shot it in midair, and it exploded into a rain of blood and bone.
Still, Alex tossed the empty weapon aside and retreated to defend Ragland while Inky brought a particularly thick black tendril to bear and smashed ten Infected flat. Blood spurted everywhere, but it didn't seem to deter the legions of Infected behind that.
"Hey, you know what?" Inky's voice echoed from somewhere on a wall.
"What?" Alex asked, rising to the bait because he couldn't see any option for attack other than yet more grenade launchers—and he hated getting plowed by shrapnel—or trying to beat a Hunter to death with his bare hands, which was suicidal even for him.
Inky seemed to laugh. "Hold still."
Alex glanced back and there was a gigantic, nearly-spherical black creature to either side of him. Each had a mouth almost as large as its entire body and filled with long silver teeth the size of his arm. There didn't seem to be enough head left for much of a brain, and each had six wavering yellow eyes that twitched or faded erratically. They had stumpy legs—eight per monster—with four on each side that barely lifted them off the ground, and flat, club-like tails that apparently were only used to weigh them down. If he had to guess, he'd say that they were walking stomachs with all the worst characteristics of crocodiles, hippos, and elephant seals, with a mouth-span of about fifteen feet.
"What the hell are these things?" Alex demanded as they moved forward, past him and toward the Infected, who all of a sudden didn't seem so eager to charge.
"These are my newest creations. I call them Big Gulps." Inky's silver teeth flashed. "You might say they're my answer to anything and everything."
The fat creatures continued their slow march unopposed. Alex stared. "They're slow. The Infected walk faster than that. How the hell do you plan to—?"
As if on cue (and Alex didn't doubt that she'd been waiting for him to say something like that), the bulky creatures opened their huge jaws and each sent a long, black tongue out to grasp and reel in the nearest Hunter.
"Not so useless now, are they?" Inky said to Alex's stunned silence. She reappeared next to him, still jet-black in her shadow-armored form and Alex refocused on her rather than watching the Hunters dying painfully in the shadow monsters' jaws. "But be careful. They're not designed for open assault, only ambush and they can't fight at close range."
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked, trying to keep up.
Inky looked at him, her diamond-shaped blue facsimiles of eyes blinking in and out of existence. Then the layer of armor over her head peeled back a bit, revealing her real face. She was frowning. "Why shouldn't I? It's what friends do. Friends don't let friends get killed for stupid reasons like not enough info."
Friends?
"I mean, I don't feel like telling you things about my past because it's not really relevant and kind of embarrassing, and you sure don't tell me some things about yourself, either. That's okay." Inky went on, not noticing his reaction or not caring. "But you can't keep potentially life-threatening things from people you want to spend time with. It's rude and pretty much makes it impossible to keep any friends."
Alex could only laugh humorlessly. Inky blinked. He shook his head and said, "You're so fucking insane."
She grinned and the shadow-armor slid into place again. "The world's gone insane already! I'll be in good company. Besides, you're the only person I know who can fire a grenade launcher while doing a backflip. Doesn't that tell you something?"
The Big Gulps were handily dismantling the Infected from a range of about fifty feet. There wasn't much to do but watch until Ragland finished doing whatever he'd come her e to do. It seemed to be raining limbs. They spent several minutes doing nothing but hanging back and waiting for Ragland to announce that he was done.
Of course, it just so happened that when he did, Infected started storming the building. Again.
Alex and Inky made short work of the bulky Walkers the second time around, since there were no Hunters as backup and assault rifles worked perfectly well.
Then there was a terrible roar and something long, red, and huge exploded out of the center of the ground, punching a hole through concrete and infected biomass all at once. It was probably about sixty feet long and as thick as a tree trunk, and Alex knew just from looking at it that it would be a problem. The three-pronged bone-white of the tentacle looked, frankly, like it could punch through armor just as easily as concrete.
"…That's not good." Alex said after a moment.
"Good to know I planned for it, then." Inky replied. She waved her arm and the Big Gulps abruptly changed targets from the common Infected to the new one. "Gamma, Delta, target acquired. Rip it out of the ground." She turned back to Alex. "You're the only one who knows how to drive an APC. Get Ragland out of here and I'll meet you back at the hospital once I finish up here."
Alex couldn't help but feel like he was being sidelined. Not all that long ago, they would have done the exact opposite, with Alex standing his ground and Inky running people back and forth. He knew he could survive nearly anything that could possibly be thrown at him and he had, but he wasn't so sure about the redhead who always seemed to weasel her way out of things.
Inky smiled faintly. "Don't worry. I'll be fine. Just get Ragland back to the hospital and we'll see what we can do about getting you back to normal."
Hey, Ed. I think I have a clue to work off of.
Ed trilled through their mental link. The last note was a high one, indicating a question.
Ha-fucking-ha. I don't need any lip from you, can-opener. Anyway, did anyone go with Mercer when he went to see Parker?
Ed trilled again, this time without changing the tone to his mental voice.
Vonnegut did? Damn, I haven't seen him in forever. The shadow-queen sighed as Gamma and Delta feasted on what was left of the monstrous tentacle. Elsewhere, her other Big Gulps were hunting down and chewing on as many of the strange structures as they could find. She knew the tentacles were just an extension of Greene's infection, not individuals. Maybe that was why she felt so annoyed by the lack of progress. Well, anyway, that means he's been in contact with her, however briefly. Set him and a few of his pack to tracking her down.
Ed sent a silent question to his mistress, confused. What could the yellow-haired woman even do?
It's not what she can do. It's what she represents that's important. The shadow-queen ascended to the ceiling again, where she could hide from the light. I don't know much about her, but for a while she had Mercer on a leash. She's the past. What in hell is in Mercer's past? He doesn't remember jack, but I think it might be the most important part of this citywide puzzle.
Just from looking at what I know, though… She sighed. Mercer's not human. No human survives the shit he did before I got to him, or what happened after. But he is at the center of this whole mess, and while BlackWatch dumping the blame on him seemed like just looking for a scapegoat…well. There's something weird going on here. Besides the zombie apocalypse, of course.
There are only a few places to get information like that. One is Greene, and I'll politely say "Fuck that" to arranging a meeting with her. Her brain's literally in a million places and a million pieces at once. I wouldn't be able to get anything coherent out of her and I'd run the risk of getting infected with whatever superbug she's coming up with now.
The second choice is the military. For obvious reasons—not including a certain level of technological superiority—I don't want to get them stirred up. Besides, they probably know about me by now. It'd be safer to lie low for a few days so they don't feel like they have to come up with a counterattack or something.
Third choice…well, I'd like to be able to ask Parker, if only because it's likely that she's being held in witness protection or something similar and it's easier to get past that than it is to take on RED CROWN entirely alone. I could corner her easily… The shadow-queen frowned. But I have to find her first.
Ed made a concerned noise. He followed it with a series of clicks.
Well, fuck. Bat, too? What the hell was he doing? The shadow-queen reached into her swarm's collective memory and pulled out a wisp of what might have been Bat a few hours previous. She replayed its tiny mind twice to make sure she had caught all of the details.
Ed whimpered.
Are you kidding me? How the fuck did Cross survive that? I knocked him off a fucking six-story building! the shadow-queen mentally screeched as a Hunter tried to reach her from the floor of the abandoned military base. She backhanded it with a twenty-foot black tentacle. What the hell is going on here?
She turned her attention to Ed, bewildered and furious. WELL?
Ed gurgled something.
What do you mean I…! She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. I realize I was blinded by anger, Ed. It doesn't change the fact that I wanted him dead. Why did you decide to save him?
Ed trilled.
…You have a point. Fine. If the Parker thing doesn't pan out or I run out of patience, I'll go see what I can do in RED CROWN. Keep your eyes on Dana. Don't let anything happen to her.
Ed nodded.
"Ed, what are you doing?" Dana asked.
Ed said nothing. He couldn't talk anyway, and there was no point in letting his ward in on the fact that she was constantly under surveillance. Not really. Then Ed forgot about everything that involved words larger than one syllable and dove for the can of cat food she was holding, content to be a pet.
Somewhere deep in the dark heart of the city of Manhattan, something primal moved among the legions of Redlight-infected. Unlike the warmth and occasional flares of common emotions among humans, there was nothing here but a fierce, razor-edged urge. It was the urge to fight, to defend, and to create.
Fight the horrible, simple-minded creatures that strike down your brothers and sisters. Defend the Great Mother. Create more of her children for her to lavish with praise and shield in her fierce joy.
Like with any family with many children, though, there was always one that went off to do its own thing and become a thorn in its mother's side. At the moment, the hundreds of minds within her hold screamed about that one. Oh, she'd tried to send her children to discipline the wild one, to get him to return to her fold, but nothing seemed to be working. Every time she asked nicely, he'd rip his siblings limb from limb and, occasionally, feast on whatever remained.
Well, now Mother didn't feel like playing nice any more.
Slowly, surely, she gently urged her children toward what she had determined was her rogue son's stronghold. He needed to be separated from those strange females and taught a lesson in obeying his mother.
After this, she would be able to shape him into a proper member of her family. She would find a way to open the collective minds to her poor lost baby, to teach him how to create more of her brood by changing the horrible creatures who killed his siblings so they could be part of her family as well. He would be a much better son once she had taught him the proper ways again.
The shell that had once been a young woman named Elizabeth Greene, codenamed MOTHER, smiled. Her children would fight, and then they would be safe from ever being hurt again.
A/N: Sorry this is like a month late and short, but I have only so much time even in the summer. But here's a plot-heavy chapter to make up for the wait!