A/N: Postgame, there will be spoilers. Requires knowledge of Prototype to understand. Rated M for language and violence (later).

Disclaimer: I do not own Prototype. All characters and settings belong to Activision.

In a small morgue somewhere on the island of Manhattan, Dr. Bradley Ragland stood over an infected corpse, looking over its hideous red growths with a mild sense of disgust. He muttered something about the time of death into a small microphone before setting to work.

He picked up a small scalpel from a silver tray nearby, and pushed it into the top of the corpse's chest. Expertly, he slid it down the torso, exposing a set of horribly mutated internal organs. He sighed inwardly. Elizabeth Greene may have been dead, but her twisted legacy remained in these...things. Carefully, he clipped the skin back and pushed an empty syringe into the creature's heart. Taking a sample of blood, he let a drop of it fall onto a glass slide and began examining it under a microscope.

After a short amount of time, he heard the sound of footsteps. He turned around and saw Alex Mercer crouched on a window behind him, holding a silver Nokia phone.

"You rang?" Alex asked, with a hint of dry humour in his voice. The doctor gestured toward a nearby door. Alex jumped down from the window and followed Ragland.

"It's about Dana," Ragland said, opening up the door. Inside the room, Dana Mercer lay on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip and a heart rate monitor.

"Do you remember when I told you that she was stable?" Ragland asked. Alex tensed and nodded, sensing that he wasn't going to like what Ragland had to say.

"Well," he continued, "I was wrong." Alex looked at him, visibly distressed. His sister was the only person he could fully trust.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, trying to keep his inner panic under control. The doctor frowned. He could see the fear in Alex's eyes. It seemed quite foreign.

"While you where gone, I performed some tests. It seems that Dana's body is undergoing rapid cellular degeneration." The doctor shook his head. "If it isn't halted, her body will begin shutting down to preserve her vital organs. Within a week, she'll be dead."

Alex turned away, hoping the good doctor wouldn't see his reaction. Trying to stay calm, he replied.

"Is there a way to stop it?" Ragland hesitated.

"Well..." Alex turned to see the doctor holding an empty syringe. "Yes."

Instinctively, Alex stepped between Ragland and Dana. "No!" he shouted angrily. "You're not making her...like me!" Ragland slammed his fist onto a nearby table.

"Dammit, Alex!" he yelled back. "This is Dana's one shot at survival. Are you going to throw her life away? Will you watch her die, knowing you could have saved her?" Alex growled in anger. That was the clinch-point. He might not have wanted it, but if it was the only way to save Dana, he had no choice.

"Fine," he said, his voice low and dangerous. Ragland pulled his sleeve back, and without bothering to scrub the site, pushed the needle into his arm and drew out a small amount of black, red-streaked liquid. Quickly, he jogged over to his microscope and began examining the sample.

"The virus seems to be linked to your genetic code," Ragland explained, not looking up from the lenses. "That's why the virus takes your body as its base form."

"So what does that mean for us?" Alex growled. Ragland took a small vial of red liquid from a rack. It was marked, "MERCER, Dana A."

"We need to alter it. Otherwise, we won't have you and Dana; we'll just have two of you." Ragland placed the virus into a centrifuge and set it to several minutes.

"So, did you test this theory?" Alex inquired. "Or are we running blind?" Ragland shrugged."I've done a few tests, but the samples degenerated too quickly, and your genetic traits were too dominant, to get a stable result. It's an educated guess at best."

After a while, the machine stopped spinning and begun to beep. Ragland removed the virus, now fully black. Carefully, he poured some of it into Dana's DNA sample, and allowed it time to consume the liquid. When it finished, the new mixture was a grey substance, again with red streaks. Ragland nodded and mounted the liquid into a syringe.

"Well, the longer we delay, the less time Dana has..." Ragland muttered. He and Alex walked back into Dana's ward and stood by her bedside. Ragland scrubbed her forearm with alcohol and pushed the needle into it, releasing its contents into her body.

"And now?" Alex inquired.

"We wait," Ragland replied.

So? What did you think? Please review, more chapters to come.