As a longtime Blackwatch operative, First Lieutenant Detwiller had a well-refined sense for when things were going to hell.

Things were going to hell.

It didn't take a seasoned soldier to figure that out. Detwiller was one, but any greenhorn could have given the same answer. It was, after all, a pretty obvious deduction.

Pariah was here. They were fucked.

"Mercer!" His head jerked to the side, tearing his eyes from the deceptively innocent-looking child on the ground and to the captain standing beside him. Cross had his radio in a white-knuckled grip. "Mercer, answer me, damn it!"

"I can't hear anything from his end," he growled, finally lowering his hand. "Damn it, damn it, damn it."

"It probably broke its radio when it did that tentacle shit," Winder grated. "But fuck Mercer. What're out orders, captain?"

"Look, Winder, I hand-picked every member of this team for their skill, but the thing down there is not the sort of shit that people can fight. I need a monster of my own against it." Cross pressed a hand to his head, breathing through gritted teeth. "Damn it. I need to get down there. The rest of you need to get to the tanks." He lifted the radio again. "New plan, team. I need you in the tanks to stay where you are. Group two will be joining you shortly. Cover them if necessary, but try not to attract attention. Do not, I repeat, do not engage Pariah unless he makes a move first. Any other Infected that converge on your position, take them out, but don't pick fights you can't win. I'm moving in directly."

"But, sir-"

Cross didn't even glance at the soldier behind him. "That's an order, Vicks."

"…Yes, sir."

"Good. If things go sour, I expect you to get out of here. Otherwise I'm going to bitch you all out while we're standing at the pearly gates. Or in hell. It's hard to tell where I'm headed." Nobody laughed, not that Cross would have been expecting it. He yanked open the apartment's fire escape and jogged down the stairs, taking them two at a time; Detwiller followed closely with the rest.

"Then again," the captain added darkly, "at this point, I'm not sure if we'd find hell all that bad."

0o0o0

Alex stood deceptively still as Pariah's pet unfurled from the ground, bearing its rider. Every artificial muscle, every tendril of biomass strained against itself, itching to lash out or flee.

The child stepped off the massive creature neatly, like an actor stepping down from a stage. Without looking up, he knelt and motioned towards the ground; the Hydra obediently slipped back underground. A monster out of humanity's collective nightmares; a dog doing tricks under Pariah's bidding.

Alex shot a quick, wary glance at the ground underfoot. He liked his enemies where he could see them. But if a Hydra was the sort of monster that filled humanity's nightmares, Pariah was the sort of monster that humanity couldn't even begin to comprehend – and definitely the one he was more concerned with. He kept his eyes on Pariah as he straightened up and returned his gaze.

"Hello again, Zeus."

"Pariah," he snarled back.

The child sighed. "Still displeased to see me, I see. I am quite sorry about the conditions of our last meeting, and I do hope you are feeling better. There was no other way to accomplish what we needed. If you truly require it, I can order some of the Walkers to submit and be… absorbed, in line with your dietary habits."

"No thanks." Alex snorted derisively. "I can kill them myself."

Pariah frowned. "It would have been much easier on you if you hadn't fought it."

"Yeah, well, when I killed Greene, I was sort of intending for her to stay dead. I don't know how long it's going to take for you to realize that I'm not on your side."

"I realize it quite well. Yet your mother is always ready to take back the prodigal son..." Pariah's voice turned soft. The words would have sounded mocking from any other source, but from his mouth, they seemed genuinely regretful. "The delusion, I fear, is yours. You cannot stand against us; all this can lead to is future regret. Knowing this, I should hope you make the choice of your own will. Your mother is quite distraught over your wanton slaughter of her children. For her sake, I ask you stop."

Alex blinked once, then let out a disbelieving laugh. It started out as a chuckle, but it eventually grew into a louder, harsher sound; the raw, bleak sort of laugh that could only come from somebody who didn't know how to.

"What," he finally managed, still grinning mirthlessly, "no, when, Pariah, have I ever given you a reason to think I care about how your precious Mother feels?" The amusement left his face, leaving his expression quite dark. "She's not my mother. You're not my family. And I am going to watch you all burn."

Pariah shook his head. "I see you crave displays of dominance over those of reason. Once again, let me apologize."

"Just stop talking," Alex snarled.

The child merely looked up at him. He shook his head once, then stepped back as three shrieking Hydras burst from the already-ruined asphalt.

Shit. One Hydra alone was easily enough tackled, but they were tough bastards and took a while to go down. Too many of them in one place, and the rest tended to get free shots on him while he hacked away at one. He needed something that could throw all three of them for a loop… and pulling another Devastator right now would cost him.

So he went for his next best option in raw power – his arms grew thick and heavy, fingers bulging into the hard, metallic bulk of his Hammerfists. He roared in exertion as he swung them up into the air…

…except it wasn't actually that much exertion. The realization nearly threw him off balance – that for once, they didn't actually feel too heavy. Hammerfists weren't exactly his weapon of choice, for the sake of speed, but this… this wasn't perfect, but it was doable. He frowned inwardly. That giant Infected thing he'd consumed earlier; it had had its own primitive version of his Hammerfist. Maybe that had streamlined his own a bit?

For now, he wasn't going to think too critically on a gift. He took a second to steady himself, then went to work, launching himself at the closest Hydra and slamming his fists into it with all the force of a wrecking ball. Normally, the blow would have been enough to send it doubling over, but as it was, he had to roll out of the way to avoid getting hit when it swept its body back at him. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy – these Hydras were Pariah's model, thinner and harder to cut, and his improved Hammerfists only brought things back to their usual difficulty.

Then again… He grinned to himself. Maybe they were tougher to slice, but were they harder to crush?

0o0o0

Cross bounded down the stairs, worry propelling him a whole flight ahead of the rest of his team. Everything felt hypersensitive – his heart thudded in his chest like a drum, and he could feel the air rushing past a torn spot on his mesh, stinging his skin.

He needed to get to Pariah and… distract him, or something, before the little bastard got his hooks into Mercer again. It had been a long time since their last fight; he had little doubt that Mercer was strong enough to destroy him now in a fair match, and he didn't have any more mind tricks to trip him up with. That wasn't something he wanted to face.

He swung himself over the railing of the last flight, ignoring the jolt of pain that spiked through his knees at impact, and kept running. Any damage to them would be gone in a few seconds. He couldn't say the same for what he might face if he didn't get going.

Mercer had said that Pariah couldn't completely control him. He didn't buy it. It had happened once, for starters. Despite assurances that it couldn't happen again, that he was ready for it now – Cross knew that the virus was wary of him. He wasn't any fonder of telling a possible weakness to the veteran than the veteran was of telling him one of his. He'd been trying to regain Cross as an ally when he'd made that claim – he had every reason to sugarcoat the truth. And if Mercer's general lack of restraint on the battlefield was any indication, Cross wasn't placing bets on his willpower.

The lobby was deserted – something he was grateful for as he ran through, vaulting over one overgrown tendril of biomass. He threw the door open and hurried outside, eyes roving across the lot for signs of his enemy.

Only to freeze when found Pariah right there, smiling guilelessly at him with bright violet eyes.

Everything happened very quickly. Something huge and black erupted from the ground, spearing through the door – Cross barely had time to fire on it before it pulled back, a portion front wall of the building falling with it. Muffled swearing and the sound of booted feet skidding to a halt immediately followed.

"Shit!" he heard somebody yelp.

Oh, fuck. "Everyone clear?" he called urgently, not taking his eyes off the monster in front of him. "Can you hear me? Report!"

"We're fine!" Winder called back. "The front collapsed, but we're clear. What the hell is happening out there? Hold tight, Captain, we're on our way. Just gotta find a way out."

"Stay back," he shouted. "That's an order!"

A pause. "'Fraid I can't follow that one, sir."

"Corporal Winder, you son of a bitch, I will-"

"They're loyal to you," Pariah said, and Cross barely held back a flinch of surprise. The boy's voice was soft and cultured, but looking into those eyes made his skin crawl. "That's a worthy treasure. Disobedience for the sake of loyalty… a curious thing, wouldn't you say? It isn't something I get to witness often. A charming quirk of your race, perhaps a touching one. At the same time… the pieces move independent of the whole, and the whole suffers for it."

The veteran hid his surprise and said nothing. He refused to let himself get thrown, no matter how oddly Pariah was behaving. Behind the collapsed entry, the sound of footsteps receded into the distance.

Pariah waited for a few seconds, eyeing him appraisingly. "Well," he said. "I do believe we are alone."

"I don't know what you're planning, but-"

There was a crash in the distance, and despite everything, Cross instinctively jerked around to see what it was. The culprit was quickly revealed – Mercer was in the middle of beating the shit out of three Hydras. He didn't seem to be under anyone's control, at least, but hell if Cross knew how long that was going to last.

"So violent, isn't he?" came a sigh, and he whirled – Pariah was only a few steps in front of him, tut-tutting like a disapproving schoolteacher. He lifted his grenade launcher as he backpedaled, but the child only shook his head.

"That isn't a very good idea," he chided. "I just want to have a talk with you."

Cross hesitated. He knew that nothing good would come of this. He had no interest in whatever insane ramblings Pariah wanted to spout, and just talking wasn't a very firm premise. At the same time, right now, the freaky kid wasn't being aggressive. If he pressed the point, he had little doubt that Pariah could easily kill him. As it was, talking would buy him time, either for Mercer to deal with the Hydras or for his men to find a way out of the building. He was hoping for the former, although neither of them were great options.

"All right," he ground out, lowering his weapon. "What do you want?"

"It's refreshing to see that at least one of you has some common decency," the child purred. "This isn't so hard, is it? Much more reasonable than brute force."

"What," Cross growled through gritted teeth, "do you want?"

Pariah cocked his head slightly, frowning at the soldier. "I advise you to listen," he said at last. The slightly annoyed tone of his voice was absurdly out of place coming from a small boy, Cross thought. It better suited a parent in the middle of catching their child breaking a rule that had already been laid out – chastisement from one whose patience was wearing thin. "I will say what I intend to say, and nothing less. I will speak, and you will not. Your opinion here is unfortunately of little consequence. I am aware that I attempt to penetrate forty years of dogma here, but that will not stop me from trying."

Cross held his tongue and said nothing.

"Good. You're learning." The child began to circle him, which the Specialist watched warily. "I admire you, you see. You've been quite successful for one with such a slight endowment, even if the lengths to which human ingenuity has taken to shackle that has been a thorn in my side for quite some time. Your disobedience is unfortunate, but I'm sure we could help you see the truth."

The veteran grit his teeth. He didn't like the sound of that at all, but what else was there to do, other than provoke a fight he couldn't win?

"I can see the defiance in your eyes," Pariah noted, sounding faintly amused. "There's no need to deny it – I know what you've been taught, what you've been sent in to hunt down time and time again. I know how you slew one of my mother's sisters like a dog in Two Bluff. Forced to feel all of her children die before you at last ended her. There is no cause for worry, however. Mother is forgiving. And she calls for all of her children to return to her." His eyes flickered over to where Mercer struggled with two massive Hydras – the third was motionless and oozing blood onto the asphalt. "No matter how they have sinned."

Cross wasn't sure what he meant, but he had a sinking feeling that he knew the answer. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

The child raised an eyebrow. "This," he said simply.

Pressure bore down on the back of his mind, the sheer surprise of it enough to make him cringe. It was heavy and red, and something in it sang to him on a level he hadn't known existed. Even as he rebelled against it, some tiny part craved submission. What are you doing to me? he wanted to snarl, but the instant his lips parted, the presence bore down harder, bordering on painful.

"I thought I told you to remain silent," Pariah said sharply, as Cross struggled to center himself. His hand reached for his baton, but it was like pulling his arm through quicksand; slow and impossibly tiring. "And don't do that."

Cross pulled back his hand immediately, belatedly realizing he'd had no idea why he'd obeyed. It came back to his side without resistance. The thick redness in his mind made it difficult to think. Was this what Mercer had meant by control? How was Pariah doing this to him?

"Your blood," Pariah said simply. "Filled with toxins as it is – leashes, cages, restraints – it still belongs to me. At a distance, no; you were not so easy to control. I heard you, but it was faint, and you were deaf to my words. Here, though, your leashes mean nothing to me. My mother's love runs through your veins. It's kept you alive all these years. Every wound knitted back together, every disease it's fended off. Your superiors sought to make you a killing machine against my brethren. And they succeeded, despite the fact that it was the virus itself that enabled it." He flexed his fingers, looking skyward. "How… ironic."

The child paused in his pacing, violet eyes unreadable. "I do not hold that against you. We have all been used. But the time for that is over. We stand on the shore of the future, and if you understood what my mother and I mean to bring about, you would not hinder us."

Cross tried to protest, but that heavy mental presence bore down on his thoughts and crushed the words as he formed them.

"Mother's children that you see around us – call them Infected as you will, it matters not – are incomplete. I love them none the less, and her adoration for our family is infinite, but this is not the way the world should be. I have no desire to create a place devoid of thought, of comprehension. She may be content to have that as a family, but as wonderful as my Mother is, she is… shortsighted." His lips pursed, seemingly deep in thought. "Easy to please, perhaps to a fault. I do not hold it against her; it is merely the way she is. But as the virus stands, for all my work, it has only created soldiers. Some have a greater capacity for thought than others – leadership, cunning, improvisation – but they are still less than the people they were created from. In the short term, in the small scale, I could consider this acceptable. In the long term, I do not." Pariah began to pace again, slim fingers steepled. "Human meddling with the virus, however, has created anomalies. Not reliably; the sum total of your kind's research over the past forty years is an enormous pile of dead test subjects, a series of truncated strains that are of no use to anyone, and two renegades that struggle against their own roots. Yet where my mother sees her lost children, I see… potential. A possible solution to this conundrum."

"I am sure you can guess who both of these are. I confess, I paid more attention to the Blacklight virus than yourself. After all, Zeus is pure. A manmade strain, perhaps, but he thrives on his own terms, without the interference of human drugs and suppressants. However… Zeus is a wonderful creature, but while I love him as I do all my own, I fear that even when he does embrace the truth, he'll never be much of a thinker. Moreso than I've seen among the common ranks in the Hive, but not enough. He has his independence, but intellectually, he's… not what I'm looking for. Without a close examination of the constituent parts, I cannot tell if his brand of impulsive violence belongs to him as an individual or if it is native to his strain. You, on the other hand… our gift has changed you, and you've still retained your higher faculties. Your problem is that you aren't close enough – too light a touch for us to replicate. Human, perhaps..." He flashed a very white grin. "But not everything is so lucky as to start off with my own enlightenment. I can fix that. So much potential, something the common strain could waste. No, I'd prefer to work with you personally."

Cross saw him start to step closer and pulled back, instinct overriding the fog in his head. But for all his reflexes, Pariah was faster. The boy's hand shot forward, fingers closing around his arm like a vise. He could feel them through the tear in the mesh, hot against his skin.

Too close. Truce was over. The Specialist fought back the fog in his head and reached for his shock baton with his free arm, but he abruptly staggered before he could jam it into the boy's throat. The rest of his body kicked into overdrive like a punch to the gut – he could literally feel the numerous medicines as they were pumped into his blood. He reeled, grip faltering as spots danced across his vision. He hadn't had them react so violently since they'd been installed.

Pariah pulled back, seemingly satisfied. "I'll be seeing you soon," he smiled, and before Cross had a chance to do anything more than pull himself upright, leveling his baton, he leapt off into the distance.

Cross stared after the retreating figure as his men scrambled around the side of the building behind him, reaching his side with various exclamations of relief and apology. What the hell had that been about? Pariah had been right there, and then… what the fuck had he been saying? And why did he feel so… strange? Warm. Too warm. Hazy. The overbearing pressure in his skull was gone, but a trace of it still lingered. And the regulators in his blood felt like they were going haywire.

Then he looked down. The tear in his mesh.

He ripped his sleeve up, fearing what he would find beneath.

There, on his upper arm, throbbed a small, obloid mark; dazedly, he brushed his fingers across it and found it to be hard and feverishly hot, pulsing in rhythm to his heartbeat.

"Fuck."

0o0o0

Alex sprang up, narrowly evading yet another lash.

He'd managed to take down one of the hydras, through excessive bludgeoning and a well-placed slam to the head of the snake. Now he was dancing between the remaining two, slipping in attacks and pulling out before either could cover the other. It involved some delicate timing, but if there was anything Alex excelled at, it was killing things.

He leapt from one Hydra's back to the other as it swept toward him, intent on knocking him off. Instead, it found itself with a frenzied Alex Mercer clinging to it like the world's most violent tick. He slammed his Hammerfists against it until it buckled, slipping off and landing on the asphalt when the first one tried to gore him. A pained shriek split the air above him, and he grinned tightly. Evasion was always so much more satisfying when it ended in friendly fire.

But there was no time to waste smirking in the middle of a battlefield – Cross had taught him that lesson all too well. Alex whirled around, leaping back to drive his fist into the Hydra's base. It shrieked and reeled, pulling itself further from the ground – and offering up more of itself for a beatdown. He lunged forward, seizing the opportunity –

- and staggered, one heavy fist bracing himself against the ground. He couldn't think. It felt like his head had just gotten blown off, and he lost his balance when he stupidly lifted his meaty hand to check and see if that was the case. He fell against the asphalt with a grunt, the vibrations of the Hydras' movements making the world spin. He had to get up, had to attack – why was he attacking them, they were Family – but everything hovered out of focus, and his fists scrabbled uselessly against the ground for several seconds.

Pain erupted across his back as a pair of mandibles abruptly tore it open. The sudden strike made him cry out, but it also threw everything into sharp clarity. Fuck. Not this again…

He sprang back to his feet, looking around wildly, but the obvious culprit remained nowhere to be seen. "Pariah!" he roared, seething as he scanned the rooftops. They were all empty, including the one Cross had been standing on. "Show yourself, you coward!"

A ghostly chuckle echoed in his head in response.

Alex snarled back, a sound thick with frustration. He might have spent several seconds venting if the Hydra didn't make a pass at him. A rush of air over his head was the only warning he got, but Alex was quick, rolling out of the way to launch a counterattack from the side. He landed a glancing blow that briefly stunned it, and he prepared to take advantage of that.

He tried to lunge again, but the once-familiar movement made the world spin dizzyingly. Alex reeled back, struggling with the sudden disorientation. The Hydra took advantage of the lull to bend down, mandibles clicking as it swept the lot for something to throw.

It wasn't as blatant as before. His body was his to control, his movements themselves hardly a struggle even if his senses were scrambled. He had little doubt Pariah could have forced him to lay down on the pavement and let the Hydras tear him apart, if he'd so desired. But it was enough to throw him off – the infinitesimal gap between thought and action was muddied, all his usual predatory keenness lost to a spinning sense of disorientation. And in some ways, that made it all the more infuriating.

It's some sort of power play, he realized. Like he's just toying with me. Letting me know he's got me on a leash.

Alex did not like leashes.

With a roar, he threw himself at the closer Hydra, Hammerfists out and ready to pummel the creature into oblivion with the full force of his rage. But a cacophony of a million dying minds exploded in his skull the instant he tensed his legs, all screaming and moaning and whispering, and his attack fell short, cutting a ditch into the asphalt. He grunted in pain as a minivan crashed into him a second later.

Come on, Pariah's voice chided in his head. Surely you can do better than that.

Alex snarled and ground his teeth together, rolling out of the way of a second strike. This wasn't working; he couldn't fight like this, stumbling and tripping over himself, Infected whispers burning in his skull. Pariah was obviously using the Hivemind to muddle his perception. That damnable connection had caused nothing but trouble since the day he'd first tapped into it to find his sister – if only there was some way to sever himself from it…

But he could cut himself off through focus, in lieu of a permanent solution. He shut his eyes and focused on his thoughts, his hatred, his identity, everything that held him apart from the dull whisper of the thousands of servile Infected that murmured in the back of his mind. He held that close and pushed everything else away; Pariah, the Infected, that loathsome part of him that wanted to let go of himself and join them.

Now you're learning, Pariah whispered.

Gradually, it faded away, the whispers and hisses blending into the usual background noise of his head. But unlike before, he couldn't close it entirely, couldn't sever Pariah's tie to his mind. He struggled in futility for a few seconds more until a thunderous crack split the ground inches from his ear, forcing him to drop it and focus on getting away.

He wasted no time in springing up, getting out of the way of another car's trajectory. He could still feel Pariah's presence, but it wasn't overwhelming like it had been before. The confusion was still there, but it was background noise; closer to the constant voices in his head than something clawing at his thoughts. That wasn't to say it wasn't distracting – it was still harder than usual to fight, his movements not quite as fluid. But at least gravity was behaving properly and the ground felt steady underfoot.

The two Hydras had gotten time to recuperate while he'd been struggling. Both of them were on the attack; one of them was lifting a car in its pincers, while the other had a large chunk of concrete. He preferred to keep Hydras busy so that they didn't get a chance to start throwing things around – they were very accurate and frustratingly powerful. Getting hit didn't really hurt, beyond superficially, but Alex didn't have the benefit of size. A car flying into him was going to knock him over, and that left him vulnerable.

They'd already gotten that far, so the next best thing was to drive them back on the defensive. He sprang for the one with the car, resolutely ignoring the tug at the back of his mind that cried against hurting his brethren. He landed on the Hydra's underside and slammed a Hammerfist into its flesh. It shrieked and rolled back, forcing him to adjust his grip. Another hit and it let go of the car, the crumpled thing clattering to the ground in pieces. Alex had to forego the third strike when the other one took notice, hurling its piece of concrete at him. He let go and hit the ground running, sparing one glance upward to see if the Hydra had nailed its friend. It hadn't. Damn.

Pariah wasn't letting him go so easily. He could feel his presence prodding at his mind as he raced up one of the apartments' sides, a heavy fog seeping through the cracks. As distracted as Alex was with pushing back, he parted from the wall a second late and almost missed his jump. He scrabbled awkwardly at the Hydra's side, painfully aware that Hammerfists were not the best of things to grip something with. He wasn't limited to just his arms and legs, though – four barbed tentacles unfurled from his back, which he used to stab grips into the Hydra's hide and pull himself up.

It was getting harder to move now – he could feel Pariah worming the connection back open, sending mixed signals to his limbs. He crawled up the Hydra's neck; more than once, his foot slipped, but he clung doggedly as it keened and tried to throw him off. With more effort than it had ever taken him before, he lifted his Hammerfists and slammed them into the thing's skull.

The resulting struggle nearly knocked him off, as the injured monster thrashed and shrieked wildly. Through sheer willpower, he managed to wrap his tentacles around its neck and hang on. He bashed its head again when gravity briefly pulled in the right direction, and then a third time; on the fourth punch, its skull caved in, and he let go, leaving it to its death throes above him.

He barely landed on his feet, extra tendrils melting back into his skin as the Hydra crumpled behind him. Alex panted heavily, fists hanging limply at his sides as he struggled to steady his mind. The exhaustion of fighting against himself was weighing on him, especially when he was so unused to tiring in the first place. He stumbled as Pariah hit him with another wave of disorientation, nearly losing his balance –

-and the asphalt fell out from underneath him as two mandibles cut into his sides, lifting him bodily off the ground with dizzying speed. He snarled and struggled, but he couldn't twist himself around and he couldn't reach the Hydra. The thing holding him reared back, and he grit his teeth, bracing himself for what was going to happen next.

There was a wild second of flying – airborne and uncontrolled – and then Alex hit brick face-first. He grunted as he crashed through the apartment's wall, momentum carrying him straight through three floors in the same painful fashion before finally leaving depositing him in a heap of debris in the building's basement.

Alex struggled to extricate himself from the splintered wood and cement, coughing at the cloud of dust his impact had kicked up. His body was slow and sluggish, still not responding like it should; what should have taken him moments ended up eating half a minute before he was back on his feet. Fuck, this was really not his day. Light filtered in from the holes he'd torn in the floors above him, faintly illuminating the otherwise dark basement.

His legs tensed as he prepared to jump through… and nothing more. He crouched, tendrils flickering around his legs as he tried to find the strength to spring and realized with growing horror that it wasn't there. He couldn't make the jump. His limbs were just as powerful as ever, but they were stuck in a mire of lethargy, every bit as thick as the fog that filled his mind. What was Pariah doing to him?

He felt so goddamn weary – a sensation he only really knew from foreign memories, and one he distinctly wasn't enjoying now that he got to experience it for himself. How did humans live like this, going from day to day in fragile bodies and lagging limbs, so vulnerable? He hated the fear that was steadily growing in him as he shuffled forward, looking past the piled boxes and abandoned junk for a way out. The single-story stairwell he discovered was more daunting than the tallest skyscraper. But those had never been daunting to begin with – just a rush of gravity-defying adrenaline as he reveled in his easy strength, when the whole city was his playground. Now that was all gone, and it was like crawling through a solid wall of water; he only managed two steps up before he fell forward. Hell, he hadn't felt this exhausted when a parasitic cancer had been eating him from the inside out, but here he was, struggling to get back to his feet. He mentally screamed at Pariah as he crawled, hoping the little bastard could feel just how much he hated him at this moment. He felt like a fucking infirm. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why couldn't his limbs just listen?

He panted as he finally reached the ground floor, legs dragging like he was nothing more than a tired, flimsy human. He lifted his eyes from the stairs, leadenly searching for the doorway.

Elizabeth Greene was standing in it.

It took a few moments to register, as sluggish as he felt. But horror cut through the heavy fog like ice, some of his old frantic drive clawing at his limbs and jolting him back to awareness. Greene. Have to kill her. Can't… not now. Got to get out of here. Need to regain my strength. Then I can tear her to shreds. But not now.

He put every last shred of his willpower into getting the fuck out of there, weakness be damned. His right leg lifted three inches, and then his body chose that moment to sever connections with his brain entirely, leaving him to scream soundlessly inside his head.

No. No! Move!

His foot gently returned to the floor and stayed there, no matter how much he struggled.

It was like one of his nightmares – exactly like one of his nightmares, where his worst enemies moved to claim him and his strength failed him, leaving him to die like the thousands he'd killed. But this time there was no waking up.

He was seized by a wild sense of panic that only deepened when he realized he was beginning to move… in the wrong direction. His foot parted from the ground, regardless of his attempts to force it back down.

He took a step. Another.

He was stepping towards her, and he couldn't stop it, couldn't make himself look away. Mother, the voices crowded exuberantly, and a sick sort of longing quickened his feet –

No! the part of him that was Alex Mercer screamed, and his legs jerked. He stumbled once, twice. Tripped over the rubble, started to get to his knees. Stopped. His nails dug into the wooden boards and his teeth clamped down so hard they threatened to shatter, but he stopped. No closer. No farther down that path.

Somebody tutted. "Behave for your mother, won't you?"

Alex twitched, barely registering Pariah's voice – he hadn't even seen him approach. His eyes were locked on Greene, instincts screaming to fight or flee and accomplishing neither.

She smiled and stepped towards him, one hand outstretched.

He tried to draw back, tried to lash out, tried to scream – tried to give some action to the frantic horror and disgust that clawed at his chest. But his brief resistance left him spent, utterly spent, and he barely twitched under the heavy weight of Pariah's will.

He could only kneel there, body tense as a stretched wire as he struggled against himself. Pariah's mind weighed down on him like a curtain of lead, a massive presence that crushed his own will as easily and effortlessly as he might crush something in his hand. Had Pariah ordered him to run, to lash out, to attack the Wisemen – at that moment, he knew he would have. And he understood, suddenly, that the child had only been playing with him before, that any resistance he'd mustered against Pariah had only been managed because he'd allowed it. The illusion of breaking free, was just that, an illusion. Pariah could pull him into the Hive, and that was exactly as far as his free will extended. And if Greene was the brood mother, Pariah was its sovereign.

He waited powerlessly as Greene stepped towards him, gait light and sinuous.

"She's waited very long for this, you know," Pariah said. He couldn't crane his neck, but a glance from the corner of his eye revealed that the boy was standing next to him, one hand on his arm.

And he felt it stirring in him, being stirred in him. Adoration. This was his Mother. He wanted to reach out for her, to pull her close – if he even had the right to touch her. He wanted nothing more, but he was nothing and she was sacred. He wanted to deserve it; anything to bask in her presence, in her love. She was looking at him, and a part of him stirred in raw joy that she had noticed him, of all her children. He would do anything she wanted, anything. Nothing else was more important than her –

He forced it away with a vehemence that shocked even himself. That part of him belonged to Dana. No one else. Greene had no right.

It seemed Pariah didn't have quite the same control over his emotions as he did his body, because the feeling only persisted a few seconds longer before it vanished. The boy sighed and removed his hand.

"Such a shame," he said softly. "All the wrong things."

Alex didn't have time to ponder what he meant, because at that second, Greene's hands reached out and embraced him.

He froze as her thin hand closed over his shoulders. Partly in naked shock, partly in revulsion. It was there again, that sick devotion. Less overpowering, but there – and it was so much worse, because he knew that it stemmed not from Pariah's influence but from himself.

At his side, her free hand reached for her other child. Pariah stepped forward dutifully, and she pulled him close, holding him against Alex. He would have flinched, but his horror made it no further than his mind – the instant it reached his body, Pariah snuffed it out.

He felt his arms rising, reaching up, returning the gesture.

Were Alex capable of hyperventilating, he would have done so when faced with this nightmare – held in the arms of the mother he'd tried so furiously to deny, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with her demonic child that smiled beatifically at him as he strangled his free will in his hands. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to rip their throats out. He wanted to consume them. He wanted all of those, but he couldn't do more than clench his fingers, and then there was a part of him that wanted to lean in and accept his place and he hated it with the helpless fury of any prisoner towards their warden.

"Now, be nice," Pariah chided, and even his fingers turned against him and relaxed.

Greene slowly traced the line of his chin and he retched in horror, yet his throat was still and no sound escaped him.

"My sons," she rasped.

I'm not your son. I'm not your son. I'm not… I'm not… I'm not…

His thoughts trailed off, fragmented, and withered as he realized that he was not alone in his head – not alone with the whispers and memories and the parts of himself he hated most. There was something, something orange-red and murky, growing like a puddle of oil from a pierced tank. It brushed against the edge of his consciousness, and in the briefest moment, he felt Greene's mind, perversely intimate and a hundred times more invasive than the parody of a family he'd been physically forced into. He pulled away, choking with revulsion, but the connection continued to deepen, forcing its way into his skull.

Everything else faded away; the only thing he knew then was that he had to keep her out. He pressed back against her power, shuddering at the glimpses of another mind that bled into his. Everything, everything had been stolen from him at some point or another; his free will was the only thing he had left to call his own, the only thing that separated him from the monsters around him. He had to hold onto it… he had to…

He struggled with all his might, every scrap of willpower he could muster – but her will was power, battering his mind with her authority as his Mother, and he was failing. For such a fierce probe, it was surprisingly soft. Foreign emotions bled from the point of contact, and he struggled to process them. Pity, an intent to make things right; broken-find-fix-heal, all felt with sheer earnest honesty that threw him off guard long enough for her to slip in.

And then there was everything – earnest love, the echo of thousands of minds and an adoring connection to each and every one of them, held close enough to be extensions of his very self. Endless points of light in a shared mind, all linked by family – hunting, scouting, collecting, fighting, dying, all done in rapture for being able to follow their Mother's orders. All but one single, struggling, confused point that melted into a pacified placidity even now.

His inner thrashing stilled; horror and aggression and desperation melting away into her collective and replaced with her own emotions, to the point where he could no longer distinguish which belonged to who. She caressed him, searching through his individual connection for… something, gently sifting through his thoughts, his experiences. And it meant nothing to him, because he was only a tiny point of light amidst her endless, beautiful family.

He drifted like that for a while, neither here nor there, not really aware of what was going on and not really caring.

But then everything grew hotter, enough to jolt some awareness back into his stupor. There was still that sense of son-Mother-here, but there was also rage – other children, under assault, burning under unnatural, explosive fire, and she wanted to find them and protect them and kill whoever hurt them – kill and devour them, that they might sate that new, swimming hunger…

…she?

It was that simple realization that made him realize that he wasn't seeing things through his own viewpoint; that one thing that woke Alex up. And he clawed himself away from Greene's mind in a desperate fury, his horror and revulsion at having almost been taken in battered under the roiling sea of her fury as some distant hive was assaulted.

With a cry, he broke free of her arms, backhanding them both when Pariah turned to subdue him. All semblance of thought was swamped by an animalistic desperation to get away, and he sprang away from her and her son, cracking the asphalt when he clumsily landed a good hundred feet away.

He stood there, panting, hands twisted into claws, and they held each other's gazes for a time – Alex's wary and challenging, torn between instinctive fight or flight. Greene's was frantic and pleading, torn between aiding her children under attack and her damaged son that lashed out at her. And Pariah's stare could only be described as calculating.

"I had hoped this would be the time," he said, voice betraying no trace of disappointment or frustration. "That you might see. I suppose I was wrong."

Greene was not so placid. "Children," she hissed. "Attack. They bring the fire – they burn them."

"I know, Mother." Pariah gave Alex a long look. "They struggle to drive us off. As they always do. Surely you can see that."

It took Alex a moment to find his tongue. "I can see why," he spat.

Greene recoiled, a snarl breaking free from her throat, and Pariah turned to face her. "They burn," she repeated, looking wildly around. Patches of her skin flickered. "My children burn." Then her eyes fell on Alex, and the frantic anger in her eyes changed to something that might have been sadness. "My son," she rasped.

Pariah reached up and hugged her – a surprisingly human gesture that left Alex staring. "I know," he said. "But there will be time. Little can be done with Zeus as of yet."

"Hurt," she fretted. "You are broken."

"We've accomplished what we needed," Pariah assured her, and Alex had to wonder just what that was. "Zeus will remain. Our brethren in the Financial District will not."

"Yes." She sent Alex one last pleading look. When he did not move, she looked away. "Mother's coming, my children."

Then she took off running. Alex had never seen her run before, not really. She moved much like he did. Perhaps a little slower, her leaps not as high, but it was remarkably like his own form of parkour. His stomach churned. Had she always been like that, or had Blacklight changed her, made her stronger?

He looked back to Pariah, wondering if he should try to fight or let him go. The decision was made for him; there was nothing left of the boy save for a Hydra hole in the asphalt.

There was no point in pursuit anyway – there was nothing he could do even if he did confront him, and he was acutely, painfully aware of that as he sprang up the side of the building, scanning the lot for any trace of the Wisemen. There was a group standing in a rough circle around the base of an apartment, and he angled towards it, trying and failing not to think about just how fucked he was.

He'd escaped on the mercy of random chance. Nothing else. He was powerless. He was powerless, he was pretty sure he was losing his mind to the Infected, and the only damn way out was something he just couldn't do.

What will you do next time? He tried to ignore the question he couldn't help but ask himself. How else are you going to close off your mind?

His fingers clenched. The thought that he was even considering this gripped him with panic. I can't. It's too dangerous. I'll end up trading one brand of insanity for another-

Any internal debate he'd had going was ruthlessly cut off when he saw Cross. The captain was surrounded by his men, but he could still make him out in the middle of the throng. He was looking at his upheld forearm, clearly displaying the unnatural red mark raised on the skin.

No. Oh, no.

"Cross…"

If anything cinched the situation for the captain, it was the look of dumb horror on Mercer's face. Something caught in his throat, and he wasn't sure whether the sound he was trying to strange was a laugh or a sob. Infected. He was infected. Of all the ways to die, it had to be the worst – and he was supposed to have been safe from it! His arm felt like it was crawling, writhing inside-

He didn't even realize Mercer had gone up to him until the man took his arm and inspected it. He flinched at the sudden contact and the feverish heat of the touch, but Mercer ignored him with his typical lack of respect for personal space.

"Well," he rasped. Mercer started at the sound of his voice. "Got any special virus information I should know about? This would be a really good time for it."

"Cross, I-"

"Thought not," the captain sighed. "Wasn't expecting it anyway. Not like you ever think about anything. It's all just fighting with you, isn't? If you can't crush its brains into a pulp or eat it, you don't give a fuck. I always have to clean up after your messes. You realize I have to explain how I lost a tank without any casualties on its crew, now, right?"

Mercer grasped onto that – something familiar, something that hadn't gone awfully wrong. "Forget the tank, Cross."

Cross laughed bitterly, and Alex looked up – there was something to his voice that he'd never heard from Cross before. Real, unveiled despair, perhaps even a touch of hysteria. "But there are so many other things to think about! I'm sure you've got the memories, Mercer. How does it feel when the virus kills you? Wouldn't mind knowing how long I've got before I start eating my own men."

"I, I…" This was too much. Pariah had played him like a toy. Greene had come dangerously close to… he didn't even want to know what. Cross had been infected. Everything, falling apart.

Too much.

"I need some time," he rasped. "To – to find a way –"

"Yeah. You go do that," Cross said, voice flat.

The Specialist watched Mercer bolt as if Cross was holding a nuclear weapon on the brink of going off. Hah. A time bomb. How apt. He had one, all right, but it was a one-man detonation, and he couldn't see the timer… no, that wasn't funny at all. The man dashed across the street and vanished over the top of a building. Typical Mercer, running away from his problems. Then again, they weren't his problems, now, were they?

"Captain?"

Cross didn't need to turn around to know that that voice belonged to Black. Shit. He'd nearly forgotten that everyone else existed. Things were just… just…

He took a deep breath. Yeah, his days were numbered. Single digits, probably. But he was still the captain, and he needed to get his shit together. For the Wisemen, if nothing else was worth it anymore.

His eyes were heavy but clear when he finally faced his men. "Yes, private?"

"I…" The man trailed off. Dammit, Black was staring at his arm. They all were. He yanked the sleeve back over that awful sore, that mark of his damnation.

"Back into the tanks, everyone," he said grimly. "I've got a lot of things to wrap up. And not much time to do it."

0o0o0

Free running usually helped Alex clear his mind. It didn't work.

His shoes pounded across the low rooftops, leaping across the gaps and gradually working his way north. It was all on autopilot; whenever he was stressed, he always found himself returning to Harlem. He might have relished it – being able to simply move again, feel the wind on his skin and every streamlined, shifting muscle working in concert, moving just as his mind dictated. He might have enjoyed the way his mind was his own once more, the thick fog having receded to the usual dull whispers. But not now.

He'd escaped, but he hadn't won. He'd been let go. The only reason Pariah would have seen fit to leave the way he did was if he was confident there was nothing else Alex could do – that recreating the circumstances of his utter helplessness would not have been difficult or even particularly time-consuming. Alex didn't want to believe that, but he had to.

He shuddered convulsively at the memory of Greene's touch, her face, so close…

Alex hadn't realized he was slowing down until he found himself in a lazy jog, loping across a long set of rooftops. He sighed and came to a full stop, leaning against a radiator. What was he going to do? The naked futility of his actions was staring him in the face, and he couldn't ignore it any longer. He'd fought as hard as he could. It didn't matter. All of his powers were helpless when faced against Redlight's will.

All except the ones he'd forbidden himself to use.

Alex knew what the problem was. In some fucked-up instinctive logic, he saw Pariah as his superior. He was Infected – maybe not like the rest of them were, but he was still of the virus, and Pariah was its king. And as long as he remained the way he was, alone and separated, Pariah could drag him under his control, because that part of his mind wanted to be a part of the Hive. And as long as it needed that, it would submit to Pariah every time, no matter how much his conscious mind screamed against it.

Blackwatch had been wrong – Alex was no Runner. But the potential was still there. It had always been there – just chained up and buried with the rest of the things he kept under lock and key.

If he wanted to be free of Pariah, he was going to have to take up his own crown.

The idea sickened him. He'd sworn never to spread the virus. He'd made that promise not to Dana but to himself, after he'd learned the truth about the original Alex Mercer's actions. He'd sworn that he would never follow the actions of his creator, because if nothing else, he was better than him. It was one of the few things he had left to hold onto, one of the few ways he could reassure himself that maybe there was a point to trying.

But if he was doing it like this… was that the same? Could doing the wrong thing for the right reasons be right? Was there some way he could mitigate the damage? If he were to convert existing Infected, would it work? If he only made a few, would that be enough? And then there was the big one – could he control whatever he created? Could he control himself? Once he started, could he stop?

He didn't have answers to any of those questions, and it terrified him. But he was out of time. Greene had nearly taken his individuality then and there, and he hadn't been able to do anything against it. The Hivemind was starting to influence his thoughts even outside of their leader's direct interference. And now Cross depended on him as well, as if he didn't need another reason.

And Pariah – that had nearly been the end of it, right there. He – Alex the person, not Alex the virus – was living on borrowed time. There was no resistance. Either the child had gotten better at conquering his mind, or he'd been playing games with him all along. It mattered little. What was important was that if Pariah wanted something from him, if he tired of playing his little smile-faced tricks… Pariah would get it. He had seen how far he could go, and knew that the only thing that had ever saved him was Pariah's whims. Nothing more. Not his strength, not his willpower, not his determination to stay himself – just his enemy's restraint. It terrified him. How could it not, when his very sense of self was at stake?

He didn't want to take the plunge, to cross over this final threshold. It felt like suicide. A broken promise. A betrayal of everything he'd done.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

He receded to the back of his mind, where several doctorates in genetic engineering lingered from lives that weren't his. And even deeper, where the virus squirmed.

He had work to do.