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+--- Thread: New Beginning or Repeating History? (/showthread.php?tid=6984)
New Beginning or Repeating History? - Alex Mercer - 11-12-2017
The white was blinding. It was so pure, so clean, it almost hurt his soul to look at. Mercer had almost preferred the blackness from before, with the ominous figure staring him down without eyes. It seemed more justified. Here, though, he felt unclean and sickened by the innocence of this world.
“The Omniverse,” Mercer mumbled to himself. He could not help a small laugh, this whole situation would have been unbelievable – had he not been who he was. As codename Zues and ground zero for Blacklight, he had already lived through the unbelievable. This? This was just another path that ‘Unbelieveable’ could, and seemingly did, take.
Cold, steely blue eyes span across the distance. There was no one in his immediate vicinity, so for a few moments he sat on the edge of the fountain. It was the only discernable structure for quite a while, except for little blips on the horizon, what he could only assume to be exits from this horrible hellhole of absolute purity.
Memories were foggy, but that was nothing new. He had to concentrate, to clear his head of millions of thoughts and memories not his own. What was the last thing he remembered? A crow… and… water… It was not drowning, exactly. Something happened and once again his memories had been scrambled. It was not nearly as bad as the first time. He could still remember most of his life, and whatever you would call what came after.
As he sorted through his memories, the memories of those he had consumed and the scrambled thoughts and remnants that came before his first death, he noticed something else. His body felt different. His hands, his skin, his innards… in the silence he could feel the beating of his heart. Maybe this was the longest silence he had been a part of, but he could not remember the last time he could feel or hear his heart beat. It felt wrong.
Turning on his seat, Mercer’s gaze fell to his rippling reflection in the fountain. He felt more human than he had in a long time. The thought made him chuckle. Not really that long… what had it been? A month, maybe a month and a half since he was shot down in Penn Station; he had no idea how long he had been adrift in the water after all. It feels longer. It feels like forever…
Mercer swept a hand through the water, ruining the image of him before standing. The man turned and began walking. He put space between himself and the fountain, and by extension, the past that he had been ripped from. Not that he could ever escape it; the screaming in his head reminded him of every life he had consumed. He could not distinguish them, in death they all sounded the same. It was all he could do to silence them, to squash the voices and memories so they would not drive him to insanity.
It promised to be a long walk. He was in no rush. He timed his pace with that foreign sound of his heart. Every other beat would be matched with another step. It was a calm stride that helped him keep his mind clear. The silence lasted all of twenty minutes.
In the distance he could see someone approaching. He could hear the faint roar of an engine. He stopped walking. The stranger was petal to the metal. Mercer rose onto the tips of his toes, bouncing a few times. His body felt heavier than it once did. It took more effort to move, he had become much slower. He could use a ride.
As the glint of a barrel caught his eye, his right arm slowly transformed. Tendrils of biomass break away from his limb and his fingers elongate into wicked blades. The shotgun touting motorist waits just a moment too late to fire and dared to come just a little too close. Buckshot littered his left shoulder, but the right hand was quickly buried into the man’s chest. His legs swept up and for a moment Mercer was riding bitch, his arm around the man in front of him.
The guttural sounds were overtaken by a sickening slurp as more tendrils of biomass leap from Mercer’s torso and into the back of his attacker. He was torn asunder and pulled back into his unwanted passenger. As the biker’s feet were torn away from the rests, Mercer’s replaced them. The clawed hand tenderly took the accelerator, and the other caught that shotgun before it could fall to the ground ripping past.
A streak of black was left behind as the bloodied cannibal hooked a sharp U-turn. Wherever this man came from seemed like the kind of place Mercer would fit in… Not likely… He may have a heart beat, but who knows how temporary that would be? The buckshot numbing his right shoulder was reminder that his body was not just pure Biomass anymore, but how long would that last?
The roar of the engine overwhelmed the sound of his heart beat. It reminded him of the heavy traffic during his earlier days as Codename Zeus; when the population did not realize just how royally fucked they were – how badly Alexander J. Mercer had screwed them over. This time it felt like a precursor, like history was doomed to repeat itself.
Closer to the gate he saw more riders. They were stationary until they saw that the man riding back was not one of theirs. Even as Mercer raced towards them, they mounted up and pealed out, leaving more black streaks on the pearl white floor of the Nexus. With his right hand still formed into the wicked claws, the left clinched into a fist. His biomass, how limited it was, shifted into the fist. It expanded, growing denser and larger over a few seconds.
There were three bikers on their way; two with pistols, one with a long double barrel shotgun. Mercer did not expect they would make the same mistake and come close enough, so he had to veer towards them. At the last second with a turn of the handle bars, his bike near tipped to the right if it had not been for that massive weight of his left hand swinging out.
Number one had not even managed to get a shot off, trying to steer away, before his back tire was obliterated. The shriek of tearing metal assaulted his ears, but it was nothing compared to the rider. His body slammed into the ground with his heavy cruiser rolling on top of him, skidding and grinding his body into the white earth. Gasoline and blood streaked the Nexus, along with a severed leg, shredded by the twisted remains of a steel tailpipe, flattened into a cutting edge.
Even as one fell, another took a shot. Alex had ruined the shotgunner, but the pistol was no easier to take. It sank into his back, narrowly missing his shoulder blade. The pain was immense, far more than he remembered ever feeling. The clawed hand revved the engine, nearly tipping the beast back as he picked up speed.
“You want some of this!” Mercer shouted at the bikers. He could not see past their dark visors, but the way they were tailing him across the grand terrain, they did not seem quite ready to quit. They were on his tail, side by side, taking aim. He could gain no ground and they were quickly closing in the gap. “I warned you!”
His feet lifted to the higher rests of the cruiser. With a mighty push, he leaped backwards, nearly stopping his forward motion. Between the roar of three engines and the wind past his ears, he could hear the yells – the screams – of his pursuers. One received a clubbed hand to the face, shattering the helmet and skull in one mighty blow, while the other just… fell apart. Mercer’s talons cut through the soft leather and flesh beneath.
Mercer touched ground before the bodies did. Once again his ears were assaulted by the shriek of metal and the wet plopping of flesh. He turned to the corpses. One no longer had a head, while the other was only half there, the other half carried quite a ways off. It was still in motion as the motorcycle slowed but maintained balance with less than half of its original rider still present. His bike was on done for; the foot rests bent horribly and the front fork warped. The third bike was not much better, his hammerfist had cleaved through the windshield and ruined one of the handlebars in the process.
This place already feels like home…
RE: New Beginning or Repeating History? - Alex Mercer - 11-12-2017
Where to now? That little chase had put him in the middle of the Nexus again. He could follow the carnage back to his original choice, but who knows how that would end up? With this new found weakness, the once feared Codename Zeus was not quite ready to take on an entire gang. He had survived a few with a number of painful bullet wounds, but ten? Twenty? It was just better to pick a different gate.
He collected the least brutalized of the bikes. The lower half of the previous owner was still in the seat, leg pinned beneath the engine. Mercer could spell the burning of denim and flesh, like sickly pork. Returning his hands to normal, the Prototype lifted the bike with relative ease, bringing it back upright with the half corpse in a pile on the ground.
As he sat, blood staining the seat of his denim, he peered down at the legs. The man shrugged. Snack for the road. Leaning down he grabs the ankle and with a swift jerk, the half-corpse was tossed up. Even as he adjusted the mirror, the legs are captured mid-fall with thick, brackish tendrils sprouting from his back. Like before, the flesh and bone and even the clothing were broken down and absorbed. Mercer revved the engine, then peeled out, the digesting body dragged through the air behind him.
The ride this time was quite comfortable. Bullet holes were slowly patched, tendrils of his dark mass even mending his clothing over time. The engine still drowned out the sound of his heart. It was still so strange. He felt more alive than he had in a long time. Something here made him more conscious of it, or maybe it was something about his last few memories. Even as he rode through the white abyss, leaving a faint streak of red in his wake, his mind wondered to just how he had come here.
The approaching gate became more and more difficult to ignore, finally breaking his thoughts. He slowed from full throttle, eyeing the mysterious gate in great detail. It seemed to have a darkness beyond it. After having adjusted to this ungodly pure world, the darkness would surely leave him blind. He would accept the blindness.
Mercer felt the loss of the shotgun a bit. It would have been nice, to spray buckshot into the darkness as insurance before unwittingly driving into whatever was beyond. Alas, he had not thought to pick it up after that last quarrel. Fuck it. The engine roared back to full throttle. If he was going to rush into a potential trap, he might as well go all out.
If all of Blackwatch could not stop him, then what did he really have to fear? Mercer felt weakened, but no more than when he had first awoken in the morgue. All it would take is time, practice and resources…