*
Alex Mercer was lost in confusion.
It was not a storm that had arisen in an instant, but the result of poison accumulated over two years of delving into GenTek's darkness finally filling his veins.
He had pored over countless documents, separating the lies hidden between the lines of reports from the truth.
The Redlight virus, DX-1118 A. And Blacklight, derived from that corrupted child.
Elizabeth Greene—
He had tracked the alien vitality she radiated,
and realized how utterly hollow the explanation that she was a “natural carrier” truly was.
Through countless nights, amid the “experimental records” designed for someone to discover, he watched every premise he had long believed in corrode and vanish.
Throughout it all, he had Dana's help. As Dana analyzed the material and pieced together fragments of the truth, Alex gradually came to understand the substance of the “prophecy” Dr. Kir had spoken of.
The fact that GenTek was systematically silencing everyone involved was no longer a rumor, either.
Researchers who had been alive and breathing were being erased overnight under the label of accidental deaths.
Alex immediately prepared his laptop and mailed Dana some of the material concerning GenTek.
It was his first safeguard for escape.
[…Alex, are you really okay?]
Dana's voice trembled cautiously over the phone. Rummaging roughly through the documents on his desk, Alex spoke bitterly.
"Greene wasn't a natural carrier. We were deceived, Dana."
Red printer's ink had bled across the report in his hand as though it were mocking him.
"This was all a designed test, and the achievements we thought we'd made… were nothing more than traces of us running along a road someone had laid out in advance."
His sense of betrayal toward GenTek and the truth about Greene pecked at his brain all at once.
Dana asked,
"Then… what are you going to do now?"
Rather than answer, Alex clenched his fist hard enough to strain the back of his hand.
"…Whatever I can."
His eyes already blazed with the determination of someone standing at the edge of a cliff.
*
"You're making this difficult, McMullen."
Alex was making a call from a communications unit deeper inside the laboratory.
Before him sat a small vial streaked with black and crimson—one of the original Blacklight samples.
McMullen's voice sounded through the receiver, filled with that unmistakable, anxious confusion of his.
[Alex? …Hang up. Come back right now.]
Sliding the vial deep into his pocket, Alex slowly but decisively spoke the words that crossed the line.
"Why—why did you hide the origin of the first sample?"
[It was… dangerous. Alex, I—]
"Don't make excuses."
His voice was lower and more ruthless than he had expected. The confusion from moments ago had completely settled, leaving only cold, unyielding resolve.
"You stabbed me in the back. GenTek used all of us, and now it's trying to silence us."
McMullen tried to say something more, but Alex cut him off as cleanly as a blade.
"Yeah. I get it now."
He drew a breath, then finally uttered the words from which there was no return.
"…You're as good as dead."
Alex hung up.
Then, without looking back, he began preparing to leave the GenTek building.
What he left behind with each step was no longer the trace of a scientist—
but the first shadow of a mutant walking toward darkness.
*
With a dark crimson vial in hand, Alex Mercer walked through nighttime Manhattan after leaving the GenTek building.
The city's lights flickered like dead stars, and the wind chased after him as it scraped against the windows.
Penn Station—that was his destination. He believed that if he followed the underground maze, he could escape into the southern sector beyond Blackwatch's eyes.
Fatigue weighed down every paving stone beneath his feet. From time to time, he looked behind him. The premonition that something was following him clung to the back of his neck like a shadow.
Passing through the center of the city, he did not pause to catch his breath.
The silence was too perfect. A sense of foreboding came through in the weight of the air.
When he descended Penn Station's stairs, rotten air, dust, and emptiness greeted him. The platform, which would normally have been crowded, now held nothing but the silence of the dead.
"...Strange."
He muttered quietly.
And, without his knowing,
several sets of targeting reticles tracked his movements from the underground darkness.
*
"Has the target been confirmed?"
A dry voice sounded over the radio.
"Confirmed entering Penn Station. He hasn't noticed us yet."
Specialist Gina Cross raised her head.
Her eyes were cold and clear—as though she were a predator designed with more precision than a human being.
"Enter through the rear. Secure the entrance before Mercer gets there."
"Orders received. Operation commencing."
At a single hand signal, the Blackwatch soldiers scattered. Their footsteps carried the rhythm of well-oiled machinery. Gun barrels gleamed in the darkness.
Cross slowly lifted her head and whispered into the earpiece.
"Dr. Mercer, there is nowhere left for you to run."
*
Inside Penn Station.
Alex stopped. He heard something cutting through the air. A cold draft, the ring of metal, and—the faint red dot of a targeting reticle.
"This is as far as you go."
Her voice echoed through the station. Captain Cross stood there, leading the Blackwatch troops.
"Put down that vial and step back!"
Gina warned coldly.
He looked briefly at the black vial in his hand. Dark liquid, thick as blood, sloshed within it.
"So this is what GenTek made in the end."
An expression that might have been a smile or resignation passed over his lips.
He could no longer run. Even the Blacklight virus sample he had kept as insurance was useless now. For him, there was no option left but death.
"Then… let's see how this ends."
He threw the vial to the floor.
In an instant, dark crimson liquid spread across the ground amid fragments of shattered glass. A bizarre ripple warped the space around it.
The next instant—gunfire erupted.
Dozens of bullets tore through the darkness and pierced him. His body slammed into the wall and slid down it. Yet his eyes never closed.
On the floor where blood and virus mingled, he whispered one final time.
"I, I…"
*
After the gunfire ceased, only an eerie silence remained in Penn Station.
The Blackwatch soldiers swiftly approached and collected the body. Red mucus clung to their equipment.
"Target death confirmed. Transporting to GenTek."
The radio cut out with a sound like tearing static.
And there, beneath the broken glass on the floor—a living red mass slowly began to twitch.
*
An odd, alarm-free silence flowed through the corridors of the GenTek building. Yet it was not peaceful silence, but the held breath before an explosion.
Minazuki Kir watched the security panel that had abruptly activated in his office.
- Access lockdown: AL-01 Sector
- MERCER, A. Location untraceable
- Blackwatch Third Company deploying
The letters on the panel flashed red in warning.
"…Fast. Just like Mercer."
Biting his lip, Kir looked down at the city beyond the window, where even its lights appeared desolate.
Blackwatch had pulled away its forces. The command structure was partially destabilized. It was a gap that would never normally appear. He took a file from his desk. Two simple characters were printed on the dark blue-black paper.
M-01.
His son.
Uncontrollable evolution.
And…
the termination protocol GenTek and Blackwatch had decided upon in fear.
Kir slowly rose from his chair. His long shadow stretched heavily behind him.
"If not now, there will never be another chance."
His voice trembled between determination and fear.
Walking through the corridor, he activated his radio.
[All units of Blackwatch Fourth Company confirmed moving from the east side of R&D.]
A voice like a suppressor's hush came over the radio.
"Good… now's the time."
Kir switched off the radio and took out the security cards he had prepared long ago.
A secret route he had created for Elizabeth and Kiria. Under normal circumstances, moving even a single step without being discovered would have been impossible…
But now that Mercer had escaped into the city, every eye was turned in that direction.
*
Kir headed there at once. The corridor was empty, and not even the small internal security detail stood before the entrance.
Blackwatch's miscalculation—pulling half its forces away to capture one Mercer who had fled with the Blacklight virus.
That was the opening.
When the door opened, Elizabeth Greene and Minazuki Kiria slowly raised their heads.
"Father…?"
Kiria's voice was heavy with fatigue,
but his characteristic sarcasm remained intact.
"Have you come to break us out? Or are you here to change my bed?"
Kir could not even smile at the joke. He immediately grabbed his son's arm.
Kiria's eyes widened, and in that brief moment, he read a premonition in his father's expression.
"…Something's wrong."
Elizabeth Greene asked with a puzzled expression.
"…Kir?"
"It's dangerous here. We need to leave now."
Rising to her feet, Elizabeth muttered softly, like a nightmare that had never slept.
"…We're running away?"
"…This time, it's to survive."
Kiria approached his mother and said with a faintly playful expression,
"I may not be at full strength, but I can still walk, Mother. Are we going on a family picnic today?"
Elizabeth could not answer. As she stared at his face, her eyes trembled as though her heart were breaking apart.
Kir took both their hands.
"All right. Both of you… stay behind me."
*
With Mercer's escape, the GenTek building was like a ship with a massive hole in its hull. More than half its troops had converged in that direction, and this was an opportunity that would never come twice.
Kir stopped and turned toward Kiria.
"…Wait. There's something we need to do first."
Kiria tilted his head.
"What's wrong? Don't tell me you're going to make me take another shot here?"
Instead of answering, Kir took a syringe filled with yellow liquid from his pocket.
"…Father, is this really an experiment? At a time like this?"
"It'll sting."
"That much doesn't bother me."
The needle pierced his neck, and yellow liquid seeped into his body.
"See you again."
Kiria's eyelids soon grew heavy.
"Mm… getting a little… sleepy…"
He leaned against the wall, then slowly melted into a liquid of dark crimson biomass.
Elizabeth drew in a breath.
"Kir…?"
Kir answered quietly.
"It's a drug that separates the viral binding and neutralizes the parasite. In this state, the parasitic suppressor can never activate."
He placed his liquefied son in a glass bottle. Then Kir took her hand. It was hot as though it were a lie.
"We'll survive, Elizabeth. We have to."
Seeing desperate hope in his eyes, Greene lowered her head and nodded.
"Let's go."
The two ran into the darkness.
*
A hidden passageway beneath the GenTek building.
It had once been a transport route, but now it was sealed off and abandoned, forgotten by everyone. Planning to escape GenTek through this passage connected to underground Manhattan, he ran swiftly alongside Greene.
The transport tunnel was dark and damp like an old artery. But the faint vibrations traveling up through the floor were becoming steadily clearer.
Kir stopped.
"…They noticed."
With all his strength, he hurled the bottle containing his son toward the transport pipe leading into underground Manhattan.
The bottle rolled away into the darkness and vanished.
Elizabeth spoke as though swallowing a scream.
"Kir, now—"
"It's okay. Once the parasite is released, he'll go to the safehouse I hid. Now we… we need to survive."
The footsteps approaching from afar were regular as machinery. A rhythm unnaturally calm. Then the darkness split apart, and a man emerged.
Raymond McMullen. Behind him stood expressionless Blackwatch soldiers like shadows, their gun barrels lowered.
There was no emotion on McMullen's face. Neither anger nor disappointment—only the face of an administrator carrying out procedure.
"Dr. Minazuki."
He spoke softly.
"Is this betrayal?"
Kir gave a short laugh. But it was closer to pain than amusement.
"Betrayal… is what you did when you started the purge first."
McMullen's gaze shifted to Elizabeth, then back to Kir.
"So—"
McMullen raised a hand.
"I had the soldiers waiting."
Click.
Dozens of weapons on both walls trained their sights on Kir.
Elizabeth stopped breathing.
Kir shielded her behind him and lowered his body like a final wild instinct struggling to survive.
"…If you fire even one shot at Elizabeth—"
"You'll kill me."
McMullen cut him off. His voice was businesslike.
"Which is why I prepared first."
The gun barrels lowered further in the darkness. Kir gripped her hand tightly. In a trembling voice, she called to him.
"…Kir."
He gave a very faint, but unmistakable smile.
"Don't worry."
Then, with despair in his eyes, he whispered softly.
"—Never look back."
In the sealed corridor filled with aimed gun barrels, even their breath chilled cold as metal.
Kir slowly released Greene's hand. Then he shielded her from the front with his entire body, taking the relentless targeting reticles descending upon him in her place.
She clutched his back with trembling hands. The warmth beneath her fingertips was hot and precarious, like the world's last remaining warmth.
"Kir… no… this is—"
He quietly shook his head.
"You… have to live."
McMullen's brow moved slightly. There was no sorrow or anger on his face. He was calm, as though completing paperwork to erase one scheduled number.
"Dr. Minazuki."
He exhaled lightly as he spoke.
"Let's end this here."
Kir turned to Elizabeth and cupped her face in both hands.
In her eyes—despair, love, fear, every collapsing emotion trembled in a heavy light.
"Elizabeth."
His voice was low like the final resonance of a dying star.
"Forgive me. For not stopping all of this back then. For not protecting you—Kiria—"
Shaking her head, she was too heartbroken to speak.
"That can't be… Without you, I… I—"
Kir smiled faintly. That smile was gentle as a miracle.
"You're strong. And… you're the bravest person I've ever loved."
Taking one final step, he pushed her behind him.
"Live. Please…"
Then he turned toward McMullen and the soldiers. Like a man climbing onto his own cross, quiet and resolute.
"—Fire."
McMullen's cold command rang out. The next moment, the world was torn apart by explosive, brutal light.
Dozens of bullets pierced his body. Blood sprayed like fireworks and splattered the walls, while his body rocked backward and fell to its knees.
But—his eyes did not go out.
He tried to take one final step forward, as though resisting the collapsing world to the very end.
But his body could not endure. Slowly, so very slowly, he fell.
Greene's scream burst out before his falling body could hit the ground.
"—KIR!!!"
Her voice was a blade cutting through the underground tunnel. The enclosed space echoed her shriek, and it crashed like waves against the soldiers' ears.
She tried to run to his fallen body. But the Blackwatch soldiers blocked her way, sharply aiming their guns at her.
She fell to her knees where she stood. Her fingertips scraped the floor, casting a trembling shadow over bloodstained concrete.
"…Why… why are you taking him from me again…"
Her voice was a broken whisper, yet decades of suppressed screams and rage were mixed within it.
A single tear fell from her eye onto the floor.
At that moment—
something inside her made a breaking sound.
Not emotion… but restrained instinct.
A sealed monster.
*
Even after the gunfire stopped, Elizabeth Greene could not move for some time.
Kir's blood slowly spread across the dusty floor, and her tears that fell upon it gathered like stains, like memories that would never disappear.
Her fingertips still groped through empty air. The warmth of the man she wished to hold was already gone, but her hands refused to accept that fact, repeatedly clenching and opening around nothing.
Like a broken machine, she could produce neither words nor tears.
Two soldiers approached and seized both her arms.
"Transport her. To the isolation room on the fifty-first floor."
The words were so cold, so light, that they made no mention whatsoever of the fact that someone's life had just ended.
Elizabeth did not resist. Not the force dragging her wrists, nor the rough hands forcibly pulling her to her feet. It was as though her soul had remained behind, and only her body was being torn away.
Her feet dragged. Even the faint sound made by the toes of her shoes brushing the floor stretched long, like a shadow of grief.
As they passed through the corridor, she kept trying to look back. But held by the soldiers' hands, her head could only face forward.
What she had left behind—Kir's final appearance,
blood,
silence,
and extinguished warmth.
It was a cruel compulsion meant to keep her from seeing any of it. The closer they came to the isolation zone, the more the air mingled the smell of chemicals with the stench of iron.
She slowly closed her eyes. Kir's smile, etched behind her retinas, suddenly surfaced. That gentle gaze he had once shown only her.
At that moment, tears that had refused to flow suddenly poured out.
There was neither sobbing nor screaming. Only silent tears flowed down her cheeks like a burst dam.
"We've arrived at the isolation room."
The door opened, and cold metallic air poured out. The moment they shoved her inside, Elizabeth finally opened her mouth. But it was neither defiance nor rage.
"…Kir."
That name alone slipped from her like the final prayer of a lifetime.
When the door closed, her weeping slowly spread through the isolated room. Nothing in the world had changed, yet for her, everything had collapsed.
*
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