*
Dana Mercer gritted her teeth and fought back against the Blackwatch soldier trying to drag her away by wrenching her arm. Pain shot through her as cold metal gloves dug into her flesh, but she refused to give up.
"Let... go...!"
But the soldier dragged her along without emotion, like a machine. Just as Dana's darting gaze became closer to fury than fear—
The steel door suddenly flew open.
A hooded man entered with ragged breaths. Dana needed only a single breath to recognize the silhouette that slipped inside like a black shadow.
"Dana...?"
Before he could do anything else, the soldier belatedly raised his rifle.
But the barrel never spat fire. Alex Mercer's fist pierced through the soldier's chest first.
Blood scattered through the air like a blooming flower. The soldier's body collapsed, striking the floor like a metal shield.
Caught between fear and shock, Dana was speechless.
Alex held out his hand. His eyes were unmistakably human, but the hot blood coating that hand quietly whispered that he was no longer the Alex Mercer he had once been.
"...I won't hurt you."
He said it carefully.
At those words, Dana let out the breath she had been holding in an explosive rush. As if, in a living nightmare, she had heard the one language she could still trust.
Alex gently pulled her by the hand and concealed her behind the shadows.
*
They escaped through back roads between abandoned buildings, deserted vacant lots,
and alleys where nothing but the city's skeleton remained exposed. Only their hushed footsteps and the unease spreading behind them followed along.
They finally stopped in an abandoned passage untouched even by the sound of people's footsteps.
"I need your help."
Dana could not help asking at last.
"Damn it, I knew some fucked-up shit was going on at GenTek. ...What the hell happened to you?"
Alex kept his mouth shut for a moment. It felt as though an emotion he could not explain had caught in his throat.
He slowly shook his head to show that he did not know.
Dana's expression twisted. Her voice trembled thinly.
"I've been investigating that goddamn organization for weeks. Digging around everywhere. Trying to get information about you. Don't you remember? You wanted to find out what was happening in GenTek's upper ranks. Everything about the head researcher."
At that moment, Alex's vision suddenly wavered like white flame. Fragments of images flashed through his mind.
Raymond McMullen,
an operating table,
a red liquid,
and a coldness close to death.
A headache tore at his head like a wild beast, and instinctively, he clutched his head with one hand.
"Are you okay?"
As Dana hurried toward him, Alex leaned against the wall for a moment and caught his breath.
"I hadn't seen you for five years. Not until you showed up at my door last month."
Alex looked at her face.
Her eyes trembled with fear and relief at once.
"Is there somewhere we can go?"
"Yeah. I know a place."
Dana straightened up. They looked at each other in the darkness, then quietly stepped forward.
The city seemed to shudder beneath their feet as if withdrawing into hiding. Matching their quiet breaths, as though determined not to lose each other's shadows, the two headed for a safehouse.
*
GenTek Building, fifty-first floor. Containment chamber.
Once, this place had held quiet breathing. There had been mornings when Minazuki Kiria awoke, nights when Minazuki Kir watched over her, moments when even the smallest hope brushed past.
But now, every trace of that warmth had vanished completely.
At the center of the room, Elizabeth Greene sat curled on the floor like a crumpled scrap of paper. The hands clasped around her knees trembled, and her shoulders silently heaved as she fell apart.
"...Kir..."
The name was not carried by the wind. It was a trembling whisper, like an absolute bond that had been severed, like a belated death sentence.
A name she could no longer reach.
A name that would never return.
The biomass within her chest churned as if feeding on her grief. A red glow, writhing as though alive, boiled up through the cracks of her shattered heart.
"I... I lost him again..."
She reached out into empty air. It was a hand trying to grasp something, but there was no one left at its end.
A family she had never once possessed completely. The only warmth she had ever been given, and that had always been cruelly torn away from her.
Greene's voice broke. The sound was not human sorrow, but closer to the cry of a virus that had devoured despair.
"Why... why do I... always..."
With every slipping breath, red energy burst from her body. The containment device's warning alarm began to shake the chamber.
Beep— Beep— Beep—
The sound soon became a countdown to death.
"Have everything taken from me... lose everything... be abandoned...!"
Biomass twisted up from beneath her feet.
The walls rippled and cracked in response to her rage. Steel railings bent without a sound, and one piece of equipment after another inside the containment chamber exploded as if screaming.
Then the door burst open, and Blackwatch soldiers rushed in.
"What the—... Damn it, that's—!"
What they witnessed was no mere test subject.
They were watching the desperate struggle of a mother who had lost her family, given form as a living creature.
Elizabeth Greene slowly raised her head. There were no red eyes there, only an inhuman abyss born from virus and emotion entwined together.
"How..."
Her sobbing overlapped with the vibration of the virus, and a voice layered with meaning filled the containment chamber.
"Why... why do you take... everything... away from me──!!!"
With her scream, red biomass exploded.
KABOOOOOM───!!!
The shockwave hurled the soldiers backward. Their shields tore apart like paper, and their helmets twisted, slammed into the walls, and shattered to pieces.
"Damn it... bring out the suppression weapons—!"
"Open fire! Open fire now—!"
But their shouts had already become meaningless. Elizabeth Greene was slowly shedding her human form.
A red aura engulfed her body, and the bitter resentment she bore toward life took form, writhing savagely.
And then───
A howl that could no longer be called human language burst from her mouth.
"■■■■■■■■───────────!!!"
That scream was the final trace of a mother’s lost family—and an omen of the catastrophe about to begin in Manhattan.
*
I had a dream.
I do not remember what it was about. All that remained like an afterimage was the strangely warm sensation of Father carrying me on his back and Mother holding me in her arms.
When I opened my eyes, the room had already sunk into darkness. It did not take long to realize the sun had set. The unlit safehouse was quieter than I expected.
"...Neither of them is back yet."
I sat with my knees drawn up and looked around. A thin layer of dust covered the desk, and there was a faint smell of mold, but strangely... it felt as though someone's lingering scent had remained here until not long ago.
Was it Father's scent?
Mother's?
Or... did it only feel that way because I wanted it to?
The emptiness of it made me laugh.
"Kiria, you... don't tell me you're sniffing for perfume right now?"
I made a pointless joke to myself, then sighed instead of answering.
This room was clearly built for someone to live in. Was it a room for me? Or an escape route Father had prepared so he could survive?
Come to think of it, either made sense.
I considered turning on the lights, but switching them on would not make Father come find me... and sitting in the dark would not make anyone come looking for me either.
It only made me feel as though I had been thrown into the world alone.
──This feeling.
In a way, it was familiar.
In another, it was the first time I had ever felt it.
So in the end, I reached out and flipped the switch.
The fluorescent light flickered on. Its afterglow scattered across the room before a quiet light finally settled over it.
The room revealed in the light was... more ordinary than I expected. That made me even more uneasy.
The fact that I, a virus test subject, had a bed to lie in.
The fact that a space had been prepared where I could rest.
Because all of it was far too much like a human life.
I slowly moved my toes and tapped the floor.
"...Feels like I'm looking for proof that I'm alive."
Muttering that, I got up from the bed and began looking around the room.
Inside the desk drawer were several old documents, bandages that smelled of wet alcohol, and... a small PDA charger Father had left behind.
"You even left a charger, Father. Were you... the type who knew me better than I knew myself?"
Since I had a tendency to physically destroy machines rather well, had he even prepared a charger for that?
I did not know why every one of these little things tugged at my heart so much.
I closed the drawer and murmured,
"...Seriously, this room... you made it so I could come back, didn't you?"
And again, an empty laugh escaped me. I was laughing, but for some reason, it hurt inside.
After spending some time sitting on the edge of the bed, I suddenly walked to the window and looked outside.
Manhattan's nightscape was... as sharp and beautiful as an iceberg. Without light, there was darkness; without darkness, there was light.
I was something caught in an awkward gap between the two.
In a way, neither human,
nor virus,
nor beast.
Then what am I?
Strong enough to be discarded without knowing the reason I was born, and too alive to disappear.
"...What would Father and Mother have said?"
The thought suddenly came to me.
Father had always seemed like someone who understood me. At the very least, he pretended to. And having someone even pretend to understand you... was quite precious.
So, feeling as though they might open the door and walk in, I stared toward it for a while.
No one was there.
Admitting that it hurt a little... was too embarrassing, so I just gave a light cough.
"Cough. It's the dust. Dust."
Anyone who heard me would probably laugh at how pathetic I sounded.
I lay down on the bed again. When I turned onto my side, a coolness seeped between my legs.
It calmed me instead.
"All right... I'll wait a little longer."
It was not that I believed my parents would come. I simply did not want to think of reasons why they would not.
It was ridiculous, but I knew that truth exactly.
──Father will definitely come find me.
──Mother too.
And so, under the most innocent delusion in the world,
I slowly fell asleep once more.
And somewhere beyond my knowledge, the world was moving in an irreversible direction.
*
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