Ash was in the air, like snowflakes frozen in time. Alex watched as the city he was supposed to protect was already in this wartorn state. This city should be bustling with life… now, it's barren. No one dares to be outside in this mess. They hide, thinking thin concrete and glass walls will protect them. All of this waiting, while their own soldiers get turned to mincemeat.
There is nothing they can do.
They have been ordered not to flee, and conventional firearms don't work on modified humans. They march forward at a steady pace towards the politicians' throats, ready to hear a surrender or ready to shoot them dead.
He should have been here from the start. Why couldn't things just go his way at least once? But, he should be grateful.
Without the assistance of the Silver cross, this deperate fight would've been over by now. But here they are, in the capital.
As bodies started to line the roads, a frown creased Alex's face.
military and civilians. It seems like they didn't distinguish between the two.
It was weird, every glance at war Alex had seen felt so unreal. Like a picture out of a documentary, we commonly don't understand the full weight of an event's atmosphere until we live it in flesh and blood ourselves. All those times you see broken buildings on the news, all those times you're given a number and a place, and a brief description of what happened.
If he wasn't protected by the power of time, Alex wasn't sure how he would've handled it all. No amount of determination could shake this feeling of absolute unease.
Alex was scared again. All that talk of how he had changed seemed to slip from his mind. He looked around him to the only friend he could rely on.
Holts was having an especially hard time, his face showing his perseverance in holding together the thin, feeble strings roping his emotions and judgment in place. The strands were thin, but Holts was never letting go. Seeing this was oddly comforting to Alex. Holts would make it. He had a strength that Alex only dreamed of.
Phantom's look as he scoured the visage of collapsed buildings was simply that of mild disgust. From his face alone, it was hard to infer what that person was thinking of, but it seemed as if this wasn't his first experience with this.
As they reached a certain point, Phantom began to speak.
"Looks like time is running out, we'll make your dash now, Red-hair. I'm only going to hold it for a little while longer. Holts, you cover his ass, and make sure you reestablish communications. You should be able to now after this dilation stops. Make sure they know what we're doing so that no accidents happen."
"We also need their support focused on us so that Midnight can be or stay separated from his own support team, which includes the plagues. Our goal will be to isolate them, and pick them off one by one with our numbers in coordinated strikes"
"Ready?" Phantom's eyes rippled as he twisted his arm to his opposite shoulder, his scythe planted into the ground as a base for him not to get blown away. At the sound of GO GO GO, Alex could only watch as a circular hole was punched out of the wall of buildings in front of them. The hole was cut fairly clean with the anti-gravity burst, even through layer upon layer of thick infrastructure that once stood in the way.
It seemed to extend into an unknown beyond, which he was flung into almost without warning.
Grabbing Alex by the arm, Phantom launched him forward with his body weight, shooting him straight through the tunnel as Phantom himself was shot in the opposite direction.
Alex's shield glowed softly as he descended, his feet facing forward. His shield skidded across the ground, creating what can only be described as the high-pitched zipping sound of fabric touching across a sanding belt. As he slid, a light grew closer, only to disappear as his stomach floated up inside of his body.
He was freefalling?
No, No, NO!
This wasn't supposed to happen, he had fallen down into the basements of one of the structures Phantom had destroyed.
Alex crashed to a halt, his shield flickering. Above him, the natural light coming from the ceiling fell softly on the area around him. Panes of glass separated the giant structure into a maze, counters full of equipment Alex was not familiar with. What was familiar, were these large pedestals coming up from the floor.
They were supposed to attach to something.
The bed that he woke up from after his GMH injections.
It wasn't just a normal bed, it was a pod-like structure with a lot of equipment attached and had a sturdy base with special pistons. It probably served some purpose while he was asleep.
There was no mistaking it. The connective tubes and piston base were strikingly similar.
There used to be GMH resting beds here. A lot of them. In Ethiopia? Something didn't seem right about this.
"Look who fell into Violet-eye's old lab." A bold voice spoke
A frightened Alex turned to see a figure under the glow of the skylight. The soft colors drew shadows over the cloth ornament covering his eyes. Silver fur was adorned around his neck and transitioned into cinnamon as it rimmed the coat hood that sat on his back. The gleam of blackened metal accents shone underneath the light tan folds of the chest of his coat. In this light, his bright blonde hair was turned a sickly pale grey.
It was as if he had just come into existence then and there, but Alex was certain he had been watching the whole time he had stumbled from his fall.
It sounded like this man knew Alex, but from where? How did this man know about him?
There were shadows behind him. Their presence was on a similar level to Midnight himself.
They were all simply overwhelming.
A spectrum of colors radiated off these individuals, compared to Midnight's two-toned lapis blue and jet black. They all had their own unique and terrifying atmosphere about them.
He could only hope and pray that they wouldn't care to let him pass.
"I wonder… how close are you to your destined fall? There is still hope in your eyes, so cherish it while it lasts. The violet-eyed man will make sure strip you of it soon." there was a female voice that came from the shadows, her voice low and mature and her shadow tall and sharp. Alex swallowed, his throat unable to make a sound. This pressure was unreasonable. But he was determined to speak. He could not ignore what he saw.
"Who are you? And why were there GMH beds here?" Alex spoke with an intensity befitting of the situation. He felt worried and sick at the sight of these beds, and the implication they presented. The glint in Alex's amber eyes were met with a bellowing laugh. Another, even larger shadow spoke his mind in a deep, quaking rumble.
"Us? We are nothing but a parade of Corpses. Dead men, and dead women, bidding their time to hell. As for this place, it is a lab abandoned by the Violet-eyed man to evade The Scientist's gaze for now. We think of this place as a memorial for those of us who have fallen. We laugh, we celebrate, and we drink to their descension. We also mourn, mourn for the ones who will come after us in our place. Today is a sad day, another will be joining us in this unsightly parade."
"Corpses?"
"Yes! To be a Corpse is to want- no, need death more than you need to breathe! Every second we are without it we want it more! What else is there to say!?" Out of the excitement in one shadow's rasped breath came another shadow's solemn sigh.
"You, Alex." The voice said gently.
How… how did this man know about his name?
"Make sure you kill Midnight. Destroy his head, so that not even his neural map can be recovered. If you fail to kill him, the worst is yet to come. Promise me you'll do this. Or another dead man will be born, and you will be just another pawn in that Violet-eyed man's plan."
Alex saw as the shadow stepped forward just enough to make out his thin, malnourished face. It was an honest face, one full of compassion but also fear.
"I'll see what I can do." Alex spoke softly
The blonde man in front grinned widely, the shadows giving him a grim disposition.
"Good. Hopefully, there's no more need to mourn. Then let's wrap it up here. You go and fight, Alex, you don't have much time. Good Luck, you'll need it."
They were fast. Very fast. They were already gone, giving Alex barely any time to blink.
Great, A Violet-eyed man. One that sounded more dangerous and coniving than all other threats combined.
That's right, the time dilation had stopped. Alex had wasted precious seconds lost in thought. He could think while running.
If this group was not against him, then he could focus elsewhere. Midnight's presence was moving at an alarming rate, and this time, he was going all out. The mirage of darkness Midnight exuded encroached on the corners of Alex's vision violently as he made his way out of the large underground chamber.
What were the chances he stumbled upon such an unusual find? Or perhaps, that was no coincidence.
The pieces started lining up in Alex's head.
If Midnight was some pawn of this Violet-eyed man, maybe destroying this country would have the added effect of erasing the evidence of these experiments from "The Scientist", whoever that may be. As for this "Scientist", Alex simply didn't have enough information on him to tell if he was friend or foe. Perhaps knowledge of this will help him in the not-so-distant future.
Alex rushed for the politician's hideout, guarded in bulk by Brotherhood and Vamps alike. Tensions were high as the TA had finally found the location and began the largest firefight Alex had seen. The rain of bullets from the Modified guns alone turned concrete into dust as buildings were being smashed down by bodies thrown into them, people falling to their deaths as fires started where bombs exploded. The ghastly howl of tank tracks running across pavement at high speeds before the boom of its cannon signaled even more deaths.
This was chaos.
It was hard to keep running. Bullets knocked Alex to the ground as he was being hammered into by waves and waves of heavy shots melting onto his heatshield. There was a point where he couldn't even see. Metal was everywhere as Alex scrambled loosely towards what he thought was his destination, wiping the metal in front of his eyes and covering them. His blood pumped through his chest vigorously as he tried to maintain his composure while being swatted at like a fly in a house. He didn't know how much longer the shields would last at this rate.
Should he just curl up and hide?
Old shots rang out through the cacophony and slowly silenced the chorus of depleted uranium.
One by one, Holts shot them dead from an unknown spot. Though Alex had a hiccup in his plan with the underground laboratory, Holts had managed to spot him again from wherever he was observing as he had resurfaced.
The attackers were forced into hiding. This boost was just what he needed. He felt a figure grab him up, his voice barely registering over the remaining gunshots. He had heard this man's voice once before. The man in yellow armor from the Brotherhood. He had met him briefly just before he met with Holts for the first time. His name was Ralkins Cheriby, but the Brotherhood just called him Vespa.
"C'mon, let's get you inside. Glad you were able to make it!" He shouted. "Now you're only a couple of steps from the finish line!"