Affinity: Part VI

The apartment complex was only ten stories tall: Windows full of air conditioning units, walls full of graffiti; the building had to have been made in the late 1800s. Alex watched the crowds of people walk by for twenty minutes or so, waiting for a lull in the foot traffic. For a blessed second, the street was just about empty, and he stood from the stairwell he had been lounging on and walked up to the steel door, clearly locked.

He felt his skin prickle slightly as his hand turned into hooks. Alex jammed the tip of one of the sharpened fingers into the doorknob and felt the tumblers inside break away; the door eased open without him even turning the knob.

"That's not noticeable," he muttered, struggling to close the door again.

The next door was glass with a push bar. He saw someone inside; a haggard looking woman, with a bag of groceries.

He knocked.

"What?" she snarled, turning towards the door. Alex gave a small flex of his fingers in greeting. "Oh." She walked up, letting him in. "Forget yo' key or somethin'?" Her accent was thick.

"Yeah," he eyed the staircase. "Something like that."

xxxx

Jonathan relocated to the sixth floor of an apartment building on La Salle Street and Amsterdam Avenue – right in the middle of Greater Harlem. Most of the neighbors would probably be in one of the surrounding colleges; the younger man would be able to fit in with extreme ease. He was in room 608, behind a thin wooden door with four different locks.

Alex's knock resounded across the bare hallway.

He could've sworn he heard a shuffling inside. "Jonathan?" he called, quietly. "Jonathan Fetcher – are you in there?"

He heard a slam, as if something had fallen – maybe the other man was surprised he had shown up; and that would be a perfectly justified reaction, his mind helpfully supplied; He probably thinks he has a stalker now, too. Alex pressed the side of his face closer to the door, his cheek grazing the wood. He could hear heavy, hesitant steps coming up to the doorway. There was a pause.

"Who is this?" Jonathan's voice sounded so close to him, now; he was probably doing the same thing on his side of the wall, Alex figured. The silence came back and Alex knew he had to say something – but what wouldn't guarantee a complete panic attack from the other man? He could already tell, how experimental - how… distinctly different Jon's voice was when he had asked who was on the other side of the door that he was scared.

And it was entirely his fault.
"It's Alex."

"Oh Jesus fucking –" The voice immediately turned down a few decibels again: "What are you doing here?"

"I came to apologize,"

"Apologize?" Jonathan sounded honestly confused, but then he pressed on: "You threw me under the goddamn bus – what's sorry going to do?" He bit back.

"I thought that we could talk about it. It was an accident! I got angry, and I just," he hesitated. "…Got carried away."

"So that's how you deal with a problem?"

"They were going to kill you!" Alex shouted back. He felt his hands turn to fists against the door, and hesitantly looked around, wondering if anyone could hear their exchange. He continued in a more subdued tone after a moment, pressing his face back up against the door: "I just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to hurt you – I was never going to hurt you."

"Yeah, well, it's too late for that, now." He heard a small thump, as if Jonathan had hit his head against the doorframe. And now he didn't sound angry, or scared. In that moment, Jonathan just sounded tired, as if their argument had been longer than two minutes – as if he was struggling with himself, as well as the man outside his door. "Alex, just go home. I don't want to see you again, alright?" Alex strained his ears as he heard the other man slowly back away from the door, back deeper inside his new home, his new life – one that hopefully wouldn't include someone like Alex Mercer, fucking it up.

"I'm sorry…" He muttered into the wood, even though there was no way Jonathan could hear him; even though there was no way he would forgive him, either. His cheek stung briefly as he pushed himself away from the door that he had been pressed against.

He slowly made his way down the stairs.

xxxx

"People are finicky; they change their minds all the time." He thought aloud. He spotted Jonathan's window; the fourth one to the right. He slumped his shoulders, and wondered what his sister would tell him if he repeated their previous… conversation to her: She'd probably try and shove him out of her flat to go try again, because that was the sort of thing his sister did. Actually, no, they were both stubborn as hell, but his more obstinate traits tended to gravitate towards a psychical challenge; and he'd been without a decent one of those for a while. In comparison, it felt like he was the one with no backbone. Staring again at the dark hole in the wall, he noticed that Jonathan's window was the only one that didn't have a curtain draped completely over it – and he could even just barely make out a dirty screen, behind the glass there, and then he had to ask himself why someone, anyone, would do that now, in the early March weather? Because it wasn't really like there was much to see around this time of year, and most of the buildings around this part of Manhattan weren't even insulated, so it was really just a waste of heat. Alex guessed that maybe Jonathan didn't even have heating – or maybe he just didn't care.

Actually, the more he stared, the more the window just seemed like a second entrance. An invitation, almost. He took a step forward, his mental train of thought already a bit unfocused, though he heard his sister's advice ringing around somewhere in there, and before he even had time to regret it, he felt his legs kicking off from the pavement and landing right at Jonathan's window.

He grappled for a hold: with no balcony or AC unit, and very little ledge to get purchase on, Alex let his left hand quickly form into a double edged blade, which he sunk into the brick and mortar easily. So he was left dangling there, trying to see how he could open the window from the outside. It was locked he found out, after a moment. He tried not to think about the people watching him from below, or Jonathan freaking out inside. And then he realized that the bartender was probably scrambling to get out of the apartment as his failure of stealth succeeded in scaring the shit out of the other man, and was still continuing on outside, as a matter of fact. So he eventually smashed his right shoulder against the wood and thin glass; once, at a bad angle that left his arm feeling twisted from its spot implanted in the wall, and then on the second time he managed to crash through, into the other man's apartment, his blade quickly unlatching itself and morphing back into a hand as he brought it down against the debris littered ground. What was left of the glass then exploded against his back as he made contact with the apartment's floor, and he already knew he'd be picking out the shards that had decided to come along for the ride out of his clothes for hours.

"I'll pay for that," he said quickly to Jonathan, who was struggling with the door's numerous bolts and chains and locks. "Calm down, Jon-"

"Calm down?" The younger man shrieked from across the small space. "Don't tell me to fucking calm down! You just broke into my apartment! From a goddamned sixth story window!" He had abandoned the escape route to begin a shouting match that he would very easily win. "What the hell – no, who the hell are you?!"

"Sit down and I'll tell you," Alex responded, his voice about as sharp as the pieces of glass currently imbedded in him. Jonathan looked between his new company, and the lone folding chair he had in the middle of the mostly empty room for a considerable amount of time, possibly waiting to see what the other man was going to do: Alex waited right along with him, and tried not to twitch impatiently as Jonathan silently contemplated his options: He was curious now, at least, and Alex just continued watching him think through the mental ultimatum he had presented. Of course, there was always the chance that Jonathan would choose the much easier 'Fuck it' method, and then Alex decided he would have to give up. Because chasing the other man down was probably crossing the line, and yes, he realized, he did have an ethical code that warranted breaking into someone's home, but not following them down the street. At least he stuck to those ethics; that had to count for something.

After a few silent minutes, Jonathan's grip on the door handle unclenched with a small, sticky sound and he had made a few token steps forward. "What are you going to do to me?" he asked quietly.

Alex felt his eyebrows furrow. "Nothing! I've told you that. I'm not going to hurt you; I'll leave right after we're done, and I won't talk to you ever again. I just…" he paused, wondering why he was even bothering with this. Now that was a good question. "…I don't want you to think I'm a monster. Really, I'm not. You just need to know the whole story."

Jonathan stood, crossing his arms, keeping his guard up, high, and a mile thick. He plainly ignored the nearby chair and instead watched every flick of movement Alex made with a hard stare. "Well? Get started." His brown eyes were dark and focused, and most importantly suspicious. Alex suddenly felt that the story he was about to tell was going to be a lot more difficult. But he had this chance. This one, tiny little chance to let someone know that the Blacklight Virus, the Gentek Scientist, and the man standing before Jonathan now were all different identities; different people. And even though afterwards he would leave and spend the rest of his life pretending that he had no need for human interaction, at least one person would know some semblance of truth.

"My name," he began, and already he could feel the weight of his words. "Is Alex Mercer, and thirty-one months ago I was America's number one bioweapon and terrorist. For a whole month you couldn't hear anything except me – me and the Outbreak here on the Island."

"I know about that," Jonathan said, looking at Alex anxiously. "I… I was in England at the time. Everyone was waiting to see what Zeus was going to do next; what the Infected were doing, who was going to get killed - or turned." He hesitated for a moment. "Alex, you're Zeus?" He murmured, thinking desperately as he tried to see the two images mold together into one: Zeus was the killing machine everyone saw and feared – the one who faded like a legend after the Outbreak had dwindled down into nothing. And the other man – Alex Mercer, the one standing before him, was… was just some quiet guy who talked to him at the bar. And that was it. That was who Alex Mercer was to him. Just a quiet, simple guy with a dry sense of humor and a penchant for wearing a hood; the guy who murdered in defense and utterly despised himself for it; just another person who got caught in way over his head – not too dissimilar from himself. He found his voice again. "Alex, you're not Zeus… you can't be Zeus."

At the hazy statement, Alex had to interrupt: "Why do you say that?"

"Because I saw you, that day in the alley, reaching your hand out and looking so fucking ashamed of yourself I had to make myself run."

"I still killed," he pointed out.

"Zeus killed. And you've killed… but you at least know enough to regret it," Jonathan stated, taking a few more steps towards Alex. "I know it's because I wasn't here," he said, nodding to the window; to the city outside. "I barely even watched the news anyway; maybe if I did, I'd feel different. Maybe if I was smarter, I'd be long gone already…" he turned and let his eyes wander around his apartment: At the half unpacked boxes and the broken mess of a window littering the ground. He couldn't feel the chill seeping in yet. Or maybe he had just gone numb, he couldn't tell. "…But I guess I wasn't here for the Outbreak, and I guess I must be a dumbass for even standing here, talking to you – but when you say that you don't want to hurt me? I kind of want to believe that." Jonathan looked down for a few seconds before he chanced a few more steps, until now they were both just a few feet away from each other, standing in front of the broken window. "And I also want to believe what you're telling me. So…" he shifted again, making a gesture for Alex to keep talking. "Go ahead,"

"It's kind of a long story," he prefaced; Jonathan just shrugged.

"You wanted to tell it. Do you want to start with a question?" the other man did a very good job of getting a detached look on his face, which might have been some sort of defensive mechanism. "Well, if your… um, entrance tells me anything, it's that you aren't human. So why don't we start there."

"I was one of the first people infected with the Blacklight Virus in 2009," Alex said. "The first, actually." Jonathan looked at him up and down as he said this, taking in the rigid posture and athletic build that was pretty much covered up by Alex's standard, rather layered outfit. He had gotten into the habit of actually using human clothes, but his fashion sense never deviated from the default template of a hooded street punk in good shoes.

"You look pretty human," Jonathan interjected. "For an Infected, I mean."

"I'm not what the military labels as a Common Infected."

"Then what are you?"

Alex felt the side of his mouth curl back into something that couldn't really be called a smirk. "A Prototype," he answered. "Of the Blacklight Virus."

Jonathan raised his eyebrows, still maintaining a half lidded stare as he inspected some detail on the other man's arm. "You make it sound like someone made you," and at that Alex did let a bitter twitch of his lips show.

"Yeah, you know, you could probably say that. Have you ever heard of Gentek?" Jonathan nodded.

"It worked with genetics and bio… stuff. It's been in the news a bit. Especially back then."

"They were engineering the Blacklight Virus: Strain DX – 1118 C. It was supposed to replicate inside someone down to the genetic level, but it tended to just make a mess of the hosts."

"Except for you. You got lucky."

"Would you call it lucky?" Alex said, squinting a bit. "But I was an exception. A very rare exception at that. Even now I'm not so sure why I didn't die or become like… the others. Something in my DNA, I suppose. That, or maybe I was just about dead when the Blacklight Virus found its way inside me."

Jonathan gave a start and uncrossed his arms in surprise. "You were dead?"

"A few rounds of bullets in the back tend to do that to a person. When I woke up, I was in a morgue, interrupting my own autopsy.

"At that point, I knew I was Alex Mercer, and that was it. That was the only thing I had – and I decided to figure out what was happening to me; to Manhattan."

"…Did you get what you wanted?" Jonathan asked, still in a removed sort of tone, though admittedly still shaken from the news that Alex Mercer had died.

"Yes. I did. I wish I hadn't, though. It turned out that I wasn't Alex Mercer. I wasn't anyone. He died from bullet wounds and bled to death at Penn Station."

Jonathan gave him a look. "Then what are you?"

"I am the Blacklight Virus. Every cell I have is from a Gentek engineered strain of the most dangerous bio-weapon Man has ever created. From the moment the human Alex Mercer was infected, the Blacklight Virus reproduced inside his still living cells. And when he died? It kept on living in the shell. In me. Because it is me. I choose to look human," He had that same, half felt prickling sensation again as his right arm morphed once more into a blade.

Jonathan watched, and if he was afraid, then he was either too shocked or too inquisitive to move from his spot on the floor. But he stared; brown eyes wide and unblinking as Alex's body practically rippled with sparks of red and black. They were vine like appendages, he noticed, and they seemed to sprout from somewhere on Alex's body, but the transformation happened so quickly that he couldn't really manage to pick out any of the details – he could only watch.

It was like some sick magic trick, he could feel himself thinking. Take one perfectly normal looking human arm, and then with a puff of black smoke, there was a long, thick sword like projection coming out from where Alex's elbow should have been. It was at least as long as his leg, and it glinted in the fast fading light of the afternoon. "But you're a lot more than that," Jonathan breathed out, stepping a bit closer and holding his own hand out, towards the blade.

"Less and more," Alex offered, shifting a bit. He almost felt himself grin in a sick show of pride. "Wanna touch it?" he asked, gesturing to his arm. Jonathan's eyes flicked up to his face before he hesitantly knocked on the broad side of the blade. It felt like he was knocking on a hot diamond, as weird as the comparison was. The blade was warm – about as warm as Alex's body usually was, which, he guessed, probably was to be expected. The weapon was smooth, tapering off at a subtle angle to create the edge of the blade. And it felt more durable than steel, and it wasn't rough like stone or cement, so his mind quickly drifted towards diamond, even though the impressive knife didn't look anything like a gemstone.  He tapped the hard black shell of the hilt, trying to see exactly where the blade started and the jacket ended, but all of it more or less blended into one another flawlessly, and as metallic as it looked, Jonathan realized he found himself regarding the blade as an almost natural appearance for Alex Mercer.

He lifted his hand slightly and Alex began to change back. Jonathan could feel the very real strands of… mass that swirled around the other's body. They were warm too, and felt as solid as steel cables, even as he watched them mould into one another and quickly disappear and lash out and move at an incredibly fast pace. Alex's normal arm soon came into view, and Jonathan slowly set the proper distance between them, not paying attention to the hot atmosphere he had just spent the last five minutes enraptured in.

"I guess you really aren't human," Jonathan felt himself saying. He saw Alex nod.

"As far as I'm concerned, I am Alex Mercer," he calmly insisted. "I'm just not the Alex Mercer everyone knew before the Outbreak. While I use that man's name, I am nothing like him." He stressed the last sentence, in desperation and in anger, and he felt his teeth grind so severely he could almost feel the hard crunch of his molars.

"The human Mercer sounds like one hell of a guy," Jonathan supplied, gauging Alex's reaction as he revealed a bit of his back story.

"He was." Alex agreed, and as he tried to inform Jonathan just how much of a monster the human Mercer was, he felt his tongue knot itself up; his mouth going dry. He couldn't say it. Something inside him just wouldn't let the other man know just how bad his previous self had been. Because he was, in a way, a part of the Blacklight Virus now known as Alex Mercer. There was the Scientist; the God, and the Virus. And they all were separate entities – each with their own mannerisms and emotions and reasons and lives, and the both previous to Alex were, as far as he was concerned, dead. They would've even been better off non-existent, but then he wouldn't be there, either. So they were all tied together with a jagged red string; all pushing and pulling against one another. He halted that line of thinking, because it always tended to turn into a game of repetition and confusion as to where each incarnation of Alex started and ended, and he didn't really want to dwell on that, now; it made him tired. Mentally tired – again, not a feeling he particularly liked. Plus, as he chanced a look back at Jonathan, who had been waiting uncomplainingly for the other man to continue talking, he was getting that same worn look on his face as his neutral demeanor began failing. He was getting tired, too, he argued within himself – he might not have been able to understand, let alone accept what the human Alex Mercer and the entity known as Zeus had done. It was a miracle he was able to accept the Blacklight Virus, even; considering the things he himself had done, as well, which he would argue weren't as abominable. "I guess that's the basic idea," Alex finished, even though he didn't really sound finished.

Jonathan also seemed a bit underwhelmed from the conclusion, but he just nodded, slowly, thinking of something to say. A strong gust of wind blew through the apartment, blowing the shards of glass around and causing an odd whistling as the breeze sailed through some small crack at the very corner of the pane. Finally, Jonathan remembered how to shiver, how to feel again, and he immediately felt his skin pucker and grow frigid under the white jacket he wore. Alex gave a glance behind him.

"Oh. Right. I should probably fix that for you. You deserve that, at least." He took a step towards the window and placed a leg up on the ledge.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, I figured I could get a tarp for you to put up, and then I could-"

"-Or we could just go to a store that sells stuff to fix this. Together. I can go outside, you know." Alex straightened up again, turning around. "What?" Came the innocent reply.

"I just figured that you'd want me out of here as soon as possible," he muttered. "That was the deal; you let me talk, and I'd get out of your life."

"That was the offer – I never agreed to that." Jonathan stood right up against Alex, and even managed a smile. He put a hand on the other man's shoulder in what was supposed to be consoling, but instead took a rather painful turn as he felt small bits of glass poke him in the hand. He pulled away, staring at his palm and fingers.

"You okay?" Alex found himself asking, gingerly peering over for his own inspection. He felt his hand go up unconsciously, but stopped himself just short of actually touching Jonathan's injured hand. Their fingers brushed for a brief second as Jonathan straightened up and let his hand rest to the side.

"Fine. No blood. I was just making sure nothing got stuck." He closed the hand a few times, trying to see if there was anything there. "Come on, take off that jacket and get me to a Lowe's or something." He began to take a few steps backwards, not taking his eyes off the other man. "There are a few things I have to tell you, too." And that was enough of a temptation for Alex, who found himself walking out the door behind the other man.