draped in the visage of a dead man, blacklight found himself more at ease ; lacking a form to call his own, the virus, a pessimistic & paranoid creature by habit, ironically found home in the flesh of dr. alexander mercer, the most WANTED man on the face of the earth. the name never faded from broadcasts after the virus ravaged manhattan, brought up when domestic surveillance bills & biological threats passed the mouths of politicians. presumed dead ONLY to the public, the face of mercer was largely forgotten, but the name would carry on.
in spite of this, the virus still wore those dead eyes & pallid skin, introduced himself as alex to those he liked & mercer to those he didn’t ; keeping the two separate but not hidden. there were hundreds of alex mercers in the world & the dozens of whom lived in the us looked enough alike to find themselves interrogated, yet were released a decade ago. the dirty looks & raised brows faded with the fad, & yet there were always the unlucky ones to have a more intimate relationship with the infamous bioterrorist.
try as he may to hide the looks, the soldier couldn’t hide the shudder, the double take as his brain pieced the information together before SNAPPING back into normalcy ; too quick, too sudden & too sloppy. their eyes locked for a moment too long, yet strangely the man did not run, did not attempt to break line of sight & call the sighting in. regardless, he couldn’t suppress the rapid pulse pounding in his chest, the slick precipitation pooling in his palms, the adrenaline being released into his bloodstream : mercer could hear it all, smell the faint aroma of fear. stolen libraries of names & faces were available to him, yet no one he had devoured knew this man. the soldier, however, knew exactly what he was looking at. mercer stared, unblinking for a moment.
it was ultimately the monster to excuse himself first, passing by the crowd & changing his face once out of sight. he’d tail this ‘leo’ for a while : cold, statuette features & bold fashion replaced with new skin, vibrant eyes & appropriate clothes. he’d passed the man over a dozen times in different bodies, waiting for the moment they were both out of someone’s line of sight. the timing was perfect : a harsh pass under the skin of a thin blonde woman, brushing his shoulder just hard enough to get him to turn around & find the iron grip of a familiar face grab that same shoulder & with a flick, tossed him into an alley, sending him crashing against a dank brick wall.
❛ i want your name, rank & commanding officer. dog tags will do. keep it level or you’re dead. ❜ the monster leered, eyes much too glassy to belong to a living being glaring impassively into the human’s.
origamiaround
gummygunk
stormborns
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
