The determination in someone else’s eyes, the certainty in someone else’s voice. Those underlying bastards responsible for this shit plaguing a world of sand far as hell away; yeah - he’s seen them too. Some group of vigilantes prowling the streets of Manhattan like Blackwatch, only they look ancient ( smell ancient too ) and like everything else around here that’s taken hold since the viral outbreak that consumed New York in a nightmarish storm; they didn’t belong.
Be it a momentary glance from beneath the curve of his hood or just a silent passing on the next corner beneath the flickering red of undying street lights, Mercer has kept his distance for damn good reason after one of them had the balls to try and apprehend him with a sickle to his sickeningly pale throat against the dampened hush of a back alley. Funny how the guy seemed to follow him all the way to Gentek’s back door like he knew where he was going. Didn’t take long for the poor bastard to die either ( nothing that tries to attack the virus ever does ) and flitting through his memories like makeshift wings broken into a life half spent near the pyramids back home before being carted off to find Alex Mercer and the Croft girl chasing him vividly paints the perspective.
They call themselves the order of Trinity but in the end it’s all the damn same to the unreal who’s lived a second life through the eyes of everything that’s still real. Too real. Just another group of terrorists trying to pin the blame on others, another place in the world suffering for someone else’s self serving ideals. Wish he could say he doesn’t get it, but after his own save the city from catastrophe he understands too much and too well. Humans are selfish. Maybe it’s just in their DNA or maybe they were born that way. Mercer’s seen enough, suffered enough at the hands of humanity to be almost thankful he doesn’t fit into their little world of self inflicted horrors.
No, to them he’s just the killer, monster, terrorist. All of these things responsible for what Manhattan has become. … and if it means never rejoining them, hell; he can live with that knowing the truth. The revelation might have freed him but it killed him too.
No place for the dead and departed like a idle symbol of home, what it used to be. Maybe he hates Manhattan because it reminds him too much of what everything should mean to him but can’t. Maybe he’s grown some sort of inevitable attachment to the damned island he risked everything just to save and now, according to far off sources, if he doesn’t risk his ass again something else is about to destroy the world and of course Gentek is playing a second hand in it.
Only the girl knows the way now.
The crunch of aged concrete almost seems to rust beneath his feet as he shifts into a feral crouch like a predator curved against the full of a blood red moon on hunting night. The pollution still blankets the horizon and the stars are nearly blotched from their own existence thanks to Bloodtox clouds still permeating Manhattan’s skies above from shit that happened years ago. If they know where he is, they know where she is, that she’s here and looking for him too. Best make sure it’s Croft that finds him first and not whatever secret agents Gentek has usurped from Egypt and sent on a wild snake hunt.
All he’s got is a half crumpled photo, some torn notes and the photographic memory of the guy still screaming in his head to go on. Since most tourists gotta start somewhere checking the motels in the most popular districts couldn’t hurt, right? With Blackwatch prowling the streets he’s gonna have to do this the unrefined way. Roof by roof.
If Croft really is here, he’ll find her.
Lara should’ve known it’d be difficult to find an elusive man like Mercer. In her endeavors to try and find the man who was said to have her map, she only kept finding more information about the company of Gentek. In a way, the information she found on such a company only made her stomach turn with disgust. It reminded her of Trinity and their goals to do whatever it took to grab for power, and essentially world domination. In a way, both of them were similar in that way that only further cemented her determination to find Mercer before anyone else did.
The problem was she didn’t know who or what this Mercer guy looked like. The recollections of the people in the neighborhoods she’d paid a visit to all spoke of a man shrouded in mystery, but no one knew who he was and some had only heard of his name for the first time.
Lara was growing frustrated.
What she didn’t know was that she was drawing the attention of Gentek in the process. Trinity always interfered later, but Gentek was curious about how this stranger, who shouldn’t be involved or have any knowledge of Mercer, was asking about Mercer. Their watchful gaze followed her until a few nights later, the rain finally having ceased its fall, and she was heading back to the motel for a night’s rest. Only, she could feel she was being followed. The hair on her neck raised and the familiar tingly awareness that someone was watching her tensed her frame as she prepared herself for the combat that was to come.
Thankfully, the area they were in was mostly deserted and most of the people had already withdrawn into their homes. Lara turned down an alleyway and began to wait for them to follow in after her. And the moment they did, she turned another corner and booked it, determined to lose them. She was only here two days and they already had sent someone to track her? How quickly did they think she could find someone who didn’t want to be found? Lara might be good at investigative research, but finding someone was an entirely different thing altogether.
She ducked and slid around the corners to try and outrun the pursuer and she could hear them running after her. One, no, two different people were chasing her. She knew where the placement of her pistol was that if necessary, she could take them out, but she would rather avoid such a confrontation if she could help it when she was in a city like this one. Running through the streets, she slid on some wet concrete and nearly rammed herself into a wall before she ran into a dead end.
Lara swore under her breath, immediately trying to look for a way out before she saw them turn into her alleyway. She immediately ducked behind some dumpsters in an effort to skirt around them, hoping that in the dark, they wouldn’t be able to see her because they hadn’t seen her yet. Spotting a nearby metal pipe, she picked it up and readied herself for the confrontation that she had been hoping to avoid.
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