Alex Mercer sat in a tree and methodically cleaned the M249. Diligently, he ignored the howling of the creatures below, and was filled with the most gloomy thoughts. The last few hours have merged into some absurd kaleidoscope, consisting of an excess of feelings, sudden revelations and restrained curses mixed with a cough, which Alex gave out when he saw how much the light machine gun was soiled. After all, every detail will have to be sorted out, every section of the tape, if necessary, so that it does not wedge after the first shot and does not burst the barrel! But it was necessary, it was necessary to check... and time has endured for quite some time now.
Not to say that Mercer would prefer to return to the state that gripped him an hour ago - complete confusion in half with bitterness that he did not have time to say goodbye to Dana. When the timer of the bomb lives out its last seconds... how much can you think about, can slender logical constructions be built, being on the verge of your own death? Absolute, as the past Mercer-skeptic believed (and his follower was in solidarity with him in this regard), the end? Probably, few people think at this moment about how much they did not have time. The fear of death is a corrosive thing, and no matter how people boast of their civilization, the thoughts of the majority in the falling plane will be filled with chaos, a painful premonition of the end. And when your death is expected from a nuclear bomb, turned by mass culture into something terrible, the scale of the catastrophe from which is indescribable... There is no room left for hope that you will somehow survive.
For eighteen days of the epidemic, Alex Mercer was used to not being afraid for his own life. There were episodes when fear and anger took possession of him... When a giant creature carried away his sister - perhaps the only person for whom Mercer was really going to fight on. Or when his only chance to end this madness, Colonel Taggart, fled from the mutant in a thermobaric tank... Yes, some part of Mercer's soul was seized by fear as he took UH-60 away from the city, into the Atlantic waters.
At that moment he wanted to leave everything as it is, without drowning out «own» thoughts in his head with mental attitudes and shock doses of neurotransmitters. If he wanted any kind of interference in this whole mental organization... it was the need to be heard in the hour of death. Mercer did not want to die in a flash of an atomic flame alone, forgotten by everyone and, undoubtedly, classified by the government after the incident. The battle with the virus and the soldiers who were absurdly devoted to the charter is over; New York has been given a grace period of three and a half minutes. Alex Mercer had no choice but to exchange his life for the survival of the city and the people to whom he owed. However, he would have been filled with much greater calmness and faith in “what seems to him to be right,” if someone accompanied him into oblivion, and finally said a kind word or two. The line of convinced introversion of Alex on the verge of death cracked, desperately wanting to find unity with other sentients...
Well, apparently, his plea was heard, although a higher power (if it really put her ethereal hand here) interpreted the request with the most sadistic, most perverse logic that Mercer could imagine.
He, having thrown a bomb into the ocean, only had time to turn the helicopter on the opposite course, as all around was flooded with a blinding flash of a chain reaction seeping through the armored glass. The burst of energy, embodied in Kelvin with a mantissa of as much as 8 units and no less monstrous pressure, arrived in time a fraction of a second later. The red-hot ball swallowed the car, turning it into steam without a trace, including the pilot... Well, Mercer thought it was about to happen. In fact, the state in which he became aware of himself a moment later was the last one that would fall under the category of «complete non-perception». It did not even resemble its faint resemblance, which could be achieved in a chamber of sensory deprivation.
"Ha-kha ... Well, nothing has hinted that everything around me is now created by consciousness itself, seized by the agony caused by the overload of absolutely all the senses in this split second." He had to overcome the craving for rapid breathing and adapt the nasopharynx. However, the "toxic air" had to be let out less often, just for the sake of full-fledged verbal communication.
Indeed, when a colossal release of energy flooded all the space around... Mercer continued to feel himself. The usual logical layer of consciousness of chimeras (1) , the bricks from which new knowledge was formed, even banal tactile sensations and the roar of a screw... All this remained in their proper places in the picture of world perception. But his eyesight suffered - the picture was so distorted, dazzled with such acidic shades and glare that Mercer wanted to rub his eyes. Why did not darkness fall on him instantly, the absence of any feelings, caused not by the blinding of the poison outbreak, but the destruction of all the organs of perception?
Then it dawned on him through the whirlwind of indicators and the screams of a siren that the engine had died, and the rotor was now being supported, in addition to the Christ's nut, by honest inertia alone.
It can't be like that, Alex thought a little dazedly. A surface nuclear explosion, no matter how powerful it may be, is not capable of significantly affecting electronics, even if the complex onboard system of the Hawk! The shock only intensified when Mercer realized that he did not feel the urges of the Hive Mind, which had come from the center of the city's power earlier - as if the evolved one was forcibly surrounded by a bubble of mental silence, a dialogue with himself. Such silence that the chimera turns into an animal acting on instincts, as in the case with the parasite (2), and the evolved one plunges into hibernation. Mercer, cursing from his suddenly unaccustomed vision, feverishly tried to put the car into autorotation mode, but the doctor could not see the mental colors of what was happening. As if... at once he became an ordinary person, unable by the power of thought to gain complete control over his own life. Words could not convey how frightened Mercer was. For a week now, he had not been afraid of something so much that it fanned in the depths of his soul the fury that had recently descended on Taggart. Powerless rage, the worst possible type of anger.
Mercer's efforts, which were augmented by the experience of the military pilots absorbed by him, however, remained unsuccessful. Not only did the turbines die instantly, without even sneezing a couple of times goodbye, but the lift dropped almost instantly, ignoring the still-supposedly spinning propeller. The car went down sharply and hit some obstacle in its trajectory with monstrous force, so that Mercer was thrown into the cockpit, barking both flesh on metal and metal on flesh. The helicopter, having fallen on its side, practically disintegrated into pieces, the propeller notably plowed the asphalt and the ground, uprooting the axle from the depths of the engine. But after a minute, all this chaotic movement around died away, and the sounds that accompanied him died down.
Wait ... Earth? Asphalt? Noises for these substances were most appropriate, but not for the water that was supposed to surround Mercer, ten or fifteen miles around! He deliberately went beyond the critical zone for New York...
No. Even though the Hivemind is covered, I still cannot be considered a human... it seems. Absentmindedly noted Alex, ripping himself from the wreckage of the dashboard. Noting that his body was seriously injured, with a single motion, Mercer fixed the open fracture of his leg; restored the integrity of the crushed skull and generally spurred regeneration. And I’m still alive... for some damn thing, I’m still not broken up into molecules. Why is that?
Mercer was dimly aware of the ensuing action. Despite the fact that other superpowers that had not gone anywhere calmed him down, made him clear his mind, and the tongues of anger subside, turn into familiar embers, the events turned out to be too absurd and too different from his ideas about how this world works.
For starters, the crashed helicopter was not flooded with water, but with gas clearly unsuitable for breathing. Mercer began to choke and cough, as if he had been poisoned with blood toxin again - no, besides, Zeus had long evolved immunity to the surrogate! Mercer began to choke and cough as if he had been poisoned by a blood toxin again, although it was only a sensation. In addition, immunity to a surrogate called "Zeus" has long been developed! Moreover, from this mixture it was not possible to isolate a single grain of oxygen, which is so necessary for a developed organism.
It was as if Mercer was forced to breathe pure sarin or some other nasty mutating gas, that did not cause much harm, but had zero oxidative value and even wasted energy on filters. Mercer put on armor, preparing for a meeting with an unfavorable external environment, and she had to become unfavorable, this is after a nuclear explosion in the middle of the ocean, in which the new Alex would simply go to the bottom! However, the head had to be left uncovered. The visor, like other attributes of the information field, did not work - with a monolithic shield, Alex, apart from heat radiation, did not feel anything as cut off. Nonsense!
Even if Manhattan was miraculously hit by an explosion, on the eighteenth day of the epidemic, Green bio-reserves remained in the subway and sewers, hidden by the thickness of the earth, its deep hives, to which the explosion did not reach and which should have been registered by Mercer's viral location! The strangest and wildest theories were born in Alex's head as he, choking on toxin and often blinking, looked for a way out. In the end, Mercer, knocking out the skewed door, rushed through the clouds of dust to fight back any possible troubles... but immediately bumped into a partially transparent screen. A deep crimson hue, it cut off the smoke and dust that enveloped the smoldering helicopter, and refused to let Mercer continue.
Excited by the pace of events and their diversity, Alex punched the obstacle with his fist. The barrier did not even think to give up, as it turned out to be devoid of elasticity. Striking again and convinced of the uselessness of the force method, Mercer clung to the glassy curtain and narrowed his eyes , peering into the colorful surroundings until the pain in his eyes. What he saw... well, let’s say, could be considered as someone's imposed memory, the delirium of a drug addict, so colorful that Alex's brains went overboard.
The problem was that not a single military and scientist, not those few civilians that he was forced to absorb when the invisible resource of stability ended, and the virus turned on its intelligence jammer...(3) None of these people did not bequeathed to Mercer something so heavy. And it was all as if for real. The arrival would not be so stable and Alex doubted that if any drug had an effect on him, then the mutant could control this vision with full sense of a sober head.
"Well, you can't say that the situation is under my control now," Alex muttered, driving in the barrel of the machine gun and slamming the bolt box.
He captured this standard watcher’s machine gun from the wreckage of the UH-60 along with the emergency package that suffered the least (biscuits and other food from it were absorbed immediately, as soon as the nature of the local living creatures became clear). Flare gun included. Mercer, accustomed to relying on his own strength and survivability, used a firearm only in those cases when it was necessary to suppress a lightly armored enemy, maintaining a distance, the same grenadiers, and therefore rushed to the exit with his bare hands. But after what he saw... his confidence in the justification of his own efforts, let's say, was somewhat undermined. Therefore, Alex decided to take with him everything that could help him in the prevailing back... situation. True, after going underground, the fruit of human engineering needed cleaning.
What did Mercer see at the crash site that shocked him so much? Well, first of all, suddenly, instead of an autumn night, day came on the street. And this sun by no means flooded the landscape familiar to the eye of a seasoned New Yorker. Take at least the squat houses of the frame type, and not the straight rows of towers engulfed in flames of anarchy and infection. Instead of rare walkers - a crowd of four-legged mythical creatures. Much stranger ... mutants. Parodies of intelligent life, and their reaction could not be called anything other than intelligent! Considering their reaction to the fall of a black flying object.
The animal would have run away without looking at the road, but many of them, hiding in all directions, looked out of their hiding places with curiosity. And they spoke! Damn it, their voices were muffled by the dome, but Mercer could hear their language! Real sound code with constructs that create a word, although unlike any other language Mercer has heard of!
I remember very well that no one infected with the «Light» except the Runners spoke clearly. Couldn't even seem sentients. And apart from... me, Alex thought for some reason. Meanwhile, several creatures, instead of keeping the distance, on the contrary, reduced it. Larger than those that Mercer had noticed earlier, with more elongated muzzles, and the plate armor with the centurion's crest was definitely not part of their protective cover. Among them, a smaller individual stood out... and they all had a cone-shaped outgrowth on their heads, just the same making up a single whole with the body. These «horns» shone in the most varied colors, and spears flew around the big ones, captured by auras of the same color.
Okay, for a moment the idiotic thought flashed through me that the shock wave had thrown me all the way to Brooklyn, internally shuddering, Mercer thought. But this is somehow too much even for the inhabitants there...
It took Mercer's perception no more than a minute to notice the details and process the entire array of information that was collected. But the contradictory conclusions drawn from this information became the last straw - usually preferring to face the problems face to face, the scientist this time just ran away. Alex, deciding that it is possible to go crazy in places more adapted for this, moved away from the barrier, grabbed the first supplies that came to hand and was like that. The evolved one did not break into the «glass» again, trying it for strength, or cowardly hammered into the bowels of the scrap metal that made up the «Hawk». He simply rushed, feverishly working with his newly grown claws, to bury himself underground. Alex could not do it as efficiently as the hydras did, but fountains of soil filled the space of the dome, which covered the helicopter. Fortunately, the dome did not turn out to be a sphere, and no obstacle to the evolved was found underground. Slowly enough, he moved somewhere that Mercer saw as the border of the settlement. His houses stood a little to the side of the fallen helicopter, separated from it by the river, so no obstacles were foreseen...
And now Mercer was already standing in the thicket of the forest, which was spread out not far from the village, and hid the belongings he had taken with him, somehow masking it with grass in a deep ravine. Alex did not know what to think now and what scenario could be called «correct» in the given circumstances.
A pitiful remnant of morality, the concept of "man is a social being" with which Mercer was captured in a helicopter rushing towards the ocean, once again clad in monolithic armor. Alex understood this, and it cannot be said that it somehow bothered him. The much more "advanced" ones were concerned that if everything really happened, he was not on Earth.
In the worst possible scenario, not only will he never return to his normal habitat, but he will never see his sister again. But Alex could not even say goodbye to her! This worried Mercer very much... One thought brought bitterness into his mind - to accept a guaranteed death in order to save the city... But it is quite another to survive and not be able to return to the city to see Dana and the doctor Ragland (to whom Alex felt obligated)!
Not only the absence of information fields prompted Alex that the place in which he had found himself had nothing to do with the good old Earth. The identity, in fact, was, but purely visual: the local grove was similar to the Caroline forests, with the exception of a minimum of conifers. Well, also the magnitude of gravity was almost identical to that of the Earth. Mercer addressed endless requests to the Web of Intrigue, trying to find in the memory of the scientists he had devoured at least something that could clarify the current situation, but the mutant could not draw a single parallel with the data collected by him...
The first is the atmosphere. More rarefied, with a lower refractive index. Absolutely and irrevocably toxic; there was not a hint of oxygen content in it. Now what? Sealed tanks, where you can hide and calmly pull the levers, taking into account what you saw here are unlikely to be found. What, the pinnacle of evolution will have to carry balloons behind his back ?! Alex thought angrily. The evolved one rolled up all the mucous membranes that could absorb the toxin, blocked its analogue of the alveoli, letting gas into the lungs only to fill the vocal cords with sound - the sound came out higher than usual, although he was very far from helium peeping. And all the same... in an economical mode, using only the mass available here and now (the reserve for the same regeneration and devastating attacks, closely related to information technology, disappeared with it), the evolved one had a good day if it was in stock. The gas no longer corroded the man's throat, did not pinch his dry eyes with pieces of ice, but the same brain work consumes tons of glucose. Mercer, having spent another small particle of the reserve, performed an analysis in his chemical laboratory, interspersed with weaving of intestines... The result was no less stunning than the events of half an hour ago.
The local air contained no less than eleven distinguishable components. But the only one that Alex was able to recognize, and which had a fraction of at least a fifth, was beryllium.
Gaseous, so it, beryllium. Damn expensive and extremely toxic metal in this land was, as they say, never breathe. But why, then, he was the usual, quite comfortable outside temperature, and did not boil Mercer in armor alive with vapors red-hot to the state of plasma? To this question Alex, with a certain doom, decided not to look for an answer yet, considering it secondary. Not a survival task for the next day.
Mercer considered the question-and-consequence question to be far more important. Namely, where to get resources to continue the functioning of the platform? Literally everything that surrounded Mercer at that time, the virus did not consider it a living thing. Trees, insects in the air, birds, frog , which Mercer, swiftly throwing out his hand, caught in a ravine, and then stared long and stupidly at the panicked amphibian, enveloped in a cloud of infovirions... and even this ordinary grass underfoot, from which it would be possible to suck out a miserable amount of calories that could be thrown into the furnace, and cellulose to strengthen the armor. All this, no matter how juicy, filled with colors and abstract life it seemed, was inedible. Simply incompatible with viral technologies. Mercer watched the galloping frog with an almost hateful look. A yellow-plated bird sitting in a nearby tree tilted its head to one side and whistled. She did not seem at all frightened by the neighborhood with the person. Something was seriously wrong with the local flora and fauna. From the point of view of both infectiousness and apoptotic abilities of the cells that inhabited Alex's «lymph», (5) it all represented... just an empty space. Eating local animals would be like gnawing stones. Soft, easily breaking, consisting of cells with quite a cytoplasmic gel... but, of course, not replenishing the mass. In the end, evolved, with all their merits and (at the exclusive desire of the individual) theoretical freedom from all shackles, remained a form of life based on carbon, and not, say... silicon. If during these hours Mercer does not find a working solution, then he will have to enter into unprepared contact with the natives... And this, taking into account what he saw, is fraught.
The third question was, perhaps, the same consequence. Shine. What if we assumed that it wasn't just that there was something wrong with the local organic molecules, but at a lower, elementary level, were things no less miraculous? The photons are local, massless particles, either shifting the usual spectrum, or overloading it... Before going on reconnaissance, Alex calibrated his eyes. The tedious riot of colors and the overall brightness significantly reduced the tone, but the saturation of the image remained. Mercer was willing to swear that the current picture of this world could only be seen in idiotic cartoons, that during his adolescence, Saturday blocks were filled. It was... annoying. But it was perfectly acceptable compared to the prospect of an energy hunger strike.
The bird, somewhat reminiscent of Cardinalis, only of a rich yellow hue, issued a couple more trills, after which it flew away somewhere in the direction of the village. Mercer did not like her behavior, which somewhat resembled a Marine detection drone. As soon as I return from the reconnaissance, I immediately take my belongings and go even deeper into the forest, he decided. The fourth question... one might say, was a generalization of the three previous ones. What happened with a Mercer land mine? What kind of place is this that ignores the usual laws of being, and how did the evolved one come to be here? Alex was not ready to give an unambiguous answer, nor to come up with a theory that more or less inspires confidence. Everything around could be a cunning imitation designed to confuse Mercer, but who cares? Not that old Mercer trusted the one-monk name principle, but such an overwhelmed concept is overkill. Moreover, it would not have any effect on a scientist. Since the fall of 2008, Alex was no longer surprised by such nonsense as the complete collapse of the pillars of his life - suppressing the outbursts of emotions, he continued to think logically, scrupulously calculating the options and choosing the optimal moves. This world? measurement? the spatial pocket of the reserve mass? certainly had nothing to do with the afterlife - both in its classical representations and in terms of the fantasies of more modern authors. The fact that the coordinate and abstract principles of his consciousness worked together, without merging into the usual imitation of someone else's consciousness, was the best confirmation of this... Well, the work of chimeras was observed in the body, which had already become a familiar and inseparable part of Mercer. Nothing has hinted that this Alex is different from the fact that eighteen days ago he escaped from the morgue and stabbed both the military and the mutants released through his own fault.
Speaking of chimeras. Mercer, as soon as he got out of the ravine, happened to observe another quirk of the local fauna - and his surprise this time did not grow to shock. The reserve has already ended, where one could be even more surprised today. For in the windbreak, far from the animal paths, a creature wandered into the noise, which could well be mistaken for a mythological chimera... but no, the beast had only one head. But morphologically - the chimera is the most natural: the body of a lion, a huge scorpion tail and leathery wings. If they once belonged to a bat, then the dimensions of a bats of an ordinary person would have plunged into awe. Mercer, standing up to his full height, did not move. Claws were not scary to him - in this creature they were in every way no more dangerous than the claws of a hunter or a penetration by a tank shell. There was an insignificant possibility that in the poison (if the tail of the creature really worked in the manner of a scorpion) there would still be a component that would be able to have a negative effect on the evolved... Again, unintended spending, bringing a hungry coma closer. During the epidemic, having received a free minute or two, Mercer even distantly pondered what would happen if there was not a single source left on Earth from which he could feed his brains, delaying madness; Considering that matter is more mundane, something to feed the body, not the spirit, the planet will always be available. That's irony, now he had a chance to check exactly the opposite case - when there is nothing to work on the platform, and not the mind... But no, Alex was not afraid of the tail either, deciding that he should be faster than a large, more inert monster.
He did not move even when the creature came close, puzzledly jerking and bristling his bright mane. And... the closer it got, the calmer it became. With the last noisy breath sniffing, the mutant looked at the motionless Alex; already quite lazy, feline glance slid along the ravine, where the hiding place had been laid. Throwing out his tongue, the nightmare lion licked his protruding fangs and lightly pushed Mercer in the stomach with his paw - then a little harder, as if trying to pick up a plate of armor with his claws. Alex wanted to touch the rough fur of the animal, but he had already left the object of interest and walked away with a relaxed gait - not at all cautious, as he was approaching the evolved one, with the tail in a fighting stance.
Perhaps... from the point of view of the creature, Alex also did not appear to be a living object and, accordingly, an object of hunting. There is no smell, there is no habitual appearance of prey and demeanor... Not otherwise, the creature showed only curiosity to the «revived sculpture», with which it would be just pleasure to sharpen the claws - Well, the purpose of this is much better served by the trunks of age-old trees. Somehow quite casually experiencing contact with the local dominant predator (Probably. Mercer could not be sure that something more terrible and toothy was not found here), Alex generated a camouflage under the local riot of colors and set off on reconnaissance to the edge of the forest. This was not the case when the introduction of the evolved worked - when walking around in front of everyone in someone else's shell, using the appropriate motor skills and areas of long-term memory, that is to say, is more convenient than just hiding from prying eyes. Even if the aborigines were edible - which Mercer, based on the data already collected, highly doubted - the evolved would not be able to adapt himself and the chimeras inside for a non-humanoid design. Probably so. Of course, until you try it by mouth, you will not know... but it was not possible to try now. If these creatures are really capable of what Mercer noticed out of the corner of his eye... For the same reason, he was not going to pry closer to the houses until nightfall; And so he went beyond the border of the forest, disguising himself among the tall bushes and grasses, freezing at the approach of at least something that was larger than field animals. When a dog ran by - quite similar to an Earth Border Collie - Alex went cold inwardly. He even laid out a tentacle under a layer of scabie (6) , preparing to punch the animal in the throat before it barked to attract the owner's attention... but his newfound chemical «invisibility» coupled with excellent disguise did not disappoint. The dog ran past, intently sniffing at the ground and periodically raising its nose in the wind; Mercer, after waiting for some time, continued to build out of himself a military saboteur-plastun. He had an idea to dispatch the distal part in front of him, the chimera as a drone, as Alex did during the capture by McMullen, but to let a particle of himself, weaker than the whole, and even equipped with a much smaller spectrum of perception, into unknown territory, Mercer considered not the best idea... So, firmly promising himself a bonus in calories for the harmfulness of being in this place, Alex was forced to move forward.
Mercer crawled until he came out on the local inhabitants, who settled down around the «Hawk», which almost fell on their heads. And the first thing that the doctor of biological sciences could say, observing them... no, in those miserable minutes, the first contact did not seem to him at all. These creatures were definitely endowed with intelligence - communicated in an unknown language with long vowels. In the village, apparently, they naturally lived with all the infrastructure they owed, like some kind of people. Around the «Hawk», they deployed something like a search operation: they did not go one by one, here and there were strong-looking creatures that were engaged in a leisurely survey of the surroundings. There were also several individuals in the same armor - apparently, representatives of law enforcement agencies. The xenomorphs were definitely... aware of the presence somewhere in the vicinity of a whole evolved, and did not even skimp on a number of countermeasures. Something told Alex that the villagers would not stop at this - and the set of measures would not be supplemented by an appeal to «expel demons» to the local analogue of the priest, if they have one. Not the worst case scenario, in fact. Aggressive medieval blockheads could be killed like the same warriors, without burdening your conscience with outpourings on the topic of ends and means.
Unless, of course, you take into account... uh, medieval, almost fantasy magic?
Unfortunately, in this respect, Mercer's vision did not fail either. Xeno has fully confirmed the possession of a whole set of supernatural (by the standards of people) capabilities. As Mercer watched, that purple approached the dome, her horn lit up, and the weakening of the barrier was gone. Then she spoke to another creature of a gentle shade of orange so naturally, as if the technology of the force field here (and it really reminded her) was the purest routine, and the creature did not violate a dozen laws of physics right at that moment. The ability to levitate objects, including themselves, was also confirmed: the winged morphs that patrolled the sky kept in the air with an area of plumage clearly insufficient for a more rarefied atmosphere... Well, that is, Mercer, during these days, also learned to stay in the air until its horizontal speed remained, and it had no wings at all. And even if they did, it would be almost impossible to use the swing with the standard Mercer design... a heavy, powerful skeleton, increased muscle density and tolerable aerodynamics, except that when covered with armor, they did not dispose to such an energy-consuming process as flight. Alex had very vague suspicions that his glide was based on an unknown principle of shielding, which turned off immediately as soon as the mutant flew out of the smog that enveloped Manhattan these days... But here, here, what kind of gravity compensated for the winged? What kept them in the air? The atmosphere was clear, suburban clean, if and not to be considered absolute toxicity for Mercer. No signs of spray hives were found... and in general, a rather meager variety, represented by only three morphs, made it possible to decide that these creatures are not mutants like «Light», but the result of a natural process of evolution... Damn it! Yes, if you do not look closely, if you do not pay attention to the calculated size of the buildings, as if on hobbits, and to remove these strange strangers from here, it turned out that Mercer was brought into the most ordinary country settlement with frame-type houses! This could not be, nonsense and surrealism!
And, nevertheless, the creatures were in no hurry to drop out of existence, in spite of all Mercerian «it cannot be» continuing to exist and developing violent activity. Standing for a minute or two under the dome, Alex suspected they were huge cats that would reach the pelvis with the top of his head, wearing hats in places, and for the most part fancy curling wigs - despite the general acidity of the range, the colors of the latter looked quite harmonious with the owner's coat. Sentient cats with outstretched paws and large head on a sufficiently long and agile neck, sometimes winged and horned. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But now, looking more closely, Mercer struggled to keep himself from clutching his head. Everything turned out to be even worse for his already worn-out reason... Small neat jaws, clearly not belonging to a predator forced to tear the dense fibers of meat with his teeth. More protruding profile of the muzzle, large expressive eyes, very poorly defined nasal cartilage; the ear, again, resembled a cat's very distantly... and no signs of many phalanges on the limbs.
This is Zeus that, Alex thought with longing, unblinking gaze drilling an orange specimen that crouched on its hind legs and was explaining something to her companion, actively gesticulating with the front, really got into the myths of Ancient Greece ? Maybe it still seems to me?
Indeed... If this species had something to do with the family Equidae, then its winged subspecies could well qualify for the definition of «Pegasus». And considering that Mercer recently met an animal in the forest, which human taxonomy could only refer to mythological...
Well, in appearance and especially in behavior you cannot say that they are ponies, of course. Only the clatter of neat, obviously well-groomed hooves, and gives out, sighed to himself Alex. However, not an indicator. People, too, in general terms do not behave like their relatives in the branch of the family... Although the misanthropes, very conditionally including the predecessor Mercer, would probably disagree with me.
Perhaps all three morphs were exactly that subspecies, despite such significant differences. The same local «standard» dwarf cat horses did not seem to be neotenic juveniles, an early stage in the development of their more advanced forms, stag and pegasus. Alex managed to spot a very small horse with wings on the edge of the settlement, which curiously moved towards the source of universal alarm, but was led away by the watchful mother. Yes, in these sentient beings, sexual dimorphism does not seem to be very different from the higher mammals of the Earth. Heavier bones, wider chest and more evolved musculature in males; in contrast, females put on a slender stature, slightly wider (based on proportions) hips and a riot of hairstyles, including lush tails.
With some part of his brain, Mercer noted that by all this enumeration of familiar terms and new facts, he was giving himself a reprieve. Thus, it fences itself off from chaos, which threatened to swallow Alex's mental activity. At the edge of his mind, feverish scraps of thought flashed and died. This is what I now will you order me to think? the evolved one complained. That the bombing threw me somewhere in the countryside, where unaccounted Gentek mutants live, which are the descendants of local horses? What kind of bestiary of the name of old MacDonald gathered here ?! Then to these questions were mixed with confusion. What should he do? What to do in conditions of such limited resources, unusual uselessness for his body of any thing that constituted the new environment? How, finally, can he return home; what should be done at least to find out how he got here? Do you really have to risk your newly acquired salvation from the inevitable end, rashly bow to the newcomers and hope for the best? The man never trusted the «hope for the best» method - neither the old Alex, nor the new one. No, during the epidemic, with its innumerable set of dangers from both the infected and the military, Mercer did not particularly worry about his own life - it was once commonplace. But now... in order to get the opportunity to return to his usual world, to calculate the moves - to think how to protect himself not from the numerical superiority of terrible creatures and no less terrible executioners in black, but from colored talking horses! How ridiculous is this twist of fate! Mercer suppressed a chuckle that would have smacked a little hysterics if he were verbally embodied.
Still operating in economy mode, Alex moved back, this time making a detour through the gardens and slowly sowing everything around with infovirions. Until the energy reserve approached a third, he could afford it... Maybe he could have hooked at least something suitable for a super-efficient heat engine inside him, which suddenly became so picky at once. And he really managed to detect it - a real trace of oxygen, very close! Having gone further into the field, the evolved one stumbled upon an object that, like much in this place, looks utterly... familiar. Something elongated, small in size, crimson-pink and motley, in appearance - paper. Made of ordinary cardboard, although it was already clear that it was not based on cellulose from the point of view of evolved. For obvious reasons, Alex was unable to make out the letters of the local language, but the drawn sparks, darkened inner walls and a thin piece of wood gave an unambiguous conclusion.
Petard, stated Mercer with such a mental connotation, as if it were a continuation of the local attraction of madness. No, well, maybe, of course, there is also a custom to accompany the festival with fireworks, so it flew into the fields...
Having received a sample for research that somehow responded to his mentality, Alex ran his finger along the inside of the cardboard tube for a while, after which the intestinum process, (8) made its way through his lumbar fascia, from the owner's hand licked and dragged into the bowels of the peritoneum.
Mercer «thought» for a while, subjecting the compound to analysis, and then, unable to restrain himself, quietly issued, “The mind is incomprehensible... Kha, what does the powdered oxygen in the rocket?”
Some nonsense came out. Who would use not even liquid, but solid oxygen in some kind of cracker instead of industrial rocketry? Potassium nitrate, ordinary saltpeter, that is, it is much cheaper if the locals get it for the production of gunpowder in at least some similar way... And firearms, meanwhile, were not visible.
It was then that Mercer froze in place. Could it be that... the puzzle was beginning to take shape? Alex crumpled the cardboard in his hand, falling into complete numbness - he became even more motionless than during his disguise, when he pretended to be part of the local flora a dozen minutes ago. He really did have a working theory: perhaps the local elements had half the atomic number, had half the mass. Hence, in particular, the rarefied atmosphere. If the elements correspond in terms of electron-acceptor activity to the Mercer counterparts having the same number... but at the same time exhibit the physical properties of terrestrial elements with twice the mass, then Mercer's oxygen is the usual sulfur for ponies. Alien equine oxygen is actually terrestrial beryllium!
Mercer swallowed a non-existent saliva. His eyes flashed with the contentment of a solved mystery - well, or the development of a concept that temporarily corresponded to the picture of a new world for him. Well, in general, for any person new; Alex deeply doubted that in a world where the intelligent were already represented by zoomorphs, hominids were also able to develop within the framework of the evolutionary doctrine. As for his relationship with the local periodic table, it was not possible, but this is how it seems to work. Their oxygen could not oxidize the fuel, and the lift of the rotor dropped instantly due to the lower density of the atmosphere. But what happened here with the atmospheric pressure, is it very similar to the Earth's? Then it came out... Alex grimaced, rubbing his temples. With an almost audible creak, he was rolling his brains of a new model, considering his assumption. Much more enthusiastically thought that at least now he knew exactly where he should go first...
Alas, a quiet retreat for the implementation of our plans did not work out. Mercer did not know who such a big-eyed was looking for there - maybe he himself lost his guard and gave out a concentration of vapors greater than necessary, and a reddish haze became distinguishable up close. Perhaps this individual was not speaking to him at all... but Mercer decided that it was he who was shouted in an unfamiliar language. Deciding that it was useless to pretend to be a rag anymore, and until the whole population ran to the flyer's cries, Mercer threw up his head - and saw how the pseudo-pegasus was staring at the stranger, who no longer hid his presence. Judging by the shape of the muzzle and the lightweight build, the female is the color of sky blue with a variegated, rainbow-colored mane. Mercer noticed her a couple of times in the sky at the moment when he was approaching the village. This individual was very fast - in the blink of an eye she was removed from the place to disappear behind houses or get close to a group of other pegasus. She shouted something again in a hoarse voice, frowning quite humanly and pointing at him with her front foot.
Behold the devil, the evolved thought darkly, it started.
Alex jumped on the spot, grouping with equal zeal as he burst with a cannonball into the ranks of the opponents. Rolling up the camouflage coat, the look of which he gave to his scabie formatam, the mutant rushed back into the forest, completely forgetting about the moderate waste of calories. Diffusing into the air with an ergonomic gray lightning, Mercer pursued only one goal: to prevent falling under the local telepathy, it is still unknown how it would have worked on him. Breaking the distance was more important than trying to maintain camouflage and what a evolved pursuit could equip. The glass cutter, as he had already mentally christened the pegasus for her raspy voice, flashed somewhere in the field of lateral vision, and did not even think to lag behind. She even tried to block his path, to direct him in the other direction... Mercer was really lucky that there were no other pegasus next to her who could play as a team of beaters. The fact that the winged one rolled to the side when Alex did not slow down, taking her on a ram, reassured the mutant: perhaps a sentient (both literally and figuratively) horse really feared that it would be rushed into it at such a speed. Mercer's truck, rushing under its honest hundred miles, could not budge - let alone a living creature of flesh and blood would have crashed against him into a bloody mess with fragments of bones. Although, taking into account their abilities, the same telekinesis and levitation, with which Alex until today has not had a chance not only to feel on himself, but also to see... Not a fact, not a fact. A tactical retreat, as always during an encounter with the intelligent-menacing unknown, was the best solution. This was clearly not the case when the «I don't know what you are, but I know I will kill you» tactic worked.
The pursuit of Mercer never took place. It is unlikely that they lagged behind him, and it is unlikely that the azure one was afraid to fly at high speed between the trees, given what miracles of maneuverability she showed - rather, the locals tried not to climb into the forest. Well, considering that here it was so easy to run into a giant poisonous cat... Nevertheless, grabbing his stash in his arms, Alex ran further, tangling his tracks. Already at cruising, moving through the thicket, he stuck straight into a thicket of blue flowers - obviously toxic for Mercer, since he was noticeably sick. Cursing the local nature, where, wherever you go, you will certainly be met by chemical weapons, Alex shook himself off the thorns of the already quite ordinary blackthorn and undertook another race. Exactly until then, he ran, until the wolves made of wood followed him.
Nature, when I thought “What else can you surprise me with here?” it was a complaint, not a suggestion, gritted his teeth with Alex. He has already spent b o most of his reserve, and therefore made the only correct decision. Reasoning that the further into the thicket he will run, the more delirious (although much more already) and more dangerous the forest will begin to throw surprises at him, there was only one option - to stop and get ready for his plan. If these creatures were related to dogs not only in appearance and habits, but also in innate qualities, stopping was... permissible. Mercer flew up the tree, clawing at the bark. He noted with a grin that the arboreal biomechanoids hadn't followed; like ordinary wolves, they took the tree in a ring, howling and getting up on its hind legs, as if they had driven a squirrel or some other tenacious living creature onto its paws.
Once the doctor of genetic sciences, this alignment was quite satisfied. Having put in order his poor belongings, he sat down to disassemble and clean the machine gun. Alex's thoughts were still gloomy, but the outlined plan, a series of meaningful actions that had to be performed to rectify the state of affairs of his own, brought some order to the general... confusion caused by this world. Again, Mercer was not going to waste time, pulling out a map of the area from under the gaze of the local people. All he had to do was take the virion search tracks downwind and find the nearest swamp. Not that he would suddenly be impatient to buy moonshine from horse rednecks, if they really lived there. It's just that the sulfur content in peat bogs could reach ten percent - but it's good if there were one or two for Mercer. This was the best chance if the mutant did not want to face the aborigines unprepared. Shouldn't he have plundered the stocks of fireworks from the local organizers of anniversaries and funerals? Although... also a thought. But in this strip of vegetation there had to be somewhere to find a swamp with much more significant reserves, it had to be... And the local sulfur as a universal oxidizer was far from the most interesting guess that was spinning in his head, yes. Alex snorted cold beryllium plasma, pushing in the tape and jerking the bolt. When in Belvedere Castle an army transport man tore off his arm with a Bushmaster shell, and it grew back in a matter of ten seconds, Alex thought that the power of metabolic processes evolved in numbers is not inferior to a nuclear power plant. But if his superficial, non-foreman This theory is correct at its core, and the regularity of the periodic table extends to other elements, then... from his point of view, the local aborigines should seem no less eccentric. They are all walking atomic bombs. Well, nuclear combustion of lithium, is it known?
“Well,” almost casually summed up the line Mercer, taking one of the overgrown weeds below at the sight, “it remains only to check whether the usual chemistry works with my usual matter as it should. Who knows... Maybe my flesh has not come off my bones until now only because my body works more... adapted to local realities. I wonder if I will ever be able to find out everything, what the virus is capable of?”
The short burst only provoked the quasi-wolf: 5.56 bullets inflicted minimal damage on the tree, swelling the fibers and covering the animal's body with a network of cracks. But the machine gun worked as the engineers who created it intended: without access to the local air, the Earth's chemicals calmly reacted and released the necessary energy. The creatures were not frightened by the shots; it looks like the pieces of metal stuck in the wood only made them angry. Mercer, almost pacified by the result, put the M249 aside and aimed down the flare gun.
The wolf took up the flames, darted among his fellows, smoking steam from the damp wood - his brothers shied away as if death itself had passed them by. Alex jumped down, and the blow that followed the sticky landing was terrible. An armored fist chopped up the wood on the head of the nearest creature, so that the chips flew in all directions. The wolf died instantly - well, or finished his parody of life, showered with a pile of branches.
“Well, we must have run away,” Alex muttered under his breath, throwing a machine gun over his shoulder and looking after the frightened yapping flock. Thinking, he took off the pit, snaking between the trees in an economical mode. The route was calculated so as to move at an average distance from the border of the forest, along the river. One of its tributaries could well have originated in a swamp... With a machine gun behind its back and an emergency package in hand, no more than fifty miles per hour was the speed of the evolved one - but this was quite enough to throw information carriers upward in the spaces between the trees, beyond the crowns... Shooting a dry gaze at the most unfriendly shadows that were buried in the thicket, Alex would not have let himself be caught by surprise. There is no such convenient information environment for the virus? There is no habitat at all familiar to his human experience? Spit. What the hell are telekinetic horses to him? Mercer single-handedly left such a hole in the military budget of the most powerful country in the world that it would take all the power of the US printing press to patch it up. He has already entered into a battle with what people could see until the fall of 2008 only in Hollywood bad taste or some other fiction similar to them. He will most likely win, and this time, he will emerge victorious - no matter how much blood has to be shed. However... this should have been avoided until Alex could say for sure what the zoomorphs were, and until they showed open aggression. Not that Mercer was concerned about the peaceful pioneering of a new intelligent species by mankind - in general, after the revelations of Cross, Alex could call himself a human only with a rough assumption.
Well... Wherever you look, there are restrictions that he imposes on himself, guided solely by his common sense. Well, so what? Genius was often born in constrained circumstances, and his predecessor was already a genius.
He will return to his sister. He will certainly find a way to get out of the place where he managed to hide from a nuclear explosion. And if it turns out that Alex Mercer found himself here by the intrigues of not some higher powers, to which hands will be short for a very long time, but the magical ponies he saw at first glance... he will make them return everything as it was. Mercer thought he had means of persuasion of a wide variety of calibers and characteristics. He will thank for the salvation - and then very, very politely ask them to kick out of this nightmare of the epileptic back into his dimension, or as in terms of quantum mechanics, you can also call the states of the universes. Then he will ask a little less politely. Then another - and so on until the expected result is achieved.
If the refueling turns out in the remaining day (save Mercer from the need to devour his own limbs and secondary systems in order to last longer!), Already at dusk he will be able to visit the notion town. It was necessary to somehow return to the wreckage of the Hawk and grab what Mercer needed, but then his hands did not reach. Necessarily necessary - maybe Alex was, finally remembering his former self, primarily an expert in genome theory, but he unpacked some knowledge of helicopter pilots, including on debugging on-board electronics. “The armored personnel carrier of the Marine Corps consists of 19 main systems and more than 25,000 parts. In the next 8 months, you have to learn them all ”, hmm. Even if, according to the new idea, for the sake of this it will be necessary to enter into direct contact with the locals. Save their local gods to show hostility... Because if Mercer is cornered, he will have to show hostility in return.
The prototype of the most advanced military machine, equipped with a human shell and, by some oversight, found itself in the world, which was the last to need military action, and got down to work.