Death Is Legion - The Virus

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Down in the facility, things are getting bad for all concerned.

Trigger Warning: Body horror.



T24 rubbed the plastic and cloth covered mask over his face, looking around with his opaque eye lens. Kyle could feel his healing factor groan against the virus, as a new chain of pustules rose on his arms and broke open wetly, oozing corruption down his forearm.

"The reactor room is this way, mate." T24 waved towards a heavy door, with a blinking cluster of access panels to one side. "Here's where I can't help much. Thetagen turned the technicians into this cluster of mushroom looking things that just scream all the time. No way to tap into their knowledge."

Kyle pressed the ruined front of his shirt against the sores on his arms, soaking up the pink-tinged pus. "Great.." He groaned. "Well, I'm never eating a grilled portobello again. We talking like, mushroom mushrooms or giant walking mushroom zombies I'm gonna have to punch in the spores?"

"Mushrooms. Rotted into a single pile." He waved towards the reactor. "Let's just do this. After a decade down here, I just want it to be over; for the voices to stop."

"Gross." It explained why the dude in the suit was kinda cray though. Kyle followed, keeping an ear out for the mentioned screaming - it was probably weird-ass psi stuff but fuck, if there were going to be screaming mushroom people, he wanted as much warning as possible. "You at least know how to open the reactor room up, right?"

He shook his head. "My powers may stop the virus from completely absorbing me, but I'm not free. There's an instinct for self-preservation in the virus. I've never even been able to reach the door, mate." He grabbed Kyle by the upper-arm. "I might not be able to stand aside when you try to open it."

Kyle pulled his arm back sharply. "Don't touch me, dude." It was hard enough to keep himself back from clawing off his damn skin. "We'll cross the "I kick your ass" bridge if you jump off it." He gave the man in the suit a once-over look, rubbed his hands against his pants to dry them and then tapped the bluetooth earpiece. "Hello? Are you still there?"

The earpiece was dead, and he realized that he hadn't heard from them since installing the datatap in place. Maybe they had decided he'd done his job? WEAPON T24 stopped close to the access door, tapping at the control panel. After a few tries, he shook his head. "There's got to be a manual release or something."

Kyle wasn't so sure of that, but standing around waiting for the guy in the suit and mask to decide that no, he was going to turn into a giant mushroom too, or whatever that virus did to people wasn't going to get him back out, and it would get his parents very dead. He moved in front of one of the access panels, swallowing the bile in his throat and the thought that Omega Red might've just killed them anyway. "I don't even know what that'd look like. I don't think that just punching panels is gonna help, but that's all I got."

"Aren't you part of the program? You've been in facilities like this before, haven't you? Haven't you?"

"Dude, this is the first time I've ever been in...." Well, there was the Mistra facility, he thought and the power plant in Genosha but they couldn't be that similar, could they? Kyle snapped his mouth shut, and held up a hand. "Hold on, hold on, hold on, let me think. I have a buddy who said something once about places having only a couple of kinds of designs." Fuck, what had Forge said - he'd been half cranked on Red Bull and talking a mile a minute and Kyle had tuned half of it out in favor of playing Team Fortress 2. Emergency controls, something about power - some way to open doors if the power went out and people had to evacuate. They had them in the lower levels in the mansion, even.

The walls were metal sheets in tall sections. He picked the one closest to the side of the door with the keypad, and kicked at it with the heel of his foot. It gave a solid thunk, with no give, and Kyle kicked again, just to be sure. "You think you can kick walls? Might not be a sure thing but might be a manual release behind a wall panel. I'm guessing though, man, I wasn't in any program. I'm here because my mom fucked someone, I guess." He moved across to the next panel and gave it a sharp kick. "Seriously, I don't have a decade, man. The longer I'm down here the closer I get to dead."

"You're not from the program? Then-" His voice trailed off. For a moment, WEAPON T24 sagged, before suddenly straightening. "Ah." With one hand, he spun Kyle back around, and sliced up his chest with a hand now tipped with bony protrusions.

"He's not," Wade said, coming around the corner with guns drawn. "But we are." He fired three shots in quick succession, two at the weird dude's shoulder and one at his leg just to see if they'd have any impact on him. You never could tell with weird dudes, especially ones in former WeaponX labs.

The figure jerked momentarily, and then threw his arm forward, as if he was throwing a baseball. A ball of mucus-y liquid hit Wade square in the throat, and started to burn deeply. The liquid actually moved on his skin, clawing like a living creature as smoke rose from the skin. In Kyle's wounds, pus was already starting to dribble out, and he could feel the tearing as something grew in the rents he'd torn into him.

Using Wade's entrance as a distraction, Logan charged around the corner straight for the figure, who seemed unhurt. Well shit, there went the quick in and out they were hoping for. He dodged another thrown slimeball to come within reach and slash at the outstretched arm with both sets of claws. "C'mon, bub, do you hafta make us go the hard way?"

His claws tore into one arm, but the other slammed into Logan's stomach. It pierced deep into his gut, and suddenly shot outward. From out of Logan's skin burst strange, sharp creepers, latching on to his body.

The growing weakness in Kyle's limbs passed as adrenaline shot through him, and he leapt, grabbing at the back of Weapon 24's suit. The leaping attack was clumsy - a rough bodyslam, and not the purposeful tackle Kyle had intended, but it connected, staggering the strange man, and leaving smears of Kyle's blood on the suit where his skin had sloughed off wetly.

He fell to his knees. As Kyle grappled with him, WEAPON Thetagen reached into the partially exposed cavity, grabbing a handful of Kyle's intestines and simply tore them free.

Wade had holstered one gun and gone for the neck of his shirt as soon as he felt the acidic burn start. He kind of liked having a windpipe. It was good for that whole 'breathing' thing that was so hot these days. He attempted to wipe as much of the liquid off as he could, skin coming off as he worked, but he thought that was likely the lesser of two evils at the moment. Wheezing as he inhaled, the act as painful as it sounded to his own ears, the mercenary focused on the man who'd tossed the acid at him.

Bullets hadn't done much of anything but claws seemed to have something of an impact. He holstered his second gun and reached for his belt, opening a small pouch and pulling out a garrote made of thick, flexible wire. He moved quickly, rounding the bloody brawl his friends were involved in as he sought an angle from which to attack. His aim wasn't the throat, though, but the hands. The garrote might not hold for long, but it would give them all a moment to regroup if they could subdue the man momentarily. That, or it'd give Logan a chance to decapitate him. Wade was all for that plan.

This was messed up even for WeaponX. Logan dropped back to claw off the vines trying to envelop his body from the inside out. He felt them tearing through him like a vicious parasitic worm and it wasn't doing much to help his mood. He staggered back onto his feet and snarled when he smelled fresh blood and saw intestines where they shouldn't be. He caught sight of Wade circling and looking for an opening. Guess he better do what he did best.

He charged T24 with a roar and smashed into him hard to get him away from Kyle. This time he knew better and was immediately slashing at both arms to keep them from causing other weird shit to invade his body. He tried to pinion both arms through with his claws but the asshole was proving faster than he looked. Logan took a hard blow along his side, grunting with the impact. He tasted blood in the back of his throat, which he then spat into T24's face.

Something was growing in his neck. Wade was pretty sure there'd been some kind of spore involved in that loogie the bastard had chucked at him. He was really beginning to hate spores, no matter what Callie said about how precious all the little plants and things were. Moving with a burst of speed, Wade waited until T24 had committed to his attack against Logan before looping the garrote catching one of the man's wrists and twisting the wire so it would hold, at least momentarily, before using Logan's hold on the other arm to secure T24's other wrist.

Memories flooded Kyle's thoughts, bits of recorded trauma coming up like gorge - pushing his torn guts back into his abdomen while lying in a filthy alley. The fear that he might die here was as real as the fear from then - but tempered. He remembered surviving the last time, it wasn't all instinct and fear causing him to shove the loops of intestine back inside before his stomach healed over the wound. He knew the symptoms of shock, because ~Jesus fucking Christ Laurie lectures on them all the time~ and he knew what sepsis was, and that he was already sick with the virus that was doing it's best to fuck them all up - the virus had to wait, he had digestive organs to heal.

The man struggled, momentarily pinned, and there was a shuddering sound as the flesh of his torso started to part, like a fanged maw. The horrible wound surged open and forward, biting down hard on Logan's stomach.

Wade made a gurgling sound of protest as he saw T24's chest attempting to eat Logan and dropped the garrote in favor of pulling Selma from her sheathe. Gripping the attacking mutant's face mask, the mercenary held him in place and rammed the knife up, through the back of T24's skull. He made sure it was well-positioned, then began wiggling it around violently. The brain couldn't make the maw continue to eat Logan if it wasn't connected to the spinal cord.

"What the fuckin' hell!" With his claws occupied, Logan couldn't avoid the insanity attempting to eat him. He attempted to kick out at T24 but the angle wasn't working. The pain was nearly blinding but the burning sensation sweeping through him was worse. It was accompanied by a numbing sensation. He ripped a set of claws free because what worse could happen? Logan started slashing at the maw, hoping to get it to release him. "You know, I always wanted to be snacked on by the program. Can finally cross that off my list of things to do."

"Dudes." Kyle pulled himself up, and stumbled to the Weapon X monster in the suit. "I think he's dead." He pulled backwards on the suit, hard, and T-24 swung out an arm violently, and wildly. "Or dying. Or the virus thing is dying."
"Yeah, maybe." Logan grunted. T24 still sure as hell seemed like it was alive though the grip the maw had on him was starting to lessen. "Better safe than sorry. Wade, let up so I can end this."

Once Wade had pulled his knife free, Logan freed his other set of claws from the dying body, pretty certain the thing couldn't get far, what with its chest still chewing on him. With a hard swipe, he decapitated the thing and watched as the head rolled on the ground for several seconds. The body almost immediately detached itself from him and slumped back to join the head on the ground.