Alex debates on what to do about the wound, it causes great pain from time to time and it bothers him having something so forgiven stuck in him.

He begins examining for other signs of pain, running a hand down his toned chest, focused on feeling any internal issues. His muscles tense as soon as he hears the resounding crash.

Alex reaches for her, alarmed suddenly. “Lisa? Are you alright?” He watches Alice become a nurturing mother figure and wonders for a moment.

He pats the ground next to him, offering Alice to sit with him. He hasn’t been touched in a long, long time. He almost wants to flinch; he’s forgotten how it felt on bare skin. His broad shoulders shudder for a moment, his smooth, pale body ripples with anticipation. The way he shifts for a second reveals more than just a sleek upper body; his jeans cling to his strong hips, the bones sticking out just a bit, leading down south. Half of the physiology and pleasing genetics he owes to Alexander, but as for the strength and filling out of the frame he owes to himself, Blacklight.

Alice sucks in a breath and holds it, knowing full well her face has turned cherry red. Yet. Again. His shift in sitting had caught her off guard, then again everything about him ends up catches her off guard. Feeling uneasy and a bit awkward, she glances around the room.

"It looks like a thin piece of metal.." Alice observes quietly. "I won't ask how, but I need tweezers to get it out. And I know Lisa is going to need some pain pills by the looks of it.." Looking over at Lisa, Alice felt a pang of pity.

"There's sure to be some somewhere at student health, it's on the other side of campus but I can get there and get back quick. I know my way around." Glancing at the clock again, she threw on her backpack. She knew the sun was just about to set.

What. Is. He. Doing. To my face?

It suddenly occurred to Lisa that this Alex had no sense of boundaries or social norms as his fingers were suddenly all over her facial area.

She was crimson. Beet. Fracking carnation red. All of the rouge crayolas, that was her face. And he was touching it.

He offers to go with Alice. She really shouldn't be alone on campus in the dark, I mean, that's a rule even when it's not the zombie apocalypse.

But.... Lisa was afraid to be left alone. A small part of her was thinking "ditch the injured one, she'll drag us down" and her face sunk as she pulled away from Alex's hand, sitting up, holding her hip. Now why couldn't he have inspected that?

"I can," *wince* "come with you guys too. I mean, I can walk. It's mainly my arm. We need to stick together in case something happens."

Alex was alert and close to her side, keeping up his end of the bargain. He made a low groan and relaxed, not bothering to button his shirt as he rubs his red fringed eyes.

“I used to be able to level a street.” There’s something sad in his voice like he’s missing something. He stays quiet for a long time. "I'm sorry, I pick the worst topics to denote on." Despite being the living sentient Blacklight virus himself he seems to take pity on humans and has a conscious. Alex knows that if he were to release his virus it would overrun the cancer cure mutagens and make more than walkers, but grotesque abominations. There’s something about it that makes him sick to his stomach, any infection now makes him feel ill and disgusted about his disposition in the first place. Sentient beings strive to fit in and try to make sense of human emotion, often failing to do so. You think he would have learned by the last a hundred years. His eyes focus on something else as he stifles a large yawn with a hand, not wanting to scare off his company with the sight of his teeth. He keeps his mouth covered for a few seconds before dropping his hand.

Before when he would yawn, plucky teens would shoot out “Dude! Awesome filing job!” Then Alex would get nervous because his canines, bicuspids, and incisors were pointed naturally by the virus to help him consume things and keep a hold on prey. It’s not something he likes to talk about, but if someone were to politely ask to see his teeth, he would oblige to opening his mouth. He’s even let others touch them, asking if they had any cuts on their hands and just warning them to wash their hands after coming in contact with his saliva. He had a purely carnivorous diet, but he did enjoy the other food groups.

Following the hallway Alice studied the sign coming up in front of her. Two hallways branched off to the right and left. Both were pitch black, which was something of a good sign. No movement.

Why is it that every hospital or medical center they always have confusing friggin signs?

Alice wondered to herself as she moved toward the signs direction for EXAM ROOMS 10-20. The lights blinked on ahead of her and still the hallway remained quiet. The doors were all shut, the lights dark behind the small window panes of smoked class. Alice paused though.. Exam room 12.. There was a glow coming from behind the glass. Looking at the door, it was cracked open and on the floor a large smear of blood as if something had been dragged. Her stomach hit the floor as she stood still, listening. She strained her hearing but all she could hear was the heavy pounding of her heart in her ears..

Alice took a step forward, then another and another. Each step felt like she was stepping on glass, alerting the world of her presence. When she reached the door her hands, shaking with raw fear touched the false wooden door. Noises started to fill her ears as she leaned over and peeked through the crack of the door frame above the middle hinge.

Blood was everywhere, coated on everything. There sat a crouched a man, still hovering over a ruined once human corpse feeding endlessly. The zombie, still wearing the blue checked dressing gown was wearing nothing on beneath. His right arm was a mangled mess with bite marks everywhere. Suddenly feeling sick, Alice swallowed hard but the noise of her disgust was loud enough to alert Exam Room 12's occupant. His face looked up at her, his dead eyes locking her own through that tiny crack in the door as he lurched for her. Alice quickly shoved against the door but the infected fought her, trying it's best to get out and get a hold of its new meal. The battle ended quickly as she gave a good shove to the door and closed it. A bloodied hand slapped against the glass, trying to get out. Alice wasn't waiting any longer to see how long it would hold him back.

There stood a nursing station cart beside the room as the next hallway of exam rooms lit up.
Ransacking the drawers Alice found a pair of tweezers..

Drugs must have been the first to go.. No matter, we'll find some.

Banging came swiftly from the room beside her. He certainly wanted out. The handle jiggled, probably from his hands coming down from beating at the door. He was making an awful lot of noise.. Suddenly lights started flashing on from both sides of her. Infected began shuffling towards her, arms out stretched and moans loud. The door handle jiggled more as Alice's panic level rose over her head.

"Fuck." Alice exclaimed as the door handle clicked and the door swung open and the man lurched at her, growling wildly. Alice dodged his arms but her sudden, clumsy movement landed her on her butt. Crawling away as the infected man clawed toward her Alice found her foot just as he grabbed hold of her ankle pulling her down. His mouth reached her boot, trying to gnaw through the material to get to flesh but to no avail. Kicking her leg back and into the face of the infected she was freed and focused on getting out.

The infected followed, shuffled after her as she made all sorts of twists and turns through the maze of hallways.

Note to self, never come here again. Ever.

That is, if she could even get out alive. Clinging to the hope that somehow those two back at the library some how needed her, it was enough to get her through the chaos ensuing around her. The dead, apparently, are not ones to enjoy being disturbed. Making it back to the back door Alice was free, but it was dark outside. REALLY, really dark outside. These lights had her seeing spots when she arrived in the darkness. Not missing a beat though Alice clung to the memory of what was around her before she went inside. And she ran, oh did she run. Around the trees on campus and the few vehicles parked here and there until she was at the library.

Panting, exhausted and narrowly missing death, Alice fell to the floor inside the lounge. The infected had lost her, but now they were out, out of their prison inside the medical center. It was all her fault.

Looking over at Lisa she gave her a small smile letting her know she was okay, and then passed out on the floor in front of the door.

After waking halfway through early morning, Alex had practically moved around every inch of the room while they slept. When he got bored of that he sat 5 feet in front of the door, listening. He couldn’t hear anything but the sound of his companions’ breathing; it was oddly soothing to him.

He spends the next few hours awkwardly arranging the two of them on the couch. Somebody had to use it; it was vacant.

"You were in special projects? What were you working on?" One scientist turned to the other and did a frown, his striking eyes familiar, his skin not as pale as now.
“We didn't know what we were working on. I mean, I pieced it together, finally. But by then, I was hooked. It was beautiful. It kept changing. It was the single most complicated viral structure I had ever seen. All in all, I made good time. It only took me three years to make it more dangerous by a factor of ten. Morality wasn't my job. Modifying chimeric viruses was. I wasn't in field applications, I was in engineering." The living sociopath turned back to his microscope.

Alex had learned over the years accurately how to survive during an outbreak for humans. Alex could be bitten right now and nothing would happen to him. Even though he was of a different strain, he remarkably remembered his own strain being tested on cancer before.

I swear to some higher power, if I am related to these mindless things I really am through with this infection bullshit.

Difference being that all they were walkers, all he had seen from this strain was walkers, a good sign. He was open to the idea that hopefully… hopefully it was only walkers. His own strain, BLACKLIGHT DX-1118, was overly adaptable and was full of readily mutating material. There were Walkers, Hunters, Hyrdras, and other subspecies. Some didn’t even need a host, they just sprung up. But above all these mutated types there was one supreme in the hierarchy, Runners. Alex was a variant of a Runner. Runner is the codename assigned by Blackwatch to Infected individuals who capable of manipulating and spreading the virus they have been infected with. Prototype is the term used to describe individuals who have been infected by the DX-1118 C strain of the Blacklight virus. The viral strand genetically rewrites the hosts cells, re-purposing it to suit its needs. Due to the rapid changes caused by the virus, the infected individual does not survive the transformations. He had become the one and only Prototype so far. The .01% to be imbued with this much power on a genetic level. He also had a heightened sense of morality that the Runners had no concept of. Only two Runners had ever sprung up in Manhattan, Alex and Elizabeth Greene. Greene was dead. Alex had killed her when she refused to stop spreading the virus. As soon as she died, masses of infected sprung up to take orders from him. He remembered as clear as day what he had told them.

“Kill yourselves, Deteriorate into the lowest forms of harmless ions. Drown yourselves, douse yourselves in Bloodtox. Stand directly in the line of fire. Do not attack. Do not become volatile. Blacklight needs astringed from the world. Become an endangered species. Do it because I tell you to.”

Alex never released his variant again. Viruses live to spread. For the last hundred and forty-nine years Alex had suppressed that urge. Now there was another urge, kill off this threat and become dominant again. He felt an another feeling in his gut the only came around once or twice every five years. Codename Zeus lolled his head back to the ceiling and closed his eyes, thinking. He was silently praying that he wasn’t coming into heat again. He was the only living creature that was "male" that came into heat.

How embarrassing, he thought.

There was a huge difference between spreading and a Runner coming into heat. Spreading produced walkers and such, coming into heat and actually mating produced another runner. Attemoting to mate with non-infected resulted in a 5% chance of success of not killing the mother, not a good margin of positivity. Runners were typically supposed to work with one another in this topic. He was the last Runner. Truth be told, when he met other Runners in the world from where they had fled, after he had hunted them down to eradicate all of Blacklight, he hated them. They, after all this time, were ni more than walkers to him. Sure they were smarter, but they had no concept or will other than spread and mate. Like a dirty animal, an invasive species. When Alex met them, or when they had found him, Alex snuffed them out. He couldn't stand it, there was no idealism on coexisting. He was going to be the last of Blacklight ever. Now he was.

The price came with being the last of your species and very, very lonely.

He looked over at the women and noted their warm, soft skin and their scent. The way their bodies curved and filled out.

Alex looks at them quizzically, thinking hard. 36... 29... STOP. This is horrifying.

By god was he going to suppress this too until anestrus.

Alex starts to pull off the layers in a less hasty manner than last time, he slips off his trademark jacket and plays with the zipper of the sweater jacket. He removes the white dress shirt again and picks up on their reactions. This time he's uneasy and nervous, one might even say flustered. Realizing he is in heat makes this two fold more embarrassing because the light touch of skin on skin is going to make him want to hide or hug her leg from him sitting on the floor.

"This is really going to hurt, yes. But it's not helping that its there" He pathetically looks up at her. "I have a high pain tolerance. But... the only reasonable explanation for this much pain is that the needle shaft is still full of the anti-virus." Alex looked down full of worry that he was going to react strangely.

Alex's body was tense, he couldn't help it, the man's back muscles grew taut, flexing a bit. He was perfect physically, down to the heels of his feet. Soft skin that would willing shape itself for protection in the blink of an eye. He wasn't going to tell any of them about being a runner.

Or about being in heat. God no. Not about that.