Moments of silence filled the room. Blackow gave no expression at all, no reaction, just trying to grasp what Lloyd just said.
Lloyd had seen how blackow acts.
"We arrived when the corrupted had marched further. We found you on top of your mother. I wished my eyes were deceiving me, but you were indeed munching on her already dead body. There was nothing to be saved."
"My men tried to kill you, thinking you were just a stray monster. I stopped them and ordered them to retrieve you and the lifeless body of your mother, and another person found near you."
"On board, you passed out multiple times. After chaining you with what we got on the chopper, you cried, just cried. This is what gave me hope that you were still there, still not consumed by that virus, and it turned out that my feelings about you were right."
Blackow stared, just like a statue, at Lloyd's being. No words can describe what was eating away at his soul.
Lloyd stepped closer to him. Nobody ever dared to do so, their bones aching with fear. But Lloyd? He knew he had a son to look out for.
Blackow quickly snatched his hands, pressing them hard, lifting his head to meet Lloyd's eyes, desperate for any sign of a lie.
"Please, uncle! You are lying right?! I know you like playing around. Tell me this is one of your games!"
Lloyd only stared down, pulling his hands away from Blackow's grip, no words to be added.
Then sounds of screams and cries broke out.
Nothing could fix this now. There is no way back. It is the reality Blackow is to face now. This is what Lloyd told himself to keep his legs steady.
Lloyd turned to face Lane and the nurses and guards who were peeking from the windows, gestured for them to leave the room, and they gladly did.
Blackow kept crying, begging Lloyd to at least let him see his mother, but he refused: "There is no way you get out of this room without a leash powerful enough to withstand your jaws."
At the sight of Blackow's shattered world, Lloyd couldn't hold himself from embracing him, as if he was seeing his late son.
*****
On that graveyard, Lloyd and Lane were waiting for their other companion, Melvern, who was the ride for Lloyd's wife. They stood in front of Kerielle's grave. Before she was put in her coffin, Lloyd had never shed a tear since his son's funeral, and there he was, departing from his fake shell of stability and calm. She was no ordinary person to him; she was his friend before she was his other friend's wife. He wasn't sure what to write on her stone, but he knew that she trusted him and his will, so he ordered for her fake identity to be carved: Alea Arakyle, a loving wife and resilient mother.
She was finally laid and buried. He never thought that one day he would stand in front of her grave, just as he stood in front of her husband's, Eron.
Her ending wasn't painless. She had to suffer for nobody knows how long, and no one can imagine how she felt, being eaten by her own son in her final moments. What a terrifying end that must be.
Lloyd went through a lot in his life, saw hundreds of deaths. Only a few were stuck in his mind, and sadly, this is added to his unforgotten memories.
Finally, Melvern arrived. He stepped gently out of the car first, reached for Lloyd. When he got too close, Lloyd started wiping his tears off quickly, as if he was embarrassed to let anyone see him in this state.
"Sir, they are here," a calm voice said. It was Melvern's, but for Lloyd, it wasn't calm at all. He was in a terrible state. He had to face his wife, and their daughter too. The daughter had no issues with him, unlike her mother.
Kamilia stepped out of the car quickly, almost running toward her father. She slammed into him in a quick and emotional embrace.
With his only right arm, Lloyd gently patted her head, breathing in the scent of the brown hair she had inherited from her mother.
She forced her tear-drenched green eyes up to meet his gaze, the eyes she inherited from him, her breath hitching as she asked:
"Dad… please tell me it isn't true! Aunt Alea is dead?!"
He had no answer but to point to the newly buried grave. The stone displayed Blackow's mom's fake identity in clearly carved lines.
She buried her face into his chest again, only to whisper under her hitching breath:
"What about Bee…?! Is he okay, father?!"
Lloyd sighed at the sight of his daughter gasping for air from crying, nodding slowly:
"Don't worry about him little butterfly. I will get you to meet each other, but not for now."
He continued hesitantly:
"He is a little hurt. Soon he will get out of the hospital."
She hugged him even tighter as he finished delivering the bad news.
He bit his lip from the inside, not satisfied with the fact that he just lied to his daughter, but he had to do it this time, telling himself that his place is somewhat a hospital.
He sighed heavily for the thousandth time this morning. This was just a thought he distracted himself with to avoid facing reality.
He was not prepared to meet Alba.
She walked gently, accompanied by Melvern, toward them. She passed Lloyd and their daughter without a word, leaned toward Kerielle's grave, and started crying quietly.
He wasn't brave enough to murmur a word to her. He left her to cry without disturbance, hoping she would get up and say anything, a word to him.
But she didn't. She walked back, grabbed Kamilia by her arm, and got back to the car.
Melvern and Lloyd exchanged nods, and Melvern took them away.
Lane stepped closer to Lloyd and murmured, "She's quite a difficult one, isn't she?"
Lloyd gave a slow nod, his fine blond strands shifting softly. "Indeed, she is."
*****
Back to Blackow, it's been hours since his mother's funeral. Hours that felt stretched far longer than normal، the feeling of a suffocating blade on his throat wasn't willing to stand back. He hadn't left his bed, hadn't even moved unless his body forced him to.
That thought kept circling, back and forth, tearing through whatever remained of his sanity.
Whenever it surfaced—how he had done it, how he had eaten his own mother—his stomach twisted violently, and he vomited again.
There was nothing left in him to throw up, yet his body refused to stop.
He stared at the mess beneath him, trembling with a shallow, uneven breath. His mind wouldn't let go of it.
"What if that's her…?"
What if what he was looking at—what his body had rejected—was her?
A broken sound escaped his pained throat, something between a choke and a whimper, as his hands clenched into his hair, pulling harshly, as if pain could drown the thought out.
Outside, nurses stood frozen behind the glass, watching him like he was something unstable, ready to snap. Coming inside was the last thing any of them could think of.
Suddenly, the door burst open.
Lane stepped inside.
As always, composed—cold. Observing. Measuring.
Lane, as a doctor, had that habit. He didn't see people first. He saw conditions.
"Boy, I know what's in your mind right now. This isn't your mom's remains. You blacked out for two days straight before you woke up today, and don't worry again, Lloyd said you vomited when you were aboard, so no, you didn't digest your mother."
For a moment—just a moment—there was silence.
Then something in Blackow broke.
He snapped. Voice cracking, raw and unstable:
"As if that would make it any better..! I feel sick… I feel like shit! I'm the worst to ever live! I shouldn't even be alive! I just want to disappear, I want to die and get lost—I don't want to remember what I heard!"
His voice turned hoarse, on the verge of breaking:
"I can't live with this… I can't live knowing I'm a complete orphan now—because of me… because I was the one who killed her… I killed my own mom…!"
His chest heaved violently, breath hitching as if each inhale was a struggle. His hands shook uncontrollably, nails digging into his own skin, as though he was trying to tear something out from inside himself.
"I can feel it—I can taste it—"
He gagged mid-sentence, turning away as another wave of nausea hit him, his body folding in on itself.
"I can't—" his voice collapsed into a whisper, barely audible, "I can't get it out of my head…"
Lane scratched his chin. "I can't blame you, but hey, we got some good news for you, but I'm not sure how to deliver it in a way your small brain can receive."
Blackow's head snapped up.
There was something wrong in his eyes now—fractured.
He spat on the ground, his voice laced with fury and disbelief:
"Are you kidding me?! How can you speak so calmly like I didn't get turned into a monster?!"
"No, I mean you are such a unique condition. As you know, the virus is transferred by any form of bodily fluids entering the body, and as you already know, whoever gets corrupted, there is no way to de-corrupt them. You are a new and unseen condition. Your genes were able to mutate once again. The mutation process is when the virus takes over your mind and cells. It breaks them down and reconstructs them in a new form and way, which results in new chemical reactions throughout your body. This is what's known before you. Now, I'm not sure how you did it, but your body reacted once more, shifting your cells again. Your whole anatomy changed and returned to normal, which has never been witnessed before. It happened multiple times and in no time too, shifting back and regaining your mind, although I'm not sure you regained all of your memories, as you didn't know that you killed your mom, which might affect your life. However, you are still unstable, as when you were in a coma, your body transformed three times. You were not conscious, yes, but you did it."
Blackow frowned when Lane stopped speaking, demanding him to continue, which he did:
"Your cells are healthy, and the coding of your DNA is mutated, which also resulted in your sperm being affected. This might not sound so amusing, but the corrupted produce sperm with their original body code, and then you know. They transfer the virus from the wombs."
Lane adjusted his glasses:
"which is what's strange with you, as you didn't produce sperm with your original DNA code. Yours shifted once more. You shifted the virus's effect on your genes once, your sperm shifted twice. That means that you can still reproduce. Which nothing special really as the corrupted also do, This was the good news. But the bad news is the genes of your child will eventually shift back to a condition similar to yours, kind of a momentary lock that will break when it's time."
Blackow gave him a perplexed look, so he asked, terrified: "How did you get my sperm?"
Lane's cold expression faltered. He held his hand in disappointment.
"Oh, of course you didn't catch anything but the word 'sperm'! Such a generation only focuses on sexual topics."
Blackow frowned once more at Lane, who sighed at Blackow's expression.
"Don't look at me like that! no one laid a hand on you. We went with the moral way and used a device to produce electric signals to seduce your brain and extract your sperm, definietly not manually."
A hint of relief settled on Blackow's face, which Lane noticed.
"You seem relieved we didn't touch you more than the fact you hadn't digested your mother."
"Does your ass itch? Why do you have to be a bag of shit?!"
Lane gave a slight, uncertain pout.
"I guess it's a talent."
He turned to face the heavily reinforced metal door. As he was stepping out, Blackow shouted in a tone that mixed concern and confusion behind him:
"Hey! Bag of shit! Lloyd said something about retrieving a man found near us at the site. Is that pig dead?"
With fury poisoning the tail of his sentence.
Lane glanced back. A clear look of interest appeared in his eyes, rubbing his chin with understanding.
"Huh."
"No, he is in a critical condition, in the next room to yours."
And he continued his way, smiling.
Leaving these words to Blackow, words he clearly knew would set Blackow into waves of fury.
Lloyd kept that guy alive for answers about the situation back at the gas station. But if Blackow showed hatred toward this guy, why waste time calculating if they could unleash Blackow on him? Using him as fuel for an experiment is better than asking boring questions that can never change reality. It happened anyway. Knowing what happened won't change a thing. Plus, knowing what? He was bitten, and that's all that was needed to cause this chaos.
These were the thoughts Lane told himself on his way to the main room of this massive underground facility.
*****
At night, while everyone was sleeping, Blackow couldn't sleep. How could he sleep, knowing his mother's killer is in the next room?
Blackow kept burning inside until he finally decided to leave the bed. He wasn't tied anymore since he woke up, but he was still attached to medical wiring and pipes, and he had no idea how to remove them.
So he used the primitive way, tearing up what couldn't be removed with the traditional way.
Finally, he put his bare feet on the ground and pushed himself upwards with all his might. He felt like he hadn't moved in decades, stretching his body like he got out of a coffin.
He got up because he saw something. That door was slightly opened, barely pouring light from the hallway. He walked slowly like he was testing a new body toward the door. As he reached it, he lunged forward, slamming into it to push it open. He raised his gaze to the security camera above, grinning as if he was mocking the security.
And stepped out into the cold, well-lit hallway. He gasped the air that held a weird smell. He spat.
The guard noticed after falling into drowsiness. As he reached for his phone to notify other guards and Lloyd, a cold hand set on his, lowering it away from the device.
"Don't."
Lane shook his head to the panicked guard.
"Watch history unfolds."
Blackow walked like a zombie to the next room, the only moving thing in the long silent hallway.
He approached the next room at last and peered through the windows at the one sleeping on the bed, linked with devices and pipes even more than he was, along with body structure supporters.
He was wrapped like a mummy, wounded and bitten possibly in every inch of his body.
And he was awake, clearly awake, although he wasn't moving his head, his eyes irritated in panic as they settled on that figure behind the windows, waving and smiling at him. Like a ghost.
It wasn't any smile—it held the shadow of vengeance.
Blackow glanced around to scan the hallway for anything to be used as a weapon.
And there it was, an emergency hammer, a lot bigger than his nail hammer. The new hammer even had a serrated point on one of its sides, perfect for penetrating skulls.
"How ironic," Blackow murmured as he moved to get it.
He wasn't about penetrating this man's skull. He didn't want him to die without agony.
He took it out of its chamber and walked back slowly.
At that time, he wasn't a fourteen-year-old boy. He moved in an uncanny way, a posture only seen in a serial killer.
The loose door slowly slid inwards, revealing a demon with a massive hammer standing behind it. It was no child for the one on the bed.
He crept forward cautiously, in utter, deadly quiet, holding the hammer to his side, as if the hammer itself wanted it's fair share of his fear.
He crept forward cautiously, in utter, deadly quiet, holding the hammer to his side, as if the hammer itself wanted its fair share of his fear.
The man began shaking in a desperate attempt to free himself as that child approached, deformed cries erupting from him as his mouth was shut by a pipe. There was nobody to help him.
He was in the presence of a true monster, not like anything else he had seen, and surely he knew what he was capable of.
He raised his hammer.
"I told you before, didn't I?… I will give you an end you'll wish the corrupted had finished you with before you met me."
And the hammer fell.
But not onto the body on the bed. It fell, slamming the ground with a heavy clang, as its holder couldn't focus. He fell to his knees, screaming and pressing at his stomach like he was burning from the inside.
And in the eyes of Lane, it all happened.
Clapping inside the security room next to that terrified guard.
As he watched that demon, form.