Chapter Text
Never Jump Sharks
by Lokemele
Adam Pierson swore in several languages as he read the words which glowed out from the computer monitor. He should have realized Kronos' allies would have kept some of the virus for themselves.
Though his medical degree was decades out of date, he'd had more than enough opportunity to catch up on the latest advances while he'd recovered from being held captive, experimented on, and tortured by an American pharmiceutical company. They'd had the assistance of an Immortal who had called himself Mr. Smith, but was recorded in the Watchers' Archives under a number of names starting with Quintus Metellus Pollio and including Tomas de Torquemada. Smith had been trying to break Pierson and get him to reveal the names and locations of other Immortals. It had become his obsession, and Pierson had killed him for it.
He'd spent months in a private facility for government agents who'd "gone off the deep end" but knew too much to be treated in regular institutions. He'd spent even more time at a secret facility in the French countryside, founded by an Immortal and specializing in the needs of those people.
It was while he was there that he heard the first rumors of the continued existence of Kronos' virus, from one of the other patients. He'd been skeptical at first. He'd spent weeks at Bordeaux making sure everything in that lab had been burned, melted down, and/or vitrified, sealed away in an underground bunker which had immediately been covered in several dozen meters of concrete.
In vain, as he'd come to learn.
He'd started by having a few people check out his fellow patient's claims and learned to his horror they were true -- the people who'd developed the engineered virus for his former "brother" had kept samples for themselves. They'd gone on to offer it to an unscruplous billionaire with ties to terrorist groups, who'd greedily agreed to their terms.
He'd hunted down the people who'd worked on the virus and pointed out their mistakes -- just before making sure they'd never make them again. He used the information he "persuaded" out of them to locate his next target.
And in the course of events he'd learned some old friends were indirectly involved.
He'd run across a young man with the improbable sorbiquet of Jimmy Bond, who was looking for a woman who had used the alias Yves Adele Harlow. It turned out the lady was the daughter of the billionaire and had been trying to foil his plans.
It also turned out Jimmy was working for The Lone Gunmen, a trio of men to whom he owed his life and sanity. He only hoped he could keep them far away from the horror he was chasing.
He hoped New Jersey was far enough away, because the trail went there.
And from what he'd just read, there was very little time.
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He'd picked up the trail at a small New Jersey college, and almost immediately ran into Jimmy, who told him he'd seen Yves, whom he now knew as Lois. Pierson gave the young man a false lead, hoping he could keep the Gunmen away.
He should have known better.
He'd hoped he could find the other carrier and dispose of the body before the container dissolved and the virus was released.
But the Gunmen were too good, and they'd -- unfortunately -- found him first.
Leading them to give their lives for the good of others.
If only it were that simple.
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TBC