Alex Mercer

Dr. Alexander "Alex" J. Mercer, also known as The Prototype or by his codename Zeus, was the former head researcher of the Blacklight project at Gentek. After learning that those affiliated with the project were being systematically murdered, Mercer attempted to flee the city with a sample of his research contained in a vial. Cornered at Penn Station, Mercer smashed the vial and unleashed the deadly virus into the surroundings. This triggered a viral outbreak that eventually covered all of Manhattan Island.

After awaking at a Gentek facility with no recollection of his past, Alex Mercer escaped the building, and soon discovered his new powers and abilities, granted by the virus he unleashed. He began to utilize his powers to learn more of his fragmented past, as he scoured all of New York for those responsible.

The Prototype Alex Mercer came to being as the result of exposure to a vial of Blacklight virus assimilating into its creator Dr. Alexander J. Mercer, its human host from whom he attained his identity. Dr. Mercer himself was the head of the Blacklight project at Gentek in charge of engineering weaponized viruses from samples given to them by the government. In the subsequent experimentations, the samples were provided exhibited curious behavior, including mimicry and retention of genetic information from infected hosts. In time, Dr. Mercer and his team found themselves developing a particularly virulent and potent virus codenamed "Blacklight".

As Gentek became scrutinized by Congress leading to investigations that provoked Blackwatch to kill every single Gentek scientist who was involved in the Blacklight project, Dr. Mercer attempted to escape. Thanks to his own paranoia, Dr. Mercer had foreseen the upcoming general purge thanks to Dana's assistance who had mailed a laptop with classified documents to her as part of the plan to go AWOL. Dr. Mercer had also smuggled a vial of the Blacklight virus out of quarantine and taken it with him as insurance should he got captured. Despite his efforts, the Blackwatch agents moved quickly to intercept him and ultimately cornered him in Penn Station. In a fit of frustration and rage, Dr. Mercer threw the vial to the floor, smashing it and unleashing a biological apocalypse. Where the virus rapidly infected the area. He was promptly shot by Blackwatch operatives before having his corpse taken back to Gentek in a body bag.

Unknown to everyone involved, Dr. Mercer's decision to smuggle the vial of Blacklight Virus led to an unforeseen consequences. As his body collapsed onto the viral sample, the virus was reconstructing Mercer's body, cell by cell; his biomass feeding the virus as it replicated the still-living matter it had infected, leading to the birth of first and original Prototype. The Prototype would name itself Alex Mercer after its very creator as he originally believed himself and Dr. Mercer are the same person before learning that was not the case.

Mercer woke up in a morgue on a slab just as two scientists were about to cut open his torso with a scalpel for an autopsy. The two men panicked and fled, terrified of Mercer. Mercer didn't understand why they were so frightened and had no recollection of his previous life. He ran after the scientists in an attempt to escape also.

Though Mercer was now an amnesiac, he was sufficiently aware to realize that the Blackwatch soldiers were certainly not friends when he saw them kill the two scientists as they tried to escape the facility. The soldiers noticed him, but his body regenerated the damage caused by their fire instantly. Surprising both the soldiers and himself, Mercer cleared the several feet high fence around the facility in a single leap.

After escaping, he found himself trapped in Manhattan, being pursued by the military. He soon discovered that he had the ability to consume others and take on their appearance and memories, along with their special skills.

With no recollection of his own past, Mercer decided to track down those responsible for his situation and consume them in order to uncover the truth behind what has been done to him, caught between the Blackwatch Special Forces and an ever-growing population of civilians infected by the virus he released.

On consuming Lt. Charles Perri he learned the whereabouts of his sister. Mercer hoped that his sister, Dana, would have some information regarding what happened to him, so he attempted to make contact with her. However, when he arrived at her apartment, he saw soldiers stationed around the building. He consumed a Blackwatch commander and, taking on his appearance, easily infiltrated their perimeter. When Alex entered he saw Dana being held by a Blackwatch soldier. Dana headbutted the Blackwatch soldier just as Mercer impaled him with his fist. Dana was terrified having witnessed this, but Mercer convinced her to help him. Dana told Mercer that she knew there was something wrong going on at Gentek. She did not know what had happened to Alex either, but was able to tell him what he had told her prior to his memory loss. She told Mercer that he had her researching the Gentek organization for weeks. When she went looking for him to relay her findings, he had already disappeared. The conversation incited a flashback, in which Mercer remembered seeing the ID card of Dr. McMullen. Dana then lead Mercer to a new safe house, the home of Dana's friends, who were out of town for the year. Dana already had all of the files she could get on Gentek stored in the apartment.

Dana wasn't able to tell Mercer what it all meant, but insisted that the two of them work together to uncover whatever conspiracies were at work. Dana told Mercer that since Blackwatch was waiting for her at her apartment, they must also be waiting at his. Mercer arrived at his apartment and uncovered further hints of his past life. He saw a photo of himself and Dana with a graduate certificate from the University of New York. He also saw a photo of himself with a blonde woman. When he touched the photo he experienced a flashback in which he saw himself with the woman, his ex-girlfriend Karen Parker. When the flashback was over, it was apparent that the onset of these flashbacks was painful to him. As he was recovering, Blackwatch detonated a bomb that had been planted in the apartment, meant to kill him. He astonishingly survived without a scratch, despite having been thrown out of a window and down to the streets several stories below. Mercer hunted down and consumed the man who gave the order to detonate the bomb.

Mercer returns to the safe house where Dana shows him his laptop, stored on which are photographs of a girl.

Mercer recognizes the girl. Dana tells him that the file has only two names in it: Alex Mercer and Elizabeth Greene, the girl in the photo. The file also says that she is being isolated in the Gentek building. When Mercer went to free Greene, she cryptically told him that "The time for waiting is over" and threw him across the room. Greene then disintegrated a wall by touch and sent Hunters after him as he escaped. She then took charge of the infected. He also located his ex-girlfriend, Karen Parker.

Dana continued to assist Mercer in locating his targets, while Karen promised him a cure for his disease. She first claimed that he needed to find her different samples of the virus destroying Manhattan, but once he arrived inside a nearby Hive, Mercer was ambushed by Blackwatch specialist Captain Robert Cross who used both the infected and his own soldiers as cannon fodder while he tried to take Alex down. Mercer ended up defeating him, but Cross turned the tables by distracting Mercer by mentioning 'Penn Station' and triggering a painful flashback. He injected Mercer with a biological weapon while he was distracted.

Due to the parasite Cross had injected him with, Mercer couldn't use his special powers aside from his superhuman strength and speed. He still managed to escape from Blackwatch.

Mercer returned to Dana who showed him that Blackwatch was keeping an eye on a doctor for McMullen, Dr. Bradley Ragland. Dana then told Mercer that if he finds him, Ragland can help them get to McMullen. Before Mercer left, she showed him what she found about Hope, Idaho and Greene but Mercer said Hope was an experiment. She asked how he could know that, forcing Mercer to admit that he had killed a great number of people and their minds and memories were now within him. Dana was shocked by what her brother has become.

However, with the help of Dr. Ragland, Mercer was cured, restoring his abilities and gaining him the armor and blade powers as a result. During all of this, Mercer was placed as the number one terrorist threat in the entire United States due to treasonous activities against the United States and her allies.

During one of Mercer and Dana's meetings, Dana was kidnapped by a Leader Hunter, a larger and stronger version of the normal hunters. Alex pursued this Leader Hunter across the city, but was ultimately unable to rescue Dana. With the help of Dr. Ragland, Mercer located and consumed the same Leader Hunter that kidnapped Dana, learning of her location in the core hive in the center of the city. Mercer was eventually able to penetrate the hive, where he confronted Elizabeth Greene.

Elizabeth Greene told Mercer that Dana was "with us now". During a struggle, Greene seemingly bests Mercer, but he was able to inject Greene with a syringe containing the parasite as it had been extracted from him. Greene's body rejected the parasite immediately and she vomited up a large amount of biomass, from which the Supreme Hunter was born. Mercer defeated the Supreme Hunter and saved Dana. As he left, a sinister clawed hand began to regenerate and rise from the remains of the hunter, showing the Supreme Hunter was far from done.

As the conspiracy unfolds, with the assistance of an unidentified contact, the origins of Mercer, the virus, and Elizabeth Greene were uncovered.

In 1969, the government had tested a virus codenamed Redlight in Hope, Idaho. This virus was designed as a biological warfare agent, targeting those of a predetermined race. The virus unexpectedly mutated into something far deadlier, infecting the whole population of Hope. Elizabeth Greene was the sole survivor of the incident; her body welcomed the virus rather than dying from it and it had rewritten her genetic code, along with that of her son, who was taken from her by Blackwatch and codenamed Pariah. This inspired the government to continue research into the virus, cooperating with the Gentek corporation. Scientists at Gentek locked Greene in a cell which had been used to research Blacklight, the new virus present in Greene. They continued to study the different strains of the virus that formed throughout her system as a means of accelerating the biological weapons program.

Before long, the military began to deploy a new biological agent, Bloodtox, engineered to kill the virus and its hosts.

When the chemical was deployed across the city, the infection went underground to escape it, and subsequently amassed beneath the surface. The anonymous contact told Mercer to aid the military in pumping the Bloodtox directly into the ground. They hoped that it would drive the virus to the surface, allowing Blackwatch to fight it directly. Elizabeth Greene, now embedded in a new viral organism called Mother, came to the surface and engaged Mercer in combat. Mercer killed Mother and consumed Greene.

He then attempted to confront McMullen, the Head of Research and founder of Gentek. After a grueling battle with Marines and Blackwatch between him and his target, Mercer confronted McMullen and moved in to consume him to find out what he knew. McMullen committed suicide before Mercer had the chance. It became apparent that General Randall planned to nuke Manhattan to destroy the virus. The mysterious contact, revealed to be Captain Cross, then guided Mercer to consume Colonel Taggart, who was attempting to flee the city. Cross had been ordered to capture Taggart and had Mercer impersonate him in order to get onto the USS Ronald Reagan where the bomb was being held.

Cross betrayed Mercer once on the ship, and was revealed to be the Supreme Hunter having consumed Cross at some point and taken his form. It battled Mercer on the deck of the Reagan and was subsequently decapitated by Mercer. Mercer boarded a helicopter and dropped the nuclear bomb into the Atlantic Ocean, allowing it to detonate at sea but leaving himself well within the blast radius. His remains washed up on the city shore as lumps of red tissue, but he was able to take human form after consuming a crow that attempted to devour him.

Mercer walked off thinking to himself, "What have I become? Something less than human, but also something more..." Later, Manhattan is seen in a recovering state, with the virus almost completely destroyed.

After stopping the nuclear threat, Mercer, having lost faith in humanity as a result of his own actions, went on a soul-searching trip around the world, hoping to find something to believe in. Unfortunately, throughout his travels, Mercer only found more and more reasons to hate humanity rather than protect it.

During his travels, Mercer killed a villainous African warlord and traveled to Moscow, where he came to realize that, even though humans treated one another with decency, it was all a façade and they only cared about themselves and their individual freedoms. On his way back to the U.S., Mercer freed a small town from a drug cartel, though the citizens' celebrations only further convinced Alex that humans were selfish and not worth saving. He also found whole families weren't just abandoning their own kin, but abusing them as well.
Making his way to a lumber mill in the north, Mercer took on the alias of a writer named Jack and rented out a cabin from the mill owner Flint and his daughter Autumn, the latter of whom became attracted to him. However, Flint's former business partner, Zurich, wanted the lands around Flint's lumber mill, and when it became clear that Flint would not sell, Zurich sent two thugs to kill him and Autumn. However, Mercer killed the thugs and decided to deal with Zurich himself.

Realizing that he had developed feelings for Autumn, Mercer infiltrated Zurich's base and consumed him, discovering through his memories that Flint was once a criminal involved in many murders and extortions. Enraged and disappointed, Mercer returned to Flint's cabin and, despite Flint's insistence that he had left his past behind, killed him.

Still in disguise as Jack, Mercer returned to his cabin to find Autumn there and attempted to convince her to come with him, only to discover that Autumn had stolen his money. Autumn promptly shot Mercer in the face and revealed that her father had taught her better and that she cared about herself above anything else. To her surprise, however, Mercer regenerated and consumed her, finally deciding once and for all that humanity was worthless and that it was his duty to destroy them and usher in a new and better world.

A year after the original outbreak, Mercer returned to New York City, now renamed New York Zero, and started a second Blacklight outbreak within Penn Station. Taking up residence within the city's Red Zone, Mercer proceeded to create several Evolved to infiltrate both Blackwatch and Gentek in order to destroy both, having one of them contaminate a newfound cure for the virus with his blood so as to transform even more people into infected.

There he met the man who would be his undoing, James Heller. Heller and his squad were inside an APC on patrol in the Red Zone when a car was hurled at the APC. The car struck it, flipped it violently out of control leaving Heller as the only survivor. Mercer then lured Heller further into the Red Zone until a helicopter arrived to pick up Heller. Mercer, hiding in a ruin, jumped out and destroyed the helicopter. Shortly after; Mercer sent a Goliath on Heller and oversaw him escape the creature. (Presumably to study Heller's athletic talent.) After Heller managed to find cover behind a destroyed ruin, a Brawler pounced on on him, only to be killed by the Sergeant as Mercer watched. Seeing Heller's potential, Alex infected Heller with his own virus. After this, Mercer vanished and Heller was taken by Blackwatch.

After he broke out of the lab, Mercer confronted Heller and tried to convince him to fight Blackwatch and Gentek while claiming that he wasn't responsible for Heller's family's death. Eventually, Heller discovered Mercer's plans and found the evidence that it was indeed Mercer who released the virus once more.

Over time due to Heller ruining all of his plans, Mercer confronted Heller and attempted to kill him, though ultimately failing, and fled the scene, distracting Heller by sending a Goliath to release the Whitelight while he went to kill Heller's friend Luis Guerra. Dana Mercer joined James Heller on his quest and the two of them managed to discover that Maya, Heller's daughter, was alive but locked up. But when Heller arrived at her captive site, Sabrina Galloway took his daughter to Alex Mercer. Mercer then took Dana and Maya and locked them both in a bank vault.

Before leaving, Dana told Mercer, that her real brother was dead. Mercer claimed he was now beyond Life and Death, as was Heller. Finally, Alex Mercer and James Heller faced off on top of a destroyed building with Mercer's Evolved present. Heller demanded that Mercer give him his daughter back, but Alex scoffed and spoke of his plans to make more Evolved and replace mankind as he sought to do.

Heller finally faced Mercer after the latter consumed his Evolved, including Sabrina Galloway, to become stronger and faster. Mercer used his upgraded Blade, Claws, Whipfist, and Hammerfists against Heller. Alex was able to regenerate from the wounds caused by Heller, even mocking him. But after several repeated major injuries, Mercer was beginning to weaken.

Defeated, but unconcerned by his impending death, Mercer welcomed Heller "to the top of the food chain" with a bemused tone immediately before Heller consumed him and gained a memory from him. Heller, having become extremely powerful as a result, used an expansive mass of tendrils to destroy all the infected citizens in the surrounding area, saving Manhattan from the "Mercer" virus in the process.

However, Heller appears to consume Mercer after a series of dismembering Mercer's limbs. As seen in the first installment, Mercer has the ability to regenerate his entire person from a small sample of genetic material, depending on if the tissue sample comes in contact with a living organism. Therefore, Mercer has the potential to still be active but was seen defeated (as a final event) in Prototype 2.

In the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke,