Chapter 4 The Metamorphosis

Capture

The fallback point was still about 2 kilometers west. But in a warzone like this, it mattered not.

We ran hard, ducking through the collapsed alleys and shattered tunnels of this ruined city, Vecht guided us like a hound on scent. Our boots struck puddles of murky coolant contaminated water, our lungs taking drags of air so toxic it left a burning in your lungs.

The Upyr needed not to chase with footfalls, they knew that they had us.

Ventral lagged, his rhythm off. He kept glancing at the stretcher rig we had not brought, and towards where jex should have been.

We cleared a collapsed overpass, and thats when we saw it.

A dull green flare blinking under the twisted chassi of a old troop transport.

The extraction point.

A Valkyrie class gunship hovered about 3 meters off the ground, it's gravitic repulsors kicking up debris and dust. It's side door hung open like an invitation, beckoning us to get in. We were 20 meters out.

Then the upyr hit.

"Get the fuck down!" Rorke yelled, slamming Vendral into cover as plasma bolts hissed past.

We scattered behind a slagged civilian hauler. Vechted shouted into the squad comms…

Nothing. Our comms were being jammed. 

"Go!" I barked. "I'll cover!"

"Hell no," Vecht protested.

But I was already up, spraying suppressive fire towards the source of the jamming pulse. 3 silhouettes flicked in and out of view like apparitions of armor and static.

Vendral hauled Marik towards the evac. Rorke covering him. Vecht grabbed my shoulder on his way past. His eyes met mine, and he muttered, "Get out. Or don't."

I nodded.

And then they were gone.

The valkyrie lifted, hatch closing mid run.

Rorke dragging Vendral in by the collar. I saw marik attempting to join me but getting knocked out by Vecht.

I turned to run.

And that's when they hit me.

Something screamed in my head, a signal. It froze every nerve like static through bone. My limbs spasmed and I hit the ground hard.

Dark shapes loomed over me,they injected something into me and I soon dove into unconsciousness.

When I awoke I was pinned upright to what seemed to be a metal table, the air was frigid and stinking of chemicals. I felt groggy and could feel where the blood has dried on my skin. Purple bruises blossomed across his body, after a few beats, I noticed that I was naked. I tried to free myslef but I was clamped into place. I tried to calm myself, some time had elapsed since I was captured, hopefully enough time for the squad to have escaped and reach the fortress and organize for a search.

I tried to look around, it was a fruitless effort for my neck was clamped in place. From what I could see, this room was small, like a prison cell. Its walls were clad full of what looked to be medical apparati. 

"My squad will be here to save me" I assured myself, "it's almost over" I started as the door opened.

In walked a cogmind who gazed blankly at him, Cogminds were humans that were captured and converted into semi conscious slaves, used in Upyr prisons and labs to assist with grotesque procedures. behind it was a Fleshwright, I started to thrash in terror, an animalistic instinct that proved useless. The Cogmind approached with faltering steps. It might have been a woman once, there was something feminine about the patch of dead hair that reached down to its shoulders from the right side of their scalp.

Either way, it paid no heed to my terrified pleas, in it's hand held a syringe which it used to inject a paralytic into my person. The fleshwright stepped forwards with an electro drill and behind it, a line of cogminds waited silently, carrying tools and bionics and gears. 

As the fleshwright started drilling into my body I wanted to scream, feeling my skin corkscrew away as the drill chipped away at my body, the paralytics doing nothing to dull the pain. My vision swam in agony, but this was cut short and returned to sharp focus as one of the cogminds injected me with a concoction of life saving drugs. I felt as my blood swim from the holes the Fleshcrafter had made in me, another cogmind stepped forwards, handing it a blackthorn cortex array, I had seen those on the backs of elite Upyr soldiery, those bastards were gonna turn me into a weapon. 

They installed it at the back of my skull. I remember the sound, not of pain, but of the rewiring. Thoughts flickered and danced around in my mind, my senses which have since been dulled by pain have suddenly become heightened. I was no longer just watching the corridor. I was feeling every vibration, every breath in the air, and making calculations on how to kill each person in the room.

My fingers twitched, it felt as though my skin was in a dichotomy of burning and frostbite. My spine burned, strengthened, armored.

Next, the fleshwright took a saw and started taking off my arm. I started to thrash once more, nearly tearing through my restraints, the wall mounted servo arm activated and pinned me down as my left arm ripped away, my arm tearing and giving way to a spurt of blood, next went my right arm. The next cogmind stepped forwards, presenting forth a vaguely needle shaped container of an oily black slurry.

I thrashed. Begged. Screamed. It was all for naught.

With a single thrust, the it stabbed the syring into my chest. Right between the ribs, not deep, but far enough to feel it slide along bone, and for a moment, nothing.

Then whatever was split apart like a metal flower, unfolding inward rather than out, digging deeper with a sickening wet sound. Something was injected, not liquid. A swarm. Like fire made of insects.

Nanomachines, angry and precise, crawling through my bloodstream like ants marching to war.

By now I was in convulsions.

Pain erupted behind my eyes. My nerves lit up like burning wire. I felt as they infiltrated every stem, tearing down muscle, stitching new tissue, and rewriting code in my blood.

My chest heaved. The slurry was rewriting me.

My bones groaned. My skin twitched. My breath caught and never fully came back.

The nanomachines had taken root.

Inside me, a new rhythm emerged. Not of a heartbeat, but a processing cycle. I can feel it ticking through me like a second heart. Thoughts became vectors. Pain became data. And time bent at the edges.

And then…

And then my fucking arms reformed.

Not of flesh, not anymore.

The stumps churned with black liquid that hardened, reshaped, realigned. A blade, a claw, then a hand that was not mine. The metal shimmered with subtle pulsations like it was breathing.

My new limbs twitched, slick with forming armor, the metal hissing softly as it cooled into shape. I wanted to scream, I wanted to claw my now foreign face off and forget what they had done to me, but I was still strapped onto that table.

A cogmind approached, slower this time, the cortex array told me that in its hands it cradled a neural scaffold unit. It was pulsing with dim light and etched with alien glyphs that danced in impossible geometries. It handed the damned thing to the felshcrafter, who jammed into the cortex array.

That's when the real invasion began.

It wasn't of pain. It was... intrusion.

My mind was no longer private. Something crept into my thoughts, scraping against memories like a blade through old film. I saw flashes, my squad, faces half-remembered. My name, buried beneath static. I tried to hold on, to cling to it all.

But the psycho indoctrination had begun.

"You are no longer a man."

"You are a function."

"You are a tool."

The voice wasn't a sound. It was inside. Whispered into the cracks between thoughts. Subtle at first suggestion, compliance, erosion.

They played memories of my past on a loop, cutting them apart, rearranging them with surgical precision. Jex's face flickered, then warped. Vendral's voice echoed, twisted, mocking, not his. They rewrote emotion. Where there was grief, they wrote contempt. Where there was fear, they inked obedience.

A wash of bliss followed commands. A spike of pain punished resistance.

My vision blurred. I wasn't just watching my life anymore, I was being reprogrammed to forget it.

A flood of neurostatic drowned the thought before it finished.

My "arms" pulsed again, and then they snapped into spearpoints as if by reflect, my body responded before my thoughts could, like a dog that only knew how to bite.

I couldn't cry. I couldn't scream.

But in the silent halls of that upyr lab, I began to forget how to want to.