1 A Dream of the Past

The ear piercing shrieks of alarms jolted me from my sleep.

A masked man in full surgical overalls, with only his pair of violet eyes revealed, stood over me. He held a small syringe full of blue liquid with a sharp needle glinting in the light.

A rush of pain like a thousand needles pierced through my body, causing me to convulse on a hard surface in the bath of a pale blue light. I tried to scream, but I couldn't hear my voice, other than the noises of others speaking.

His cold gloved hand rolled up the sleeve of my gown, and a cooling liquid entered my veins.

In an instant, the pain faded away.

"Don't move yet. I gave you a painkiller," a masked male instructed, while patting my clenched fist with his hand.

I recognised his voice - Kaseo.

Kaseo is one of my regular cyberneticist surgeons who looked after my major cybernetic implants to enhance our physical capabilities.

His eyes remained transfixed on the monitors and the large computer platform next to me. To the side was a surgical trolley.

"Seizing, 803 is seizing from the procedure!" I heard the yell from a female.

The number allocation told me that the child is younger than ten.

Only after we turned ten years old, the High Command gifted us permanent names, a reward for surviving the earlier stages of cybernetic implantation.

My body is part machine and part flesh. They fitted me with a cybernetic relay system which ran alongside all of my nerves.

I turned my head toward the ongoing ruckus and saw nothing but the white walls of a closed, sterile and sparsely finished room within the Central Military Hospital.

The Central Military Hospital housed the family I ever knew - a group of geneticists and cyberneticists. From conception in an incubator dish to my life, I went in and out of the hospital's sterile laboratories for the staged surgical cybernetic surgeries, check ups and training rehabilitation.

Several voices talking in my head at the same time, causing me to experience a slight migraine.

Somehow, I knew by the neuro-inhibitor drugs they were calling out for, 803 whoever it is, is dying.

One out of three children never survived the major neural pathway surgery in which the surgeons insert the core neural chip into our mid-brains and connect the neural relays of the chip to other parts of the brain.

Hence, the High Command restricted this surgery to the military class children.

"Ah, you can hear - so the improved cochlear implants are working," Kaseo interrupted the noises in my head after noticing me covering my ears.

I kept moving my mouth to ask about 803, but no words left me.

"Well, since you are awake, we might as well test out your new implants," Kaseo said as his fingers tapped on one monitor. "Now to lower the amplification in your cochlear implants…"

His hand reached for a knob on the panel. While he turned it, the voices grew softer and softer before the silence.

"Can you hear anything now?"

"Ahhh…," I could only make a guttural sound after the surgery.

In frustration, I shook my head.

My voice sounded unfamiliar after the laryngeal implant in my voice box. I ran over my neck while gulping down. Oddly, no pain or bumps.

"You won't feel the implant," Kaseo mentioned as he tapped on the panels to adjust. "After a few days, your voice will return to normal. There's also a pleasant surprise for you."

"Ahh…?"

"With that new implant of yours, you can imitate other people's voices, match their tone and pitch exactly."

Cool. I smiled at the thought of bypassing voice activation commands now.

Then he dropped the bomb.

"But it requires training to do neural pairing with your galactic translator in your head."

I rolled my eyes at him while he chuckled in amusement.

Two lines of words rolled across my vision and I tilted my head, confused. My optical implants never showed me these lines of command before.

[Atomites activated]

[Laryngeal implant activated]

"Try speaking again and tell me what you read," Kaseo said with his eyes stuck on the monitor, displaying the speech waves.

"Ahhh… atomites… ahhh… activated, laryngeal implant ahhh… activated."

"This ahhh…," He turned to me with a big frown on his face. "did you intend to say it?"

I shook my head.

"No… only when I want to say something like ahhh… atomites. But what… ahhh… are… ahhh… atomites?"

"Hmmm, still needs adjustments," He replied, ignoring my question.

He gestured for me to try again after he gave the screen a few more taps.

"What are atomites?"

"Sit up," he said as he went to the surgical trolley and pulled the top drawer out.

I sat up and watched him digging around in the drawer.

He took a scalpel and handed it to me. "Slash your palm to find out."

I hesitated at the offered scalpel. What did he mean by slashing my palm?

"If you want to find out what they do, slash your palm."

I studied his eyes carefully to check if he was joking. He didn't flinch at my stare and stood his ground.

I reached out for the scalpel and took it from him, while wondering what the newfangled tech they inserted into my body again for the umpteenth time.

With a deep breath, I slashed the palm of my left hand and a sharp pain caused me to yelp. Blood flowed from the new gaping wound. A strong warm sensation rushed from my left arm to the palm and I noticed a silvery web forming over my gaping wound.

Another blink of my eye and the wound disappeared along with the pain, leaving my left palm scar less.

"What is… this?"

"Work of the atomites, body repair robots as small as atoms. Now you don't need bandages for wounds. They form —"

The door slid open, interrupting us. A frantic staff member at the door cried out, "Sir, we need your help with 803! We can't stop his seizures!"

Kaseo stood up and bid me to stay in the room. After the door closed, I hopped off the platform and started entering the passcodes on the command terminal to look at my summary file.

<Subject: Tuku Genja, aged 18>

<Program: Elite Operative Cadet>

<Class: Military>

< Past Cybernetic Implants: optical, cochlear, nervous system, brain neural core chip, core organs backup, musculoskeletal nervation>

<New: Experimental atomite system (lymphatic system) >

<New: Laryngeal implant>

I clicked onto the atomite option to read further into whatever the heck they installed in my body.

<Capability: self replication, body repair, artificial intelligence>

A tingling sensation irritated the slashed but healed palm, distracting me from the screen.

I lifted my palm to inspect, noticing a few tiny bulges moving slowly under my skin where the slash used to be. My eyes narrowed down on one bulge moving up and down.

The bulges burst open, spilling large tendrils of shadowy black wisps from my opened wound onto the floor, slowly engulfing the room.

I froze in horror at the dark shadows forming in the room. No, it can't be.

I staggered backwards while sudden screams from one of dying conscripts in the space squadron echoed in my head.

No, that devastating war didn't take place until I was far older.

This is not reality, I kept telling myself. Nothing is making sense.

[Alert: alarm activated] appeared in front of me.

A bright flash of light burst out, blinding me.

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