SHORT STORY | FICTION| SCIENCE FICTION| MILITARY| INVASION
Upgrades
What does life hold in store for a man-made god?
“His vitals are stabilising.”
Haddon’s consciousness barely translated the words. They scraped against the walls of his skull along with a cacophony of beeps and the mechanical rhythm of assisted breathing.
His breathing.
He choked.
Hands pressed him down, and a familiar voice told him to breathe out as hard as he could. He gagged, almost puking as the obstruction in his airway withdrew.
“We’ve got you, Commander. You’re okay.”
The voice grated on his eardrums. Light burned his retinas through closed lids. He couldn’t find words. The only sound he could make fell somewhere between a growl and a groan. His entire body thrummed as if it was vibrating apart. It didn’t feel okay.
A rush of cold through the veins in his left arm brought almost instant relief. “That’ll give them something to work on until they find their levels.”
Haddon snapped his eyes open, his photosensitivity swiftly subsiding as his body calmed. “What did you do?”
Dr Marsh briefly met his gaze, then busied herself with cataloguing his readings. “We were losing you.”
A boom shook the infirmary, the lights momentarily cutting out before the emergency generator kicked in. The noise was painfully loud. His brain fired out messages as if he were scouring the daily data logs. What the hell?
Danger. North wing breeched. Enemy insurgents approaching.
Marsh had done something to him…something that was still unfolding inside him. “What did you do?” he demanded again, grabbing the woman’s wrist as she attempted to stick him with another syringe.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she countered.
The question elicited an overwhelming surge of memory. A recon mission. An enemy drone swooping in. Blood…flames…screaming… Only now did he see the dark stains soaking his uniform.
The building shook again, showering them in concrete dust. She flinched, but remained professional. “We were losing you.”
Cold seeped through him as he joined the dots. “I denied permission for a live trial until you provided more evide — ”
“If I hadn’t done it, you would be dead.”
He looked around at the personnel present, the rest of his team strikingly absent. ‘The others?”
“Already dead when we reached them.”
Another explosion. His mind fed him the data that the enemy had breached the last perimeter set to keep hold them at the north wing. Distant rapid-fire tore through the silence.
“You had no right to put those mechanical parasites in me,” he hissed, swinging his legs off the bed, before yelling, “Someone get me a rifle.”
“Not parasites. They’re symbiotes — co-existing with you, not feeding on you.”
He spun on her, and something in his expression made her take a step back. “They’ve done their job. Turn them off.”
Marsh averted her gaze, suddenly less confident. “It’s not that simple, Sir. We’d intended to build in a kill switch before starting human trials, but — ”
Rage blossomed and sank so quickly it left him unbalanced. Anger was a distraction he couldn’t afford. But was that his own thoughts, or was that the nanites talking? “You let those things loose in me with way to switch them off?”
“They can’t function outside of their primary command. They’ve been programmed to understand the human body and keep it healthy. That’s all they’ll do.”
“Except that’s not all they’re doing!” he snapped, heading for the door. Out in the corridor they were on emergency illumination only, a sickly yellow hue that agitated his eyes. He cast his gaze to the muted greys of the concrete floor to ground himself.
Marsh hurried to catch up with him. “What do you mean?”
“They’re giving me intel. Positions of our personnel. Status of the incursion. Which areas have been compromised…’
She didn’t reply for a moment, her footsteps the only sound now other than the distant weapons fire. “They’ve adapted. They must have remotely accessed the garrison’s network. What else are they saying?”
“I don’t have time for this, Doctor.” Haddon rounded a corner, almost colliding with the soldier he’d sent in search of a weapon. He snatched the rifle from him with a sharp nod of acknowledgement.
“You don’t have to be alarmed. This is still within their operational parameters. They’re finding information to protect you,” Marsh insisted.
“Don’t give me platitudes, give me info. What exactly do they do?” he snapped, clipping his rifle to his tac-vest.
Her brow furrowed with concern. Not a good sign. “They’ll heal any physical problem that poses a potential risk to your life or functioning.”
“Anything?”
She nodded. “Injuries…sickness…” The pause that followed told him there was worse to come. “Aging…”
His eyes snapped up to hers.
“You’re potentially immortal,’ she said with a shrug, just as they reached the command centre.
There wasn’t time to process the ramifications of that nugget. “Give me your earpiece,” he demanded, thrusting his hand out. She slipped it free and handed it to him. He opened up a base-wide channel. “This is Commander Haddon. All units fall back to the south wing and evacuate.”
That done, he sought out the young soldier who had supplied him with his weapon. “You…get these people out of here and to safety.” He snatched up Marsh’s arm and dragged her toward the younger man. “Keep this one close. I need her alive.”
“Yes, Sir. What about you?”
Haddon called up the base scanners, glowing dots appearing at all strategically weak points in the building’s construction. The charges were still operational. “I’m going to hold off the enemy as long as possible to give you time to escape before I take this building down around their ears.”
“Don’t you need a second authorisation code, Sir?”
The nanites streaming through his brain were already telling him how to bypass that necessity. “Not now, I don’t. Now, get out of here.”
The young soldier caught Marsh’s arm and tugged her along with him as he and the other personnel beat a hasty retreat.
Haddon steadied himself on the console before him, feeling somehow stronger than he’d ever felt before, while allowing the nanites in his system to instruct him how to access the base’s self-destruct and override the system’s dual command protocols. He had no way of knowing what the physical changes they brought meant for his future, but right now he meant to use whatever advantage they gave him to stop the insurgents gaining a foothold.
After that…the possibilities were both terrifying and endless.
Story inspired by Mad as a March Writing Prompt by JF Danskin, particularly Idea 10 (Write a story involving physical change).
