One common misconception and logical fallacy of the numerous people working in the Weapon X program, and its many many branches if he was being honest, was that their genius ironically enough blinded them to a single laughably simple truth.
You didn't need to know how a weapon worked to use it just like how one didn't need a degree in mechanical engineering to drive a car. As long as they had a method to shut it down and point it towards their target, then it was all the same at the end of the day to one Zander Rice. It had taken quite a bit of time and effort to create their newly improved Psychic Inhibitor Collars, or P.I.C as it was shorthanded, vastly increasing its potency and even specifically attuning it for Subject 001.
They had attempted to bring in some more experienced telepaths to hopefully help, but attempts to dive into the thing clad in the form of a boy was far from fruitful. They had given up after the 12th time someone was rendered insane or catatonic after forcefully linking minds with it. Apparently, if a person's mind could be called a bowl of water with one's "Ego" acting as the bowl to keep everything together such as emotions, memories, etc.
Subject 001 was a thunderstorm, chaotic, ever-shifting, and as impossible as the clouds to grasp a hold of and almost twice as hard to dive into without losing your way. Like a thousand minds roaring out in anger, or the buzzing of a million bees. Like a cornered beast it only became all the more dangerous as you tried to corner it, and it tended to bite back.
Well, that was what one of the more intact psychics had told them after they managed to drag the woman away had said anyways. It sounded like a bunch of mystical zen nonsense to his ears. Honestly, what was with these mutants and super-powered folks and their tendency for the dramatics?
Just say the kid had some kinda mental shield and be done with it! This is why he especially hated mystics.
The little hiccup didn't bother him. They had spent the past month studying the beast intensively. They knew it well inside and out, from how many strands of hairs was on its damn head to the color of its colon. They have carefully calculated his mass and regenerative abilities, cross-referencing with the data of the previous year and other subjects with healing factors to determine its limits. While they couldn't remove anything meaningful from it for some reason, nothing stopped them from forcing something inside now, was there?
With many powerful incendiaries and kinetic bombs inserted inside of it and the thing's shapeshifting controlled by them, 001 could be shut down or eliminated at their leisure with the push of a button. He couldn't wait until the thing was fully conditioned to follow commands. Even if that was only limited to killing when told too, not that it seemed to need any help in that regard, and when to stop. Perhaps they'd even be able to get it to not attack the facility's own soldiers but that wasn't high on his priority list.
Simply dropping an unstoppable berserker into enemy bases or behind their battle lines would already be far more than enough as a certain previous generation mutant has proven. It was a pretty brilliant idea in his own humble opinions, why waste time and resources attempting to training an unruly dog when you could have a bear with an admittedly more limited selection of commands? The boy was a wild animal, and like all animals, they can be brought to heel.
A beast was never a match for man after all.
Especially if he could fill his pockets and gather more funding by employing the two newest additions to the collection of pawns even sooner.
Speaking off a certain assassin, it was quite amusing watching that bitch Kinney pretend to act tough whenever he sent X-23 on a suicide mission or some brutal punishment and experimentation in the name of further training for his own amusement.
Nothing like tormenting the clone of his most hated adversary and a stuck up whore to brighten his day. Not like the little bitch mattered much, he already had all the DNA samples he needed to make any number of clones, it was only a question of when he would get rid of the old model.
Perhaps he would send the mother-daughter pair to hell together? It'd be... Poetic justice in a way he supposes. The one who killed his father would have his life snuffed out by his own "daughter" while the woman who created the abomination in the first place would fall victim to her own hubris.
After they serve their purpose he'd make sure to wipe out all traces of Weapon X Prime, personally. He couldn't wait to make that wild animal pay for his crimes.
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"Curious, most curious. He seems to have adapted to the reduced Oxygen levels already."
Outside of incineration or attempting to harvest samples Subject 001 seems to have somehow gained immunity to all forms of mundane damage. Dr. Kelly had determined that the creature somehow had a physic bond to every part of its body, as if every cell was simultaneously a nerve and muscle one, their own unit that was capable of carrying out commands even when separated from the whole.
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Insane or not it seemed that Subject 001 was smart enough to be intentionally self-destructing parts of its body to spite them. Even when they pulverized him into bloody bits, the thing would rather remain a snarling head than allow them to harvest anything from its body.
It was too bad they couldn't clone it, with only a single specimen they had to be more careful with it now than it has proven so very interesting. He was tempted to test how far that regeneration and stubbornness went. Would it yield when it was only an eyeball? A fraction of one? A cell?
How far could they break it down before it was no longer able to retain consciousness? How did it even store that consciousness? Even after he had Kimura remove its nervous system, the thing seemed to no longer be fazed by it!
Remarkable, really. He hadn't felt this excited since he worked on X-23 and the previous 22 failed replicants of the original Weapon X.
He was going to enjoy digging out whatever secrets the thing still withheld from them.
"How goes the scan?"
"Bone structure has become noticeably less dense and hollow, quite similar to avians, sir. "
While they couldn't get its DNA, they could still learn plenty from observing its physical changes. The thing had a remarkable ability to adapt and evolve and seemed to be able to mimic any animal it ate, although it never did seem to change into a different human appearance. Was it because "human" was already in its database, or maybe it simply didn't see the need?
"Keep decreasing it every hour and make sure to keep track of any changes in its biology."
"Yes, sir!"
It was too bad that the idiots in charge wanted to simply use Subject 001 as a mere weapon. Don't they comprehend the scientific advancements that could be accomplished?! The thing seemed to be able to endlessly replicate and heal from anything.
Diseases, illness, injuries, even death itself might be conquerable! Immortality. Yet his boss in all of his infinite wisdom decided to turn it into just another method to kill. Fools, the lot of them.
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While his body was under the, highly limited, control of the Weapon X scientists his mind had retreated far inward. The consciousness was many of many layers and as time passed by he sunk ever slowly deeper within its depths as if a stone tossed into the sea.
At first, his life as Earth's Andrew William passed by. A different high school, a different group of friends, a different life. An abusive alcoholic of a father, a timid woman of a mother too scared to stand up for herself or her son, and days spent lost in the pages of comics to escape from his own shitty life.
Even in a different world, Andrew William was a coward it seems. One that ran from his problems.
He lasted all of, what, 2 years before fucking up monumentally? Must've been a record he mused. As he went past the conscious and into the murky layer of the subconscious things began to change and sudden;y he wasn't seeing "his own" memories anymore. It was fun as he avoided the dark waters and found sparkingly orbs of light floating randomly nearby in an invisible current.
Once he was a hawk soaring flying high and free above in the endless blue skies. His cries resonated through the heavens and rang clear and loud in the early morning, the proud cry of a predator and ruler of the sky.
Then he had awoken as a lumbering black bear up in thick Canadian forest. Treading slowly towards he river his eyes gleam as the river was practically filled with more salmons than water. his large paws lazily slammed into the water and knocked scores of fishes onto the riverbank, more than enough for a mother bear and her three little cubs.
And then he was a fish clutched in the claws of... Himself? It was paradoxical and yet it seemed to all make sense. His fish self struggled desperately for its life, but it was helpless beneath the cold gaze of the avian. It couldn't breath and everything was getting dark. It closed its eyes in resignation at the cruel world.
He lived a thousand lives from a thousand different positions. Each with their own unique perspective, but one truth was constant.
You can be a king or a street sweeper but everyone dances with the Reaper.
Sometimes he could see the "real world" through a small window that seemed to follow him whenever he returned from living a particular life. He tried to play through the entire "story" but sometimes it gets cut short. A forest fire, a flash flood, or some punk with a gun.
He so rarely got to finish a lifetime no matter how brief the lifespan of the species he took the form off.
Andrew didn't know when but eventually he got to see things from a familiar but now also foreign perspective. It seems the force controlling his body while he was inside his mind had finally Consumed a person. How strange that something he once so feared now seemed so utterly pedantic.
If one could call the lives of the animals as a street performance, free and payment were optional, than humans were live a movie or show. The costs vary but in here the only thing he had to pay with was himself.
He'd flutter here and there, zipping in and out of the many windows of lives he has taken, often leaving pieces of himself and picking up something else along the way.
Eventually, before he knew it all the lights slowly disappeared and he had found himself a "companion". It was a small, yellow, baby chicken of all things. Its feather were soft and seemed to shine with a golden hue. How very odd, animals had visited him or passed by as he sunk downwards, all rushing to the surface in a bid for his body, but only this little thing had sought him out and stayed with him.
Maybe those old mystical mumbo jumbo about spirit animals were on to something after all? Still... Although it felt like an eternity ago... Wasn't it supposed to be a deer or a frog according to all those online quizzes he took..?
Or even a butterfly
He didn't know why this... Echo of a mind was following him, but he decided not to question it. He wasn't even sure if it wasn't just a hallucination honestly. The company was nice though. He felt warm for the first time instead of an icy numbness. And so he had a companion with him as he went looking through more memories, for each one he completed it seemed another dozen would show up.