I laid on a steel surgical table facedown. There were no straps, because no mundane strap would hold my Bronze body back if the pain proved too much for me, and there was no anesthesia because there was no substance in the Dominium that could keep me unconscious for the entire length of the procedure without risking killing me.

Instead, they had told me to grit my teeth, clench my teeth and fists, and hold as still as possible while the team of Medicus Doctors and Servi nurses drilled a hole through my skull. Moving the Scholarium’s student body to active duty in the officer corps meant that we would have to all go through the processes and procedures we would have gone through after graduation and preparing for deployment. The first of these steps was the implantation of a Silicon Daimon artificial intelligence chip into the grey matter of my brain. Silicon Daimons ordinarily flew and managed capital ships, but the Apollo system sunk as much money as possible into the Strategoi. Basic nerve connecting brain-machine interfaces like wormwires were rendered unusable by our Rank. The needle-like mechanical threads could not penetrate our rock-hard skin to reach our spines’ interiors and our brain stems. A permanent installation of a Silicon Daimon resolved that issue by linking to our exo-armor, weapons, communications systems, and vehicles.

We had been evacuated out of the Scholarium through the Janusian teleportation gate and from there had been moved to military facilities where we would be cybernetically augmented with the AI and our armor and weapons.

I breathed slow and steady as they shaved part of the back of my head and then sliced an incision through my marble skin with a Keenblade scalpel and then clamped the cut open so I would not heal it closed while they worked. Then the Doctors brought down the drill on my skull, grinding and scraping through my durable Bronze skeleton. I smelled smoke as the drill worked, the rotating friction and down force of the Gold Medicus’s pressure heating up my skull’s material and charring it as it spiraled into my head at frightening speeds. I wondered if they would be able to get through Andarias’s Imperator/Campeador hybridized bone. I heard more than felt the drill tip break through, the Medicus handling it restraining it just before it pushed further in and blended my brain.

The medics added a metal ring formulated to be highly resistant to the crushing force of my bone growing back the missing section into the hole they had punctured.

I had seen the Silicon Daimon’s chip before the operation began, the Doctors and medical professionals had shown it to me. The chip was a small thing, about the size of a pea, but with fantastical computing and processing power and it contained an electronic entity so advanced it could credibly be called a person unlike most of the computer systems that the Dominium’s starships, aircraft, hovercraft and handheld devices utilized. The chip was coated in a unique alloy of fourteen percent Jovium, five percent silver, one percent titanium, and eighty percent gold that would avoid rejection as a foreign object by our Imperator’s healing factor.

“Inserting the chip now, your lordship.” The Doctor said as he picked up the electronic piece with a long pair of tweezers. “It will migrate on its own to the optimal binding location in your neural structure once we get it close enough for its sensors to approximate that point and for its mechanical flagella to move it in place.”

I kept very still as the Doctor worked his medical magic and situated the device.

“All done, sir.” He said and he removed the metal ring blocking my bone’s growth and the clamps holding the incision wide open.

I got up and stood. The Doctors and nurses looked alarmed.

The Doctor put his blue gloved hands up in warning. “It’s best during the linking process of the implantation for you to be to seated or lying-“

Every muscle in my body spasmed and I flopped to the ground like a limp dead fish, my teeth chattering and my body shivering. Colors and lights flashed in my eyes and there was a whine in my ears. The medics tried to get me back on the surgical table but when they touched me, I twitched and sent one of them flying across the room and I cracked the clean white floors with my superhuman strength being unleashed by my micro-seizure and loss of control. They backed away after that and left me to my writhing and shuddering. I could feel the bone fill the hole under the resealed skin.

After a minute and a half, the spasms ceased, and my entire field of view flashed blue. Graphics and lines of data appeared in my vision like I had contacts in my eyes with a heads-up display installed. A loading bar centered itself in my sight, climbing in percentage quickly. It reached one hundred percent and I heard a binging sound and my vision flashed white this time.

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“Systems online.” A woman’s voice whispered.

“Hello?” I said to the Silicon Daimon in my head.

“Hello, Adrias Lucion. I am Alpha-Sigma-14, but you can call me Alsig.” The AI said.

I was not sure how to refer to her gender-wise. It? She? The machine sounded female but was not remotely human.

“She.” The Daimon purred inside my head. “Shall we proceed onwards to the armory?”

“Sure.” I said and a glowing path appeared on the ground with blinking arrows pointing the way, all hallucinated by the artificial intelligence hijacking my visual cortex.

“You don’t have to talk out loud for me to hear you, you know.” She said.

Oh. I said, feeling foolish.

I followed the simulated path and left the operating room behind me, navigating to the armory where I would suit up in a Strategos’s armor, even if technically I had not been given that rank in the Solar Guard just yet.

“Why don’t we get to know each other better, huh?” Alsig said, and I felt a shock run through my body and images of my life before the implantation flash before my eyes. My memories and feelings: the murder of my family, the ring transforming me from a Silver Servus to a Copper Imperator, meeting Livia after the death of her gang, fighting in the arena, saving Antonias from a drug overdose and the resulting fire, my ascension to Bronze after killing Javias, the Knight of Emerald, my Abnormal Primacy: First Class earned by nearly dying in the heat resiliency test, the attack by Servi flight attendants turned into monsters by dark alchemy, the pyre of Heracles and the revelation of being the Regent’s grandson inflaming me and giving me victory over Andarias, my lessons with Lilliana Kaesarion in psychic physio-augmentation, and finally the feeling of the drill boring into me.

The artificial intelligence did not say anything for a few moments.

“Well, that’s positively delicious. Don’t worry, sweetheart, I can keep a secret.” Alsig said and I could almost imagine her winking at me.

Entering the armory, I was led to one of many side chambers where my fellow Imperator officers were also gearing up. I stripped and put on a black body suit that shrank and molded to my body.

“A nanite weave underlayer similar to the hospital gowns you wore during Examination Day, though more advanced. It’s as durable as you are and self-repairs.” Alsig said.

A locker in my side chamber popped open and revealed an exoskeleton.

Do I really need this? I thought to her. Surely my Bronze physical abilities and physio-augmentation would suffice to wear the rest of my armor?

“It will allow you to you to move as if you were not wearing the outer shell of your armor. Your Adamantplate armor is spatially folded to achieve an impossible density of a Jovium-titanium-iron alloy.” She replied.

A drawer pushed its way out of the wall as well and presented a humming power core for my exoskeleton.

I latched the components of the exoskeleton together and to my body, attached the power core to my chest with a click, and then the last side locker popped open to reveal my Adamantplate armor.

It took my breath away.

“Impressed?” Alsig asked me.

“Yes,” I said aloud, forgetting in my awe of the moment as I stared at a real Strategos’s plate that I was supposed to speak to her in my mind.

The armor was painted midnight black, deep and dark and glossy, and it had bronze accents and flair. The pauldrons were marked with designs and heraldry, the right had the red and gold sun insignia of the Apollonian Solar Guard and the left had the violet three-headed eagle clutching silver lightning bolts in one claw and a gold laurel wreath in the other that was the mark of the Dominium. The helmet’s face was a smooth obsidian glass with no eyeholes in it, I expected it to either be clear from the inside or to use hidden cameras and a display for me to see, and the sides of the helm bore glorious spread wings of bronze metal.

I grabbed a greave and almost lost my balance and fell over, the compressed metal was so heavy that I had to use what tricks of levitation I had gleaned from Justinias that I had to not hit the ground. Just this one piece of armor weighed almost as much as I did with my seven feet of concentrated muscle and bone. I was suddenly very glad to have the exoskeleton to manage it all.

After I got all my gear on, my footsteps shaking the ground from the sheer mass of my armor, I followed a new line to where I would meet up with my team, a group of nine Hemistrategos led by one former third year who had been made Strategos rank. When I found them, I laughed. Alsig had marked my vision with identifying tags to show who was behind the bronze winged masks of dark obsidian glass, though I could recognize Andarias Fulvion’s immense bulk towering over the rest without even seeing his name appear above his head. On this new team were familiar faces, most of whom I was glad to see here with the exception of Quartias Fulvion. Andarias, Antonias, Caesia, Kato, Clodias, Quartias, Aurelia, Thorania, Pollixa, and Diocletian Claudion who was apparently going to be our leader.

“Dio.” I acknowledged him.

“Firstie.” He replied.

“Alright, team. Here’s the mission: we’re going to be deployed as a strike force to clear out some pockets of resistance that the Militares and the Venators are having trouble cracking. The plan is simple, kill everything that moves.” Dio said.

We were combat ready.