Cerberus:
“
As the doors opened I had kept my weapon trained on the door to Cell 6. I watched with anticipation. Only thing is, I was not expecting it to be a regular human, most of the other things looked more frightening or dangerous than them, but given that the boss had told us to be cautious of them I nearly blew their head off when the boss’ synthesized voice came over the line saying something about them being a host for some kind of parasite then Boss told us to move to the server room to knock out the ‘Lotus Protocol’ whatever that meant.
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Couldn’t blame me for being jumpy, but they were still alive. So we gathered everybody up and got a move on. The server room was right around a corner behind a blast door, Boss couldn’t unlock it remotely so Helios just cut through it with their powers, Still can’t tell what gender they are.
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Once we got in I was immediately confused. I had been expecting some sort of complex machine but what I saw was rows and rows of servers. I had asked for an explanation. But all I received from my radio was static. I’m sure you can get it from the helmet recording.
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I did what I was told.
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Nothing more.
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This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
You don’t blame a soldier for following orders.
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I Don’t know what the boss did in there… And if I’m honest, I don’t want to know. When the boss did whatever they did, all the servers went dark. And alarms started blaring. We didn’t need to know to start running.
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“
LOG END.
Name: A.R.M.E.D. Implant
Purpose: Assist in the manipulation and incorporation of mana into non magical humanoids.
Status: Successful.
“We don’t even know if we can trust that Thing. Look at what it gave to our troops!” Sergei shouts.
“Sir with all due respect. Please let me finish explaining before you make a decision on this. While it is true that the A.R.M.E.D. implant does inject mana into the individual that has it implanted into their body all of the long time users have not shown any signs of damage.”
“Have not shown any signs of damage? They could be ticking time bombs for all we know!” Sergei continues. “Didn’t you say that this ‘mana’ is radioactive? And now I’m learning that it’s being pumped into people!”
“‘Pump’ is a strong word here, and mana is only potentially radioactive. The amount that is injected into most of the people that are using the implant is small enough that it went unnoticed for months before we even knew. This precision is not a malfunction, it’s a feature, though we are still figuring out why. Though from the test results we just got back I think the answer is fairly obvious.”
“So 7 is exposing them to a particle that we know hardly anything about, without my consent. There better be a **** good reason why.” Sergei sighs.
…
“All of the long time users of the implant have higher muscle and neuron density, leading to improvements in all measurable metrics, DNA testing has even shown a regression in the aging process.”
“That’s it?” Sergei replies with a huff.
“There appears to be a seemingly exponential increase in most of the statistics, which is directly proportional to the amount of time that the person has had the implant.”
“I don’t believe in getting something from nothing, there has to be a price.”