Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In military training, you’re taught how to take your weapon apart and put it back together, to be familiar with every single piece. You’d disassemble it and reassemble it over and over and over, until you could do it in your sleep, until it started feeling less like a gun and more like a part of your body.

So, it stood to reason that, if one took their body apart and put it back together, again and again, becoming familiar with every piece with perfect, analytical precision, it might start feeling less like one’s body and more like a gun. A detached, unfeeling thing one used, but felt no connection to.

That was Matthew Kane’s thinking, anyway, as he disassembled his mechanical left arm for the third time in as many hours.

Wishful thinking, as it were, but it was what he knew and he was willing to try anything if it meant granting his mind any distance, no matter how small, from the mangled abomination of flesh and metal his body had been twisted into. 

The fingers of one of the complicated metal contraptions made to resemble hands that served in place of where the real thing had been, not fourty eight Earth hours ago, held the Strogg equivalent of a screwdriver he'd found in a small compartment on his arm, carefully removing the connecting screws that held the panels of his other mechanical arm together with a precision that surpassed any he’d had before, when he was still…Before he became…

He focused on his work. He had to understand how this new body of his worked.

It was a tool, like any other. A tool that was vital. Something that would give them the edge against the Strogg they so desperately needed. A tool that could mean the difference between the human race’s continued existence, or another devastating invasion. A tool that could not break down.

Each piece he removed was recorded and categorized by his brain and, more specifically, the neurocyte implanted in it. 

It wasn't quite clear exactly what it was. Some speculated it was purely a microchip, others thought it might be something more organic in nature. No scans could get any clear details on it and any attempts to remove it from Strogg corpses ended with it being far too destroyed to study. 

The word “neurocyte” just meant “neuron” or “nerve cell” and, as far as anyone had been able to translate it, that was more or less the equivalent word to the Strogg. 

A single part of a larger system of electrochemical communication, able to send and receive signals that, combined with hundreds of thousands of other similar signals, were translated by a processing unit of some kind into a greater understanding far beyond what each individual piece could possibly hope to comprehend, alone. 

Kane felt that definition written deep in his brain, where the neurocyte had made its home, the way he felt all Strogg “words”.

The alien symbols of the Strogg alphabet flashed across his eyes, as they did every waking second, now. They displayed his body’s physical state, his current objectives, the ammunition of whatever weapons he currently carried and, presently, the components of his arm, placed in careful rows on the table. He’d seen them and understood them from the second the Strogg syringe pierced his skull and drove the neurocyte between the folds of his parietal lobe. 

The neurocyte had granted him the ability to understand the Strogg language, both written and “spoken”, but to consider there to be a true Strogg “language” was a bit of a misnomer.  It was more of a collective understanding of intent. 

The written Strogg language had baffled linguists on Earth, dialects often varying wildly between each instance. Trying to read it was often more like decoding a cipher than reading a language. Only a handful of people had managed to make any sense of it (Strauss made everyone very aware of the rarity of that particular achievement).

As for spoken Strogg, no clear example had ever been heard of it. By the time humanity rallied itself together to begin a proper defense against them, the Strogg troops on Earth were largely Stroggified humans. Those who heard them utter any kind of words and lived to tell the tale all reported the same thing: the Strogg spoke in human languages, though usually only quick exclamations or commands. 

It wasn't until Kane’s neurocyte implantation that the mystery of their “language” began to truly unfold (Strauss told him that the few military scholars back on Earth who were privy to his current state had apparently already been clamoring to interview him about it).

The Strogg had no language. Or, that was to say, they had many, but each was largely superfluous. Each individual Strogg spoke the language they'd spoken before their Stroggification and all other Strogg simply understood what it was they meant to express. Whether it be complex sentences or just snarls or random vocalizations, the meaning was simply understood. On the whole, it seemed Strogg did most of their communication via the Nexus (at least up until Kane destroyed it, anyway), with vocalizations being done more out of habit from their pre-Strogg lives than for practical reasons.

The written language seemed more like a code because, in many ways, it was. The alphabet remained largely the same, but what words the symbols spelled out varied by whatever Strogg wrote it but were understood the same by any Strogg who read it.

Perfect, effortless understanding. 

It unnerved Kane more than any of the other things done to him. 

The way it all just… made sense. Even the things that made no sense at all. 

He understood how to categorize the pieces of his arm into the storage system in his neurocyte because he simply did. Without the slightest bit of effort, he understood how he could highlight different features of each within his synthetic memory, separate and sort them by size or shape or make them connect to other information he had stored. Hell, he could color code them if he wanted! 

He could do everything his neurocyte was capable of allowing because he simply could. It was so clear, so simple, and yet, in its perfect clarity, impossible to describe or define. 

He could no more explain what “color coding” his memories meant or how he could do so to a human being than he could explain the way he understood how to cause his lungs to draw in breath. He just knew it. 

He hated it. 

Hated how that… thing lodged itself in the meat of his brain like a parasitic insect, made itself so at home in his skull, sunk its tendrils so deep into every neuron, that he could do nothing but know it, be it. 

If Strogg brains atrophied, it was not because they had no will of their own, but because the flesh had become redundant. Everything that it had been, absorbed and stored by the neurocyte. Everything it could be, overwritten by the will of the Strogg that was channeled through it. Everything it was, filtered through it.

No matter how long he spent trying to untangle the threads of his own consciousness from the cold metal wiring of The Strogg, he came up only finding them more and more intertwined. The more he tried to separate what was the neurocyte and what was his own mind, the more the truth seemed impossible to deny: His neurocyte was him.

And he was his neurocyte. 

The other Rhino Squad members placated him. They called him “almost Strogg” or “nearly Stroggified”. They acted like it was the same as his reconstructive treatment after Armstrong or a cybernetically enhanced soldier, like a human that just looked like a “real” Strogg. 

As if the very last step of the process, the proverbial “bow on top”, not being completed meant the rest somehow didn't “count”. Like being torn apart and remade was something that could be disregarded on a technicality. 

They could all pretend as much as they wanted but, unactivated neurocyte or no, they all knew what he was:

He was Strogg. Body and mind. 

Kane felt the sudden urge to tear the rest of the metal from his arm, to rip away plating and electronics until he reached flesh and keep digging until he found something inside his body he could still recognize. 

He swallowed down the urge, forcing himself to try to focus on his task. Trying to suppress the rising panic within him.

He didn't need to recognize it. It was just something to use . A tool. A tool that was so desperately needed. A tool that could not break down.

He could not break down.

Excessive adrenal response detected. Administering counteractive neurotransmitter .

The alert appeared to Kane as a Stroggscript warning across the HUD ever-present in his vision, the meaning of it being instantly translated for him, snapping him out of his spiraling thoughts of self destruction. 

His body had sensed a spike in his anxiety and, sensing his attempts to quell it, instinctively moved to chemically suppress it. To force away emotions that weren't considered efficient or productive. To drown out his personality in a flood of synthesized neurotransmitters. 

“NO!” Kane cried, getting suddenly to his feet. The pieces of his arm he removed flying off the table and scattering across the ship floor. 

Halt command recognized. Routine aborted.

No chemical suppression came. No sudden change of his mood or dulling of his emotion. Yet no rush of relief at the danger to his mind being averted, either. He felt…nothing. Nothing but the sense of wrongness and disgust he felt all the time, now, of fitting wrong into his own body. If it could even be called that, anymore. 

Come to think of it, had he felt anything but adrenaline responses or discomfort these last forty eight hours? 

Had he even felt accomplished when he destroyed the Nexus? Had he even felt happy for his teammates’ praise? 

He'd been so focused on just surviving that it hadn’t been surprising to feel only the adrenaline of the moment but, as he focused on whatever routine had been triggered to try to calm him, he found that every single chemical his brain and body could produce were now capable of being synthesized and administered on the command of his neurocyte.

Would he have to choose what emotions he felt at any given time, now, through purposeful deployment of certain brain chemicals? 

Why couldn't he feel anything about that?

It was then he noticed that every eye on the room was focused on him. Expressions ranged from surprise to outright fear. Kane’s neurocyte immediately highlighted the fact that Rhodes’ hand rested on his side arm, though he kept his expression mostly neutral.

Strauss looked like he was on the verge of pissing himself.

Fuckers.

So much for placating him. Kane wondered how much of a sudden outburst he’d need to have to end up with a bullet through what remained of his skull. The whole rest of the Hannibal had threatened him with as much. Only a matter of time before Rhino squad lost whatever fleeting affection they still held for the man he had been and joined the club.

Only Sledge seemed unfazed.

“I hope you know where those went,” he said. “Because I am not helping you search for tiny Strogg pieces on the floor.” 

The comment seemed to cut the tension in the room and Morris approached Kane with his normal warmth.

“You alright, soldier?” he asked, as if “alright” was anywhere within the same galaxy as Kane right now. 

“Fine,” Kane said. His face didn’t emote much without him doing so purposefully, anymore but, if it did, he would have grimaced at the raspy, mechanical quality his voice had, now. “Neurocyte started some kind of subroutine and I…It took me by surprise.”

Morris chuckled.

“So you yelled at it?” he laughed. 

“It worked,” Kane said, sheepishly. 

“What kind of subroutine?” Strauss asked. “Something you didn’t ask it to do?”

“Should we be concerned that the Corporal's brain bug is acting on its own?” Rhodes asked, though he seemed to have had the decency to take his hand off his gun. “I thought there was no chance of it activating.”

“The neurocyte is not a bug,” Strauss corrected, sounding more offended by the idea of an insect than a forcibly inserted brain control device. “Connection to the Strogg collective is not active, no, but it is still functioning and is a part of Kane, now. Do you control everything your brain does?”

Well, at least it was somewhat reassuring to know that Strauss didn’t seem to be specifically afraid of Kane out of fear he was suddenly turning full Strogg, just that he might be on the verge of violence for unrelated reasons. 

“Adrenal suppression,” Kane answered, ignoring Rhodes’ comment. “Through...synthesis of brain chemicals. ”

Strauss got that look in his eye that he got when something sparked his interest. 

“Oh? Through what means? And counteracting the effect on the brain instead of disabling the adrenal gland?” he asked, perking up.

“I…I don't think I can explain it,” Kane admitted. “I can just… the neurocyte can just…make my brain produce them.”

 “Very interesting, indeed.” Strauss said, seemingly undeterred by Kane’s inability to detail the process.  “I would not have expected a chemical suppressant! Especially not one meant to counteract the existing adrenal response! Emotional control through induced neurotransmitter production goes against everything we understand about the Strogg.’ 

“Strogg brains are atrophied, though, aren't they? Why control the emotions of things that don't even have them, anymore?” Rhodes asked. 

“That is just what I want to know!” Strauss said. “And to find out! If we are able to connect to Kane’s neurocyte, we may be able to find these commands.” 

Kane’s face did not show it, but he was uneasy with the idea of tampering with his neurocyte in any way, especially not to try to find out how to get it to manipulate his emotions. He tried not to allow his thoughts to dwell on the fact that emotions might be things he needed to induce, manually, from now on.

“I have another question I think’s a little more important just this second” Morris interjected. “Just why is it that, sitting in the middle of the rec area, our boy here has enough adrenaline pumping through him to set off his neurocyte’s ‘chill pill’ program?” 

Kane looked to Morris, for a moment, before averting his gaze, looking to the scattered pieces of his arm on the floor. 

He nearly jumped when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“When's the last time you got some rest, soldier?” Morris asked, his voice soft and earnest. 

“...before I stopped needing it,” Kane answered. 

Morris gave him a disapproving look. 

“I don't care how much machine you've got in you now, Kane,” he said. “Even machines can't run full steam all the time. They have to cool off and refuel.” 

He paused for just a fraction of a second, so briefly that a human might not have been able to catch it, his eyes glancing aside before returning to Kane's face, wearing a practiced neutral expression that still could not fully hide his discomfort at what he was about to ask.

“Speaking of which…Kane…when's the last time you--” 

Kane didn't know how he did it, hadn't known he could until he did, just desperately wanted something, anything, to stop the end of that sentence from being said, from the awful truth of it being spoken into reality. 

He opened the connecting latch that held his largely disassembled hand to the rest of his arm, sending it clattering to the floor with a loud clanging noise, cutting Morris off. 

The hand, already missing most of the connecting screws, broke into dozens of pieces that scattered across the rec area floor.

Kane dropped to his knees, trying to stop them from escaping across the entire rec area, an endeavor made harder by his now being down an appendage.

Cortez stopped a runaway screw with the side of his foot. 

“Need a hand?” he asked, a laugh at his own bad pun in his voice. 

“It'll take an age to pick all those up,” Rhodes said. “I say you just let the automatic vacuum thing in here and dump the pieces out of it when it's done.”

“The one you strapped a knife onto?” Sledge asked, arms folded. 

“Hey, it keeps us on our toes!” Rhodes laughed. 

Kane didn't respond to any of them, focusing on picking up pieces of his hand and reattaching them. Even scattered, he knew which piece each one was and where it belonged. 

He picked up a piece that he'd color coded with a color he had no human name for and screwed it into place, the joking of the rest of the squad just a dull buzzing in the background of his perception.

So absorbed in his task, it took him a moment to process a sound as being directed at him. 

“ Kane,”  Morris said, for what his tone implied to be the third or fourth time. 

Kane looked up, but did not stop the reassembling of his hand. He didn't need to. His memory of where the collected pieces were was exact. 

“I said, I think you should try to get some sleep,” Morris said. “Let me handle getting all your arm pieces back and you can reattach it when you get up. We don't want you putting your hand back on backwards because you're exhausted.”

Strauss scoffed, moving to stand across from Morris.

“Kane’s augmented stamina is far beyond that of a human, Morris,” he said. “He's likely able to remain awake indefinitely. This is a monumental discovery I have made! I must research it more thoroughly. Rest can come later.” 

He gestured to Kane. 

“Kane agrees, ja?” he said. “This could be critical to the war efforts. And you also want to know more about how your brain functions, I am sure.” 

Morris frowned, but turned to Kane as well. 

“It's your call,” he told him. 

Kane attached the piece of his arm he was still holding and got to his feet, looking between Strauss and Morris.

On one hand, he had no great desire to purposefully activate any part of the neurocyte’s behavioral programs. Or any of its programs, really. Whatever information was stored in that strange and mysterious piece of technology, Kane wasn't sure he wanted to know. 

Somehow it felt like keeping a wall between himself and the neurocyte. If he opened the door between them, somehow he knew there would be no closing it again. 

And yet, contained, it festered like an abscess; an ever growing weight on his mind that only grew more sickening to breach. 

On the other hand, the idea of being alone with his thoughts, of lying in bed, unable to sleep, unable to dream, unable to feel, sounded even less appealing.

Besides, if he could help the war effort by helping them better understand the Strogg, then at least that was something positive to come from all this, right? 

Kane wished he could feel anything in regards to either option besides a vague sense of discomfort.

He turned to Strauss and gave him a nod.

Strauss smiled, smugly. Which was, incidentally, identical to his normal smile.

Kane followed Strauss to one of the medical bay terminals and sat on the end of an examination table. 

Rhodes and Sledge had followed to watch. Kane hadn't told them not to, after all. Nor the two techs, Luch and Holdorf, from Viper and Eagle squads, the only two non Rhino Squad Marines who didn't seem to view him with some level of fear or outright hostility. They'd been fascinated with him when they'd first brought him in after his rescue. They'd had so many questions, after all. Of course they'd want to be present. 

Wasn't every day you got to pry open a man's brain and dig around inside while he was still alive. 

Kane said nothing.

Strauss produced a long, silver cord from one of the equipment closets. 

“My own design,” he said. “Reverse engineered from wiring taken from Strogg cadavers and able to connect from Strogg to human technology with no corruption of data or destruction of connected tech.”

He sounded very proud of himself. Which, incidentally, was identical to his normal voice. 

“Every Strogg connection point can be different so I must see about where to be inserting,” he continued. 

Rhodes snickered and Sledge rolled his eyes at him. Strauss seemed oblivious to both. 

Looking Kane over he settled on a spot at the back of his head. 

“This should work,” he said. “The fit is not exact so I must employ some force.”

That, apparently, being all the warning Strauss felt was necessary, he then jammed the end of the cord into the back of Kane's head hard enough to force it through the port like a stake through the back of his skull. 

Kane let out a yelp like a cassette tape tangled in the player, then shivered as he felt thin strands of wire begin to reach out from the end of the cord’s metal end piece like hair-thin fingers, feeling around in his brain. 

If he could feel much of anything, Kane was sure he'd feel like getting sick.

“Strogg nanites continue to try to repair flesh and machinery, even when severed from the main mass,” Strauss explained. “Cable nanites are dormant, usually, but when connected to a living Strogg, it will search to repair the connection.”

“Even an unactivated Strogg like Kane?” Luch asked.

“Ja, but there is a complication to interfacing with Strogg technology,” answered Strauss.

“What’s that?” 

“You will see when the connection is made,” Strauss said.

Kane had no time to feel uneasy about the cryptic response, his body suddenly seizing as the cord made contact with his neurocyte.

He sucked in a gasp as his vision whited out for a moment, his eyes rolling back in his head, before, all at once, an explosion of machine code, both binary and another system he did not recognize, lit up across his vision.

It took a moment for his brain to parse the new input and separate it from his vision, separating it into a different sense of awareness he had no name for. His vision returned but he could still feel the Hannibal itself, the code of every interconnected system on the massive ship, stretching out before him like a series of pathways, branching and sprawling like veins from a heart, reaching out to every connected machine on the ship. 

It felt staggeringly huge, somewhere Kane’s consciousness could get lost so easily, split into a thousand pieces sent down every path where he’d never be able to bring them all back together, scattered like the bits of his hand rolling across the rec room floor. 

Something about the mental image seemed almost comforting. Kane tried not to think about why.

Then, without warning, the pathways cut off like a metal screen slamming shut between Kane and the rest of the ship.

Kane shuddered at the sudden loss.

“Ah. There we are,” Strauss said. “Not to be mistrusting of you, Kane, but I have disconnected this terminal from the main server. Strogg code is not always ‘friendly’ with ours. Best to keep it contained.”

Kane blinked a few times, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them again. He could still feel the connection to the terminal, but it was far less overwhelming. 

“What does not being ‘friendly’ mean?” asked Rhodes. “What are we risking by plugging him into our computers, here?”

“No risks,” Strauss said. “I will show you.”

He tapped a few buttons on the glass control panel and one of the large screens in front of them lit up, displaying what looked like a totally nonsensical mix of numbers, letters, and both human and Strogg symbols.

“Our technology cannot understand Strogg code. I have been working to create a compiler but Strogg code is partially organic, like genetic code. Made of things like amino acids and nucleotides. Such things are…not my specialty.”

Admitting that anything was outside of his range of expertise was clearly not easy for Strauss.

“It makes progress slow,” he said. “But, now with a living, willing Strogg brain to connect to, I should be able to make great strides towards…”

Strauss trailed off as the display on the screen flickered, the symbols rapidly changing, cycling between different characters.

Kane barely noticed how every eye turned to him. He was distracted by the screen and how the mishmash of coding languages felt almost like an out of focus image, causing his eyes to strain. His mind struggled to parse it, to adjust his focus until it cleared. 

He winced and something shifted within him, then, all at once, the screen seemed to twitch like a film reel being bumped out of alignment, before settling, the symbols now all the same: Strogg. 

The feeling of strain from the discordant code vanished and Kane almost felt something like relief, until he noticed the rest of the occupants of the room staring at him in slack jawed awe. 

Kane numbly shrugged his shoulders.

Sludge huffed.

“That makes things simpler,” he said, sounding as unconcerned as always.

“You think you can make it get cable TV?” Rhodes asked and Kane wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking.

“It seems as though Corporal Kane’s neurocyte is acting as a translator for the terminal’s systems,” Strauss said. 

“It doesn't look translated to me,” Rhodes said. “Not all of us read Strogg.”

“Translated for the terminal , not for us,” Strauss clarified, as if to a stubborn child. “And this is not Strogg language. It's a Strogg coding language. I understand more than any other human being about its structure.”

“Which is how much, exactly?” Rhodes said, his tone incredulous.

Strauss made a sour face. 

“Enough to hack into Strogg security systems and facilitate our entire mission,” he said, sharply. 

“So you can read this?”

Rhodes smirked and Strauss glared back at him. 

Sledge rolled his eyes at both of them. 

Kane said nothing. 

“Strogg security is less organic. There's a more standardized language for coding. Individual Strogg have code as unique as DNA,” Strauss said. “Deciphering Corporal Kane's specific code will take some time but I am fully capable--”

“I can read it.”

Kane barely recognized he'd been the one who spoke until Strauss and the others turned to him, again. 

“I can read it,” he repeated, trying and failing to put normal human inflection into his voice, instead just sounding flat and strained. 

Strauss blinked.

“Ah, ja wohl…äm...Very good, then, Corporal Kane,” he said, clearly not used to being surpassed in his technological understanding like this.

“How do we even know where to start?” asked Luch. “There are probably millions or even billions of lines of code in the neurocyte. How can we possibly know where what we’re looking for is?”

“We do not need to know,” Strauss said. “ Kane already has found it.”

Kane stared blankly at Strauss.

“You accessed these commands earlier. You must only do so again, while connected to the terminal.”

Kane nodded, after a moment. 

He just had to…to reach into the neurocyte again. 

Easy. Effortless, really. 

Easier than not doing it, in fact! So much easier…

Terribly, terrifyingly easy.

Kane squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the clinging thoughts away and trying to focus on accessing the code he’d found before, again. 

It took only a moment for the terminal display to shudder again, then reload with rows upon rows of Strogg code, separated into sections.

Kane opened his eyes and looked at the code. Tilting his head, he stared at the separated sections, understanding of their purpose being granted to him before he could even begin to search for it. 

Commands. Executable scripts associated with various words and concepts. 

Numbly, he squinted his eyes at it, shifting something within his mind he couldn’t hope to name and, with another shudder of the screen, the chunks of code morphed into a visual interface, mirrored on the terminal control panel. A series of buttons with a Strogg word on each.

He was like…an interpreter, he realized. How he perceived the code was how the screen displayed it. No difference between his thoughts and his neurocyte’s computations, translated instantly onto the display for all to see. 

“Incredible,” Holdorf said. “The amount of control you have over the neurocyte, Corporal.”

How much control he had over it.

“These are the chemicals it can produce, then?” asked Luch.

Kane shook his head.

“Emotions.”

“Emotions?” Strauss parrotted. “Not direct neurotransmitter simulation but…simulated emotions?”

“That…doesn’t seem like the Strogg’s style,” Rhodes said.

“Or, we don’t know as much about the Strogg as we thought,” Sledge said.

“We assumed, due to their atrophied brains, that all higher thought must be coming from somewhere else,” Luch said. “But…if that’s true, shouldn’t the destruction of the Nexus have left the Strogg completely unable to function? Or, at least, reduced to purely animal instinct?”

“It’s true that the Strogg hardly seem emotionless,” said the Holdorf. “Closer to ‘fanatical’.”

“What is that one?” asked Luch, pointing to one of the words on the screen. 

“Makron,” Kane said.

“Pretty sure ‘Makron’ ain't an emotion, there, Kane,” Rhodes said. 

Kane didn't know how to explain it. He knew what they were and what they were meant to do because he just did. He knew they were emotions the same way he knew “happiness” or “sadness” were. He also knew that they were not the same as “happiness” or “sadness”. He could understand the way  ideas and the feelings overlapped but he couldn't begin to explain how.

“It seems it is to the Strogg,” Sledge said, saving Kane from trying to put what he felt into words.

“Emotional response in the human brain is a release of certain chemicals in response to certain stimuli,” Strauss said, seeming deep in contemplation of the idea. “Evolved to affect behavior in ways that lead to the survival of the species. Our emotions are defined by what helped us survive. For Strogg, survival has meant very different things.”

“Humans feel the effects of emotions on the brain and assign those to certain concepts because the emotions evolved first,” said Holdorf. “For a species like the Strogg, it sort of makes sense, right? They’re programmed in on purpose, so the concepts and the feelings around them are one and the same. A machine would never need to separate them. Wouldn’t need to be able to.”

Strauss looked over the long list of commands. 

“There is no way to know what neurotransmitters are being induced for each command without activating them,” he concluded. 

He turned to Kane.

Kane said nothing. 

“Wait, is that a good idea? If this is how the neurocytes control the Strogg’s brains, won't that mean Kane here will end up brainwashed?” Rhodes asked, hesitance clear in his voice. 

Strauss shook his head. 

“Nie. It would seem these routines would normally completely overwhelm and replace the emotional responses in the brain. Every thought would be filtered through this chemical control,” he said. “Until the brain was completely rewired and the unnecessary parts atrophied. I believe it would take days or months of constant chemical control for these changes to become permanent. It retrains the brain how it is meant to react to each concept. That takes time.” 

“Like how that dog taught that Pavlov guy to ring a bell every time it drooled,” Rhodes said, nodding knowingly.

Strauss’ under eye twitched.  He ignored Rhodes’ bait and his shit-eating grin. 

He touched some controls on another control panel and a scanning device lowered from the ceiling.

“This will monitor your brain activity as each is activated,” he told Kane. “You will need to describe how these signals are translated into feeling in your brain.” 

“Describe…?” Kane asked, voice flat. 

“Immediate emotional response, associations, sensory triggers,” Strauss shrugged. “Whatever it is it makes you feel.”

Kane said nothing.

Strauss pressed a few more controls on the other panel and the scanner whirred to life. 

“Let us start with the command you triggered before,” Strauss said. “Are you able to locate it?”

Kane closed his eyes and focused for a moment, sifting through the mechanical and organic pathways in his mind, searching for the command he'd accidentally activated and managed to stop before it took effect. 

And now would be activating on purpose. And not stopping it.

He opened his eyes again, watching as the list on screen scrolled rapidly through dozens of commands, eventually landing on a specific word. 

Strauss frowned at it as though it personally offended him.

“I…do not recognize this word,” he admitted. “Too specific to Kane's biological code’s interpretation.”

He looked to Kane, expectantly.

Kane looked at the word and tried to examine the meaning that was imparted on him from it. He wasn't sure there was any specific human equivalent.

“Calm,” he said, at last. It wasn't quite right, but he had a feeling none of the things on this list would match up cleanly with any human concepts. 

It had the connotation of being brought down from a state of high emotion. Such an emotion was not felt passively nor in a vacuum. There were not the positive associations a similar word would have in English.

Strauss made a small humming noise in acknowledgment. 

“I am activating the command…now.”

He tapped the screen.

Kane let out an involuntary sigh as energy drained from his body. 

“Are you feeling the effect of the chemical synthesis? Remember, I am trying to document this!” Strauss reminded, sternly. 

“N…numb. Heavy,” Kane said, just saying the first words he could get to come to his mind. “But not…physically. Not relaxed. More like…being in shock. Sedated.”

Strauss examined the readings from the scanner.

“It seems the production of chemicals has already stopped,” he noted. “Exceedingly temporary. It must be activating nearly constantly for the level of control the neurocyte exhibits over the host…”

“It’s no surprise. An extended release of the amount of brain chemicals these commands seem able to produce could become dangerous or even deadly exceedingly quickly,” said Holdorf. “It would have to be in extremely precise, controlled dosages.”

Kane took a deep breath, feeling as the weight of forced calm began to fade. 

“Damn, that’s gotta be useful to have. Just calm down at the push of a button,” Rhodes remarked. “If I’d had something like that, I wouldn’t have had so many demotions for gettin’ in fist fights.”

“You wouldn’t have used it,” Sledge said.

“Eh, probably right about that.”

“Scans indicate the synthesized neurotransmitters should now have dispersed enough to continue,” Strauss said.

Kane said nothing.

“This next word, Kane?” Strauss said, pointing to the next command in the sequence. 

The word lined up a bit better with a human equivalent than the last, if not exactly.

“Efficient.”

Strauss activated the command.

A pleasant feeling spread through Kane’s mind and the edges of his mouth, for once, did not curl down in a half-grimace. 

“Right. Correct,” he said. “Like satisfaction. And…discontent.”

The feeling was like the relief of being rid of something uncomfortable, something weighing him down, but left behind a lingering feeling like a bad aftertaste in the mouth. 

Ideal, but impossible to achieve. Impossible to not keep trying to anyway. There was always more. Something more to refine, to enhance, to perfect. 

“Perfection,” he concluded.

The feeling stirred something like an itch in his brain and Kane’s grimace returned. Perhaps it would have been better described as “addiction”. 

Strauss was satisfied with the answer, however, and Kane had no great desire to speak any more than he had to. He was quickly realizing that any attempt to describe the feelings these commands instilled in him in human terms would fall woefully short. 

They moved to the next command.

“S…Servitude? To…have served?” 

Kane furrowed his brow, trying to find the words.

“To succeed? Hm…”

“To be successful in servitude?” Luch offered.

Kane shook his head.

“They’re the same word.”

“There is no success to the Strogg that does not serve the Strogg,” Sledge said. “All the same. No need for separate ideas.”

Sledge said much less than other members of the squad, except for Kane, but his eloquence and comprehension always showed that he listened far more than he spoke. 

Kane was thankful for it now, more than ever.

He nodded. Close enough.

“Activating…” Strauss announced, tapping the screen.

“ Pride,” Kane said, immediately, the feeling filling up his chest with the unmistakable glow of it. He closed his eyes and let the warmth of it wash over him. “Praise. Success.”

He held a hand to his chest as if he’d be able to feel the warm feeling welling there on his skin.

“Good,” he said, a contented smile forming on his lips. 

Rhodes chuckled. 

“I kind of figured, by how you look right now,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before.”

The smile faded, slightly. Kane hadn’t even noticed he’d been doing it. 

He shook his head.

“No… good. Um…” he struggled to think how to clarify. “Not bad.”

“Good as opposed to evil?” Luch asked.

“...I guess.”

It was more than just the opposite of evil or the opposite of bad. It was the feeling of the very idea of “good” in all forms, on all levels. Of doing what was right, what was needed, what was…was just good. 

He’d gone so long feeling so raw, the feeling was a balm on his war ravaged soul. How could he not try to hold onto it for as long as he could, even if it would only be a few moments?

Letting his mind follow the ideas the feeling conjured in him drew out the chemical signals so he leaned into each.

He had done well. He had succeeded. He was worthy of this praise, of this feeling. He had earned it. 

Each thought defined the feeling more, causing the it to well up again, just a little, as it faded, until a thought crept into his mind, unbidden:

He had served the Strogg well. 

The feeling of pride and self worth swelled up in his chest again so strong it almost brought a tear to his eye, before the cold pit of dread that followed drove it away like he’d been drenched in ice water.

Of course. There was no servitude except to the Strogg as a whole. No success that was not the success of The Strogg. No worth but what could be provided to the Strogg.

No feelings that did not serve the Strogg. 

Kane blinked, suddenly aware that someone was trying to get his attention.

“This next word, Kane?” Strauss asked. “You said it was ‘Makron’?”

He nodded, then noticed a word lower in the list and a deep uneasiness churned in what was left of his gut. 

Kane said nothing. 

Strauss activated the Makron command. 

Kane had to take a moment to adjust to the wave of feeling before he could speak. 

“Reverence. Devotion. Total devotion. Worship.” he said, though the words fell flat in comparison to what he tried to describe with them. 

“Belonging,” he added, then paused, rephrasing. “To…belong to.”

‘To want to belong to’, he did not say. 

Memories of the creature he'd fought twisted, temporarily, in his mind, like light refracted through water, colored by the chemicals his brain swam in. 

A being of total control, of pure power. Risen to the ranks of the Strogg warlords and then surpassing them all, when the position was left empty in the wake of Bitterman's triumph over the previous Makron. 

And such a being had picked him, him, specifically, to become Strogg. Had found him worthy of his unique form. Had been impressed enough by him to hand pick him for a commanding position. 

“Starstruck,” Kane said, feeling momentarily silly, afterward. Yet, he could not find it to be untrue. 

Even if he'd clearly surpassed it in strength, having singlehandedly defeated it, leaving the position, once again--

“ Empty,” Kane breathed. “There is no Makron.” 

Kane winced against the sudden shift in his mind. The feelings of devotion twisted with the knowledge of the object thereof’s absence. 

“Incomplete.” Kane shook his head. “There is no Makron!” 

Like a missing stair in a stairwell or rung in a ladder, the idea of a void at the center of the hive that was the Strogg made something in Kane’s mind skip and sputter, reaching for a stability that was not there. 

Something akin to panic began to fill him, but it passed mercifully quickly, as the chemicals from the synthesis command faded. 

“Interesting…” Strauss said. “A secondary reaction to the same chemical induction based on circumstance.” 

“Then the desire to replace the Makron is an instinct on a chemical level,” Sledge remarked. “Which explains why there was a new one so quickly. Without the Nexus, such ascension will be more difficult but, if it's really that deeply ingrained in their minds, they will find a way, soon enough.”

“It's incredible how much insight you've been able to give us to how the Strogg function, Corporal!” Luch exclaimed. 

Kane felt rung out. Going through so many shifts in emotion so rapidly was exhausting on his already weary body and mind. 

The word only one down the list from the next in line, again, made his insides twist with dread and foreboding. 

They were learning so much. Things that would be so important to the continuing war effort. So much more important than any uneasiness he might feel. 

It was easy to just follow orders. He didn't have to think. Easy to just go along with whatever was needed of him. 

Easy to just sit and swallow down the growing sickness that churned in his stomach and say nothing. 

Kane said nothing. 

Strauss pointed to the next word.

“Strogg,” Kane read, obediently.

“They've got an emotion that's just ‘the whole species’?” Rhodes said. “Figures. Egotistical bastards. I'm sure you can relate, Strauss.”

Strauss huffed at Rhodes’ jest. 

“To not be aware of my own brilliance would be indicative of a lack of basic perception,” he said. “A condition I do not suffer from. To deny it would simply be lying. Which I see no need to do.” 

“Mhmm…” Rhodes hummed, smugly. 

Strauss tapped the screen. 

Kane's eyes went wide and tears welled at the edges, just short of spilling over.

He could bring no words to his lips, only sit in awed silence. 

“...Kane?” Strauss’ voice was uncharacteristically gentle. 

“ Again? ” Kane breathed, without even thinking. 

He cleared his throat.

“It's…a lot,” he said, fumbling to give reason for his strange request. It wasn't even entirely untrue. 

But it wasn't why he asked. 

Strauss tapped the command again and a word tumbled from Kane's lips before he could even think to stop it: 

“Love.” 

He let the feeling wash over him again, clinging to the way it eased the hollow, aching void in his chest. 

He knew what this feeling was supposed to be in reference to, knew the thing that was meant to stir this love in him, but he couldn't bring himself to care. 

He was like an open wound, an exposed nerve. Every friendly touch stung like a knife across skin. Every thought was like a vice around his mind, trapping and crushing him. He had felt nothing but pain, pain, pain, from every part of his body and every corner of his mind, for days.

This feeling enveloped him like a second skin, shielding him from the worst of that pain. He could not reject it. Not even knowing what it was. He had no strength to. To even begin to want to.

He wanted to do nothing but let it fill in the cracked and crumbling thing that was his psyche, but he needed to come up with some kind of answer for Strauss. 

“ Love,”  he stressed, as though that would somehow clarify it. 

How could he possibly begin to? 

“In every way. Anything it could…anything that could be it.”

He huffed, frustration seeping through the protective blanket of positive emotion. 

Love of the self. Love of the community. Love for others. Love as a concrete action. Love as an abstract idea. 

The feeling was the same for each because they each were the same. 

To be Strogg was to love the Strogg. To love the Strogg was to love oneself. It was others, it was community, it was…

“Me.”

Kane startled, then raced to correct himself.

“T- The self!” he said. “The…sense of self. As part of a whole.”

There was no separation between the self and the collective, no room for a sense of existence apart from the ones place within the whole. How could there possibly, then, be different feelings for each? 

All the devotion each individual Strogg seemed to show, the fervor with which they served the Strogg as a whole. It made sense to Kane, now. 

Each felt themselves to be the Strogg as a whole. They could not differentiate the needs and desires of the collective from their own, not fully. Only as far as they could consider different parts of the whole to have different needs. 

A hand didn't not think itself separate from the body. It didn't not think of being harmed as sacrificing itself for the body, only allowing one part of itself to come to harm to protect the whole. 

Each Strogg saw its body and its mind as a single, tiny part of itself, barely a single cell in the body that was the whole of it. Insignificant in comparison to the true self that was The Strogg.

And, dear God, did the Strogg love themselves. In the most twisted, obsessive, and depraved way. 

They were fully and completely consumed by a cyclical self obsession so strong it left no room for even the slightest consideration for others, aside from what they could provide. What could be harvested from them or created out of them. 

Kane was grateful, more grateful than he'd ever been, or likely ever would be for anything else in his life, that Voss and the rest of Rhino Squad broke him out of that tube before his neurocyte had been activated. 

Nothing could ever make him give up what remained of his humanity, the last shred that Voss had managed to save. 

But for that feeling? That utter certainty of purpose, that unwavering feeling of love, multiplied over a million, million minds, stronger with each return of its echo?

Well…there was a hell of a lot else he could see giving up for that. 

“What did I tell you? Egotistical fuckers,” Rhodes said. 

The last of the feeling faded and Kane was left more hollow and weary than ever, but it was quickly replaced by a sudden spike of fear as he realized what word they'd reached. 

“The next word, Kane?” said Strauss. 

Kane said nothing.

His heart, or whatever amalgamation of metal and flesh now sat in his chest, pounded in his ears, nearly drowning out every other sound. It beat against his ribcage like a cornered animal, desperate to escape. 

“S…St…Stroyent…” he said, at last. 

“Hm,” Strauss hummed. “Interesting.”

If he said more, Kane could not hear it over the growing whine in his ears. 

Kane said nothing. 

Strauss looked over the scanner results.

Kane said nothing. 

Rhodes said something Kane couldn't hear, gesturing to the scan. 

Kane said nothing. 

Strauss waved Rhodes off, his words a dull, indecipherable drone. 

Kane said nothing. 

Strauss reached back for the controls. 

Kane said nothing.

Kane said nothing. 

Kane said n--

“Strauss!” Morris’ shout startled Kane back to reality. 

“Do I even want to know what the hell's going on here?” Morris demanded. 

“I am merely performing the tests we discussed earlier,” Strauss said. “Before you interrupted me.”

“Then why is the scanner blinking like that?” Morris asked, folding his arms. 

“That's what I was asking,” Rhodes said. 

“And I gave you the same answer I give now: The scanner is designed for human brains. In the event a human brain produced so many different neurotransmitters in such a short time, it would indicate a serious problem,” Strauss said, sounding irritated both at being delayed in his work and for having to repeat himself. “ Corporal Kane’s brain is augmented. It is far more resilient and has capabilities the human brain does not. The scanner simply cannot accommodate this.” 

“Just how much of this stuff have you been forcing Kane to pump out?” Morris asked, tone accusatory. “The man should be getting rest, not having you mess with his head like this! No good can come of it!”

Strauss huffed, insulted. 

“I have not ‘forced’ anything. The Corporal is here of his own volition and perfectly capable of--”

Kane abruptly stood, cutting Strauss off. 

He raised his hand up and roughly pulled the cord from the back of his head, letting it fall to the floor, the end clattering against the metal. 

“Ach! Fick--! Corporal Kane, this equipment is extraordinarily valuable!” Strauss cried, hastily falling to his knees to recover the cord from the ground. 

Kane barely heard him, he could only think of getting out of this room, away from that console.

Away from the word on it.

“See, look what you have done!” Strauss snapped. “You've insulted him!”

Morris snapped something back at Strauss behind Kane but he didn't even slow down, pushing his way past Rhodes without so much as a glance back. 

Sledge stepped out of his way with a silent nod. 

He didn't know where he was going. Just away. Just not here. Just anywhere else!

He hadn't even noticed the continued calling behind him until a sudden hand on his shoulder made him jump. 

In a flurry of movement too fast for the human eye to follow, he spun around on his heel, grabbing his attacker’s wrist in a voice grip. 

Morris held up his other hand in surrender. 

“Hey, hey, it's alright!” he said. “I just came to tell you all the pieces of your hand are rounded up, back in the rec room.”

Kane blinked. He realized it was the first time he'd done so in some time. 

He stiffly released Morris' hand and looked down at his left arm where it abruptly ended. Somehow he'd forgotten. 

How could he have forgotten his hand was missing?

“Kane…” Morris began. 

“Thank you,” Kane said, his voice sounding emotionless and robotic to his own ears. 

He didn't give Morris the time to say anything else, making his way towards the rec room. 

---

Reattaching his hand was easy. Kane knew every piece and where it went. He knew how to attach each to the next and even how to reconfigure it into different shapes for different purposes. 

He disassembled and reassembled his arms, up to the elbow, where they blended into flesh, again and again.

The work provided a welcome distraction from his thoughts, but it could not drown out the needs of his body.

“Fuel low. Seek immediate St--”

Kane dismissed the alert as soon as it appeared, just as he had been doing, over and over, for hours. 

He replaced the final screw of his right hand and tested the mobility of the fingers. 

Perfect. Not a single piece out of place. Just like every other time. 

The rest of the Rhino Squad had gone to sleep and no other squad members came near their wing of the Hannibal, anymore. 

Not when they knew there was a Strogg haunting the place. 

Fine with him. He was in no mood to deal with people. He'd always preferred solitude. 

Which only made the sense of loneliness that hung over him every moment more ironic. 

Strogg were not meant to be alone. They weren't made for it. Even unactivated, Kane's neurocyte yearned to connect to another. 

Just another hunger he couldn't feed. 

“Fuel levels critical . Seek immediate --”

Kane dismissed the warning, again, but he could still feel it in his periphery, like a headache building behind his eyes. 

He winced against a pang of hunger in his gut. 

He needed fuel. Food. 

But the Strogg only had one source of either.

Stroyent. 

The nightmarish food source of the Strogg, made from the liquefied and processed corpses of their enemies. The reason they endlessly sought out more planets to conquer, to consume. 

Earth was the most recent of their attempted conquests and now, with human soldiers dying in droves on the surface of Stroggos, it was undeniable: all the Stroyent Kane had seen in the waste processing plant, the gallons and gallons he saw in barrels and dispensers, it was all human remains that comprised it. 

And it was the only thing Kane could eat, now. The only thing he'd ever be able to eat again. 

Even if they won. Even if he made it back to Earth. He would never be able to be sustained on anything else again.

Kane felt lightheaded and he wasn't sure if it was from the horrifying thought or just the hunger. 

There was a sample container of Stroyent in one of the medical bay storage units. Kane could easily get it, but the idea of consuming it was too repulsive to even consider for more than a moment before his mind recoiled.

He put his head in his hands. What was he going to do? 

Another pang of hunger got him to his feet.

He made his way, as silently as he could, to the mess hall, which was mercifully empty, this time of night. 

Creeping to a food storage locker, he opened the doors and grabbed several things inside. An MRE, a tiny sleeve of hardtack crackers, and canned fruit.

He sat down at one of the empty benches, putting the food down on the table in front of him. 

Normally, even military rations like these would have looked mouthwatering to him, given how malnourished he was, but none elicited any feeling in him besides slight nausea. 

First he tried the fruit. Canned fruit at least had the closest resemblance to “real” food of most of the rations. 

He pulled the lid of the can off with his bare hand. The sickly sweet smell of the peaches inside made him grimace. 

Holding his breath, he raised the lip of the can to his mouth and tilted it back to pour a small slice of peach into his mouth.

The instant the slimy, mushy flesh of the fruit touched his tongue, Kane gagged, a shiver of disgust running up his spine. 

The texture was repulsive, like mucus over gelatinous flesh, and the taste was even worse. 

It tasted wrong. 

There were no specific flavors like he'd had as a human.  It tasted of concepts the same way his emotions felt like ideas. 

It tasted like it was not fuel.

It tasted like it was dangerous to him. 

It tasted like he had to spit it out that instant! 

His throat not even entertaining the idea of swallowing it, Kane had no choice but to spit the offending bit of fruit back into the can. He then spit several more times to try to rid his mouth of the taste. 

Next he tried the hardtack. The dryness alone was enough to make him cough and retch. He couldn't even begin to try to actually eat it.

Getting more desperate by the second, Kane tore open the MRE. The meal inside was some kind of sad attempt at a sandwich. 

He took it apart, separating the dry, stringy beef from the rest of the sandwich. As unappetizing as it even would have been to his human self, it was the closest anything so far had looked to food. 

He shoved the entire piece into his mouth and clamped a hand over his lips to stop himself from reflexively spitting it back out. 

The texture, at least, did not completely revolt him, but his body still seemed to cry out against the foreign object that was not the fuel it kept begging for. 

Kane had seen it, on Stroggos. A sight that would be burned into his brain until the day he died, no matter how he tried to forget it. 

He'd entered a room and taken aim at a Strogg Grunt that was attacking a downed marine, then frozen in his tracks as he realized it wasn't simply mauling the marine. 

Blood and viscera dripped from its mouth, bits of flesh clinging to its teeth, it had been eating him. 

Kane had put his shotgun directly against its metal plated skull and blown its head clean off. 

He had made a point not to look at the corpse. 

He knew, then, that Strogg could consume more than just Stroyent. They could! Some kinds, in some circumstances, at least. 

So why not him? Why not now? 

He clapped his other hand over his mouth, fighting tooth and nail against his body's frantic demands that he expel the tiny scrap of beef. 

With a monumental effort, Kane forced himself to swallow. He gasped for breath. 

He'd done it. It was difficult but he could do it. It was possible. He could--

Kane shuddered violently when the bit of meat reached his stomach. 

Warnings flashed across his eyes and in his mind like red hot pokers against his brain. 

“ Foreign substance in fuel storage! Emergency ejection sequence activated!”

Kane's stomach suddenly burned like it was on fire and, even with his superhuman speed, he only just made it to the trash can beside the table before his attempted meal was violently expelled back out of his stomach and up through his throat and mouth in a rush of burning green acid, the same as he'd seen the failed Stroggification “zombies” spew at him in the bowels of the waste processing plant.

Kane coughed and sputtered, spitting the glowing bile from his mouth as his stomach heaved again, but mercifully did not eject anything else. 

A noxious scent of melting plastic filled his nose and he saw, to his dismay, that the acid had eaten through the trash bag and managed to burn holes through the metal of the can itself before it had seemed to neutralize. 

A sickening slurry of half melted garbage and alien bile leaked out onto the floor and Kane felt like weeping. 

He hadn't done it. Hadn't done anything but steal rations, make himself sick, and destroy a trash can. 

He couldn't do it. He couldn't consume anything else. Not ever again. Not anything but Stroyent. 

Even the despair he felt seemed more like a heavy numbness. It didn't feel real, more like a terrifying idea in the abstract than the reality of the rest of his life, however long that was for a Strogg. 

He took a steadying breath and let the numbness turn to a cold resolve.

He had no choice.

The medical bay storage was locked with a heavy padlock but a swift pull with Kane’s enhanced strength popped it open with little effort. 

The glass container, roughly the size of a water bottle, capped with metal ends and filled with a viscous reddish orange liquid that glowed softly, seemed to mock him.

All his effort, all his desperate attempts to find an alternative, it was all pointless. 

When push came to shove, he'd end up here, in the end. 

But he'd known that already, hadn't he? 

Kane grabbed the container and roughly closed the locker door, trying his best not to think any more. 

He held it in his hand, trying to overcome the mental hurdle of even considering consuming it. 

When the planetary defense systems activated, hundreds of marines crashed to the surface of Stroggos. The lucky ones died on impact. 

When the next wave of Marines managed to land, there had been no corpses coating the landscape. Drop pods were torn open and empty. The wreckage of ships were stained with blood, but no bodies to be found aside from those too destroyed to be more than a vague pile of flesh. 

The rest had been taken. Alive or dead, they were hauled off to either be reanimated as Strogg or, more likely, processed for food.With the supply of bodies from Earth all but completely cut off, after being driven off planet during the unsuccessful invasion, they'd have been in short supply of their precious Stroyent. All of which meant that, not only was nearly all the Stroyent currently on Stroggos human in origin, but it was humans Kane likely knew.

He didn't know every other Marine personally, of course, but there was still a bond there. They had been brothers and sisters in arms. They'd traveled together, trained together, laughed and watched old horror movies together, on recreation nights. 

The bottle in his hand held more than just human flesh, but all that was left of those brave souls.

And he was going to eat it. 

Kane dropped the container on a medical cart and paced back and forth.

There was no way.

There was no other way. 

His body wouldn't let him eat anything else but his mind wouldn't let him eat the one thing his body could. 

He stopped pacing.

He couldn't overcome the limitations of his body…

He looked to the control terminal. 

…But maybe he could overcome the hesitation of his mind. 

Back in the medical storage unit, he searched around, mentally pleading that it was still-- ah ha!

Kane pulled the silver connection cord from a drawer. 

He held one end up to the back of his head, pressing the metal end connector gently against the port there. Unlike the first time, the cord seemed to almost recognize him, eagerly worming its way into the back of his skull and extending its tendrils to connect with his neurocyte. 

The terminal was, thankfully, still isolated from the rest of the ship’s computers, making it far less overwhelming when Kane connected the other end of the cord into it.

Using a mix of mental control and the console, he navigated it to the list of emotion commands and scrolled down until he found the word he had been looking for. 

The word he had been dreading.

Stroyent. 

Kane stared at the screen for a long time, hand frozen over the controls. 

He watched his empty fuel gauge as if he could will it to be lying to him, to not need what he knew it did.  Alerts flashed through his mind, begging him to find something to keep his body running. To consume the only thing he could, anymore. 

He reached for the controls, a tremor too slight for human eyes to have even seen in his hand. 

He...

He…he couldn't do this. 

He didn't want to feel what the Strogg felt about their sickening food source. What he was supposed to have felt. What he would have felt, if Voss and the others had showed up even a split second later. 

Fuel warnings turned to body integrity warnings. The gauge for his health would begin to creep downwards, as well, soon enough.

How long would it take him to starve, like this? Could he possibly hope to finish his mission to end the Strogg threat for good before he did? 

Even if he could stay alive long enough, how fast would his physical health fail? Stroyent was more than just food, just fuel, to the Strogg. It was their mechanical lubricant, their coolant, their hydraulic fluid, and the source of all their healing. Without it, how quickly would the enhanced reflexes and superhuman stamina that the war hinged on begin to falter? 

How many more of his fellow Rhino Squad members would die for having put their faith in him? 

Kane tapped the screen before he could think about it. 

If he'd thought that the reaction to the induced emotional response for the Makron or even the Strogg had been overwhelming, he'd been hopelessly unprepared for the flood of chemicals that rushed through his brain in response to the command for Stroyent.

Want. Hunger. Need.

Purpose. Fuel. Food. Energy. Health. 

Life life life!

Kane nearly staggered from the sudden intensity of it. The natural urges of his body to find sustenance melded and amplified with the new rush of artificially induced emotion. 

God, fuck , he was hungry.

The fuel warnings and alerts pulsed like a migraine in his skull yet, as he looked towards the glowing red container next to him, his mind still went back to the processing plant. To the bodies he saw, some with insignias like his own on what remained of their armor, in rotting piles, awaiting being crushed and liquefied, and he had to turn away. 

It still wasn’t enough to overcome his revulsion.

He activated the command, again.

In an instant, Kane suddenly understood how the Strogg could strip planets to the bone in their endless hunger. 

He could do nothing but share in the need to scour every centimeter of the galaxy for anything that had even once been organic to process and consume. 

Need turned to desperation and, in that desperation, reverence.

Stroyent was more than sustenance in the sense of food or fuel, it sustained the very idea of the Strogg. The very nature of their endless conquest, given form. 

It was conquest. 

It was the driving force to conquer, the fuel by which it was carried out, and the spoils thereof, all at once. A cycle of perfect, insatiable hunger, pushing them endlessly to refine their art. Their beautiful efficiency. To consume species, planets, even whole galaxies, in their entirety. There was no purer form of victory.

No more beautiful form of art.

Good God, no wonder they were so ruthless. Feeling this, every second of every day? Kane couldn’t imagine how they could do anything but tear the galaxy apart in their pursuit of more efficiently acquiring it. 

Chemicals swam in Kane’s head, feelings of reverence and repulsion warring in his mind while the demand for fuel seemed to pound against every inch of his body. 

Kane took the stroyent container in his hand, hunger pushing him forward, but disgust holding him back. Frozen in place between conquest and conscience. Purity and practicality. Hunger and humanity.

It was beautiful. It was horrific. He wanted it. He hated it. 

He needed it. He needed it. He needed it! He needed it!

He had to. He couldn’t.

He…he couldn’t!

God damn it, Kane! he cursed at himself, dropping the Stroyent back onto the medical cart. Why, after everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve had to do to survive, why this? Why is this what stops you? You’d really let everything that’s resting on your shoulders come crashing down just because you’re squeamish?! 

After all, it’s not even like it would be the fir--

Desperate to stop his own train of thought before it completed, Kane slammed his fist onto the command button with such force that it broke clean through the tempered glass screen. 

“Oh shit,” Kane breathed.

He had no time to do anything else before a tidal wave of chemicals hit his brain hard enough to send him crashing to the ground in a fit of convulsions. 

The scream that escaped his lips was inhuman, more like the horrific screech of rending metal than a noise made by a creature of flesh and blood.

Warnings flashed across his vision faster than even his supercomputer of a brain could process.

Toxic levels of dopa--Serotonin over--Toxic levels detected of norepine--Toxic levels of ser--Toxic levels detected--Histamine production warn--

Kane thrashed on the floor of the medical bay, trying desperately to get his spasming body to obey him. Clutching at his skull, his screaming was drowned out by the ceaseless wave of chemicals and subsequent distress signals from every part of his body, both organic and mechanical.

Finally, with a quick forward thrust of his head, Kane managed to pull the connection cord from the port in the back of his skull.

The deluge of synthesized chemicals stopped, but Kane’s still drowned in what had already been dumped into his skull. More warnings than ever stabbed against his brain like iron spikes, informing him of the significant damage to his body that forcing that amount of chemicals to be produced had caused, along with the toxic levels of the chemicals themselves. 

The maelstrom cleared just enough to solidify into a single directive that encompassed every cell and circuitry of his body: to feed.

Kane’s revulsion was more than just forgotten, the very centers of his mind capable of producing the feeling were entirely drowned out. Anything beyond the drive to find and consume fuel was buried under that singular drive.

Had he had access to any of his higher brain functions, Kane might have wondered if, in that moment, he felt what it had felt like when Voss said he couldn’t control how the Strogg were taking over his mind. Not simply controlling his body to do what his mind did not want to, but controlling what his mind wanted, what it even could want. 

Thankfully for him, Kane thought of nothing but the glowing container on the medical cart beside him.

Lurching to his feet with an inhuman speed, limbs bending at unnatural angles to facilitate the movement, Kane grabbed the container of Stroyent. He tore the metal top clean off, tossing it aside and pressing the container to his lips. The fluid within slid easily down his throat, a far cry from the choking attempts to eat he’d done, earlier.

Whatever it tasted like, in human terms, Kane couldn’t have said. It could not be translated into any sense of taste the way he’d had known it before, only more chemical signals his neurocyte translated into feeling. 

It tasted like he had succeeded. It tasted like he could function more efficiently. Most exquisite of all, it tasted like he had served the Strogg well. 

More than anything, it tasted like he needed more of it.

The warnings for low fuel and compromised physical integrity still blared in his mind, burning across his vision, as he tossed the empty Stroyent container across the room, the force of his absentminded throw shattering it against the wall, though he didn’t even notice. 

That puny sample was all the Stroyent they had on the ship and it hadn't even given him enough fuel to overcome the energy and resources spent on the overloaded neurotransmitter synthesis.

Kane dove into the files of his neurocyte, digging through all the information that had been downloaded to it when it was first implanted, something he'd been steadfastly avoiding. His desperation overcame whatever hesitance he was still capable of feeling. 

There had to be something he could do, some way to get what he needed! Surely there must have been some smaller scale process for the creation of Stroyent for individual Strogg far from any kind of processing plant! Some other way of creating it than the plant he’d destroyed. He'd seen that grunt eating a marine. He'd heard they'd even managed to extract it from crude oil, for God's sake!

At last, he found something: a biochemical process for individual Stroyent creation within the body of a single Strogg unit. It seemed that his stomach could be used to process biomass into a very unrefined Stroyent, not unlike the way the Stroyent Creature did, but on a much smaller and far less efficient scale. A crude approximation of his stomach’s function when he was still human. 

Kane didn't even hesitate. 

He activated the process without a second thought, but then doubled over as a sudden jolt of pain and discomfort gripped his abdomen. 

He hugged his stomach as it twisted and burned, the acidic green bile he'd vomited up earlier being pumped into it to turn it into a sort of miniature distillation unit. 

All at once, it was like a pit opened up within him. A yawning void of hunger that demanded to be filled. 

The next thing he knew, he was tearing the door off of the locked cold sample storage. 

Cloned flesh kept on hand for emergency skin grafts, blood and tissue samples from each squadmate for tissue synthesis, pieces of alien flesh saved for further research, and even plates of agar that housed microbial samples each were consumed as quickly as Kane could get his hands on them. 

There was something almost freeing about it, in what little way Kane was able to process such an emotion, currently. 

Some part of him was aware, in a purely factual way, that he was destroying precious samples the medical crew would be devastated to lose, as well as doing something that any human being would find shocking and revolting. 

Yet the accompanying sense of shame, guilt, or disgust that normally would come with such knowledge was just not there. There was no room in his mind for things like morality or empathy, only simple practically.

He needed organic matter to convert to fuel. Flesh was most suited to the task. This was the most readily available form of it. Nothing else mattered, especially not the emotions of humans.

Such guilt would have destroyed him, before. Now, he felt nothing but a faint sense of fulfillment.

The awareness of what should have been a source of enormous pain, while feeling none, granted a strange sense of comfort, like a sort of invincibility. He was beyond so many things that could hurt a human being. This was just one more thing that could no longer harm him. Could not hold him back from what he needed to do.

A total and complete freedom from shame and emotional pain.

There was a comfort in that, indeed. 

Kane's fuel gauge finally began to slowly tick upwards, but it was still far too little. The conversion rate of food to fuel was so low, he'd need far more to even hope to get his fuel to an appropriate level. 

Before he could even begin mapping out possible sources within the ship, he heard the faint sound of footsteps across the metal floor. 

With a deft jump forward into a slide, Kane slid into a darkened corner, turning to crouch like an ambush predator in wait. 

It seemed like a possible source had found him.

---

Morris had had a bad feeling about Kane all night. Ever since he’d seen the exhausted, hungry look in Kane’s semi-robotic eyes. 

The guy was running on fumes, emotionally and physically, anyone could see it. 

Well, anyone but Strauss, apparently. 

When a horrific scream like grinding metal and microphone feedback rang out through the ship, waking him and some of the rest of the squad from a dead sleep, he knew his suspicions had been well founded. 

He was out of bed and heading for the source of the sound by the time Cortez had managed to sit up and begin to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

A quick glance at the empty rec room made the pit of anxiety in Morris' gut turn to dread. He knew where Kane must be, though he wished he didn't. 

Morris stepped into the med bay with careful, quiet footsteps. 

The glass control screen was totally shattered, shards scattered across the floor along with something else he couldn't quite make out in the dim light. 

He knelt down and picked up a silver cord from amongst the glass. The connection cord they'd used to interface with Kane's neurocyte, earlier. 

God damn it, Strauss!

The sound of shifting metal made Morris snap his head up, but too late to avoid the incoming attack. 

He only caught a glimpse of two glowing orange eyes in the darkness before Kane tackled him to the ground with a growl like a failing diesel engine. 

Gnashing teeth tried to catch Morris’ neck but his reflexes kicked in in time to deliver a swift punch across Kane’s jaw, sending him rolling off of him. 

He jumped to his feet and backed up to put distance between himself and Kane.

Kane spat a mouthful of some mix of blood and a glowing green slime, then turned back to Morris with a hiss like steam from a boiler. 

“Kane…Listen to me. This isn't you,” Morris said, voice insistent, but still soft. “I told Strauss that messing with your head like that would lead to no good. Whatever's going on in there, you need to snap out of it!”

Kane crouched low, moving in that jerky, mechanical way the Strogg did. Unblinking orange eyes stared Morris down with no hint of recognition in their depths. 

He sprang again and, even expecting it, Morris couldn't hope to match Kane’s Strogg enhanced speed, nor overpower his strength.

Kane knocked him flat on his back and pinned down his arms so he had no hope of punching his way out of the restraint, this time. 

“Kane! I know you're still in there! You've gotta fight this!” Morris cried. 

Kane bared his teeth, a small drop of acid saliva dripping from his lips and onto Morris’ cheek, causing the skin to sting and blister. 

“Come on Matt,” Morris said. “You're stronger than whatever juices that metal bug in your head is pumping out. I know you are.” 

Kane opened his mouth wider and leaned forward as if preparing to tear out Morris’ throat, but hesitated, as if he'd somehow gotten stuck. 

His breath grew shaky and Morris saw his expression war between animal ferocity and remorse. His eyes looked tortured and the beginnings of tears seemed to glisten around the edges. 

“Hey, I get it, alright?” Morris said. “You're exhausted, you're hungry, and you're hurting. But you're not alone. Your squad is here for you, Matthew. I want to help you. But you have to let me go, first.” 

Kane’s expression twisted into an agonized grimace as he seemed to fight with himself. His hands tightened around Morris' arms. 

“I…I--I c- can’t!” Kane choked, his voice a harsh rasp. 

Tears started to fill his eyes in earnest.

“I-I…I ne-- need--I--!” Kane grit his teeth, screwing his eyes shut as the battle for his mind warred within him. His body shook with the effort of restraining himself.

“I know, soldier. I know,” Morris said. “We'll help you through this, I promise. You can do this.”

Kane let out a sob. 

“I w-w-want!” Kane's tone was one of self loathing and desperation. 

“It's okay,” Morris breathed. “It’s gonna be okay.”

With an electronic whining sound, Kane pried his hands from Morris’ arms, releasing him, and rolled to the side with a pained wail. He clutched at his stomach, body trembling as he curled in on himself. 

Morris sat up, rubbing at his arm where Kane had gripped him hard enough to make his bones creak. 

“Good man,” he said, through a hiss of pain as he probed a particularly tender spot. He'd need to get the medical team to scan for a compression fracture. 

Kane seemed to rally himself enough to get to his knees. He crawled away from Morris, pressing himself against the far wall. 

With a sudden shudder, Kane vomited up a torrent of that glowing green bile, along with bits of glass petri dishes and plastic containers. 

The acid bile bubbled on the floor, hissing as it ate into the metal. Morris hoped it would cause no more than superficial damage. 

He got to his feet and approached Kane, slowly, like he was a cornered animal. 

“Stay away from me!” Kane cried, his voice distorted by his modified voicebox and the acid burning his throat.  “Leave…leave me alone!”

His whole body was shaking, violently, as he curled against the wall. 

“Afraid I can't do that, Soldier,” Morris said, though he stopped moving forward, kneeling down to Kane's level, instead. “I know I'm no Voss, but I am the commanding officer of this squad. And that means it's my job to look out for my squadmates when they're in a bad spot.”

“ Look at me!” Kane spat. “I'm not your squadmate anymore! I'm not even human!”

“I don't remember you being relieved of service just for not being human, anymore,” Morris said. “Strogg or no, you're a part of my team. And this team needs you.”

“Why?!” Kane demanded. “Because I've got an advantage like this? Bitterman didn't have any of this -” he gestured to his body’s modifications “- and he took down the whole planetary defense systems single handedly!”

Kane let out a sharp, humorless laugh. 

“And he didn't run on the corpses of our fallen teammates!” he shrieked. 

He clutched at his head, tears flowing down his face, lit up like fiber optic trails by the glow of his eyes. 

“Some advantage I gave. Voss and Anderson…I was right there and I…They risked everything just to save me, even like this. They vouched for me in that pod and I couldn't even--!”

“Voss and Anderson knew the risks when they joined this unit. We all did. They gave their lives protecting the most valuable asset humanity has ever gotten in this war,” Morris said. “And you can't blame yourself for that. You'd just been beaten, drugged, and mutilated. It's a miracle you were even on your feet! You think you didn't give an advantage? You took down the communication Nexus for the Strogg across the galaxy! And while having gone forty eight hours without sleep or food--.”

Kane flinched at Morris’ words as though he'd been struck.

Morris paused for a moment as the pieces fell into place. Kane had made a drastic improvement between when they first freed him from the Stroggification line and when they'd regrouped on the Hannibal.

Morris had chalked it up to the drugs in his system wearing off and him getting his feet under him. 

It seemed like there was another reason for his sudden recovery.

“Ah. That's why you couldn't even talk about it. Not ‘cus you couldn't ever bring yourself to do it…Because you already had.”

Kane wouldn't meet Morris' eye. 

“...It was in the processing plant. I got hurt. Bad. I didn't have any more medkits on me and I found a Strogg Stroyent station,” Kane said, his voice flat. “I…I knew what it was. I didn't want to do it, but I was in so much pain and the smell of it--God it was everywhere and I--I …I couldn't help myself… ”

He curled in tighter around himself, screwing his eyes shut. 

“You should have never broken me out of that tube,” he breathed.

He looked up at Morris, pleadingly.

“I can't even feel anything anymore!” he sobbed. “It's all just…chemicals and code, now!”

He let out a few more choking sobs before a Morris’ soft chuckle seemed to snap him out of his despair induced stupor. 

“Well, forgive me if I'm being presumptuous here, Kane, but it seems to me you're feeling a hell of a lot right now,” he said. 

Kane blinked. 

“I…um…” he stammered, as if suddenly becoming aware of his own emotional state.

“What you're experiencing is called ‘shock’. Something I'm sure you're familiar with after Armstrong,” Morris said. “You're feeling numb because your brain still thinks it's in a life or death situation. It doesn't feel safe to feel anything positive,” 

Morris chuckled, again. 

“Believe me when I say you are far from the first man to use chemicals to force some positive emotion to try to keep going.” 

He gestured to the broken control panel behind him. 

“That's not even the worst fight I've been in with a soldier on a bad trip after trying to ‘chemically induce’ his troubles away,” Morris laughed. “I don't even think you're the first one to try to bite me.” 

Kane had uncurled, now just sitting, back against the wall, looking calmer, but still wrecked. 

Morris sat against the wall, beside him, with a sigh.

“Listen, I…I'm no Voss. I know I'm not,” he said. “Or Bidwell, for that matter. We lost both of them so quickly…I never expected to be thrown into command so soon. Didn't think I'd have to be trying to fill in Voss’ shoes.” 

He leaned back, resting the back of his head against the wall and looking up at the ceiling. 

“Voss was one in a million. The kind of guy who could talk and you’d just listen. Who always knew what to say, no matter how shitty things got,” he said. “Right now, half the squad dead, you turned Strogg, everyone on a hair trigger, barely keeping it together; We could use a man like Voss more than ever…and I'm just not that man.” 

He looked back to Kane who had stopped shaking and just looked back at him, wearily. 

“But I'm still the leader of this squad. And, goddamnit, I'm gonna protect what's left of it with everything I've got,” Morris said. “No matter what.”

Kane had no time to respond before the rest of Rhino squad burst into the med bay in various states of dress. Sledge was in his sleepwear and seemed largely nonplussed, Rhodes had only his sleep clothes and his weapon holster, Cortez had put his chest armor over his sleep shirt and Strauss, ever cautious, was in his full armor. 

Rhodes had his weapon drawn, but lowered it when he saw it was only Kane and Morris within.

“God damn it, with all that ruckus I thought we were under attack, again!” he said, holstering his gun.

Morris waved off their concern.

“Just a little malfunction with the terminal,” he lied, “Nothing to--”

“I attacked Morris,” Kane interjected, his voice devoid of emotion. “I tried to kill him. To…to eat him.”

He stared straight at the ground, as if he couldn’t bear to look the others in the eye.

“I…I can’t eat anything but Stroyent, now. I tried to use Strauss’ connection cable to connect to the terminal again. I used the neurotransmitter synthesis to try to overcome my own reservations about it,” he said. “But I broke the terminal and overdosed myself. I lost control.”

There was a long beat of silence where no one said anything.

“Son of a bitch, Kane!” Rhodes exclaimed, and Kane flinched, only for his expression to turn to one of surprise and Rhodes continued. “Why the Hell didn’t you say something earlier? We could’a been spending this time figuring out something for you!”

He knelt down next to Kane and Cortez followed suit. Strauss frowned and turned away, making his way to the storage lockers.

“We’re your team!” Cortez said. “You can’t keep this kind of thing to yourself like this!”

“I hope you at least had the good sense to eat something while in the Strogg facilities,” Sledge added, folding his arms. 

Kane balked.

“I…you aren’t…I thought…” he stammered.

“What? That your squad would turn on you over this?” Morris asked. “I told you, you’re a part of this team. We’re not abandoning you over some dietary restrictions.”

“Dietary restrictions?!” Kane cried. “You know what it is, don’t you?! How can I--how can anything justify sustaining myself on that?! How anything justify keeping something like me alive? ” 

He winced, curling in on himself and clutching at his stomach. It seemed that whatever he’d done to snap himself out of his feeding frenzy had undone most if not all of whatever he’d been able to get from it.

“Shit,” Cortez swore. “You should have said you were going through all this shit! We don’t have any--”

He was cut off when Strauss, having returned from the storage lockers, held out a large, metal container, somewhere around two liters in capacity, towards Kane.

A quick sniff and Kane’s eyes grew wide, sitting suddenly upright.

“It’s…?”

“A sample of Stroyent I acquired for my own personal research,” Strauss said, handing the container to Kane, who accepted it with a haste boarding on frantic. “Not… officially on the ship's manifest.”

“Meaning you smuggled it on,” Rhodes said, with a smirk. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Strauss, for once, did not react to Rhodes’ goading. 

With shaking hands, Kane twisted off the metal cap and raised the opening to his lips, eagerly gulping down the glowing fluid within. It took him only a few moments to drain the entire container.

He panted for breath as he lowered the empty container again and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. 

“Thank you,” he breathed. 

The hollowness of his cheeks and deep, dark circles beneath his eyes seemed, already, to soften, ever so slightly, and his body seemed to release a great amount of tension it was holding. He slumped back against the wall, leaning shoulder to shoulder with Morris.

Strauss looked at his own boots, fidgeting with his hands.

“Mine is the most perceptive mind of my time. To deny this would be simply inaccurate,” he said. “My ability to observe and analyze that which is around me is unparalleled. This much is undeniable.”

He looked up at Kane, a deep remorse in his eyes.

“Therefore, there is no feasible explanation for my not recognizing your fragile state aside from pure carelessness,” he said. “I did not take into account your emotional and physical distress. I ignored such details in order to pursue my own interests. And for my negligence, you have come to harm and suffering.”

He hung his head. 

“Forgive me, Corpor-- Matthew.,” he said. “For my carelessness. My selfishness.”

Kane blinked, surprised by the sudden sincerity from the normally aloof Strauss, then his expression softened into a smile.

“Thank you,” he said, again.

“Hot damn! Strauss admitting when he was wrong?” Rhodes laughed. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“Extraordinary circumstances,” Strauss said, snide tone returning. 

“Hey, it’s alright, Sauerkraut!” Rhodes said. “I knew you had a heart somewhere under all that ego!”

Cortez and Rhodes laughed as Strauss huffed over the nickname and Morris chuckled as well. He felt Kane lean more of his weight against his shoulder, seeming to finally relax.

“ In any case, I have had some opportunity to study Stroyent and its chemical properties, as well as elements of the processing facility,” Strauss said, poorly pretending to be unaffected by the laughter at his expense. “I feel confident I could replicate the process on other, non-human organic substances, given some time to create a mechanism to do so. It would not be so effective as that produced by the Strogg, but it would be sufficient for your needs.”

“Hey, who knows, you might end up starting a new protein shake craze, Kane,” Cortez joked.

“I have also observed Strogg with the capacity to inject Stroyent directly into their digestive systems,” Sledge noted. “It may be possible, with your permission, to make some modifications to your mechanical augmentations to allow you to do the same.”

“Oh, yeah!” Rhodes exclaimed. “And while we’re making changes, we outta do something about covering up some of those open patches of skin. I can’t imagine having big wounds all over you all the time like that can be comfortable. Maybe the Strogg don’t mind, but it seems gross to me. Uh, no offense, of course.”

“Maybe some changes to your armor, as well, huh?” Cortez suggested. “Something to give a bit more protection to your chest and make you look a bit less like the tactical Strogg.”

“Paint it green like your old armor!” Rhodes added. “With a Rhino Squad symbol! So if any of those dipshits in the other squads think about giving you trouble, they’ll know just who’ll straighten them out about it!”

“What do you think, Kane?” Morris asked. “...Kane?”

The rest of the squad, who had been busy discussing ideas among themselves, finally turned to look at Kane.

His eyes were closed and his face free from the constant furrowed brow and tight lipped grimace he’d worn since arriving on Stroggos. Chest rising and falling softly, he had, surrounded by his team, finally felt safe enough to fall fast asleep.