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“Forgive me, Corporal Kane, I truly did not think this process would take so many iterations.”
Matt Kane finished ejecting the last of his stomach’s contents into the heavily reinforced medical waste disposal bin and slumped over the edge of the bin. He gave Strauss a weak thumb’s up.
Wiping his mouth against his arm, he winced as the acid bile bubbled against the metal for a moment, before neutralizing.
Strauss had been trying, fairly unsuccessfully, to recreate the Stroyent creation process on a miniaturized scale and, most importantly, with more “ethically sourced” ingredients.
Which was to say: “not human flesh”.
“The medical staff’s refusal to allow me to use their cadavers in my experimentation is a pointless obstruction of science!” Strauss huffed. “How am I to be expected to recreate the machinery when I do not have access to the same materials to test it with?”
Kane wasn’t sure how he could have ever thought Rhino Squad would turn on him over only being able to eat Stroyent, now. He should have guessed that Strauss’ thirst for scientific knowledge and experimentation would far outweigh his (admittedly unpolished) sense of empathy for his fellow man. He’d all but commandeered this section of the medical wing to set up in.
“I didn’t…want them to,” Kane said, out of breath from having so violently heaved up the latest batch of “Diet Stroyent”, as Cortez had coined it.
Though, the fact that Kane had eaten all the medical team’s samples and destroyed their datapad interface and storage lockers probably didn’t help endear him to them enough to offer anything more, anyways.
Strauss waved off his comment.
“Yes, yes, your concerns are noted as well, of course,” he said, offhandedly, as if they were discussing the chance it might rain.
Kane couldn’t help a weary smirk. He had to admit, Strauss’ utter lack of social tact with such delicate subjects was an unexpected comfort through all this. He treated it all with such a detached, clinical kind of curiosity, instead of as something horrifying. It helped Kane forget, for a moment, why this was all necessary.
Helped him forget how he’d been transformed against his will into an amalgam of flesh and metal sustained off of liquefied human corpses.
He turned around and leaned back against the bin, sliding down to sit on the floor.
This had been the third batch he’d attempted to consume today. They’d seemed to be making progress, the last two staying down for increasingly longer periods of time before ultimately being rejected, but this more recent one hadn’t even fully hit his stomach before he’d had to eject it.
Warnings flashed across his augmented vision. Information about the recent non-Stroyent substance in fuel storage, some minor damage caused by the sudden bile production and expulsion, and, of course, an ever-present low fuel warning.
He dismissed them all and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the bin. The fuel warning would come back, more insistently each time, but, for now, it was manageable. Like a mild headache. Persistent, but not debilitating.
Not yet, anyway.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew better than to let it get as bad as it had been before, when he’d been driven to using the neurocyte’s neurotransmitter production routines to force himself to consume Stroyent, accidentally massively overdosed himself, and attacked Morris in a chemically induced frenzy to find or create fuel by any means necessary.
Thankfully, Morris had snapped him out of it before he took any bites out of him. Kane felt bad enough about the small compression fracture he'd given Morris when holding him down, he'd have never been able to live with himself if he'd hurt him more severely. He couldn't even begin to entertain the idea of what would have happened if he'd actually killed and consumed him.
He wasn't sure even Rhino Squad would have been able to keep the rest of the Hannibal from having him put down.
He wasn't sure he'd let them try.
In any case, he wasn’t likely to lose control like that without something going seriously wrong with his brain chemistry, again, but he wasn’t particularly interested in getting anywhere near that state if he could help it.
“Kane.”
Sledge’s voice roused Kane from his thoughts and he opened his eyes to see a glowing vial of red fluid being held out to him.
Stroyent.
He sat up with inhuman swiftness before shaking his head and reigning in his reaction.
“I’m fine,” he said, waving away the offered vial. “I still have a while.”
It wasn’t entirely untrue. Ejecting the failed Stroyent alternative got rid of any fuel stored in his stomach (or, at least, the augmented fuel tank his stomach had been modified into), but even with the tank empty, fuel still lingered in the rest of his system. It wasn’t ideal, but he could last for at least a little while on just that.
Sledge was clearly unconvinced.
“The last time you had anything you could keep down was almost twenty hours ago. Even without you hurling up Strauss’ creations all day, that’s too long to go on so little,” he said, then added, “I’d say the same to any soldier putting his health in jeopardy. Not just you.”
Sledge made it clear it wasn’t out of concern for Kane turning violent, again. He didn’t blame him for attacking Morris. None of Rhino Squad did, save for Kane himself, of course. They trusted him and liked to remind him of that trust. He appreciated it, even if he wasn’t sure he deserved it.
“I don’t want to waste it. We need to ration,” Kane insisted, but Sledge didn’t buy it.
“We got three drums of it on that recon mission back to Stroggos,” he said. “We’ve plenty for you and to study.”
When Kane still seemed adamant in his refusal, Sledge changed tactic.
With a smirk, he said “You know, if you don’t trust the new intake system Strauss and I designed, you can say so. I’m sure he won’t be offended.”
“What’s this?” Strauss exclaimed, sounding as offended as Sledge clearly intended him to be. “Kane is well aware my design is flawless!”
He turned to Kane with the look of a decidedly distraught puppy.
Well played, Slidjonovitch.
Kane held out his hand and accepted the vial, knowing he had no chance to refuse now that Strauss’ pride had been put on the line.
He held the container up to the port they’d installed near his collarbone and pressed the specially designed cap at the end of the vial into the opening until it clicked and the Stroyent began to drain.
They’d copied the designs of some of the Strogg they’d found whose mouths had been covered or destroyed during Stroggification that allowed Stroyent to be injected directly into their digestive systems, letting Kane circumvent having to actually drink any of it. They only reason he had been physically drinking Strauss’ attempts at a replacement was because throwing up was a lot less taxing on his body than flushing out his entire fuel systems.
He let out a sigh as the Stroyent started to be absorbed by his body, the relief immediate. He’d gone too long.
Right as always, Sledge.
“See?” Strauss said, smugly, still clearly unaware of how he’d played into Sledge’s plan.
Sledge just gave him a noncommittal shrug.
Even if he didn’t have to taste it, it didn’t change what Kane was putting in his body and he hated how much better he felt, every time. Stroyent wasn’t just food. It was his mechanical lubricant, his all purpose medicine and painkiller, and the basis of his hydraulics and his coolant systems. Everything from moving to breathing and even just regulating his temperature got so much easier the second his fuel gauge started ticking upwards.
It was small wonder that Strauss had been having such middling success trying to reverse engineer the process of creating it. It was practically a miracle substance. Ironic, given its gruesome source. It probably took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for the Strogg to create and refine the process. The processing plant Kane destroyed had been massive and full of complex biomechanical equipment he couldn’t begin to comprehend, even with the base information afforded to him by his neurocyte.
What hope could they possibly have with a few half understood Strogg schematics and whatever paltry amount of time the three small drums of Stroyent they had would last him?
And, of course, the Greatest Mind of His Time.
“I am confident the device's construction is correct!” Strauss said. “I must simply continue to iterate on the composition of ingredients! Did you find the mixture of mainly animal proteins to be more or less palatable than the one of mainly plant derived peptides, Corporal?”
“Uh…more? Maybe?” Kane answered.
It had all felt about the same, coming back up.
“Extraordinarily unhelpful, Corporal Kane!” Strauss scolded. “I must ask that you take this seriously!”
Kane couldn't help a small huff of laughter at the confident earnesty of the insinuation that he was taking a cavalier attitude with the whole ordeal, though thankfully Strauss didn't seem to notice, too busy pouring back over his notes.
He wasn't good at showing it, but Strauss cared deeply about his team. It was more than just scientific curiosity that had him working, night and day, to develop this machine for Kane. His fussing and blustering was just another sign of that and Kane couldn't help but find it endearing.
“Hey, not everyone can have our dedication to the field of science,” said a voice from the doorway.
Strauss' under eye twitched in irritation.
“Corporal Rhodes, I must insist this area be kept clear of non-scientific personnel…” he grumbled, from between gritted teeth.
Rhodes had mastered the art of getting under Strauss’ skin and was seemingly extremely proud of the accomplishment, taking every opportunity to put it into action.
Strauss was less than impressed by the feat.
“Aw, don't pout, Sauerkraut!” Rhodes said, implementing Strauss’ least favorite of the nicknames Rhodes had come up with for him. “Can't a guy be interested in the scientific process?”
“Your only contribution to the scientific process is its purposeful obstruction!” Strauss huffed, turning back to his notes. “Do or say what you must, then leave, thank you.”
Rhodes chuckled, warmly, undeterred by Strauss’ prickliness. He turned to Kane.
“Morris wanted me to check up on you. See how you were holding up,” he said.
The last of the Stroyent drained into Kane’s systems and he ejected the empty vial from the port.
“Better now,” he admitted, wearily, handing the vial back to Sledge.
“Ah,” Rhodes said, ever present grin faltering momentarily. “Keep your chin up, yeah? If there's anybody out there who can figure out how to make something to replace Stroyent, it's our egghead, here.”
“Corporal Kane surely has no doubts about my abilities!” Strauss said, clearly not ignoring Rhodes nearly as much as he was trying to act like he was. “He is well aware this will be trivial for someone of my intellect! If you have nothing to say but to state the obvious, be on your way, bitte.”
“Alright, alright!” Rhodes said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I won’t take up any more of your precious time. Next time you get the chance, though, Kane, I think Morris’d appreciate you checking in with him, yourself. He says he's got something for you.”
Kane nodded. He felt awkward around Morris, after what happened, but he couldn’t afford to allow discomfort like that to grow within the group, with how closely they had to work together.
With a small grunt, Kane hoisted himself to his feet, trying not to notice how much smoother and more comfortable the movement was, after his “meal”.
“Snack”, really. His fuel gauges were more than happy to remind him of how much more he was supposed to be running on, along with the fact that what fuel he did take in was being used less efficiently at such low levels; a portion of it having to be used to repair the damages that running his body in such a low fuel state had caused, each time.
In end effect, by rationing it so extremely, Kane was burning through their Stroyent supply faster than if he kept himself at a more stable level.
Well aware of this fact as he was, Kane still couldn't bring himself to do it.
The new injection system had helped tremendously with the immediate revulsion of the act of consuming Stroyent. It gave him a bit of mental distance from just what it was that he was doing. Easing that problem, however, only brought another into stark contrast:
He didn't want to feel better.
When he had enough Stroyent, the everpresent ache in his body faded. His joints no longer fought against his attempts to move them. His body no longer felt so terribly heavy. He felt strong. Good.
And that terrified him.
That pain and discomfort, the way he felt, at all times, like he fit wrong in his own skin, it kept this all feeling like it wasn't him. Like a foreign object lodged in a wound, instead of something inexorably intertwined with his body.
When he was well fed, his body ran better in all ways. He’d experienced first hand just how well it could run, back on Stroggos. His strength, speed, agility, and stamina were all augmented far beyond what he could have dreamed of, before.
But his was a Strogg’s body, now. The better it ran, the closer it came to its intended function, its intended design.
To feel better was to feel more Strogg.
“You may leave while I prepare the next attempt. I will not need long, however, so please do not stray far,” Strauss said, snapping Kane out of his brief reveire. “I am very close to finding the right chemical composition, Corporal! I'm certain of it!”
Kane wished he could share Strauss' optimism but, in fairness to himself, such a positive outlook was likely easier to maintain when you weren't the one hurling up every failed attempt.
He gave Strauss a nod and made his way out of the med bay, pausing as he passed Sledge.
“…thank you,” he said, softly. Reluctant as he'd been and conflicted as he still felt, he'd needed the fuel and they both knew he'd have never taken it without Sledge's insistence.
Sledge just nodded in reply.
Morris wasn't hard to find, waiting in the Command room. He turned towards him when Kane entered the room and Kane grimaced slightly at the sling around the other man's arm.
Seeming to notice his discomfort, or maybe just having anticipated it, Morris gestured towards the sling with a light-hearted exasperation.
“I told the med team I didn't need this whole get up for one tiny compression fracture,” he said, shaking his head. “But you know how they can get. Said they wanted it to heal ‘as naturally as possible’.”
He shrugged.
“I guess I can't argue with conserving our faster acting medical supplies, but it still seems like a lot more trouble than it needs to be.”
Kane just avoided Morris’ gaze.
“Rhodes said you wanted to see me?” he said.
“That's right,” Morris said. “Wanted to get your input on something before it's sent for final fabrication.”
He gestured to the command table, atop which were a number of pieces of what looked like armor, but without normal padding or any obvious place where fasteners were supposed to be attached.
It took Kane a moment to realize what he was looking at.
He looked down at his chest, where exposed cables jutted out from ragged wounds that never closed, connecting into garish orange plating grafted directly into his flesh, then back to the piece on the table that looked perfectly designed to fit the same space.
“Strauss and Sledge did most of the technical designs, but Cortez had quite a bit of input as well,” Morris said. “He may not be one of the techs, but he understands more than most about our equipment and had some valuable ideas on how to best interface it with your get up.”
He chuckled.
“And, of course, Rhodes insisted on the color.”
Each piece was the same dark green that Kane's armor had been before his Stroggification. The same the rest of the squad wore, including the Rhino Squad emblem emblazed on the chest.
There seemed to be a piece to correspond with each of his pieces of orange Strogg plating, along with some that looked like they were meant to bridge some of the raw and exposed areas where the metal met the skin.
Kane just stared, unsure of what to say.
He'd known the team had been tossing around ideas for modifications to his “armor”, but he hadn't given it much thought. He didn't want to think about what had been done to him more than he had to.
“I…had no idea you were so far along in making these…” he said, numbly, his emotions unable to sort themselves. “Didn't realize you'd…even started.”
Morris chuckled again.
“Yeah, it wasn't easy to get Strauss to keep his mouth shut about it, but we all figured you'd do better not having to think too much about all this until they were close to being done.”
They hadn't been wrong. Having known about the design and construction of these would likely have been nothing but a cause of distress for Kane. Only serving to extend the emotional turmoil he felt right now.
On one hand, he hated what had been done to his body and had no desire for it to stay as it was but, on the other, changing it meant, in some way, claiming it. It was trying to make a Strogg body more “his”. More “him”. Which was the last thing he wanted to feel about this thing he'd been made into.
“What…do you need me to do?” Kane asked.
Falling back into looking for orders came naturally and was easier than trying to untangle the mess of emotions warring within him.
“I don't need you to do anything, Matthew,” Morris said, purposefully circumventing Kane's attempt to compartmentalize. “I'd like it if you'd try them on for size and see how you like it. Then I'd value your input on what you might want changed or added.”
He gestured to the pieces again.
“They'll fit over what you've got, there, already. Fit won't be perfect but it'll give us an idea if it all works together and how it'll need to be adjusted. And a pretty good idea of what it'll look like when it's all on.”
He nodded towards the door.
“I've got Luch and Holdorf on standby to help put everything where it's supposed to be.”
Kane looked over the pieces on the table, again.
His whole squad had come together to make these for him. As much as he wanted to avoid looking at or thinking about his body at all, he owed it to them to at least make an effort.
“Kane…This is up to you. You don't have to do anything you don't want to,” Morris said, gently.
For all Morris have himself a hard time for not being Voss, he'd more than shaped up into an effective leader and source of support for his team.
“I'll do it,” Kane said. “Try it on. Then I'll…see how I feel.”
Morris nodded with a soft smile, then went to the comms panel to call in the two techs.
Kane was silent while they worked to fit the new armor over him, slowly replacing orange with green, and, thankfully, the techs were mostly quiet as well, only giving him instruction on what they were doing and if they needed him to stand or move in any specific way.
It fit somewhat awkwardly, but far closer than he would have expected. Strauss was nothing if not precise in his designs.
“Alright. That's the last of it,” Luch said, affixing the final piece over Kane's chest, covering most of the exposed cables below.
Morris tapped a datapad interface and a screen that took up most of one of walls of the room changed to a reflective mirrored surface, giving Kane a look at himself.
“What do you think, soldier?” Morris asked.
Kane looked, wide eyed, over the green of the armor, the red and yellow of the Squad’s emblem, the neat, smooth curves of its human design instead of the jagged Strogg edges beneath them.
All of the open sections of flesh were covered, each harsh, exposed joint buffered by supplemental plating and rubber padding.
“It…looks like me,” Kane breathed.
It was strange to say. The face that looked back at him was still largely a stranger, stretched and contorted as it had been, and no part of his skin except his head was visible but somehow, there was something familiar.
It no longer looked like metal forced into flesh, but rather like standard armor worn over it. If it wasn't for his face, he might have even passed for human, if, likely, a cybernetically augmented one.
He'd opted out of any enhanced augments he'd been offered after Armstrong. What he'd gotten was top of the line, but intended to function as closely to the original as possible. He'd wanted to remain as “organic” feeling as he could. Ironic, now, of course. But the way he looked now reminded him of looking himself in the mirror the first time after his first round of reconstructive surgeries. When everything had been more or less replaced that needed to be, but he still had a long road of healing ahead of him.
He'd looked a bit like a stranger, then, too. But, like then, he could see some base familiarity with who he'd been in this new, broken and reassembled man.
Saw someone who could never again be the man he'd been, but might still someday grow into someone he could be.
“They can be fitted over the existing plating or, if you want, and you trust Strauss and our med team to do it, we can try to swap them out,” Morris said. “Strauss says he's confident he can remove what's there and replace it without damaging anything but, well, Strauss is confident about his ability to do just about anything. And we don't know how your body reacts to pain killers, now, no matter anesthesia. It'd be your call if you want to risk it.”
“I'll…give it some thought,” Kane said.
Before either of them could say any more, Strauss' voice called out via the comms.
“Corporal Kane, return to the medical bay, now.”
“Straight to the point as always, Strauss,” Morris chuckled, then looked to Kane. “Better not keep the resident genius waiting. You can keep those on while you test his next attempt. It'll give us a better idea of the fit in motion, anyway. And you can think if there's anything you want to change.”
Kane nodded and headed back for the med bay, but stopped before the door, turning back to Morris.
“Could…do you think they could do something about my head?” he asked. “I'm not saying I expect hair again or anything. I just…”
“I'll have them see what they can do.”
Kane smiled.
“Thank you.”
“Corporal Kane, I specifically informed you that I would not need much time for this iteration!” Strauss scolded.
“Looks like Morris had you try on your new uniform,” Sledge noted, he and Kane largely ignoring Strauss' blustering. “How do you like it?”
“Naturally Kane finds it to be perfectly adequate! My designs were exacting! We are wasting time that could be used in the interests of furthering science on petty frivolities!” Strauss interjected.
“Here.”
He handed Kane a vial of faintly growing green liquid.
Kane eyed it warily.
“It's supposed to be red, isn't it?” he said, removing the cap from the end of the vial.
Despite the fact every one of his attempts so far had ended in violent expulsion, Strauss seemed flabbergasted that Kane had any reservations about his creation.
“Ja, and that is precisely why the previous attempts have been failures! I have been trying to recreate refined Stroyent. Stroyent that went through a secondary round of processing and fermentation!” he explained, as if it should be obvious. “This should be far closer to the chemical composition before this secondary process.”
Well, if nothing else, they might get to see how this new armor stood up to getting some of his acid bile on it.
Kane took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and tilted the vial back, downing the liquid in one gulp.
He clapped his hand over his mouth to prevent himself from spitting it back out, on instinct, as various warnings flashed across his vision and his stomach gave a familiar lurch.
The “taste”, as far as his Strogg senses were concerned, was repugnant. His systems scrambled to analyze this unknown substance in its fuel tank and determine what to do with it.
Kane squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself to make another dash for the waste disposal bin when, suddenly, the warnings disappeared.
His eyes snapped open in shock as he saw the level of his fuel gauge creep slightly upwards, his body seeming to begrudgingly accept the concoction as being at least close enough to Stroyent to not be immediately ejected.
Strauss and Sledge looked on, anxiously, Strauss clearly not as unshakably confident in his recipe as he had tried to appear.
Another tense moment passed where Kane didn't dare move, lest it somehow shatter the fragile calm of his body, but the sense of nausea only continued to fade as his fuel gauge stopped rising.
Hesitantly, he removed his hand from his mouth.
“…so…?” Strauss prompted.
Kane waited another moment for any sudden upset, then gave a weak thumbs up.
Disgusting, but technically edible.
He'd take it.
Sledge grinned and Strauss puffed up with pride.
“Na ja, obviously, it is correct!” he said. “No doubt! I will continue to perfect the formula for maximum efficiency. As well, I will begin to look into alternatives to the standard putrification process since you destroyed the creature the Strogg had been utilizing for the task before even taking any samples or photographs!”
Kane couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter at Strauss' absurd but entirely in character scolding, as well as just of relief.
They'd really done it. They'd created something he could eat. He didn't have to run on the corpses of his fallen comrades, anymore. He wouldn't run out after the three drums ran dry.
Moreover, he could claim some tiny piece of living back from a cold and often cruel universe. Some way to live that he could stomach calling his own.
It certainly wasn't perfect, and it had a long way to go.
But better than the alternative.