Waking up was brutal. The first thing to return was physical sensation, and I did not like it. My muscles twisted with deep, grinding aches. This was not the satisfying exhaustion after a productive gym session; my body hurt like I had just survived a severe flu that had drained every drop of moisture out of me. Every tiny movement sent dull pressure through my joints.
I am breathing. My heart is beating. Considering the lethal risks of the experiment, that already counted as a victory.
I opened my eyes and took stock of my surroundings. An unfamiliar room. A wide window to the right of the bed. Beyond the glass stretched a dense night, sliced apart by the sweeping beam of a camp spotlight. Judging by the sterile pale walls and white sheets, they had transferred me to the camp hospital.
I carefully sat up. A thin plastic tube pulled taut. A catheter ran into a vein in my left forearm from the IV stand beside the bed. Judging by the label on the bag, it contained concentrated saline with glucose and plasma expanders. I had no intention of waiting for the doctors’ rounds. Rising to my feet, I grabbed the metal stand by its pole and quietly rolled it across the floor. Priority one was a visual inspection. From the fragments I had managed to see before losing consciousness, my skin was probably going to look like the upholstery of an old bargain-bin couch.
I raised my right hand and focused briefly. A steady, pulsing blue sphere of energy formed above my fingers. It was more than an improvised flashlight in a dark hospital room. It was my primary piece of evidence. The sacrifice had not been in vain. The limits had expanded, and now I could bind one more [Familiar] to myself.
Step by step, pushing the IV stand ahead of me, I made my way to the private bathroom in the corner of the room. I flipped the switch. A fluorescent ceiling lamp flooded the room with light. I walked up to the mirror above the sink and studied my reflection carefully.
Yeah. Not a sight for the faint of heart.
My entire body, torso, shoulders, hips, arms, even a line running beneath my hair along the temple, had been crisscrossed with rough surgical stitches. Black threads pulled together the edges of torn scars, turning me into something resembling a rag doll. But that was only half the problem. My eyes were filled with heavy redness. The whites had vanished completely beneath burst capillaries, giving my stare a vicious look, like a rabid dog.
I summoned the status window and scanned through the internal specifications. The fractures in my forearms and the displacement in my lower jaw were already in active consolidation. Bone callus was forming. Which meant Omega truly delivered a colossal increase in strength, enough to shove an armored personnel carrier, but the power only lasted for a matter of minutes while simultaneously breaking apart the user’s own skeletal framework and turning the soldier into a suicidal maniac. A pure laboratory creation born from the minds of deranged geniuses. They cared about peak numbers on a graph, not whether the test subject would still be able to fight with those hands afterward.
I did not panic. The bones would return to normal on their own; it was only a matter of time. The hemorrhaging in my eyes was purely cosmetic and barely affected my vision. The blood would clear eventually. The scars, however, needed to be addressed.
Several years ago, after another dull office shift, I had spent an evening in front of a monitor watching a lecture from a surprisingly competent plastic surgeon. He broke down the mechanics of scar formation in simple terms. The principle was straightforward: the body does not care about beauty. If the damage is deep enough, panic begins internally. The brain orders an emergency dump of collagen and connective tissue to seal the breach as quickly as possible, stop blood loss, and block infection. The result is a rough, ugly scar. And there is no way to explain to stupid cells that you are lying in a sterile medical ward under the supervision of the Corps’ best professor, that there is no reason to panic and they can take their time working neatly.
Well, an ordinary person could not explain that. But with my [Trainer] class, negotiating with my own body was easy. Before passing out, I had not issued detailed instructions for precision epidermal regeneration. The situation had been too critical. Survival was on the line, and cosmetics had not exactly been a priority. But now, in stable condition, I could force the cells to redo this butchered work properly. First, though, I needed to get rid of the foreign material. The stitches.
I quietly stepped out into the hospital corridor. Half darkness, silence, the faint hum of ventilation. The duty station stood empty. If a nurse was on shift, she was either asleep in the staff room or somewhere on another floor.
I moved carefully down the hallway, trying not to let the IV stand rattle too loudly. I peeked into a couple of empty rooms before finding a doctor’s office. I slipped inside, closed the door behind me, and switched on the desk lamp with its green shade. The first thing my eyes landed on was the flip calendar sitting on the desk. Three days had passed since the injection. Considering the density of my scars and the state of my bones, my healing sleep had achieved phenomenal efficiency. An ordinary patient would have spent three months recovering from injuries like these.
I opened the top drawer of the desk. The tools were exactly where they should be: tweezers and a pair of disposable scalpels still sealed in their packaging. Taking the supplies, I sat down on the examination couch right there in the office and began the operation.
Hook the knot with the tweezers, carefully cut near the base of the skin with the scalpel, then pull the black thread free in one smooth motion. I felt no pain, only a peculiar itching sensation as the thread slid out of the tightening channels. My back was the hardest part. I had to maneuver in front of the wall mirror, but my agility stats justified themselves completely. My joints and muscles bent like rubber, allowing me to reach even the most inconvenient areas. Step by step, I stripped my body of its medical fasteners, preparing the tissue for proper, controlled regeneration.
The entire process took about half an hour. Once I finished removing the stitches, I sat down at the doctor’s desk, pulled over a clean sheet of paper, and wrote out an official memorandum in neat handwriting. First, I explained my actions regarding the removal of the scars. Then I listed every item necessary to eliminate the consequences of the overload. I specified exact dosages of calcium, phosphorus, collagen hydrolysate, and heavy doses of vitamins B and C to accelerate the restoration of skin elasticity and the consolidation of bone fractures. I had no doubts about the qualifications of the Corps’ medical staff, but when it came to the internal architecture of my body, I possessed far more expertise as a [Trainer]. My organism was an object under my direct control, and I knew better than anyone what resources were required to close those deficiencies.
At the bottom of the page, I added a final note:
“Personally deliver to Professor Langstrom.”
An ordinary Corps medic would have scratched his head in confusion after seeing a list like that. Selina, however, would understand the logic behind my requests immediately.
After returning to the room, I carefully lay back down on the bed, adjusted the catheter needle, and placed the sheet of paper on my chest.
[Special Command: enter healing sleep mode. Localize excess collagen adhesions at rupture sites. Initiate scar tissue degradation and replace it with normal, healthy epithelium.]
My consciousness slipped into darkness with familiar ease. In the final moment before losing awareness, I could clearly sense the chaotic scar tissue cells, thrown together by the body in panic, breaking apart while a clean, elastic structure rebuilt itself layer by layer in their place.
***
The next time I opened my eyes, it was already daytime. Bright sunlight glowed through the curtains. Beyond the window, in a distant sector of the training grounds, a sergeant was drilling a squad of cadets wearing standard S-Armor kits. From this distance, they looked like steel beetles. The note was gone from my chest. I shifted my gaze to the IV stand. The old transparent bag had disappeared, replaced by a dense opaque solution dripping steadily through the line, mixed exactly according to my specifications.
It was time to evaluate the results of my intervention.
I got out of bed. The metal wheels of the IV stand rattled loudly across the floor again, but this time the daytime staff reacted immediately. The door burst open, and a young nurse hurried into the room.
“Cadet Ross!” Her voice was full of outrage. “Get back into bed right now! You’re under strict medical orders to remain at rest!”
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said calmly, looking straight into her eyes.
“Fine,” the nurse replied, pressing her lips together with obvious irritation as she reluctantly stepped aside. “But afterward, you’re going straight back to bed. No more freelance heroics. I’m informing Doctor Langstrom immediately that you’re conscious.”
She spun around on her heels and practically stormed out into the corridor. I entered the bathroom instead, locked the door behind me, and switched on the overhead light in front of the mirror.
The result exceeded expectations. My skin was perfectly smooth. Not only had the fresh crimson scars from the experiment vanished, but the system had completely erased even the small scars left over from early childhood. A blank slate. The only remaining reminder of the recent nightmare was the faint pink tint in the whites of my eyes, but judging by how quickly the hemorrhaging was fading, even that defect would disappear on its own within a few days.
I returned to the bed just in time. The sharp echo of Selina’s heels carried down the hallway before she shoved open the hospital room door.
“Tom, you removed the stitches! There’s not a single scar left on you!” she blurted out from the doorway, not even trying to hide her shock.
“Good to see you too, Selina. Did you bring food from the cafeteria?”
“What the hell do you mean, food, Tom?!” She waved the comment away irritably and sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Do you even realize what just happened here? This isn’t simple regeneration. You demonstrated complete conscious control over the division and differentiation of your own cells at a fundamental level. Tom, with a tool like this, you could reset the biological clock of the human body with a snap of your fingers. You’re literally holding the key to rejuvenation.”
“I know.”
“You know?” Selina slowly adjusted her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, studying my face carefully.
“That was the first thing that came to mind when I started analyzing the cells’ capabilities,” I replied with a calm nod. “Once age-related degeneration starts creeping in, I’ll just perform routine reconstruction. I can return myself to my twenties. Maybe I’ll stay there permanently.”
“Tom, I’m officially declaring that I hate you.” Her voice carried a mix of pure scientific envy and the bitter frustration of a researcher who had spent years fighting through formulas while someone else achieved the result with a single command.
“I understand.” I rotated my wrist slightly. A smooth blue sphere of energy silently formed above my palm and drifted in place. “But you’ve got a chance to get in on it.”
Selina froze. Her eyes locked onto the glowing sphere instantly. “Is that what I think it is? You unlocked a second [Familiar] slot?”
“Exactly. And I’m offering that contract to you. Remember what you said? The symbiosis between my [Trainer] and your [Engineer] could overturn the entire scientific world. I can push your physical capabilities to the absolute peak of human potential. And as a bonus, we’ll solve biological aging permanently.”
“That’s enough.” Selina raised her hand sharply, cutting me off mid-sentence. Every trace of enthusiasm vanished from her face, replaced by cold focus. “Tom, I’ll never sign that agreement. Never. I’m far too good at calculating risk, and I know exactly how your [Special Commands] function. One mental order from you, and you could rewrite my memories so thoroughly that I’d never even notice the alteration. I’m not walking willingly into slavery, Tom, no matter how pretty your promises sound.”
“Your choice.” Without the slightest objection, I closed my fist and extinguished the blue sphere.
Honestly, I had expected nothing else from someone with her mindset. Independence was Selina’s greatest asset. And realistically speaking, even aging generals or billionaires in the future would think three times before asking me for rejuvenation. No sane person would willingly lie on an operating table in front of someone capable of casually turning them into a puppet.
“Do you at least understand how close you came to dying?” The fanatical gleam in her eyes had finally faded, replaced with exhaustion. “Your bed was covered in blood. I practically had to piece your skin back together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
“And I genuinely appreciate that, Selina. Thank you.” I gently cut off the lecture on safety procedures she was clearly about to start delivering now that the project had already ended successfully. “Let’s leave the incident reports to the archives. Get me a proper lunch, and right after that, send Sam to my room.”
“Sam? What do you need him for right now?”
“I need him to unlock S-Power. It’s time to test how much more informative my upgraded [Enemy Analysis] has become.”