Vanorion IncarnateChapter 2: First Trauma
Life in the Vanorion facility was ordinary.
At least, it was the only kind of ordinary I knew.
My days followed a predictable routine. Lessons with my creator, conversations in the quiet hours between experiments, and long stretches spent reading the ancient tomes that filled the library Mother had assembled from her vast collection of knowledge. I had grown accustomed to the scent of old paper, the faint metallic chill of the facility, and the constant hum of servers processing information somewhere beyond the walls.
The masked staff were familiar faces, even if I rarely saw them without their uniforms.
This was my world.
My home.
Everything I knew of life existed within those walls, and every memory I had made there belonged to the identity Mother had given me.
Aku.
It was strange, then, how quickly an ordinary day could become something unrecognizable.
The first warning came from the security system.
The second was an explosion.
By the time the alarms began to sound, the hidden facility beneath the surface was already under attack.
The sounds of battle travelled through the corridors, accompanied by the sharp reports of weapons and the distant thunder of collapsing structures. I heard people shouting orders. I heard the metallic shriek of doors being forced open.
Then came the screams.
I had heard people express pain before. I understood what injury was, how the human body responded to it, and what happened when its systems failed. I could identify distress in a voice and recognize the physical signs of fear.
Understanding those things in theory had done nothing to prepare me for the sounds coming from the corridors.
My muscles tightened.
I remained in my mother's laboratory, clutching a Ura-based blaster in one hand and a crystal in the other. The security interface was projected across the screens before me, and I had already established a connection to the facility's internal systems.
The information coming through was incomplete.
Multiple security checkpoints had fallen. Personnel were being killed. Unidentified hostiles were advancing through the facility.
The organization responsible was identified in the intercepted communications.
Amaterasu.
I knew the name. I knew enough about military organizations, criminal groups, and the political structure of Atheris to understand what their presence meant.
This was not a misunderstanding.
They had come here to take something.
Perhaps several things.
I did not know what they wanted, but I knew what I had to protect.
My mother was away on business. She had left the facility before the attack, intending to continue the work that would eventually strengthen me. She had never explained exactly what that meant or why it was necessary.
I had not questioned her.
Now, with her absent, I had no one to ask.
The doors to the birthing chamber stood behind me. Beyond them lay the sealed section of Mother's laboratory, the place where I had first opened my eyes. It contained the equipment used to create me, the records of her research, and the accumulated knowledge she had entrusted to the facility.
I had connected myself to the security network for a reason.
No one was getting past me.
The first raider to approach the chamber discovered that for himself.
I fired before he could raise his weapon.
The Ura discharge struck him squarely, and he collapsed before he could cross the threshold. I kept my weapon trained on the doorway, listening as the sounds of battle drew closer.
My hands were steady.
My thoughts were not.
I could still hear the screams.
I forced myself to look at the security feeds instead. There was no advantage in dwelling on sounds I could not change. I needed information, equipment, and a plan.
Then the door disappeared.
A violent impact tore through the entrance, sending fragments of metal across the floor. Two of the facility's guards were hurled into the room alongside the wreckage.
A man walked through the opening.
He had black hair and wore a blindfold over his eyes. A red emblem glowed faintly on his uniform, and his four massive arms flexed beneath the armour covering his upper body. Purple energy crackled around his gauntleted fists, distorting the air with destructive force.
He smiled.
It was not the expression of someone enjoying a difficult fight.
It was the expression of someone who had been looking forward to hurting another person.
He charged.
I exhaled.
His first strike met my raised hands.
The impact drove a tremor through the floor, but I held my ground. My body was small compared to his, and my opponent possessed several times my reach. Yet my strength exceeded what my appearance suggested.
His attack stopped against my palms.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
The blindfolded man tilted his head.
I stared back at him, my brown eyes fixed on the four arms poised to strike again.
I was not a natural-born Neohuman.
That much had been made clear to me during my lessons. I was a clone, created from the remains and records of someone who had died before my existence began. Mother had explained that the newer strains of life on Atheris possessed capabilities that separated them from ordinary humans.
I possessed those capabilities, but my creation was flawed.
My body had not developed as it should have. My potential existed beyond what my physical form could reliably support, and there were limits I could not overcome through intelligence alone.
Without activating my augmentations, I was already considerably stronger and faster than an ordinary human. Under extreme stress, my body could push beyond its usual limits, producing bursts of strength that approached the capabilities of a B-rank lifeform.
But the man before me was not an ordinary human.
I could not win by trading blows.
So I stopped trying to fight on his terms.
I twisted my wrists, redirected his next strike, and drove my foot into the floor. The sudden shift in leverage sent him stumbling backwards. Before he could regain his balance, I struck him in the chest and launched him across the corridor.
The impact shook the walls.
He recovered quickly.
Too quickly.
I needed another advantage.
My eyes moved toward the equipment arranged behind me.
Mother had left me more than weapons. She had left me access to her research, her machinery, and the knowledge required to use both.
On the floor lay several injectors filled with glowing red liquid.
The mutagen.
It contained a concentrated mixture of pre-activated augmentation factors, charged with Ura and designed to temporarily force the body beyond its ordinary limitations. Its effects would eventually wear off, and the substance would be purged from my system within approximately six hours.
Six hours of borrowed power.
Six hours to make them pay.
I picked up the final injector and examined the liquid inside.
I knew the risks.
The ArkaShell had not been designed for me to use at my current stage of development. My body lacked the physical fortitude necessary to sustain it safely, and activating it without the proper preparation could cause severe backlash.
Mother had made that clear.
But the people who had created those warnings were not the ones standing in this corridor.
They were dead, wounded, or fighting for their lives.
And I was running out of time.
The invaders thought they could break into our home, slaughter its inhabitants, and take whatever they wanted.
They were wrong.
I stepped into the centre of the chamber.
Runes illuminated the floor beneath my feet, spreading outward in intricate patterns that climbed the walls. Concealed mechanisms responded to my commands. Segments of specialised equipment disengaged from their storage housings, rising into the air around me.
A voice emerged from the facility's speakers.
My mother's voice.
Calm, clear, and recorded long before the alarms had begun.
"If you're hearing this, you've decided to choose war."
I froze for half a second.
The recording continued.
"Protocol. ArkaShell."
A pause.
"Initiated."
I looked down at the injector.
I wanted to hear her explain what I was about to do. I wanted to ask whether she had expected this, whether she had ever imagined that I would need to use her creation to defend the place where she had raised me.
But there was no one to answer.
I drove the injector into my body.
The mutagen entered my bloodstream.
Pain was immediate.
It spread through me in a violent rush, overwhelming my senses before my body began adapting to the foreign compounds. My skin split along glowing red lines, not from the tearing of flesh but from the energy forcing its way through my system.
My heartbeat accelerated.
The runes brightened.
Around me, the suspended components began to move.
They converged in a precise sequence, folding together as though guided by invisible hands. Plates of obsidian and crimson locked over my limbs and torso. Reinforced segments aligned along my spine, exposing a lattice of glowing runic channels. Additional appendages unfolded from the armour, each one connecting to the central frame.
The structure rose around me, suspended momentarily within a gyroscopic halo of rotating symbols.
The final piece descended over my face.
The mask sealed.
For a brief moment, I could hear nothing but the rhythm of my own heartbeat.
Then the system connected.
My vision expanded as the ArkaShell's sensors activated. The facility's internal network merged with the armour's interface, displaying the positions of every identified hostile within range. My perception sharpened, and the movement of the world around me seemed to slow as the system processed incoming information.
The mutagen was doing more than increasing my strength.
It was allowing me to access functions that my body could not ordinarily support.
The armour's internal systems stabilised around me, drawing upon the temporary Ura stockpile contained within the formula.
I raised my head.
"ArkaShell online."
My voice emerged through the mask, lower and more distant than before.
The child standing in the laboratory had not disappeared.
But the thing surrounding him had been built for war.
The blindfolded man had barely recovered when I moved.
I crossed the distance between us so quickly that the sound of my passage followed after I had already reached him. The air cracked beneath the acceleration, and the corridor shuddered as my first blow connected.
He tried to defend himself.
It did not matter.
My fist struck his guard and shattered it. I followed with another blow, then another, driving him backwards through the wreckage of the doorway.
The armour reinforced every movement, while the mutagen supplied the strength and reaction speed needed to exploit openings that would otherwise have been beyond my reach.
I did not give him time to recover.
He swung with all four arms, purple energy surging around his gauntlets. I slipped past the first strike, caught the second against my reinforced forearm, and drove my knee into his torso.
The impact lifted him off the ground.
My armour's appendages snapped forward.
They caught his arms from opposite angles, preventing him from using his additional limbs to defend himself. I pulled hard.
The joints gave way.
His expression changed.
For the first time since entering the facility, he looked surprised.
I struck him again.
And again.
My fists burned with concentrated energy as I drove him into the floor. Every movement was deliberate. Every strike was aimed at ending the threat before he could retaliate.
I could hear his bones breaking beneath the impacts.
I could see the destructive energy around his body fluctuating as the field generated by the ArkaShell interfered with his augmentations.
He tried to rise.
I drove him back down.
I was not fighting to win a contest.
I was fighting to make certain he could never reach the chamber behind me.
Another hostile entered my peripheral vision.
A woman named Silkmourn moved to exploit what she believed was a blind spot, her own abilities flaring as she approached. The ArkaShell's tail-like appendages reacted before she could complete her attack.
One caught her arm.
The other locked around her shoulder.
I twisted.
She screamed as the joint was torn from its socket, and I threw her into the wall with enough force to crack the reinforced surface. The armour's sensors registered the impact, then immediately shifted their attention to the remaining threats.
I did not stop to watch her fall.
The blindfolded man was still moving.
I seized him, drove him against the ground, and struck his jaw. When he attempted to retaliate, I drove a reinforced blade into his throat and followed with a final concentrated discharge through his chest.
The purple energy around his gauntlets flickered.
Then it went out.
The corridor fell quiet for a fraction of a second.
I stood over him, breathing hard inside the mask.
I had killed someone.
The thought appeared in my mind with the same clarity as any other observation.
I understood what death meant. I understood that the man would never move again, never speak again, and never return to wherever he had come from.
Yet the realisation did not stop my hands from moving.
The security network identified him as the Ashen One.
I committed the name to memory.
Then I turned toward the remaining hostiles.
There was no time to think about what I had done.
There were still people to protect.
I reached the next section of the facility as Jargo Varn prepared to attack the surviving guards and staff.
They were evacuating through a damaged passageway, struggling to carry the wounded while avoiding the raiders pursuing them. Jargo had positioned himself between them and the exit, his weapon raised.
He never saw me approach.
I appeared behind him and struck before he could turn.
The blow lifted him off his feet.
His body folded around the impact, and he crashed into the ceiling before falling back toward the floor. I followed him, extending one of the ArkaShell's tendrils around his throat and wrenching him away from the fleeing personnel.
He struggled.
I tightened my grip.
The fight ended moments later.
Two additional hostiles remained in the immediate area.
Serna Talith, known among the raiders as the Veined Priestess, stood beside Tharnic Roe, the Wormcaller. Tharnic was mounted on a monstrous centipede whose segmented body filled much of the corridor.
The creature lunged toward me.
I caught it before it could reach the survivors.
The ArkaShell's strength overwhelmed its resistance. I tore it away from Tharnic, mutilating the creature's body as I forced it to the ground. Its movements became erratic, then ceased.
Tharnic barely had time to react before I seized him.
I broke his back and slit his throat.
Serna attempted to retaliate, but her abilities were disrupted by the field surrounding my armour. She was unable to establish control over the fight before I closed the distance.
I dispatched her in quick succession.
The entire encounter lasted only moments.
My armour's sensors swept the corridor, searching for additional hostiles. I found none within immediate range.
The surviving staff stared at me.
Some were too injured to move. Others had stopped in the middle of carrying their wounded companions, their attention fixed on the crimson and black figure standing amid the wreckage.
I looked at them through the ArkaShell's interface.
Their injuries were severe.
I accessed the armour's remaining medical supplies and retrieved several recovery-fluid darts. Each contained a charged solution intended to accelerate healing and stabilise .
I fired them toward the wounded.
The darts struck their targets, delivering the fluid into their bodies. Several of the injured began to recover almost immediately, their breathing stabilising as the compounds took effect.
It was not enough to undo what had happened.
But it might give them a chance to survive.
I watched until the evacuation resumed.
Then the warning appeared.
Ura reserves critically depleted.
I looked at the display.
The mutagen's temporary stockpile had sustained the ArkaShell's functions, allowing me to access its various capabilities without exhausting my own body immediately. Reduced weight, enhanced acceleration, increased reaction speed, friction control, spatial distortion, and resistance to toxins had all been supported by the formula.
But the stockpile was finite.
And I had spent nearly all of it.
The warning changed.
ArkaShell shutdown imminent.
I tried to compensate by redirecting power.
The system rejected the command.
The armour's appendages began to retract. The reinforced plates around my limbs loosened, their locking mechanisms disengaging one after another. The spinal lattice dimmed as the runic channels lost their glow.
The entire structure began to collapse.
Dark grey, black, crimson, and white segments separated from one another, falling away as the ArkaShell lost the energy required to maintain its configuration.
I staggered.
The mask released.
The last plate detached from my chest, and the remaining components dropped to the floor.
I was standing in the corridor once more.
Small.
Bare.
And suddenly very aware of how much my body hurt.
My eyes were bloodshot. Blood filled my mouth, and when I tried to breathe, I began coughing violently. I doubled over, one hand pressed against the floor as I struggled to keep myself upright.
The backlash arrived all at once.
I had known it was coming.
Knowing had done nothing to lessen it.
The ArkaShell had been designed for a body capable of withstanding its demands. Mine was not ready. I had forced it to function anyway, using the mutagen to compensate for weaknesses that should have prevented activation in the first place.
Now my body was collecting the debt.
I reached into my remaining equipment and retrieved a green vial.
The recovery compound inside was designed to accelerate healing and stabilise my condition. I drove the injector into my body and activated it.
A green glow spread beneath my skin.
The worst of the immediate damage began to subside. My breathing steadied, and the trembling in my limbs diminished enough for me to stand.
I wiped the blood from my mouth.
I had defended the facility.
The staff had a chance to escape. The invaders who had reached the sanctuary were dead or incapacitated, and the sealed chamber remained untouched.
I had accomplished what I set out to do.
So why did the victory feel incomplete?
I did not have time to investigate the question.
A figure emerged through the dust and debris at the end of the corridor.
He was tall, standing approximately six feet five inches, and wore a tactical uniform beneath a specialised lab coat. Scarlet hair shifted around his face as he walked, and his metallic gold irises shone with an unnatural light.
His expression was composed.
Almost curious.
Then I noticed his eyes properly.
The power radiating from them was unlike anything I had encountered during the raid. The sensors I still had access to struggled to classify the energy, returning incomplete readings before displaying a provisional assessment.
Threat level: S-2.
I stared at the result.
The man was far beyond the opponents I had just defeated.
He looked at me, a manic grin slowly spreading across his face.
I tried to move.
He was already in front of me.
His fist struck my stomach.
The impact lifted me from the floor and sent me stumbling backwards. I should have been torn apart by the force, but the residual effects of the mutagen had left my body more durable than usual.
I managed to remain conscious.
Barely.
The man looked almost disappointed that I had survived the blow.
Then his expression shifted into something far more disturbing.
Fascination.
He seized me by the throat and lifted me until my feet no longer touched the floor.
I grabbed his wrist, trying to pry his fingers loose.
They did not move.
My strength was disappearing as the mutagen's effects continued to fade. The remaining power in my body was insufficient to overcome his grip, and the green recovery compound had only stabilised my injuries. It had not restored the strength I had spent fighting.
I looked into his golden eyes.
For the first time since the raid began, I was afraid for my own life.
Not because I failed to understand the danger.
Because I understood it perfectly.
This man could kill me whenever he chose.
And there was nothing I could do to stop him.
My photographic memory preserved everything.
The colour of his eyes. The scarlet strands of hair falling across his forehead. The slight movements of his mouth as he examined me. The pressure of his fingers around my throat.
Every detail was recorded with merciless clarity.
The man introduced himself as Shinzo Hibino.
He glanced past me at the destruction I had caused, his expression settling into something between irritation and amusement.
"You've made quite a mess," he remarked.
His gaze returned to me.
"Some of our people will need to be rebuilt. What a waste."
Rebuilt.
The word registered immediately.
He spoke of the wounded and the dead as though they were damaged equipment. As though the people whose bodies I had broken were merely tools that had malfunctioned during an operation.
Then he smiled again.
"But I suppose you've made up for it."
His golden eyes narrowed.
"A normal human being. Almost entirely unmodified, too. And look at that resilience."
He turned my head slightly, examining me as though I were an object displayed for inspection.
"How interesting."
I tried to speak, but his grip prevented me from drawing enough air.
Shinzo did not seem concerned.
He was studying my body, my remaining strength, and the traces of the mutagen still circulating through my system. His fascination was clinical, but there was something deeply wrong beneath it. He was not looking at me as another living being.
He was looking at raw material.
"Perhaps," he murmured, "you'll be useful after all."
He finally loosened his grip enough for me to breathe.
I coughed, struggling to draw air into my lungs.
"Our god deserves a vessel worthy of his presence," Shinzo continued. "Something that can withstand what ordinary bodies cannot."
He smiled down at me.
"And now I may have found one."
I knew the name he gave next.
Evaltol.
Their god.
Their patron.
The entity for whom they had come to the Vanorion facility.
I had spent the raid protecting my mother's work from these people. I had killed their warriors, destroyed their equipment, and exhausted the power she had left for me.
And now, after all of that, one of their leaders was holding me by the throat and discussing my future as though I had no say in it.
I could not fight him.
I could not escape.
I could not even return to the chamber I had sworn to protect.
Shinzo struck me once more.
The world lurched sideways as I lost consciousness.
My final conscious thought was of the sanctuary.
I had activated the last-minute security protocol before the fighting reached its worst. The system had concealed the chamber's location and secured the records and equipment within it, ensuring that the invaders would not discover the heart of Mother's work.
They would not find my cradle.
They would not find the research she had entrusted to me.
Whatever happened to me, that part of our world would remain hidden.
I had protected what belonged to us.
But the cost was difficult to ignore.
The facility had been devastated. People had died despite my efforts. My freedom was gone, and the man who had captured me intended to use my existence for a purpose I had never chosen.
Had any of it been worth it?
I remembered the library.
The old books.
The steady hum of the servers.
My mother's voice as she taught me about the world beyond our walls.
I remembered the first time she had called me her son.
I had not understood what the words meant then.
I understood a little more now.
My sanctuary was not simply a collection of rooms, machines, and research. It was the only home I had ever known, the place where I had been given a name and where I had begun to understand what it meant to exist.
I had protected it because it was mine.
Because it was hers.
Because the people who lived there mattered.
I could not undo what had happened, and I could not change the fact that I had failed to protect everyone.
But I had accomplished what I had set out to do.
The sanctuary remained hidden.
Mother's work was safe.
And if I had to pay for that with my freedom, then so be it.
Mother, forgive me.
The thought lingered as my consciousness faded.
I was taken from the Vanorion facility by the remaining members of Amaterasu. Somewhere beyond the wreckage, a portal opened, its light spilling across the ruined corridor as Shinzo's people retrieved their surviving comrades.
I tried to move when they carried me.
I couldn't.
A sudden, violent pain had torn through my neck. My spine had been damaged, leaving my body unresponsive beneath their hands.
I could still see.
I could still hear.
I could still remember.
But I could not move.
The portal swallowed the light behind us.
And the home I had fought so desperately to protect disappeared from view.
I had been created to serve a purpose.
I had been given a name, a home, and a mother.
Now, as Amaterasu carried me toward a future I had never chosen, I had no idea whether I would ever see any of them again.
For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to lose something.
And I would remember every second of it.