Meanwhile, above the hovercraft, high in the swirling atmosphere, The Orbiter circled its prey, in one of the many panes above the floating city, a group of scientists were to be seen hovering around a single screen. Playing God with the many creatures that lay below. All were designated humanoid doctors except one a lowly analyst who had been doing repairs, a plasma torch clasped firmly in his grimy hand. They wore long black uniforms which all donned the Collective’s blue dawn, an insignia that was feared in the many corners of the galaxy. They were bickering among themselves, an argument bellowing throughout the room.

The door behind slid upwards, a grey boot dropped upon the ground and hands were raised in a forced salute.

“I have more serious matters to attend to than a simple malfunction, the riots back home have called us to arms, the newest senate election will have a large hand in the future years ahead, this section of the immortalization project will be terminated if no further evidence is revealed.”

“Major Nix! Sir, how glad we are to see you. This is a breakthrough, a revolution.”

“Stuff it, rather convenient if I say. Just show me what's so important” he hissed

The humanoid creatures turned the glass computer panel to the Major's view. He paused and scanned the screen, his mind filtering through the information.

As he read the lines upon lines of code and incoherent diagrams his jaw dropped and eyes sprung wide with shock and bewilderment.

“You… Corporal Moq..., you found this wire net had been removed by force?”

“Yes, Sir… there are visible signs of tension. I looked at the security footage, Sir, there is no mistake.”

The lead scientist walked from his station and into the major's shadow.

“One of the subjects J-32356236091130 exhibited strange behaviour 3 hours after he was awoken from a level three sleep. Look here, he actually pulled out the neural net, an action that requires physical awareness. We double-checked his neural patterns. They spiked in ways we had never seen before.”

“Ways we had never seen before?”

“Yes Sir, ways we had never seen before”

The computer thought he was dead since there were no brain waves and he was tracked and ejected following protocol.”

“Did you check the array for any malfunctions, perhaps a frayed wire could have caused it to detach.”

“We found nothing Sir, Nothing.”

He looked shocked, almost worried smoothing his fingers through his hair.

“Where is he now?”

“His pod went to the garbage planet after the subject left its core was drained and its resources moved to the landfill to be recycled, the rendezvous drones never met him in time to ensure his trackers were functioning.

“Any possibility he is still alive?”

“His tracker reads he is still alive however its location system was severely damaged and it may be able to repair remotely.”

“Those are designed to last a lifetime, what happened to it?”

“I believe it may have been surgically removed or short-circuited, either one fatal to the tracking process” a doctor shouted.

“What programs were loaded onto him?” The Major scoffed.

“The basics… The introduction program, enhanced combat, enhanced vehicle skills, engineering. The whole deal. He was the last part of the C-52 program. It was scrapped 3 months ago, too costly and minimal to progress as ruled by your board.”

“I still hold by that decision, hold your tongue or you may bite off more than you can chew” Nix snarled.

The Ensign slinked back into the shadows, his colleagues stepping forward to take his place.

“We do not believe the information helped him escape his mind. It must have been something else. The protocol for recycling should mean he's in the quatra section. Minimal to no Collective presence apart from garbage bots. A large number of mutants and psychos, almost all documented.”

“Okay… even with all of that knowledge he couldn't have moved far in the quatra zone, it's nothing but a forest of metal and smouldering wreckage, our best bet is that he was injured in the crash and is holed up in some ship. Send out a T-52 Squad,”

“All robots?”

“Robots get the job done. And we need all the soldiers we have for the front lines.”

“Corporal, Be ready for advanced questioning. I'll have my team do another scan on his pod and the array to see if there is a mistake. Meanwhile, the T-52’s soldiers will pick up this bag of jelly and drag him back for enhanced neural testing.. I have a feeling this will be easy, prep the lab for a field day.”

“Yes Sir”

The Major brushed back his slimy grey hair and walked halfway through the door.

“Oh and Sargent. I have taken control of this section of the immortalis project.”

“Were not terminated?”

“Yes. Now get to work”

The scientists saluted the Major and stood sweating, a cryptic silence swept through them as he stalked down the hallway outside. Once they had been cleared from their minds, their gaze averted towards the large hologram of a swirling and shimmering brain. A sensation of pure wonder flowed through their veins, beady eyes fixed on a possibility of closing talons on the prize which had haunted them so dearly.

I woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamed of nothing, I slid out of bed for my foot to shiver on the icy steel, a knock on my door echoing across the room.

My life flashed before my eyes, my brain reinhabiting all that had happened. Getting dressed I opened the door and walked into the hall, the floor of the Tobago was almost covered in a thin brine of frost, steam rising from the vents, Sparky was at the ship's main controls, the general in front.

“John?”

“Yes sir?” I replied

The ship will reach Number one, Domino's farthest outpost in a number of hours. I need you to come to the deck with me, I need you to train.

I got dressed and was handed a steaming bowl of rice, the wafting smell blissful to my senses. I engulfed it slowly, taking grateful sips out of an orange mug. How good it was to finally eat, even the most basic of foods seemed like sheer delicacy in contrast to starvation. When I was finished I put away my plate and climbed the metal ladder rungs to arrive at the deck. I opened the steel hatch, squinting in the blinding light as I reached the frigid outside.

The land was a sun drowned waste, a forest of strange and exotic flora as far as the eye could see, flooded with lost creatures and abandoned settlements. Ancient megalithic structures stood dormant while mystical leaves flew through the air.

The general stood at the front of the deck, beside him lay a wooden splintered crate. The box was overflowing with miscellaneous items, a handheld scanner, stun pistol and baton overflowing at the mouth of the arsenal.

“Sit down…” He gestured towards a spot on the deck

Sitting down I crossed my legs, my hair blowing in the wind.

“Your memory has been completely wiped by the collective, I was more to escape part of the torture and for mine to return however, yours… yours is unlikely to return. You see according to some of my charts an extensive part of your memory was removed and replaced, you were part of a C-52 program, a high memory enhanced download which deleted almost all of your prior knowledge to make space.”

“You're saying I will never know who I am?”

“You already know who you are, a human named John Taylor… everyone you knew on Earth is dead, your presence on Earth has most likely been forgotten simply a blip on the radar. But on the one hand that is good, to remove your memory is to remove what makes us who we are, but it also removes our limitations, our problems, all that holds us back from success.”

“What must I do first? For training?”

“First I ask you to do one thing, sit… sift through your mind and gather all the knowledge you have knowledge is power, and power is the only thing that will keep you alive on this planet.

From what I've heard, only five hundred and thirty-four people have had the C-52 program downloaded, and Archius’s politicians say that they have intercepted transmissions saying Collective has stopped it. They perceived the ideal as too risky in the terms of prisoner and test subject escape. You have a large amount of knowledge inside you, do not let it control you, let you control it.

I sat closed my eyes, clearing my thoughts. Nothing happened.

“Is something supposed to happen?”

“What do you think is going to happen! Just try to remember” it said laughing.

I sifted through my thoughts, my memory of a river, information flowed like grains of sand but it wasn’t simply like I standing on a bank, I was in the midst of a torrential sandstorm, surrounded by an endless wave of information that seemed determined to bury me under its weight, they soon overpowered me, my head developing a slight headache, and my knees buckling from exhaustion.

After five minutes we stopped, he opened his eyes and looked out into the horizon.

“Your skills may be unmatched yet your body is not ready,”

“What do you mean?”

“You have been frozen for a long time, and most of the information you obtained is still engraving itself into your muscle memory, you are not fit enough to complete half of the fighting styles you know, not strong enough, simply not ready. We will start with a simple exercise.

He threw me a pistol, my memory told me it was a six-round energy revolver, which uses preloaded batteries to burn attackers, designed by the company of POAQ technology it fired as fast as you could pull the trigger.

“The most common weapons on the ground are like these, battery-powered charge guns, electricity builds up in the front and is released from the barrel in a charged bullet built into the battery, the bullet has a battery and gunpowder, which gives it a more electrifying attack. Burning most creatures' skin to a crisp smouldering pulp. Here put it on stun and shoot the floating target I set up.”

The target was a triangle shape, in the middle a single dot about a centimetre squared. The general picked up the pistol and fired 4 times each one about a millimetre away from the centre.

I picked up the pistol, my mind racing, even with muscle memory kicking in it still felt clumsy in my hand. Aiming it at the target. I held my breath and fired the shot, my finger twitching on the trigger, the shot landing directly a few centimetres to the right of the middle leaving a small mark in the targeting robot’s battered screen.

He laid a hand on my shoulder and fired once again, hitting the direct centre. His eyes glinted with a smirk as he smoothed over his beard.

“Your skill is fine, your execution needs work, your mind is trained but not your body. Some of the legionary robots are only vulnerable in certain areas, some less than an inch wide.”

He took three thick plastic-bound books and a bundle of papers.

“I bought the book at a shop in Archius. The others I found off the cold corpse of a Collective Medical and Research team. It's a good summary of the planet. Vital information. The first book seemed new, almost a history book. The other two were filled with a jumble of numbers and codes, more of a manual than literature for reading.”

Inside was information that I devoured keenly. The radius of the planet, the laws and regulations of Archius, etc. I didn't have enough time to read it all though I simply flipped through the yellowed pages and handed it to the general when I was done.

One page did slip out of the leatherbound pages, a diagram of a thin wired robot, The T-328 Assassin. Some scribblings had been scrawled across the image however it was barely legible. I scrunched up the paper and put it in my pocket saving it for a later read. For the next 3 hours, I studied the book. I read every segment of every last word, my mind a sponge soaking up the words in a testament of power. The planet I was on had deep lore yet it still seemed like the book was censored, some pages ripped out, others vague with information as if someone had tried to erase moments of the past that were vulgar or displeased them.

At last, Sparky came up and the General went below. He had been plotting a course as I read. Sparky threw a metal pipe at me. I luckily caught it just before it broke my shin.

“Hey!”

“Reflexes are good… let's work on them”