Eyes opened in a flash.

Meeting a world of purple, devoid of anything but it. Suffocating, he needed air, gasping desperately for it. Instead, filling his lungs with more of the purple. Suddenly, gravity pulled him down, splattering him flat on the soft ground below.

Gagging, retching and puking up what was inside of him, he slowly wiped the corners of his mouth as he slowly stood up. He looked around, eyes narrowing, illuminating grey as he blinked. Then the comms module spoke up in his head.

/Dropping in two minutes: Target [Suspected VIP]: Target in ongoing battle, likely behind enemy lines within reconnaissance vehicle: Reinforcements, likely. Weaponry, small arms caliber, likely: Troop count, unknown. Heavy weaponry, unlikely: Enemy heavy vehicles, unlikely.

An image formed as his eyes blinked, an image of an older man standing behind a younger woman. An image that seemed taken from a bystanders’ perspective as the two were walking down what looked like a parade. The younger woman waving at those she passed while the target, whom walked behind the younger woman, held a wary gaze as he looked around, looking for dangers. The image focused in on the man, and his other mind took in every detail, absorbed all that it could, remembering every minute imperfection. Doing so in no more time than it took for him to blink away the image.

A dim red glow drew his attention as the image faded, turning as several parts of the armoury lit up. Immediately, he walked towards the closest glow. Illuminating the general service rifle, pressing its button and walking past as it swooshed away. The next light illuminated grenades, three shields and three explosives grenades. Next, a knife. Then it was the darkened container, filled with a substance designed to eat through anything.

He pushed each respective button and moved towards the second armoury. Light illuminating the slick and light armour, made to keep him hidden from all sights but the most advanced. Stepping inside, he heard the click of the footpads lock into place, followed swiftly by the mechanical snakes shooting out and fitting the armour onto his body. Last piece being the helmet, locking into place with blinding white-hot pain.

He, and his other mind, walked out from the now dark armoury, out into the weapons armoury and into the, not, dark dropship. Instead of being dark as it usually was, it lightly illuminated the console in a low blue glow. A flashing button waited to be pressed.

Press he did, and the screen bloomed into life. Words appearing in a fast blur. Not too fast for him, reading as the words spelt out.

“Greetings, hels chosen. This is Lord Baldr writing to you. I will keep it brief. This godforsaken planet is sapping all available resources from my dwindling pool of both manpower and weaponry. I beseech you to use minimal resources to ensure the success of your mission. Therefore, I have strictly halted the use of your dropship in open combat. It will only see use if I deem it necessary. Or, if it’s needed for your survival. I expect you to complete this mission with ease and therefore expect you to extract yourself from the combat zone. To your health and a successful mission!”

He stared at the last exclamation mark as it blinked into and away from existence. Standing still and simply, staring. His other mind taking in what they read, not doing much with the information. It hadn’t been sent through official channels, and therefore, was not important to them.

Yet, he stared. Stared at that last exclamation point, staring as it blinked to, and away from existence. Too, and away.

Staring at it as the miniscule light illuminated his pupils.

/One minute until drop.

The comms inside his head spoke mechanically, sounding like the mix between a human and something else. But as if shook awake by the voice, he twisted around and walked out of the dropship. Out and back into the weapons armoury.

There, he marched straight for the high explosives, pressing the button six times before hovering his finger over the button for the anti-armour gun. A brief flash of warning echoed from his other mind, locking him in place as it pointed out that this would encumber them with the current set-up and gear.

With a thought, he was released and moved his finger away. Instead, he pressed the button for the grenades several more times. More than several. Explosive grenades stacked on top of explosive grenades.

Eventually, the warning came again, and he stopped pressing, moving back to the dropship and standing in front of the now dark screen, staring at it, and waited. Waited, and waited some more. Pockets filled to the brim with grenades.

Grandfather clock, tick-tocking.

Until the comms chimed. /Dropping in ten, enter pod for extraction

A dropship burning into life. Mechanical arms shooting out from everywhere and nowhere, pumping him full of substances that no mere human could ever hope to survive. Pain subsiding, headache disappearing, body strengthening and mind sharpening.

He was ready.

But even if he was, time was a fickle thing. Especially to someone with mind-altering drugs being a part of the equation.

Time was slow like molasses. Standing in a dropship primed and ready to explode down onto a planet he might or might not have been on before.

But all waiting must end, as his other mind spoke.

/Bracing for drop

And the dropship lurched with a boom out of the mothership, propelling him down planetside with forces that would flatline any living being. The screen in front flashing back into life. This time, showing an image instead of words. An image of a desert planet, orange and red.

A planet he knew he’d been on before.

He still stared at the image of the planet, staring as it grew in size, staring as the g-forces increased incrementally and the size encompassing the entire screen grew with it. Staring even as the dropship shifted g-forces, slowing down, de-accelerating. Hovering far-far above the planet.

The screen turned black, and he felt rather than heard something click open. Soon after, the two blast doors protecting him from the vastness of space opened up slowly, revealing darkness as far as the eye could see.

True darkness.

His body moved out of its own volition, moved like a marionette by his other mind, pushing them outside the dropship and into the darkness, embraced like an embryo while his dropship flew back up to its mother.

Then he looked down.

And he stared.

The sun was bearing down on him from behind. Heat dissipated throughout his armour but colouring the ground far, far below in beautiful arrays of orange and red, dotted with specks of black mountains and white clouds.

Locked in his own body as he was, forcefully staring down.

Unnecessary.

The ground came at him fast. Wind growing from a thin film, too a vast wall, screaming at him as it did its best to tear him asunder. Whizzing past in volumes so great that ears would normally rupture.

His body moved, changing directions. He blinked, and his vision zoomed in on the ground. Spotting miniature dots speckled around on a vast, hilly field of sand and dunes. Flashes of white, red and dark-orange briefly illuminating small patches of the vast field. Bigger flashes accompanying sudden plumes of sand that turned the landscape into cheddar cheese. already filled with many craters.

Closer and closer, he distinguished two sides. One was his allies, the other his enemies. His body steering towards the enemies. Steering towards their backlines with fewer and fewer visible enemies fighting. Steering until he steered no more, and his eyes scanned the ground for his intended target.

It did not take long for him to spot it. A black vehicle, surrounded by a tiny force of enemies, spread out in a semi-circle facing forward. At this distance, details were hard to make out, but he could tell that there were few combatants here.

His body tightened and swung around, feet facing down and head locking upwards. Armour turning translucent, invisible to the world while his other mind calculated the distance to the ground.

Not far. He would land close to the target’s vehicle, but far enough away that the chances of getting spotted were slim to nil.

But as his other mind calculated the distance, fired off the armours built in speed-dampener and prepared for impact. He tore himself from his other mind’s control, glancing down on the ground, using the cameras all around, and counted the enemies.

No more than thirty. More further away, but too far away to matter in the short time it would take him to infiltrate the target’s vehicle and eliminate them. No enemies guarding the vehicle neither.

It was empty.

A short warning came from his other mind, taking back control of their body as it locked him in, fired the speed dampeners and prepared for impact.

A small, deceptively small impact of sand shot up, followed by a slightly larger, followed by nothing. That was what others would have seen if they had looked. A sound as if a large rock impacted the ground could be heard and felt, if one was listening.

He did not wait to see if anyone had seen or heard him. Instead, immediately dashing for the targeted vehicle, focusing. His other mind looking around, searching for potential threats. Finding none.

In no time, he was upon the vehicle. Switching between sights, he tried looking within, finding it impossible with the sights he had. So he jumped, he fluttered and landed on it, barely no sound echoing out. Only the barest ember of a stone dropped into a pond of water.

As his other mind scanned around, finding him safe, he pulled out the black container with the liquid that would easily chew through the vehicle’s roof and moved to pour it. Suddenly stopping himself.

Taking a second, a truly important second, he looked around. Empty, barest of enemies. He turned back towards the vehicle and pointed his arm down. From it, he fired a tiny little mechanical snake, no larger than a fly.

It flew true and impacted the vehicle, biting down as it sucked on the vehicle’s mechanical mind, draining it of its intent and learning the truth. A truth discerned by his other mind that immediately flashed a warning. An alarm.

It was a trap.

Body was pumped with all the drugs it allowed, mechanical muscles oiled up while he immediately jumped away, pulling out his shield grenades in one swift motion. The vehicle had been booby trapped, rigged to explode the second something triggered it. That trigger being an intrusion of any kind.

As his mind grew faster, body stronger, muscles impossibly taut and nerves firing at faster than light. His body was still too slow to act.

The vehicle exploded before he could throw his shield grenades, sending him ragdolling across the yellow dunes, flying far away. Body numbed, he could only stare as the ground, sky, ground and back to sky flashed across his vision. His other mind screaming out warnings of all kinds, warning of ruptured organs, broken bones, profuse bleeding, concussion, hearing loss.

What little control his other mind had left of the now ruined armour, it used to reorientate itself, reorientate them, pulling and pushing at his unresponsive body.

It softened the impact with the ground by using the speed dampeners, only costing him a broken foot in the process as their armour was broken where it should have cushioned the speed-dampeners back-force.

A great plume of soft sand propelled in all directions as he crashed. Tumbling around until he stopped a long distance away from the explosion, face down into the sand, arms unresponsive, legs unresponsive, pain dull but present everywhere. Eyes dark, unable to tell if blinded or blind, ringing a constant screaming in his ear.

His other mind immediately set forth at repairing his body, sending out SOS signal, and assessing damages.

The last of the drugs within him were administered, bones pushing back into place, flesh mended where it could, closing off bloodflow where it couldn’t. Organs, one by one, shutting down to sustain life.

One camera still functioned, giving him the sights of where the target’s vehicle exploded. A plume of sand fell like droplets of rain, fire raging all around and dark smoke pluming up into the sky far above. And from the burning wreckage, he spotted several moving enemies, clad in thick armour, protective against the heat of the flames. They were few, but they searched with vigilance.

One looked in his direction and moved closer. Holding a big rifle in their hands.

The other mind realized the danger and started calculating. Quickly concluding that the enemy was searching for him and would soon find them. As soon as it concluded that, it stopped repairing and forcefully stimulated what muscles weren’t torn to lift them.

Only managing to push them upwards, before promptly falling back onto the ground. Muscles too torn to work, biomechanical only able to do so much before they too failed.

He himself did little, simply staring out of the vision the camera gave him, flickering with static as it showed the enemy moving closer and closer.

His other mind finished its new rounds of calculations, of introspective thinking, thinking as if it was him thinking, but not. And with little emotion, as if it was simply stating facts, it thought to him.

/Death imminent. Issuing last protocol. Farewell

It spoke to him, and he felt heat building up within. Deep within. Building up in his chest. Building up in his heart.

A heart that was bigger than most, built rather than born. Made to pump blood and fuel, created with a technology so advanced that one heart could never be replicated again.

A heart they had given him on his last day as a human.

A heart that now started beating out of control.

A heart that would explode with the heat of a nuclear explosion. But far worse.

But the heart did not. Instead, it started beating slower once more, easing as he thought. As he forced back control of his body and gave them an out.

His other mind, having considered what he was thinking, started planning, reluctantly stopping their last protocol, and gave over the reins to him.

With what strength he had left, he reached down and tentatively pulled out all the grenades he had on him. A shaking hand barely able to pull the grenades to drop them onto the soft sand beside him. One by one, falling into a pile.

His other mind monitoring the slowly moving enemy, ready to initiate last protocol whilst helping him by setting a timer on each grenade, set to explode at the same time.

As the last grenade dropped by his side, he used his arm- his only arm as the other lay limp, to pull at the sand above him. Pulling and pushing with his broken leg and feet. Barely gaining ground.

Barely would have to be enough.

Blood pooling around his body, painting the ground in thick red. He still moved, flashes of warning about low levels of blood being blasted in his head, ignored as he crept his leg into position. Positioning his leg so that his foot was above the pile of grenades.

As his broken foot was dragged into place, he primed himself the best he could and pulled the proverbial trigger.

The thrusters made to stop his fall, was now used to propel the grenades forward. Sand and grenades shooting out in all directions, like a shotgun blast too wide for its barrel. His already broken foot torn sunder from the contained blast, flying off from the ankle joint and leaving a white, broken bone sticking out.

No pain, staring at the lone camera screen fluttering and stuttering, exposing a cloud of sand and dust forming around him. As the screen of dust and sand settled enough to see the lone enemy, he saw more than one, several, a group gunning for his position. Flashes accompanied them, no sounds, deaf as he now knew he was.

Then a massive explosion, several, rocketed the ground. Fire and dust all around as people exploded into a fine red mist, gored and torn asunder. Most grenades missed, but the few that were close enough did what explosives did best.

Staring through the flickering camera, he saw as enemies flocked around one another, seeking shelter amongst the many. Some still firing against his position, the majority that he could see were running away. But the explosives had gored and killed the most.

More than this, he could not do. He had bought himself more time.

Time for what?

His other mind did not know, for the end result was the same.

A beating heart beating faster.

A conclusion of death.

Their death.

Stopped yet again as the comms module inside his head beeped, then spoke up with a mechanical tone.

/Reinforcement incoming

Followed by two dropships hitting the ground close to his position. Felt rather than seen, as the vibrations through the sand gave him an approximation of where they had landed. He knew what they were here for, what it meant.

His other mind did too.

World plunged to darkness as his other mind let everything die. Everything but his mind and still beating heart to keep him alive.