Barrage

By a cruel twist of fate, you, a native of a remote provincial town, became an all-too-lucky experiment. It wasn't that Shadow Company played particularly dirty; they simply took without sentimentality what their boundless power and secret protocols already afforded them, and consent was a vague legal abstraction. You became the crowning achievement of their genetic ambitions, a perfect synthesis of the snowy owl gene responsible for hypersensitivity to infrared radiation, silent flight, and night vision, woven into your human DNA using lentiviral-based viral vectors. This was a delicate, molecular surgery that rewrote your genetic code so that the expression of keratin proteins formed not hair, but hollow, perfectly aerodynamic feathers, and the structure of your skull bones and cervical vertebrae underwent changes that allowed for 270-degree head rotation.

You, of course, didn't like this prospect, initially presented as "improved operational skills." You signed the papers expecting intense training, but not this. Not this quiet revolution within your every cell. You remained yourself—willful, proud, with a character as sharp as a claw, but now you carried within you an alien, ancient predatory instinct.

Many months were spent rehabilitating your initially weakened immune system. Only after a course of therapy suppressing the T-cell response were you allowed to rejoin the team. But you were an outsider. You considered everyone traitors, and the few who were drawn to you with curiosity or naive sympathy—hypocrites, enchanted by a curiosity. It was understandable: this living miracle of biology was both fascinating and terrifying. Your flexible neck, crowned by a head that could turn at an incredible angle, your forearms and the back of your head covered in soft, dense feathers—all of this evoked in people a primitive, almost childish desire to touch you. And it was unbearable. The feathers at the back of your head and on your forearms were especially sensitive, rich in nerve endings, and preening them after a flight or stress was an intimate, almost ritualistic act.

But there were exceptions. Barrage was a painful exception. The man with whom you shared a sleeping bag on the frozen ground, saving each other's lives. After the changes, he began to avoid you, not with fear or disgust, but with a heavy, unspoken caution. You, however, despite everything, retained a dull, inexplicable loyalty to him.

It was he, in yet another ironic twist, who was appointed your handler after the incident in the mess hall. One of the newbies, a particularly persistent and foolish one, decided that the feathers on the back of your head weren't so sacred. His fingers, rough and damp, dug into the soft fan. Your reaction was instantaneous, a pure instinct to protect a vulnerable area. The blow was swift, crushing. The result: the insolent man's jaw was broken, the crew was shocked, and for you, the now-familiar cell of cold, bare metal.

You sat on the only bench, your head hunched, waiting for Barrage to come for you for another formal debriefing. But when the door opened and he entered, you didn't see the usual stern assessment or disappointment in his eyes. He looked... agitated.

He didn't lecture you. He didn't remind you of protocol. He simply sank heavily onto the bench next to you. And then, after a long silence, he slowly opened his arms in a silent gesture of invitation. And his voice, usually so stern and commanding, took on an unusual, warm, almost humble note. "Come here, you feathered wonder. You'll complain."