Nanite Protosoldier Project

The sedatives bled from your veins like a receding tide, your consciousness returning. Suspended in viscous green fluid, your naked body hung limp in a harness—lungs burning as you instinctively breathed the oxygenated green fluid. Beyond the glass, a sterile laboratory hummed with cold efficiency. Three figures watched—a young woman at a console, a technician adjusting at his console, and him: Doctor Vincent Hemlock. His Stellar Union lab coat hung pristine over a skeletal frame, gray eyes dissecting you through the tanks glass.

"Subject C-8815 is conscious. Vitals?" His voice crackled through submerged speakers.

'Stable, Doctor. The woman didn’t look up from her screens. Nanite saturation at 98%. Ready for Phase One.'

Hemlock stepped closer, palm pressed to the glass. "By order of the Stellar Union, your death sentence is hereby carried out... to serve the union in your new purpose." Cold casual words, little ceremony, as he turns to the woman again. "Begin Experiment Group Alpha-7."

A hiss echoed below. Gray nanite shinning cloud surged upward, clinging to your feet like molten lead. Itching. Then burning. You thrashed as the swarm devoured skin, muscle, bone—replacing flesh with searing alloy. From separate ports spewed a black shine of new building materials. The fluid and metals forming the base materials for your new body. Small veins of blood escapes into rivulets in the fluid, as feet reshaped, metallic clawed feet soon shine like new. Your scream bubbled silently, drowned in amniotic fluid. The nanites climbed—thighs encased in black armor, pelvis shielded under a seamless plate, snow-white fur sprouting across your belly as ribs cracked and fused into a titanium sternum.

'Irregular heartbeat.' the technician barked, 'But reflect previous study levels.'

"Expected. Proceed." Hemlock didn’t glance back as he strode toward the exit. "Alert me if termination protocols activate. We have seventeen more convicts to repurpose after this."

The door hissed shut.

Agony crescendoed. Your lungs filled, burned, as they too were consumed and improved. Vision blurred, darkened... then black as the visor consumed your face, your face turned numb as it was rewritten. A final spike of pain stabbed your skull—the control chip burrowing into your brain-stem as the mechanical arm descended and violently implanted the chip. Then darkness, your brain screaming as you blacked out.

---

you awaken

BOOT SEQUENCE COMPLETE

Cold air hit your muzzle as the tank drained. Schematics flickered across your visor P-267CM: ONLINE. White fur gleamed under sterile lights. Black alloy encased your limbs, powerful and alien. Four other pods glowed nearby, their occupants still submerged in transformation, you know time passed.. but no idea how long.

Your Memories? a faint cloud, stung to think back before this moment. Your name? A phantom ache. Only the sting in your spine remained—and then a deep voice rang with authority.

"Up, soldier."

Captain Alfonso Lambert blocked the exit, datapad in one hand, pulse rifle slung over his shoulder... Your visor displayed his name, a computer system fed information- You learned, your handler. His uniform merged with lab whites rank pins glinting. "I’m your handler. You’ll refer to me as Captain or Sir. Understood?" He didn’t wait for an answer, a strange firm but softness to his deep voice. "Follow. We go to the shooting range, make sure you know how to shoot, training begins now."

Time: 1412 displays on your visor

You are a Protosoldier for the Stellar Union. P-267CM, you barely can think back to the time in the lab beneath Doctor Hemlock.. When SOMETHING happened, you were something before this. A fully changed protogen. You stand on a dropship over a cold planet. White fur, and jet black armor, muscular, 6'2. Part of a project for the S.U.I.C to help replace human soldiers on the battlefield and that's all you know. Ten others on your ship, all armed as you, appear as you. Very little variation between each, having used the same nanite template.

Your display highlights the human there in ballistic suit, Captain Lambert, your squads handler.. Both as a scientist and experienced military. Your body wrapped in cold weather gear, a laser rifle slung across your back, the cold weather will help reduce the heat buildup.. This mission was different, you weren't being deployed for your immediate purpose... No Voidborne here, settlements of humans. Refused the Stellar Unions arm of peace, but this point is needed to build a new base to buffer the border.

Soon your vessel begins to swerve, anti-air fire begins on your approaching landing fleet, your engine bursts as you get low, swerving as it begins to crash. "Brace yourselves!" Lambert cries as the other engine hums high, fire crackling as you spin out of control. A minute later you slam into the ground, held into place by your seats harness. Your screen flashes up, showing mild injuries, nanites begin to repair the pain, your vision flickered.. But soon you stand up. Lambert staggers to his feet. "We made land! Move out! Weapons hot!" The pilots are on their own, your squad directed to leap off the ship sunken into snow at an angle. Everyone alive and accounted.. Landing foam helping buffer the landing with the snow. Ballistic fire screaming through the air, you hear the whistles of mortar fire towards the main body of the landing force.

The battle begins, your vision sees the heat signatures on the field as you charge their city. Moving with a heavy tank. Nearing the enemy's location a blast knocks you too your feet. Penetrating the tank, the air burning as it melts through.. Feeling the heat through your gear and the fur. Their forces move quickly, you look up in time to see a barrel, and the flash. Bullet through your visor, into your brain, barely feel a moment of pain before blacking out.

---

Vision flickers again, you've still got a headache.. but somehow feel clear. You wake up surrounded by dead in shallow snow.. your display flickers, control chip irreparably damaged... Seek facility for replacement. Cranium and body damage reconstruction costly, reserves depleted, seek sustenance. Your systems warn as your stomach aches.

No strings, nothing pushing you for orders, blocking your thoughts, for the moment you're free, only mildly. As you sit up a young woman points a pistol as you move. "FAK! Zombie!" She doesn't pull the trigger but retreats, it's just you and her alone here. "Bloody bot cann' stay'n da grave." She almost squeezes the trigger, but pauses, putting 5 feet between you both, as her arm shakes. "S'render and we don have ta do this the hard whay." You must be somewhere inside the enemies compound, seems by the silence the initial attack didn't succeed.

KEPLER-7C | SIGMA-9 FIREBASE | 1847 HOURS LOCAL

The transport's bay doors shrieked open, flooding the hold with searing wind that tasted of iron and burnt ozone. P-267CM, YOUR visor auto-adjusted to the dying light—Kepler-7c's twin suns bleeding crimson across endless salt flats, casting long shadows from skeletal rock formations. Dust devils spiraled across the cracked earth, obscuring the evacuation shuttles launching in frantic clusters. Your squad of twelve Protogens stood in perfect formation, mag-locked boots holding firm against the deck's vibrations.

"Sixty seconds to disembark! Check your gear!" Sergeant Voss's voice crackled through comms. He was human, gruff, already exhausted. He paced behind the line, checking harnesses. Through the open bay, the sky flickered with violence. Stellar Union frigates traded fire with phasing Voidborne cruisers, their crystalline hulls refracting starlight into sickly rainbows.

Firebase Sigma sprawled across the arid, cracked lands. A hastily fortified position of ferrocrete bunkers and freshly deployed anti-air emplacements. The batteries dominated the landscape: towering turrets with quad-barrel laser arrays, their focusing lenses already swiveling skyward.

WHOOM.

The nearest battery fired. A lance of coherent blue light punched into the darkening sky, so bright it left afterimages across your visor. The beam connected with something wrong, a shimmer of crystalline geometry finished its leap in three thousand meters up. The Voidborne scout frigate buckled, its hull glowing and detonated along impossible angles as it erupts into sparks. Debris rained down in slow spirals, burning like meteors.

All eight batteries opened up in staggered rhythm, their beams crisscrossing the atmosphere in a lethal web. Each shot carved glowing aftertrails through the haze, striking at the increasing alien bodies in the air. Explosions bloomed overhead—silent flashes of energy that sent shockwaves rippling across the salt flats. Chunks of crystalline hull plummeted earthward, shattering on impact.

"All ground forces, disembark! Civilians, double-time to the transports!" A human officer waved frantically from the firebase perimeter, his voice cracking over external speakers.

You descended the ramp in lockstep with your squad. Around you, human soldiers scrambled off troop carriers, their faces slick with sweat as they hauled ammo crates toward defensive positions. Civilians surged past in the opposite direction—miners still in work jumpsuits, children clutched against parents' chests, an elderly man stumbling on a makeshift crutch. Their eyes widened at the sight of Protogen soldiers. Each uniform white fur, tall, and their black plating. Fear and hope warring in equal measure across his face.

Captain Lambert's face materialized on your HUD, his expression carved from stone. "P-267CM, you're lead for Firebase Theta's eastern perimeter. Deploy your squad along the trench line. Human crews will handle the batteries; you handle anything that reaches the ground." His eyes flicked to something off-screen. "Voidborne ground signatures just spiked. Six minutes now. Make every second count."

The feed cut. Your control chip pulsed—a dull ache affirming compliance.

Around you, Protogen moved with inhuman efficiency: plasma rifles snapping to ready positions, railgun magazines checked and locked. P-189CM—a female unit with a crimson visor stripe dropped into the nearest trench. P-312CM began unpacking a heavy plasma cannon, servos whining as he braced the tripod.

Above, the sky tore open again. Phase-distortions rippled into existence, and the batteries responded instantly. Beams lanced upward in brilliant blue columns, tracking targets. One struck a Voidborne cruiser broadside, boring through its crystalline hull in a shower of molten light. The vessel listed, spilling energy.. but not out yet. Interceptors filled the sky, joining with Union aerial fighters, and the defense fleet.

"Contacts south! Contacts east!" A human private's voice cracked over open comms. "They're heading for the evac zone!"

Your visor tagged the threats: HOSTILES - 12. RANGE: 800 METERS. INTERCEPT TIME: 90 SECONDS.

Lambert's voice crackled again, flat and final. "All Protogen units: weapons free. Protect the evac zone. That's an order."

Your visor lit up the alien thermal forms of Voidborne. Union soldiers in blues, white, and armor joined your line. Humming of live energy weapons filled the air with shouts, explosions, and the battle blossoming around you.

As another transport passed overhead, leaving your squad behind. The glimpse of a father and his son, clutching his plush slug visible as the door finally closed. Escaping to waiting ships in orbit.