He wished he had taken longer to make the decision. The docs said he had some healing to do before they could begin the process, and now he just wanted it to be over with. Davis had visited a few times just to keep track of his progress. He regailed James of tales of his days as a soldier, smiled at all the appropriate moments, but he wasn’t fooling James one bit. He was an experiment, and the lab techs didn’t even feign comradery. They studied his vitals from behind reflective masks, and buzzed around the room messing with various machines that James didn’t recognize. “So what exactly are you going to do to me?” He asked. Davis just grinned, “anything and everything we think won’t kill you, and then some ” was his reply. He had signed a contract after all, and he was now as much government property as a plane, or a tank. Should he die in the process there would be no lost sleep, no funeral, no letter home. He’d be a little red number in some accountant’s book , money lost.

      From what he had been told, the corps had reported him dead already. It was strictly forbidden for anyone to use his name, or for he himself to tell anyone, well anything at all really. He couldn’t be sure because of the biocontainment masks they wore, but it seemed there were only a handful of lab techs who ever entered the room. The only person he could really pinpoint in this whole thing was Davis. Suki had stopped coming days ago, and he had never seen more than half her face anyway. So he passed the days lost in thought. He tried to drown out the loud machines with memories, but most of them were louder. Surely it had been weeks since the “accident”, but the light in here never changed. Knowing the way the mind works, he figured it had probably been 4-5 days at the most.

      He awoke one “morning” only to notice that the full staff of techs, Davis, and a slight figure in biocontainment suit were all in attendance. The smallest one approached and  tried to give him a glass of water, but Davis pulled her back.  James felt only slightly relieved knowing that this must be Suki. ”So are we ready to get this show on the road yet James?” said Davis, with an unhealthy amount of cheer in his voice. “As ready as I’ll ever be” was the most confident response Ol’ Jimmy could muster. He hadn’t expected to feel so nervous, but the past week he had been envisioning all the things they could probably do to him. He felt slightly ashamed for doing so, but he asked for a sedative. “Oh not quite yet James, there’ll be plenty of that when we start the procedure. For now we’ve got to get an accurate model of your brain activity, pre-mod, and we obviously can’t do that with you a drooling mess now can we?” Before he had time to feel relief at the prospect of delaying the surgical portion, three techs wheeled in a nasty looking machine with two small blades and an all too “head shaped” bracket. “Now normally we could just tape some wires to your head and get a decent reading even through that thick skull of yours. But in this case we need access to ALL of your brain’s functions, and inaccuracy is just not an option; I’m sure you understand James. We’ll numb you up just as well as we can, but we need you awake through the entire procedure.”