A/N: This will be an Alternate Universe using characters from the CBS show NCIS. There will be some factual history, locations and science used. This story is about a Marine who survives a deadly attack in Afghanistan only to be left with multiple amputations, blindness in one eye and probable brain damage which could lead to death. However, a secretive military research group with the backing of the U.S. Government steps in to turn him into a "Super Soldier". However, how will the man himself deal with this and who is the young woman who helps him along the way.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own, I'm only borrowing the characters from CBS's NCIS


March 2002, U.S. and Afghan forces launched an offensive on al-Qaeda and Taliban forces entrenched in the mountains of Shahi-Kot southeast of Gardez; Operation Anaconda. After 16 days of fierce fighting the battle is over and considered a success with only 8 killed and 72 wounded from the US troops. However, a small group of 22 men from Task Force 11 including 4 Marine Scout Sniper teams from the 1st Force Recon hitch a ride back on an Army MTVR truck heading back to base KAIA in Kabul instead of waiting for their airlift. However, 45 minutes into the trip the small convoy of seven vehicles are blitzed by a small group insurgent with RPGs. When the smoke clears three of the seven vehicles are burning one other severely damaged the last three still drivable, the wounded and dead are quickly over-loaded onto them wasting no time to get out of the area on high alert.

Nine of the wounded are in such bad shape that they are Medevac'd to Ramstein Air Base, Germany within hours of returning to KAIA and stabilized as best the Doctors can do. Within a week four of the wounded are considered so bad that they are sent home for the families to make the final decision on their lives. However, three of them lie in limbo at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as no family can be located after two weeks Dr. R. Steven Noelle and Roger Murdock of IATR along with their representative of US Department of Defense meet with the Secretary of the Navy Phillip Davenport about taking the three Marines and to the Institute to see if they can save them through Transhuman Technology.

Institute of Advanced Transhuman Research (IATR) is a US Department of Defense backed scientific organization workingwith an interested in the battlefield advantages they would provide to the "Super Soldiers" of the United States and its allies. To enhance soldier safety and survivability on the battlefield through the new developing sciences on brain and body alteration technologies. After 30 years they have taken what was Science Fiction and progressed from just being theory on paper to actual animal testing now in 2002 they are ready to go forward to the final human procedures.

SecNav Davenport agrees for the three men to be transferred to the IATR facility outside of Durango Colorado, with the belief that each of the men has no family to take proxy over them. Once they arrive they are evaluated by teams of scientist and doctors of the Transcendent Project to workout which procedures would be needed for each man. After extensive testing and some surgery it was determined that one man Corporal David Michael James, 24, has server brain damage beyond their capability to work with so he is sent back to Walter Reed for the military to decide his fate. Sergeant Dwayne Brian Collins, 33, is found to be suitable candidate Transhumanization and also Gunnery Sargent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, 36, is also found to be suitable for procedure. Each of them is assigned an intern from the IATR labs to serve as an advocate, nurse and friend to help them through the transition.