MAN NO MORE

…physically, he'll be well within parameters for any future operations after he has conditioned himself with his new faculties. Mentally, I'm afraid that is something that I cannot answer with absolute sincerity. Considering the testimonies of past patients who'd undergone procedures for attachment of prosthetics, he's going to need time, to put it mildly. Time out of the field and away from the base. The scale of the alterations made to his body are appalling. To improve combat efficiency, many of his metabolic systems have been tampered with, some aspects removed in their entirety and others severely and disturbingly altered beyond repair. Though he retains the ability to eat and breath, he no longer has a sex drive and will be in constant need of medication for the rest of his life to inhibit his body's immune response to the base augments, amongst other things. And given that he is the first subject who has ever been subjected to such drastic engineering, I worry for the long-term consequences. If it weren't for our dire need to utilize every advantage we have to combat the alien threat, and the extent of his injuries, I'd demand that he be permanently removed from active military duty and placed on a priority list for state-funded welfare to give him every benefit he requires.

~Extract from Dr Vahlen's medical evaluation

The Sergeant couldn't sleep anymore. When he does, his mind took him back to the moments when it all went wrong. When the Captain, who was on point, came round the corner of the building to be promptly downed by crossfire from the mutons. When the Corporal was fried by the cyberdisk as he tried to load his rocket launcher. When that grenade went off and blew the pickup truck he and the Private were hiding behind, sending him flying through the convenience store's glass and crashing into several aisles of foodstuffs before landing back first behind the counter and on top of an abductee covered in green gunk. He didn't remember getting up. He didn't remember killing the muton that charged in after him. He didn't remember picking up its rifle and destroying the cyberdisk with a burst of plasma-fire despite the discrepancy between human and muton ergonomics which should have made such a feat nigh-high impossible. He didn't remember collapsing with the Private's body in tow at the extraction point miles away from the gas station while still in shock and with the alien rifle tightly clutched in his hand and enough adrenaline in his veins to make another man lift a car over his head. But they told him that was what happened, for how else would he have made it out as the only one left alive?

He didn't wish he hadn't now. Before XCOM, in the nine years he has served abroad, first as his nation's soldier and later as a private security contractor, from Middle Eastern deserts to African jungle, shooting men he'd never met before and training others to fight their own battles, he knew life was a war, and to think you didn't want it was to admit you've already given up the struggle. But sometimes, when he wakes up in the medical ward in the dark, pouring sweat in the night cold and biting his lip so hard it bled so that he wouldn't start crying, he wishes that grenade had killed him like it did for the Private.

'How've you been sarge?'

'Good. Never been better, sir. The doctor says I can be cleared in another week.' The Sergeant watched as the Colonel pulled a stool to himself. The Colonel was a big man with a big walk, a Russian who looked like he grew up fighting bears up there in his homeland's winter woods. He was also a loud man, boisterous and blunt with all his words but never coming off as rude. Now he looked subdued, almost somber, what with the way he edged into the centre of the Sergeant's room, sitting down opposite him with his hands clenched in his lap.

'That's good to hear,' the Colonel grunted insincerely. 'The others are worried about you. They thought that the next time they saw you you'd look like Robocop or something.'

'Really? Those hardasses? Are you sure you're not making that up?' The Sergeant listened as the Colonel tried to waste time with inane chatter. The difference between the consummate soldier and a man of his rank was not the medals but the mind, and the Colonel had that right mixture of cunning and book-smarts to take the textbook war game theory one learnt in an officer's strategy class and apply it with new variations on the fly in the constantly fluctuating conditions that is a battlefield. He was also a well-seasoned veteran, for he had only attended the officers' class after he got chewed up in boot camp. But when it came to things like this, the Colonel was hopelessly transparent. The Sergeant gave him five minutes before he politely asked him to get to the point.

'I talked to the Commander,' the Colonel answered gruffly. 'I asked him to give you an honorable discharge. He said it'd be best if I talk to you first.' He frowned. 'What he did; it wasn't right.'

'That he took away my arms and legs and gave me this tin can for a body? Or that he wants to send me back out there again after what happened?'

The Colonel narrowed his eyes. 'I was a witness to your…reconstruction. I had no say in the matter but as your superior officer I demanded that Dr. Shen and Dr. Vahlen let me watch the proceedings whenever I had the time to in between my duties. Now I know what they've been saying; about how we need the Meld to maintain an edge and how it was the only way to save you. I don't believe them. I know how these people think. I've been around their type long enough to know better. You could have made it without the surgery. You and I both know people who got what you got and walked it off a year later. With crutches and splints, sure, but still flesh and bone. And the medical facilities here are top notch for that matter too. The real reason they operated on you and changed you was because you were an excuse. Convenient and expendable. If they failed they could shrug their shoulders and shake their heads and say you were going to die anyway. They couldn't say that if the patient was completely healthy to begin with. But they have succeeded, and now they'll want to do it again and again, not just to the next soldier who comes in the ward on a stretcher, but volunteers if they can get them. They'll tell them it's for the sake of humanity. It will be, but it will also be for themselves as well. So they can publish their papers and books and journals. The man who carried out the first successful heart transplant became a celebrity overnight and he did it with a terminal patient who only got an extension of an hour on his life. This is no different.'

Silence.

'It is different sir,' the Sergeant replied, suddenly irritated at both everything and nothing. 'For one, I have more than just an hour. Maybe I won't live to see this war through but I can still fight for every day I can get. And though you might be right about them guys down at the labs and the engineering bay, it doesn't matter, because I'm still here.'

'But what about the next time?'

'Sir, my situation means that there'll be other people out there that can get a second chance.' He shook his metal arm for emphasis. 'You can't say this doesn't have its pluses. Even if it's depressing to look at, it's still better than the alternative. I can do more good as alive as I am by going back into the field and ensuring that my squad mates come home in one piece.' He shrugged. 'I can't see what isn't good about all this.'

The Colonel stared at him. His lips curled as he opened his mouth retort. They continued to argue for half an hour, voices heated but not raised, before the Colonel stalked out. Some of the things they said would have gotten them court-martialed at a military tribunal; others a round of applause.

It had been a shock when the Sergeant had discovered what they had done to him, but somewhere in the back of his mind, it had also been a marvel. The limbs were not the ones he had been born with but he could make them his, despite the lack of his DNA or nerves in them. The engineers were worried that he'd have to start from scratch and relearn all his motor functions like an infant would. The first two day made it seemed so, when he could do nothing but stumble like a drunk with weak knees, breaking objects just by picking them up. But upon the third day, he remembered how to run again, after escaping from the base and attempting to jog outside. He tried target practice on the fourth day, and though he found out that he will never be able to put a double tap into a sectoid's cranium from shouting distance nor dismantle a pistol while blindfolded, he could still point and shoot, and with the armaments the engineers told him he'd be getting once the suit was finished, that was all he'll be needing.

But still, he had never asked for this to happen to him, and XCOM certainly didn't ask him for permission. Never mind that he was in a coma and dying from blood loss, secondhand burns, grenade shrapnel, ruptured organs, fractured skull, broken ribcage and dislocated spinal cord, with a one in a thousand chance of surviving the week, let alone ever going toe to toe with a muton again. Never mind that there was an alien invasion and he was only one of the six billion that was human race. It was his body and his life, and they gave him no say in the matter, and he resented them for it even as he wondered if he wouldn't have wanted otherwise, which was why he refused to agree with the Colonel that he should be discharged. Because he couldn't tell whether he had been done a favor or a dishonor.

'Strike-1. Your team is clear to engage.'

'Copy that, Central. Proceeding to target zone.'

The Lieutenant watched as her team spread out and began a pincer movement, her taking the rearguard with the mec trooper. Rifle in hand, she pulled down her thermal goggles and stared at the office building in front of them. 'Strike-1. I'm seeing four x-rays in the foyer. Mutons. They're out in the open.'

'Roger, Strike-3. Strike-5. Strike-2. Let's do this by the book.'

Glass shattered. A few moments later, like the sound of a firecracker, a flashbang went off. Gunfire rang out from three separate carbines as the mutons roared in pair and surprise. The mec trooper alongside the Lieutenant took off, servos whining and whirring faintly with each thundering footstep as the Lieutenant ran behind him with her head held low. Green bursts of plasma fire came flying out over her. The mec trooper stumbled once as the Lieutenant smelt the tang of burnt metal. Then the mec trooper was crashing through the remains of the damaged glass doors and raising its minigun and filling the foyer with a barrage of 7.62x51mm NATO bullets being discharged at a rate of 3000 rounds per minute. It was over in less than a minute.

'Sound off,' Strike-1 announced, as everyone halted at the sight of three bullet-riddled muton corpses. 'Everybody still breathing?' Five people responded over the comm channel. 'Good. Sergeant. Status report.'

'Damage is superficial. Not even a flesh wound,' the mec trooper murmured robotically.

'Excellent. You get that, Central?'

'Copy that Strike-1. Intel indicates that our objective is on the seventh floor, but we have no knowledge of enemy numbers. The power's still on, so your best bet is the freight elevator. Barring that, you'll have to take the stairs. Exercise extreme caution.'

'You heard Officer Bradford. Let's all try to all get home in one piece, eh? Strike-2. Take point. Strike-3. You and I will back him up. The rest of you; form up behind us. And change your mags, people. The last thing I want is any of you guys going dry while a chryssalid's coming down at you.'

…truth be told, Colonel (REDACTED) and I hope you especially will understand, I can't be a leader without being ruthless. You have heard it been said before that the needs of the few are outweighed by the needs of the many. I'm no such idealist but I have to work with what I have, and right now, amongst the many men and women we have stationed around the world, Sergeant (REDACTED) is one of a dwindling handful who have met and survived encounters with the extraterrestrial threat. The Council is also at this point in time breathing down my neck with their politics and demanding that I give them results that are quite difficult for me to achieve with the lack of resources I have at my disposal. Even now, the President of France is calling for my resignation, and he's but the latest voice in that regard. Like it or not, I must continue to send Sergeant (REDACTED) out to do his job and given the circumstances where his squad mates might suffer similarly in the line of duty, I will not hesitate to have them subjected to the same procedure he had, if not to save them, then to save humanity.

~Extract from email sent by Commander (REDACTED) to Colonel (REDACTED)

A/N: based off the Steam achievement of the same name.