Disclaimer—Characters belong to Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes—This is probably very AU. But wouldn't it be awesome if it weren't? Unbeta'ed.
Expendable—The birth of Agent X. Post-Ep for Chuck versus the Family Volkoff.
He sighed when he sat down. He wanted to ignore the phone more than anything but the metallic bleat just wouldn't stop. It wasn't a mystery who was on the other end. The same time every day, he got a phone call, a check up from some civilian. It made his very skin crawl, having to answer to someone who didn't have a rank.
What the hell kinda name was Orion anyway?
"Keller," he answered finally.
"Good morning."
"Maybe where you are. I'm in some godforsaken jungle with all the rejects too dumb to be cannon fodder, or did you forget that?"
"I'm well aware of where you are-"
"I thought that this was supposed to be instantaneous, that I'd have a battalion of superheroes at my disposal."
"If you want super soldiers," Orion said slowly, "then read Captain America. That's not what this project was designed to give you."
"That's what I need. To turn these expendables into real assets. Work on that for me, why don'tcha?"
"My contract with the government is very clear. This isn't the drug manufacturing and trials from previous wars. We're building better soldiers for tomorrow's battles today, through technology, making game theorists and tacticians."
"I have yet to see any progress, Sagittarius."
"That's interesting, because I have the results from the last test subjects, killer. The pre- and post-brain scans of this particular Marine are vastly different."
Keller sat up straighter. "You tellin' me what? That you finally succeeded in scrambling some wannabe's eggs?"
"No... I'm saying that his cognitive thinking is off the charts now. Reasoning, rationalization, planning... his run through the war games simulator was outstanding. He beat the computer in ways I wasn't able to predict when I wrote the program. We finally have a success. We finally have our Agent X."
"It... worked?" he asked, mildly astonished.
"Patient number one-delta-niner is no longer just some red-shirt."
Keller yanked open the filing cabinet drawer in his desk, flipping through the manila folders to find the Marine they were talking about. Selecting the proper file, he shook his head. "I'll be damned."
The kid was a neanderthal but eager. Out of all the Marines at the remote base, he was the one who tried the hardest, even when it hadn't been enough before.
Grabbing a black marker, Keller put a thick "x" over the head shot of Alex Coburn.
End.