Chapter 1

"Okay." The voice - male, vocal modulator, the thought drifted up - sounded as thrown as he felt, but whoever it was rallied quickly. "What do you remember?" He thought about it, trying to reach for memories or skills. He still knew how to speak, he had language skills, so he had not forgotten everything, but his personal life - fire, pain, blackness. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

"Where am I?" No sense telling anything to people who seemed to have him locked in what looked suspiciously like a cell.

"You're back on base, recovering." There was no pause, no sign the man was lying, as he pressed on. "What do you remember?"

"Nothing." One of the orange shapes moved and there was the fuzzy noise of someone covering a microphone. He strained to hear and the words became clear.

"- have been that bomb."

"Could asset D help?" Four people he guessed, and one sitting down behind a console, probably the one talking to him. Two more shapes stood to the side, probably guarding a door out. Seemed he had heat vision as well as whatever the fuck his hands had turned into.

"I'll put the request in." One of the figures walked to the entrance. The shape leaned back to the desk and the microphone voice resumed, shockingly loud before his hearing adjusted.

"OK. This must be a shock to you, but we need you to stay calm."

"I want answers." His voice was nearly a snarl.

"OK. The short version is that you're a US military asset." His eyebrow raised under the hood. That did not sound right. "You're on a U.S. army base. You sustained severe injuries in the field from an I.E.D. We didn't know how well you'd recover."

"A military asset," he said in disbelief. "A soldier." Grimy jeans, a leather jacket, this wasn't a uniform.

"Not quite." The voice sounded uncomfortable and he could see the silhouette glancing to a figure behind it for instructions as the microphone fuzzed again. He didn't give them time to receive it..

"If I'm an injured soldier, why aren't I in a hospital?" He saw a head shake and shrug from the watching figure. The person leaned back over the microphone.

"It's...complicated..." The man, if he could tell through the metallic speaker tones, sounded doubtful and uncomfortable.

"What's going on? Tell me!" He lashed out at the glass, expecting his fist to bounce. Instead there was a grating squeal like fingernails on a blackboard. He stepped back, staring at his hand. Foot-long black claws extended, flexing as he tried twitching the fingers they had replaced. Hooks and spines grew out below it, covering the arm to the shoulder, where they blended impossibly into his jacket. He touched the join with his unchanged hand, felt the smooth blending. His jacket was a weapon? No, that was not right. He tried to pull the sleeve back on his good arm without cutting himself on the claws, watching amazed as the claws flowed back into fingers, a hand, a sleeve. He turned the cuff back, saw it was cosmetic. Inside the sleeve, after an inch or so of fabric, the material merged into his arm. It should have been disturbing, but somehow it felt right.

"What the hell am I?" he asked aloud, not expecting a useful answer. In his head he focused on a much more interesting question: what could he do? He could work with this, do more than he had, he knew. If they expected him to be angry and off-balance, playing along would get answers. Then he'd know what answers they wanted him to have and he could start working on getting the real ones. He smacked the glass again, set it vibrating. "What the hell is this?"

"Like I said, complicated." That wasn't helpful. How could personal memories be gone but his skills, basic knowledge be there if he reached for it? Muscle memory, he recalled vaguely, memories stored in the muscles from repetitive movements. Was that what his claws were? He felt more comfortable when they were out, though the watchers seemed discomforted. Screw them. He was the one in the cell.

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"This may have been a stroke of luck. Move asset D to a secure area. We need to control the information flow."

"Understood, sir."

"Can we keep it under control? It has an I.Q. off the charts. Several of its component personalities were rated at over two hundred individually."

"It can't access them. Intelligence is only as useful as the data it has to work with. Right now it has none."

"Then let's make sure it stays that way."