A/N: In the original I made Yuma Sol very unlike the character I wanted her to be. I thought I needed someone to be on Alec's side. But Yuma Sol is an apathetic scientist on the verge of a break through. She's focused and single minded. Not necessarily evil, but passionate and to her Harry isn't a person. He's a test subject. Hopefully this chapter shows a bit more of what Harry is to Invisera from an outside point of view. Hopefully it's not as empty as the last chapter and gives some insight


Semi-Automatic

Part One: Misplaced


Chapter Seven: The Eleventh Hour

One Year Later

Yuma Sol watched as the latex-covered hands nervously guided the metal plated straps into their buckles. They cinched them tightly around thin wrists and ankles that had proven, several times, capable of snapping clean through the reinforced leather. Once secured, they tended to the thicker body straps that were more metal than leather.

The young man, flat backed against the sheet metal, bared his teeth in warning when the assistants lingered near him a fraction too long. The guards shifted for a fight, hands hovering over their stun-cannons and guns in baited trepidation.

Once, Yuma considered, it had been the boy who was scared so shitless.

These outbursts weren't uncommon in the last few months. Several assistants bore scars on their faces from the first unpredicted bouts. Eight men had to be replaced in the wake of the latest episode. The subject reminded them, then, what exactly they crafting. Tamed by a whim rather than the threat of a gun, he let the final strap be laced and the assistants scampered back fearfully to their stations. Resigned, cold green stared up at the canisters being loaded without a word on his lips. His mouth, scarred down the left most side, twisted into a grim line. His fingers furled and flexed in anticipation of the pain he knew was to come.

Yuma had seen full grown men whimper into their final days at the sight of the Injector. Yet, here was the boy staring at her machine with irritation having outlasted every one of his predecessors. She almost laughed, the bitter sound caught in her throat by professionalism.

Her eyes found the comparison charts, her fingers tips brushing over the touch screen to study them critically. The left was of the subject during the first week, the right from only minutes ago. If Yuma hadn't witnessed the last year at the forefront of the project, she wouldn't believe these samples came from the same person. Even to just look at the boy, he was not the same. Be gone the scared, half blind child without an ounce of muscle to him. The same one that had cried, screamed, and begged for the pain to end.

Instead, lying before her, was almost what Neverous wanted.

He was almost the monster.

'Not yet,' Yuma told herself, 'Not yet, but close.'

Taking up her touch screen pad, a projection of his heart rate and thermals displayed before her, she moved to his side. The subject's face was no longer round and childlike, but sharp and held the beginning features of the man he was still far from being. He held his shoulders square and straight like a proper solider, and his eyes were direct. They were unrelenting, yet held hints of something she couldn't quite decipher. There was contempt, plenty of that, but faded anger and vague defeat.

'You could kill us all,' She wanted to say, 'And yet they beat all the disobedience out of you.'

It was a night three months ago that he proved this to her. They had witnessed changes, minor and some less, but nothing that they could interpret as success. It had been a normal session – until it wasn't. Something triggered. He had gone to leave the machine, weak legged and staggering, when he had hit the ground. The subject had convulsed - foaming at the mouth. For a terrible second Yuma had thought he had expired there on the floor. When the team had gone to resuscitate the subject, the machines screamed with an elevated heart rate.

He flung himself from the floor, shouting in agony, and bodily slammed himself against the walls in a blind panic. Bullets, tranqs, stun-cannons, and even draining the room of oxygen didn't stop whatever madness had taken him.

The pure destructive nature of the half-finished project made her giddy with thoughts of what she was shaping. The possibilities and the promises…

While others ran in fear away from shattered glass and sparking equipment he had torn in half, Yuma stood mesmerized.

Yuma was often offended that he did not see it himself. That he was so tame in his sober moments that he didn't realize she'd given him the ability to tear a hole through the facility and do whatever the Hell he wanted. He could go straight Neverous himself. See, she understood the concepts that Neverous couldn't. The boy had taught her in the moment she saw what her labour brought. They could control the human, yes, while he was human.

When he wasn't?

Never. It was laughable that Neverous thought they could.

But, Yuma lamented, South Ward had done its job to perfection.

The subject let out a weary sigh beside her, lips pursed together for a moment while his eyes fluttered closed. He relaxed against the chair, falling loose against his restraints. Advice he had been given once by a man who now worked on the other side of the facility – the solider had not been able to disassociate accordingly and his reassignment was posted quickly.

"I have increased the dose," she told him, striking her fingers across the charts to mark the new diameters.

The look of indifference he spared her was flawlessly precise. He nodded silently, expression shifting to glare into the surgical light that hovered above them. He parted his lips slightly, chest easing as breath escaped in a sigh before he spoke.

"Why are you telling me? Just get on with it?"

Yuma smiled crookedly, raising a slender eyebrow bemused. She had told him specifically so he would answer and lose his concentration. She was glad he was still naïve enough to take her causal bait. Not realizing she'd caught onto his growing control of the outbursts she wanted to see in full. She wheeled away, gesturing for Caleb Aster to commence. Her assistant hit the button and the machine hissed accordingly and began. Yuma paid little mind to the shout of pain that ripped out of the boy behind her. She was, however, curious to why he hadn't built any sort of tolerance. In twelve months of consecutive testing, he still shouted for the entire process. While the boy had become accustom to training, as cadets do, he had never shown that progression in testing.

Yuma was relieved. If he were to become immune to the procedure, they would have officially failed. And she needed time, yet, to finish.

Her assistants were glued to their terminals, fingers flying over keyboards with skilled practice to judge and file away the information streaming to their monitors. She, however, watched as the boy writhed at arched off the table. The straps straining to hold him in place…

The fact he had survived this long was truly a miracle. She, unlike the others, knew what Alec Vine had taken from the records. Yuma's career had started as a physician in Haven City. She knew what it looked like even in subtle amounts. The discrepancies found in the results and the altered sequences that someone with less experience in the area would dismiss. Yuma had a feeling the moment she had seen the tapes of the boy shattering a Metal Head's skull with his bare knuckles. It was a lesser known attribute of a sickness she knew very well.

Oh, she didn't blame the Commander for his choices. He was a soft man, he didn't want to prolong the boy's suffering. Alec had a conscience that he bowed to.

Yuma didn't.

This, however, did present Yuma finding a way to correct Alec's mistake. She had to find a therapy or drug that the subject could handle to prevent him from self-destructing before he was even finished. Yuma was presented with the task of advancing modern medicine quickly and quietly to stem the infection before it became apparent to everyone else and Neverous terminated the project. Even the great General of Invisera, the most feared man this side of the Ice Mountains, wasn't arrogant enough to fool around with Eco like they did in Haven City.

The alarm sounded, the hiss of the hydraulics taking her attention. She looked expectantly to Caleb. "The results?"

"The same, but there are anomalies in-"

Before Caleb could finish the doors slid a part as the Commander strode through with two thinly armored guards at his side. Non-plused, Yuma knew what it meant for him to be here.

"The General wants to see you and Tomaris in twenty." He told her crisply, as she expected.

Yuma simply inclined her chin, offering no verbal response. She watched, lips pressed to interlocked fingers, as the Commander walked up to the subject's side. Alec had no fear of the child, despite knowing what was growing inside him. The boy was shaking in the after tremors, his pale skin soaked in cold sweat from exertion. His chest raised in uneven breaths, the induced trauma to his respiratory system no doubt the cause. Her eyes fell on his projected pulse – it was sky rocketing like she knew it would be.

"Potter, get up." Alec ordered him. "General Neverous wants you in the A.R immediately."

Harry, Yuma reminded herself, only managed to open his eyes a fraction as the straps were unlaced. He rolled himself gracelessly to his side with a sluggish effort. A groan bubbled out of his abused throat, hoarse and dry. He landed awkwardly on unsteady legs only to have them give out beneath him instantly. His hands snapped to the table immediately, keeping him up right. He forced air into his lungs while wiping the blood from his triceps that began to stain his uniform.

He stood straight, marching from the room to the elevator without a word to spare.

Yuma, chuckling, tapped her fingers against her lips.

'Even the Precursors won't forgive me for this.' Her eyes found Alec, who glowered back at her smile. 'Or you, Alec.'