Author's note:

As I near the end of this arc, I feel it is necessary to give due credit. The concept and initial character of our little test subject was originally created by Insanity-Engine. She has been adapted, rewritten and redeveloped with permission.

Her role in this story was originally the product of a collaborative writing experience shared almost three years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Kayleer and I owe a lot to Insanity-Engine(Delta-Hexagon on DeviantArt) and her character and I wish to give them credit.

As always, thanks for reading.


"Will you tell me a story?"

In more recent days, I had made a habit of recording everything the test subject said. It was useless jargon, mostly, but I was curious to see if patterns arose. Every aspect of her behavior had to be recorded if the tests were to be at all valid.

"Okay, I'll make a story," she continued. "There once was a girl named Agatha. She was kidnapped by an evil, ugly ogre. One day a brave knight came and killed the ogre, and they lived happily ever after. The end."

She repeated herself quite often. This 'story' trope seemed to be the most often revisited. I could only guess as to why such a useless behavior had evolved. Basic creativity was important, certainly, to aid in problem-solving, to envision new inventions and solutions. To apply it to creating something as useless as a false story, though, where was the purpose?

I had long-confirmed that this subject had a remarkable inborn resistance to phazon. Since then, I had moved on to the next stage.

I had to pinpoint the genes responsible for her immunity. It was no doubt polygenic, and with more than 3 billion molecules in that chaotic assortment of chromosomes, I would have my work cut out for finding them.

The only way to know the effects of each gene was to silence them, and observe what went wrong in her system. Usually even a small omission would result in major organ failure. Eventually I started infusing pirate DNA, my own, to compensate for what was lost. It worked, to a point, and I realized there was no better way to test the interaction of pirate and human genes than by starting with her. I referred to this new venture as project Transfuse.

The test subject's skin had turned a dark green. It was a strange reaction, to say the least. As more of her genome was infused, the sickly color faded, and gave way to pirate maroon. Her skin hardened and flaked, some imperfect combination of skin and exoskeleton.

Eventually, though, the pirate genes were not enough to repair her rapidly degenerating body, and I had to resort to life support systems. They kept her alive despite her body's failures, and oftentimes I could even replace failed organs with pirate ones or prosthetics. Transfuse became an interesting sort of patchwork, of human, pirate and machine.

Her human fingers began to fuse together, and I realized I had reached genes responsible for her hands. The first and second pair of digits melded, forming three fingers. The same set of genes must have affected her other extremities. The cells from the knee-down began to inexplicably die off, and her legs became useless deadweight. I did not want to risk the rot reaching farther up her body, and so I amputated both.


Transfuse had become quiet. No longer did she fill her tiny chamber with high-pitched wails and screams. She did not tell her "stories" anymore. Her eyes still leaked a saline fluid many times a day, so much so that she would dehydrate herself. I eventually grew tired of refilling her water supply, and simply put her on an IV.

She stopped eating, and I was forced to resort to a feeding tube. It became one of many peripherals attached to the mutant, just barely keeping her alive.

It was difficult to tell where one gene ended and another began. Sometimes they even overlapped, and huge sections were entirely functionless junk. Human DNA was inefficient, much like everything else about them.

I had to be extremely careful whenever I infused her. I had to watch her lifesigns dutifully, and observe if her immunity to phazon was altered in any way. Many times my tests resulted in cell degeneration or some eruption of infection, and I would quickly need to reverse what I had done. I would restore that particular set of genes, record the data, minimize the damage as best I could, and continue on.

As the months went by, Transfuse appeared to suffer significant cognitive deterioration. Nothing physical, but purely mental, behavioral. I could see it from her actions. She would stare into space, cringing with fear at nonexistent enemies. She would twitch her head erratically, shift from a smile to frantic, silent sobs. I was at first concerned that her immunity was not as strong as I initially theorized. However, it became apparent to me that her dementia was nothing more than the result of psychological stresses. I had seen the same thing in the control group all those cycles ago, and this behavior was merely another, more advanced variant.

Her brain, while now demented and insane from human pressures, remained unaffected by phazon.


Nearly four cycles had passed, and I felt I was nearing a breakthrough. High Command, however, had not seen what they considered significant progress in many years. They began to lose interest. They threatened to cut my funds and rations if I did not start delivering worthwhile results.

Fools, the lot of them. They did not consider a cure worthwhile, and they failed to understand the complexity of this experiment. It was not something that could be done swiftly. While the rest of Science Team trudged forward with their self-destructive research on phazon, I worked alone to save them from their own lethal error.

But despite my righteous purpose, I knew I needed the support of High Command. And if I would not donate my efforts to their phazon programs, then I would need to find something to do with Transfuse that would make her useful in their eyes.

I briefly averted my focus from the long process of altering her genome. High Command had mentioned some complaint about the cost of new troops. Many lost or broke limbs, and they had often sought an efficient way to repair them, rather than disposing of them as they usually did with worthless soldiers.

Prosthetics were often faulty, expensive and all around dysfunctional. It was admittedly not an area of technology we had made many advancements in. Perhaps I should be the one to change that.

I drafted and tested several designs over the next few months, finally settling on one with the perfect balance between cost and functionality.

I took Transfuse from her cell. She could do very little to resist me, having no way to walk. On the pathetic stubs of her legs, I built the two makeshift pirate prosthetics.

She writhed in the process, her restrained limbs fought desperately against their holds. And yet, as usual, she was utterly silent. Not a word escaped her open mouth, and I was quite relieved that no incessant pleas or screaming would be a distraction.

When I was finished, I tested them. I delivered an electrical shock into the living portion of her leg. Her metallic limb twitched in response, showing that the signal had carried successfully through.

I cast her back in her prison and restrained her arms like normal. Her legs, however, I left free, I needed to know if they worked.

I feared that she, in her defiance, would refuse to show me any results. But to my surprise, she did just the opposite. She stood, she raked her new claws against the ground and stared at them. She toyed with them, showing a wide array of movements. Her mutant face distorted just the tiniest of bits, a human smile etched across her mandibles. It faded just as quickly.

The thing was happy that it could walk again. But these prosthetics were only temporary. I would remove them after she had shown me they were consistently functional.

Satisfied that the design was a success, I left the room to give my report to High Command. My experiment was imperfect, anecdotal perhaps, and had no proof of repetition. But it was progress all the same, and they seemed satisfied enough to support further research. When I returned to the lab, I was surprised to see Transfuse was on her knees, her face buried in her ration dish. She had actually begun to eat again.

An interesting reaction. It seemed the new legs had boosted her morale enough to restore her appetite. That saved me the trouble of having to deal with her feeding tube, I supposed. For the sake of convenience I resolved that I would let her keep them for now.