Breaking Point

Prologue

My name is not Zaid.

That name was given to me when I was made.  When the parts of me that were human were grafted with something else.  Nobody knows who or what did this to me.  My memories of it are faint.  The stretching pain as my bones were lengthened and hardened.  The tightness of my skin as my muscles grew to freakish proportions.  These pains I remember and still bear the marks and scars.  Most of it must have been too painful to remember.  My right arm from the elbow down feels a phantom pain because it is not mine.  The metal hardware grafted into my left wrist.  The cables embedded in my skin that I can feel moving behind my neck every time I turn my head.  The mounting points attached across most of my body, designed for armor plates.  One of my eyes is synthetic and doesn't feel like it tracks correctly with my real eye.

Z-41D.  On my left arm, that identifier is engraved in silver on a black metal plate.  There's a cord that can stretch from it that plugs into most standard computers.  When I plug it in, Z-41D is the identifier that comes up as the device name.  And that synthetic eye.  That identifier is always there in the corner of my vision, even when I close my eyes.  Z-41D must be what I am.

But not who I am beneath it all.  I'm still figuring that part out.  And so far I hate it.

My old friend Jesim Denethan could read minds.  An unexplainable talent possessed by very few.  He did this weird thing where he put his fingers up to my temples and it was like it pulled me into my memories.  Most of them are broken.  Like when you put pressure on your eye and you get this swirling and flashing fade that blocks out your vision, that's what these broken segments looked like.

My name was Alan Darius.  And that's all I really have.  A name.  Some blank faces.  Nothing else.  Nothing since waking up when Jesim and his expedition team found me sleeping, standing up on some pedestal strapped up to a bunch of wires.  Apparently I wasn't happy to be woken up.  The blind rage and screaming pain.  Probably made one of the expedition crew evacuate his bowels in terror before Jesim reached into my mind.

That was six years ago.  Jesim and I worked together to take down a warlord syndicate that called themselves the Apollo Project.  Thought they were some kind of Gods of War.  At the top of them was Alex Sanders.  Someone like me, but much worse.  Much more terrifying.  Much more powerful.  Pure, manipulative, dominating evil.  Code DR-4YG-0N.  Draygon.  Might as well have been a God of War.  Besides matching my size and strength, he could also reach into minds like Jesim could.  But without empathy or compassion.  Just cold, cruel ambition.  The rest of the Apollos never even realized they were being manipulated by Draygon.  They all thought they were using him like a pawn.  Until they were all dead.

That terrible voice.  The one in your head screaming at you to lose control.  To hurt someone, just to see how they'd react.  To punch a hole in the wall, just to see if you're strong enough to.  To crash your truck, just to see if you'll survive.  And when the voice is gone, you don't need to hear it anymore, because anything and everything prompts you to obey it.  No more persuasion.  Just instinct.

Jesim.  Lanesra.  Majors.  Rellik.  They all told me it was Draygon's doing.  That it wasn't me.

But I knew what Draygon's voice felt like.  His was terrifying.  But it was a voice.  This?  It's what I truly fear.

And I think it's who I truly am.

Jesim.  Lanesra.  Majors.  Rellik.  The only survivors of a platoon of sixty.  The only ones who lived long enough for this instinct to wear off.  The rest were dead by my hands, and my guns.  They trusted me.  And my true nature betrayed them all.

I remember every second of it.  From the moment my hammer shattered Sanjay's helmet, before anybody knew what was going on.  The terror in Ricardo's eyes as the harpoon from my left arm punctured the gap between his chest plate and pauldron before I flailed him through a wall.  Four more dead in gruesome ways before they tried to subdue me.  Three more with shattered bones and organs before they started firing with live ordnance.  The heat of plasma bolts and laser cutters was nothing to me.  My right arm transforming to a new form to fire waves of ball lightning.  Not even the touch of Jesim's mind could reach me then.  Rellik only narrowly escaped my onslaught, barely too quick for me to keep up with.  Lanesra's harpoon connected to Majors' arc trap striking me in the collar wasn't enough to take me down, but it was enough  to slow me down enough for Jesim to touch my temples.

Fifty six men.  Twelve minutes, four of which were spent trying to kill those four who survived.

I have spent every second trying to atone for that moment.  The story they told everyone was that this was Draygon's doing, that he showed up and wiped out the platoon single-handedly. They covered it up. And they kept telling me that though Draygon was not present, this was his doing through mind control.

But I know what I did.  This is who I am.  I don't trust myself to work with anyone else present.  I'm a monster.  Maybe by unleashing the monster on things almost as horrifying as I am, there could be some penance.  And I kept telling myself and promising myself that one day I could forgive myself.

Being the monster hasn't given me that satisfaction.  But maybe my imprisonment will.  After all, this is what I deserve.  Maybe I don't deserve imprisonment for the reasons I'm here now, but I do deserve to be imprisoned.  Or dead, if that's even possible.