Girls' Frontline Fanfiction: Tsar of the Mountain

Plight of the Alchemist

"Alchemist... What is this?" Zeldri tried his best but couldn't stop his voice from shaking. As he fully woke up, the pain in the back of his head grew. With every twitch and movement, his head made caused the metal and wires to move and scratch him. It felt like it was scratching his brain.

"The 'glory' of Paradeus and modern medicine," Alchemist bitterly joked from her seat. "I've learned quite a bit since I was captured and forced to be your interrogator. We're currently in Poland at one of Zeratul's 'research labs'; which is a nice way of saying Paradeus experimentation laboratory. Turns out, Paradeus soldiers are ELIDs that they've shoved into power armor."

"ELIDs!?"

"Yup." Alchemist blew some hair out of her face before continuing, "ELIDs hooked up to a network overseen by Nytos."

"Those strange dolls the Commander from Sector 09 fought?"

"Cyborgs, but yes those ones."

"Cyborgs!?" Zeldri tried to stand, but the metal and wires kept him seated. Alchemist once again gave Zeldri a pitiful smile.

"Yup. Paradeus has backers all over; Zeratul being one of them. And, if you recall, Zeratul is one of the leaders in cybernetic augmentation research. Eventually, with enough augmentations, you get a Nyto... Plus the weird procedure to digitize their brains, but I don't know much about the specifics of that part." Alchemist shrugged. "While I was connected to their network to interrogate you I was able to dig past their firewalls and poke around their database. It was quite the learning experience, let me tell you."

"..." Zeldri took deep breaths to calm his beating heart. His mind raced to put this twisted puzzle in order, but the more he thought to more his head hurt. "So... I'm...?" He looked to Alchemist to confirm his thoughts.

"A pseudo-Nyto, I guess you would be called," Alchemist commented. "From what I gathered, most Nytos are young girls that get indoctrinated and augmented over time. You are a grown man with a rushed augmentation job, so you wouldn't really be a Nyto."

"...Rushed?" Zeldri asked as he didn't like the look on Alchemist's face.

"...There's a reason I wanted to get the Heart's code quickly, and also a reason why this process is usually done on kids..." She paused and held her tongue as if contemplating whether or not she should continue. But, she eventually finished her thought. "...Because you were a healthy adult, your body is rejecting the augmentations and digitalization. You also weren't given proper psychotherapy to convince your body to adapt to digitalization so it's breaking down... You're dying, Commander."

"..." Zeldri opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. His dry throat somehow got dryer and his body was becoming drenched in sweat. The pain in the back of his head continued to grow. He now understood what his subconscious was warning him about. "...How long do I have?"

"I don't know," Alchemist admitted. "We've been doing this for about two months, though, and you look much worse than when we started so I'd say you're getting close to the end."

"Two months... I've lost two months..." Zeldri was in shock as he tried to make sense of what he'd heard.

"Minx was also getting anxious about my lack of progress, which also makes me think you don't have much time left." Alchemist adjusted herself in the seat as best she could without any limbs. "He really wants that Gavirul sample the Mountain's keeping but doesn't want to risk it getting nuked. Maybe you should let yourself die to spite him, in the end?" It was a dark joke that Alchemist used to deflect how much the situation was affecting her.

"You didn't tell him the sample's empty?" Zeldri asked, surprised.

"...No, I didn't." Again, a pitiful smile overtook Alchemist's face, but this time it was more unhinged. "After all, your little OGAS seems to have infected me with whatever she did to Scarecrow."