[Location: High Command Medical Bay, Orbiting Station 'Olympus'.] [Status: Restrained.]
I woke up strapped to a chair.
It wasn't a torture chair—at least, not officially. It was a diagnostic recliner in a sterile white room that smelled of antiseptic and cold ambition.
"Heart rate steady at 50 BPM," a voice said. "Disappointing. I was hoping for fear."
I opened my eyes. High Marshall Vesper was standing over me. She wasn't wearing her military coat; just a white lab coat over her uniform. She held a scalpel-laser in one hand and a tablet in the other.
"Good morning, Marshall," I said, testing the restraints. They were mag-locked. "Is this the part where you promote me, or the part where you dismantle me?"
Vesper didn't smile. She pushed her glasses up.
"That depends on your answers, Specialist."
She tapped the tablet. A hologram of my arm—the Ouroboros—appeared in the air between us.
"We scanned your arm while you were unconscious," she said. "The metal alloy doesn't exist on the Periodic Table. The energy signature matches nothing in the Federation database. And the neural interface..." She leaned in, her eyes gleaming with dangerous curiosity. "...it is fused directly to your brain stem. You didn't install this. You grew it."
"It's a birth defect," I lied. "My mother was a toaster."
Vesper's expression didn't change, but the air pressure in the room seemed to drop.
"I ran a simulation," she said softly. "Based on the energy output you released in Sector 9, that arm should have vaporized you. But it didn't. It fed on the recoil."
She stepped closer. The tip of the laser scalpel hovered inches from my exposed metal arm.
"Who are you working for, Caelum? The Iron Ascendancy? The Separatists? Or are you something else entirely?"
"I work for you, Ma'am."
"Then explain why your combat logs show you predicting enemy movements with 100% accuracy for the last six hours."
I looked at her. Really looked at her. In Life #3,200, we were lovers. In Life #4,100, she shot me in the head in this exact room.
"I've just been lucky," I said.
Vesper deactivated the scalpel. She looked frustrated.
"Luck is a statistical error. And I am going to correct it." She turned to leave. "You are cleared for duty, Specialist. But know this: I am not your commander anymore. I am your observer. And I will find the glitch."