CHAPTER 09

After that day, both my training and experiment time changed. My training was kicked up two notches with firearms and weapons mastery added to it, while the experiments was no longer frequent.

If it were before, I would be ecstatic but now, I couldn't find it in myself to care.

The days were no longer stale, they were filled with activities but I couldn't help but feel colder. Every bullet I fired while improving my aim, every swing of the daggers in my hands complimented this feeling, leading to the obvious conclusion: I took a life.

No matter how I tried to view it as necessary for my survival, the fact remains that I still took a life, and the way it seemed, it wouldn't be my last.

These thoughts ran through my head as I rolled to the floor to avoid the marker lights from the moving wooden targets, as I aimed my sights and with a simple flex of a finger, bang, straight to the head, without a pause, ignoring the recoil, I refocused on the two targets – one up a flight of stairs and the other beside my downed target, as I fired in quick succession taking them both down.

The cold steel in my hand, as I ran towards the next checkpoint, complimented my feelings in a sick way.

The monochromic image from my eyes that was transmitted to my brain was the perfect match for the frigid feeling I felt. Black, white and cold, was all I saw and felt these past few days.

I'm sure even the expression on my face complimented what I was feeling. Ever since that day, the memories of that man's lifeless eyes flashed through my mind every time I took a shot or swung a blade, not haunting me… No. It was more like a reminder of the promise I made.

Except for my changed routine, not much changed about me. No that wasn't right, something did change.

My mind.

I couldn't tell before, but a few days after the event, I realized what changed.

I was becoming frigid and monochromic.

The moment I realized that, all the trauma and gut wrenching feeling came crashing down on me like a torrential wave.

Somehow my mind had acted on its own and kept the trauma and whatever feelings I had – negative or positive, repressed. It prevented me from having a mental breakdown at that moment and stopped any kind of trauma I would have experienced from affecting me, putting me in a monochromic world of black and white.

The moment I realized this, the colors came back as I threw out whatever food I've eaten for the past few days from my stomach.

I realized what I'd being doing for the past few days as I trained under the Hydra instructors' command like a doll. An unfeeling machine.

My stomach retched as I remembered how I acted and followed their every command, coming to the realization that if they'd ordered me to kill someone else, I would've without any qualms.

My gut clenched as I shivered all the way to my toes at the implication of what that implied – I lost my free will.

My breathe seized at that thought as I shuddered at the phantom coldness that washed through me.

That night I couldn't think straight as I dreaded what that meant and how I would cope with the next day.

The next night came when I returned to my cell and left whatever that trance I was in. The memories came back alongside the sickening feeling inside me as I tried to understand what it was.

Thinking through the night didn't bear me any fruit as I let myself sleep with lesser caution to waking up once more in that state.

The next day was however different, I could feel my consciousness even when I was in that trance-like state but my feelings and emotions were dull. It was weird that I could tell that this wasn't truly me as I underwent my training without any fanfare. With a slight consciousness, I was able to take in whatever I did rather than act autonomous. I did act autonomous but my mind could finally experience it in real time rather than a clear memory.

I was expecting to feel disgust or at least apprehension when I held the gun but was surprised when I didn't feel anything. The experience was both trippy and confusing.

Knowing how you were supposed to do or feel something in a specific scenario while watching your body act in its own while watching from a back seat was a… Unique experience.

I still had full control over my body, but there was now a autonomous path it could follow on its own with my full intellect with absolute precision.

It was just like programming a machine, and it was.

Programming.

That was it.

I was able to figure it out that night after I willed my main-consciousness back to the wheels. The reason why my body operated on its own was because it was programmed to.

By who? My subconscious.

In other to deal with the trauma of taking a life, my subconscious acted on its own and when my mental defense was down, it took over fully and laid out the instructions to follow it believed would be optimal to go through my trauma. The days I spent without my active consciousness were all part of its guidelines.

I was able to know all this because it was what 'I' did.

After that understanding, I was able to slip back into that trance after a few hours of trying. Once I got in and knew how it felt, I was able to get in easier albeit after almost ten minutes.

I was not programmer in my previous life but I knew what programming meant. A series of pre-ordained courses or pathways followed strictly towards a certain objective.

With this I was able to understand my brain more to a new degree.

I tried giving my brain, or more importantly my subconscious, a few tasks to solve like how to create an atomic bomb from scratch and how to create a light saber in prison… And came up blank, which in hindsight was obvious, since I didn't know or haven't learned how to do those things as my subconscious was still my subconscious and since I didn't know those things, there was no way for my subconscious to run a precise task without the knowledge.

If I had known this would happen I would have searched these kind of videos on YouTube in my previous life – that website had all kinds of knowledge you never knew existed. From simple life hacks to shit that don't make sense like 'how to die in two minutes and gain foresight'.

Since I confirmed that in order for my subconscious to run a precise objective, the knowledge or at least the essence of it was needed, I moved on towards something feasible that would let me test its precision.

I started with math formulas I remembered and gave myself some assessment.

It wasn't even up to five seconds after I started that a random answer popped up in my head. Writing down the answer, I solved the question mentally and manually for three minutes before I arrived at the same answer.

Taking a deep breathe and forcing down any bubbling excitement, I amped up the equations to what I could remember from my previous lives and thought up four different advanced math questions and two from advanced mechanics and began solving. It wasn't more than five seconds that six different answers came to my head but I waved them aside and started solving... Which turned out to be a bad idea as I spent over an hour on those questions, not to mention the two answers I got for the mechanics were wrong from what I felt.

I knew my brain was getting smarter but not this smart. With the scientists, I gained an understanding of what they were talking about, a miniscule part however, but that was more akin to knowledge and understanding rather than advanced calculations.

It was like taking super memory and merging it with an advanced calculator. It was exciting if I was being honest.

After a few calculations and trying to remember shit from my history classes which I now remembered, I gave the last test to my brain to cinch this discovery.

It was both precise calculations and obscure memory.

I ordered my brain to wake me up tomorrow, an hour before I woke up today.

With that I laid on the wood I came to acknowledge as my bed and cleared my mind, which was already clearer than it ever was, and left my self to the creeping slumber.

…

I woke up the next morning not knowing where the time was since there was no clock inside my cell and wondered if what I did last night before my sleep would work.

While I didn't know the time I woke up yesterday, when I did there was already my portion of food at the gates of my cell, but today there wasn't. That alone wasn't enough for me to tell if it worked, but I knew that after 45 minutes of when the food was delivered was when I started my routines. It has been like that since the days of Olav.

Speaking of Olav, I haven't met him ever since then. Not that I minded.

So I waited for quite a while before I saw the guard bringing my food and made another command for me to remember or be alerted 45 minutes from now with an estimation error of 5 more minutes.

The guard drop my food without even a word to me, which I appreciated, and turned back to leave as I took the somewhat large measure of food they gave me and wolfed it down. After that I waited, contemplating how I would remember if it was time.

I sat there for a while and let my thoughts wander through what I've experienced since I was brought here; the beating, the threats, the bed, Olav(he was an experience of his own), the training, the growth, the tortures, the experiments, the death.

I cried during all of those experiences except the last one. I shed a few tears but I didn't cry. More like I couldn't.

Looking back at it now, was that also my subconscious' doing? I still remembered how I slit his throat in an unnerving calm that day as I watched the light of life slowly leaving his eyes. Remembering it now, it must have being my subconscious influencing me as soon as the order was given.

It was what stopped me from protesting as I knew they wouldn't listen – a useless endeavor.

It stopped me from rushing the guard positioned at the door – a reckless action.

It was also what stopped me from mentally breaking down – an optimal solution.

It kept my main consciousness at bay since it was already traumatized and devised a way to let those emotions filter out while at the same time acting to prolong our lives.

It truly saved me these past me days… Or rather I saved me these past few days.

God it was so confusing-

Now.

The moment that abrupt thought came to my head, I looked towards the hallway and held my gaze there as I waited.

The estimated five minutes began as I waited to see if this was a limit to my brains' calculating prowess. I counted over a minute before the the faint steps of my guard came to my ears and his visage appeared in my sights and I couldn't resist the small upwards tugging at the side of my lips.

Seeing my little experiment bear excellent results, I was ecstatic. I wonder if this was how Dr. Ernst and those other scientists felt when they made a discovery with my body parts… And that is a thought I want to forget.

Before he came to up to my gates, I willed myself into the trance as my blank expression returned and any emotional tell disappeared from my form.

Different from the other times during the trance, this time I was fully aware of everything but with my emotional quotient lowered. I felt I could tweak it however I wanted but I just left all of them lowered, giving me the perfect blank look.

I followed the guard to the training grounds. When we got there, I was lead to the gym for a warmup before I left for the firing range.

My physique currently was definitely buff. Not a lean swimmers and definitely not a bodybuilding enthusiast. I had a very super soldier-risqué physique on me and it looked good.

After a brief workout, I left for the firing range as I tested different guns, getting an over 80% accuracy.

This was what I was waiting for, firearms mastery. It was something I needed, since I had a feeling Hydra would be sending me out to the fields to do whatever dirty work they wanted done.

I focused on the moving targets, my brain running at whatever capacity it had, calculating the most optimal time and movement needed to bring down my targets.

I missed some however, making me understand that my body sometimes lag in response to my brain which was somehow understandable. But this was inconsequential as I recently started working in sync with it.

All I needed to time, time to grow.

Time to get stronger.

Time to adapt.