Sitting cross-legged on the tarpaulin covered floor of his room. In front of him were strange devices that were being modified by him personally. Next to the devices were concoctions that he had made from a centrifuge that were inserted in various parts of his body.

Perks of being born in a shitty future was that he had to know the basics of some formulas that they taught. Like a drug addict relying on certain drugs to cause a reaction. Boosters that make the body stronger. One time drugs that were hard to manufacture in the future, but were easily acquirable in a resource-rich world.

He noted the formulas down then got rid of them. It ain’t a serum like the ones that SMU’s used, but it was enough to strengthen the body.

The more complicated ones were hard to craft without the technology to do it. He had no knowledge of the recipe, no inkling of how to create materials that were beyond his reach for they were protected by corporate and military interest. Robert had sincerely thought he was beneath all of this. Then again he had to make sure that he survived this.

All I can do is this. All I can do is this. Other than a few gadgets, I can make them later when the world develops more tech. When materials are easily acquirable

Robert created two holders in his arm that would hold the serums. Six bags worth of serums holding 3000ml flowing inside of him.

Effects are going to be hallucination, nausea, and intense pain in the lungs and plausibly internal bleeding. Body can take it. Need to hang on. Just endure until internals are taking it.

Robert blocked the door. He already messaged his superiors, friends, and contacts that he wouldn’t be around for a day.

A searing in the veins. The liquid flows inside the superior vena cava and inferior vena cava. One of the needles plunged inside his heart. The other was inserted in his cerebellum and occipital lobe directly. The method of inserting was complicated and without the implants that usually handle the insertion and delivery of said liquid. He had to do it in the most painful way possible.

This method was used by the very poor who didn’t have it. This was the most basic concoction that mercs like him knew how to make. Reason was that it was like a drug to mercs like him. Once your system digests it through this method, you can only drink it to stimulate the nervous system.

With the proper implants there was no threat. But if applied directly through an IV needle then it was much more different and dangerous.

His nose was bleeding. His eyes were dilating and his breathing was rapidly increasing. Because of the direct insertion the needles gave him a severe headache.

His stomach was swollen. Diaphragm squeezing inwards. He was experiencing asterixis. The skin was jaundiced. Sclerae were icteric. His temperature was rising and he felt abdominal pain every breath he took. Marking his skin were multiple spider angiomas. His palm sagged, exhibiting liver palms.

He was suffering from dysarthria. His speech muscles were unable to form a word. His balance was off. His limbs were swelling. Robert’s all-sense warned him. Every instinct in his body told him that he needed to get rid of it.

Nine hours left.

His mind swam.

His ears bled.

His face started to swell as if he had eaten an allergen.

His nasal passages were blocked.

Struggling to catch air.

Robert kept his mind steady with all sorts of thoughts. The pain was mind-breaking as he tried to keep himself steady. He refused to vomit and as the liquid brought his mind to this strange geometrical world.

All kinds of shapes polluted his view. He held on to reason. Held on to what was real while urging his willpower to keep on going. He couldn’t clench his teeth. Couldn’t even feel any of it.

Then his head went blank.

This loud and ear-piercing ‘ting’ as he found himself prostrated in some strange world where he could see himself clearly. It was like an out of body experience fueled by extreme pain and hallucination. He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t in the body. He looked at his left arm and saw this reinforced plated bionic left hand. On the ground was the face that he had been born with.

He looked down and saw his guts spilling out. Intestine and wirings. His synthetic stomach, liver, lungs, and heart connected to this monitoring chip. 

Instinctively he reached out for the button behind his ear. Trying to restart his neural operating system. He only felt a bone. He forced himself and scooped up his stomach, forcing them in.

When he uses his left hand, the right hand moves. He was confused. Like the body was not his. It was his but the body was unfamiliar to him.

He tried to walk two to three steps only to fall face-first. Head hitting the ground, shattering it, falling downwards. He began to fall down this hyperbolic geometrical. 

It felt like an eternity.

Falling and falling until he found himself landing in a pit of corpses. His mind conjures last moments. Memories of a dead man begging for life as something even more painful pries his soul. An invisible hand started pulling him out of the body he was in. Plucking him from the head and then hammering him in this body with a palm until his soul was fitted in.

His vision switched. Looking at the body, that body stood in front of him. The body is pale. The right arm was intact. The left arm is replaced with steel. The stomach is gutted. With four 4cm holes below the rib and the diaphragm.

The back of the head has slots. The eyes were unnatural with an artificial feel to it. The eyes glowed and then he saw the gutted figure looking around. Its eyes targeted him.

“GIVE IT BACK TO ME!”

He found himself able to control the body. The one in front of him. His former body demanded.

“Give it back to me! I can’t die. I can’t die like that. No, no, give me my body back!”

The reinforced tendons of his former body lunged at him. He, Kato, ducked, and with a well-practiced movement, threw his former body down.

Then he saw the left arm of his former body taking a hidden blade out. Kato blocked with his left arm, then pushed the face of his former body.

“It’s not far! You can’t just take it away! That’s my body. My life!”

Kato stopped. ‘Robert’ who threw his hands at him didn’t. Kato spaced out and then stabbed his fleshy arm in his former body which then leaped back. The second heart still beated. He could feel the steel that replaced his inside. The plastic veins. The synthetic heart that could pump harder than a normal organic heart beating alongside his natural heart.

He was full of bionics. It was hard not to be full of it in a world that needed men like him to fight. As long as the brain survives they could find you a shell to fit you in.

You are disposable.

Fight hard.

Fight well.

Many would break.

He wasn’t special.

Just one of the many that was able to get out of service. He had sincerely thought that maybe he would be able to live peacefully. But that dream died for him. It came to him that he had died already when he saw her lose the light in her eyes.

A dead man walking.

A dead man living in another body, possessing the corpse of a man who didn’t want to die.

For once he had the luck.

Kato stared down at his former body.

Are you my nightmare?

Are you guilty?

I did nothing.

You scream as if I wanted to have this.

You demand as if I wanted to be thrown into a world where there are no vestiges of her!

Kato moved his body. His fleshy body slamming on his former body. He can feel his knuckles ache. His skin was tearing. If this was a nightmare then it was too lifelike, no, if anything the pain was similar to a memory that this body had experienced. The memories intertwined, creating this awful situation.

The smell. The pain. The rush as he defends himself. It was like trying to hit steel repeatedly until there were only bones left.

Don’t have any AP rounds.

Don’t have anything like that right now.

And yet he kept on punching. Not caring any longer whether this nightmare would end if he won. If anything he felt an appreciation to the body that could withstand him.

No, if anything, he had underestimated the future he lived in. It was true that he couldn’t be as physically fit as he was when he still had a natural body. And yet facing his own self that was a tin man. A product of a future that suffered war. Men with steel on them. Barely human. Barely like one as well.

Kato used his weight to punch through that ribcage of his. Fingers grasping the former heart. But before he could squeeze that synthetic heart. A steely hand pierced through Kato’s heart.

Ah, to be honest, I just want my family back… if you can return me to them. I’d take it, but that can’t be happening. We’re both the same now. I’d honor your name, but I’ll be the one in control. I’d never stopped walking you bastard.

Kato declared.

I can’t go back.

I know that.

Even if magic was possible.

I can’t see my family and her family.

His former body pulled his heart out and squeezed it. Kato clenched his fist and squeezed his former body’s heart as well. They both fell to this abyss. And as they fell Kato could hear other thoughts tha himself.

I want to leave.

I don’t want to be part of CASE.

I wasn’t born fit to fight monsters like that.

Ah… be nice if I can see Sofia… hear or voice.

Then the memories stopped. Kato could feel his body being stuffed together with his former body. Then he was drowning in the colored chemicals he concocted for himself.

He saw memories.

Both Robert and Kato.

Their happiness.

Their sadness.

It felt so long that Kato himself didn’t know if he was Kato or Robert first.

He was sure that he was fooling himself.

But he couldn’t let go of the memories so easily.

It was so hard to just forget.

No one forgets easily.

And he himself could never forget.

But they were real to him.

His ego fought and fought for control.

He was Kato and Robert.

But his ego was the dominant one.

The one that took hold after Robert died, leaving only vestiges of memories fragmented after his soul was broken by whatever spell those cultists did.

I killed them for you at least.

Made sure that none of them left the sewers alive.

Let me take the reins. Let me have this.

I can’t let go easily as well.

You are fragments. 

Like I said, I’ll honor you.

So please believe that.

There was no reply to his thoughts. But he wanted to believe that Robert would be fine with that.

Then he slowly opened his eyes with moonlight touching his eyelids.

Covered in a plethora of filth and blood.

There was nothing left.

The devices that he crafted burned.

He was lying back-first on the filth-ridden tarpaulin.

He was in pain.

His body was sore.

From head to toe there was a terrible cramp.

Movement was impossible.

And yet there was a sense of triumph found on his face.

No falsehood this time.

No more false faces.

No ‘Kato Lores’.

There was no ‘Robert Oswald’ that could be found here as well.

Just this strange mix of the two.

Just him.

A deadman who called himself Robert to honor a lost broken soul with respect.

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