Immediately following his encounter with the intimidating APEX official, Alex was thrown into an unprecedented training regimen, the most extreme he had ever endured across two lifetimes. This physical exhaustion was merely a prelude; afterward, he was routinely hauled off to a medical facility dedicated solely to running a relentless series of invasive tests and brutal experiments upon him. His days became a cycle of agony and clinical scrutiny.
The procedures were grotesquely painful: sometimes a four-inch needle was inserted into his spinal column to extract fluid while he was entirely awake. Other times, the doctors subjected him to extreme temperature cycles, forcing him to endure searing heat and biting cold, logging every spasm and struggle for survival. This ordeal—the biting cold, the scorching heat, the debilitating pain—was calculated purely to amass data.
Regardless of their specific objective, whether seeking his physical limit or something darker, the torment always ceased only when his survival was in serious doubt, often leaving him hovering on the edge of extinction. He was made to endure physical conditions that would have instantly killed multiple ordinary humans, all in a relentless quest to gauge the absolute extent of his endurance.
From this sustained torture, Alex gained a single, undeniable conclusion: a Regeneration factor was active within him. He didn't know if this was a blessing or a curse, but its presence was an unavoidable confirmation of his meta human abilities. The captors never informed him—he couldn't understand their language—but the consistent discrepancies between the severity of his injuries and his miraculous recovery time made the ability self-evident.
He recalled receiving medication only during the very first few days. For the ensuing weeks, they deliberately pushed his limits far beyond human norms, yet offered no medical relief, not even basic pain medication. This lack of intervention led Alex to a crucial deduction: given their certainty of his metahuman identity, they must be after a highly valuable power, something far beyond simple biological study. His regeneration, on its own, didn't seem to justify this immense effort. The true prize, he realized, lay somewhere deeper within the experiments.
The most traumatic event was his repeated exposure to a burning pit. To feel his skin incinerate, his throat melt as he tried to scream, and his eyeballs dissolve was a horror of unimaginable scale, yet he was forced through this baptism of fire four separate times. The third time was the defining moment where he grasped the profound abnormality of his own existence.
During the first burn, his entire body fused into a painful, single mass of tissue, where the slightest movement brought exquisite agony. He was a creature of pain, looking far worse than any depiction of the scarred Deadpool; he was the epitome of grotesque, burning anguish. Unable to cry out, he was trapped in silent suffering. It was not until the third day that his sight and painless breathing returned, though his skin was still heavily charred. By the fifth day, he was restored to his normal, unblemished condition, ready—or forced—to resume the cycle of training and experimentation.
After this event, Alex began nightly self-tests, making cuts to determine if the healing was drug-induced or an inherent factor. It was the latter, though he recognized his regenerative speed was far from the near-immortality levels of figures like Wolverine or Deadpool.
Understanding his regeneration clarified one thing: he was being pushed to the brink to map the boundaries of his recovery. Yet, he strongly suspected there was more to his power. Whatever APEX truly sought—and he refused to believe it was merely for "health potions"—would have to be revealed over time. For now, he was simply grateful for the healing ability.
He also discovered that the potency of his regeneration increased with stress. Initially, a deep gash on his palm took three hours to heal. Following his near-fatal "Shadrach" experience in the fire, the same injury now healed in approximately ninety minutes. This improvement of over an hour was a tremendous biological leap, especially when contrasted with the two weeks a normal human would require.
Furthermore, Alex observed a startling, non-conventional increase in his strength. While the hardcore training explained some gain, the speed and scope of his physical enhancement went far beyond what any conventional training could achieve. He felt his abilities were elevating his physique to a superhuman level. He estimated his current power was roughly a quarter or a fifth of Super Soldier capability, judging by cinematic examples. His strength, speed, reflexes, and awareness were all rapidly improving. He concluded that, unless his meals were laced with an extreme steroid cocktail, his Meta human gene was fundamentally rebuilding him. The only check on his ego was adrax, who still easily dominated him during 'physical conditioning,' as the handler smugly referred to their fights.
These few weeks yielded only two solid facts: accelerated regeneration and an emerging superhuman physique. Beyond that, his world was confined and unknown. He remained unsure if he was still in capital city or even the terra. His mental count put his captivity at two months, placing the date in November, and the simple pleasures of his past life consumed his thoughts. He yearned for the small chats with May, the vibrant atmosphere of Charlie's café, his regular gym routine, and casual city walks—a normalcy now stolen by a single, catastrophic occurrence.
He was nothing but an event stripped of agency and choice, an insignificant piece in a megalomaniac's grand, likely doomed, design. His average, unremarkable life, one of countless billions, had been reduced to a mere counter on a lunatic's chessboard—all for the fleeting gratification of a false accomplishment. The arrogance of it all was appalling.
He lamented his fate: even a delusional madman, obsessed with chaos, possessed more true freedom than he did, a man who only desired a quiet, tranquil life.
What further suffering was demanded before he could reclaim a self-determined life? If divine powers existed, what colossal error had he made to deserve such persistent injustice, chasing him even across universes into a reality born of fiction? He questioned if his resolve was so easily scorned, his determination so offensive that they sought to crush his very will. Were they simply seeking entertainment in their endless existence? If so, his soul cried out with a singular question: Why me?
Why select a broken man who was already at the end of his emotional rope, toss him into a world of wonders with the silent promise of freedom, only to snatch it away and drown him in unending torture? That initial spark of hope and enlightenment was deliberately suffocated, leaving him sinking into the absolute, ink-black canvas of the abyss.
Alex, enduring his relentless torment, found himself wrestling with existential questions inspired by mythological suffering. If legendary mortals were cursed for acts of ignorance or outright defiance against the gods, he wondered, what sin had he committed? He had neither blasphemed nor cursed any deity. He mentally compared his plight to seminal acts of cosmic rebellion: Lucifer's expulsion from heaven in Abrahamic tradition, Lycaon's transformation by Zeus in Greek mythology, and Pandu's curse by Rishi Kindama in Hindu lore. In each case, a deliberate transgression occurred. Alex could pinpoint no such rebellion in his own life. It seemed the trials of mankind were simply a form of entertainment for the divine.
If his only crime against the celestial order was merely desiring a peaceful, uncomplicated life, then what would happen if he chose to actively rebel against his current fate? Would defiance result in his annihilation? If passively accepting life as it unfolded was considered a form of blasphemy by the gods, would pursuing his own deep-seated desires lead to a pardon or merely greater condemnation? If the acceptance of his presented, brutal reality was deemed foul and taboo in the eyes of the higher powers, would his ultimate forgiveness be assured by striving for change, or would his grace be magnified by his suffering? He concluded with a desperate, solitary plea: for whatever deity had imposed this strange, agonizing curse or unlikely blessing upon him, would he be utterly forsaken if he dared to dream of freedom once more?
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In a vastly different part of the complex, an unknown observer viewed Alex's existence through a lens of scientific ecstasy. To this scientist, a miracle was not a spiritual event but a moment when all rational hope had been exhausted, only for the impossible to occur. What they now had before them was precisely that: a miracle of biological potential. They viewed Alex as a genuine gem among all known biological treasures, an absolute impossibility made real by the advent of the X-gene mutation centuries prior. To the scientist, Alex was nothing less than the living key to finally validating Darwin's theory of evolution—a human being possessing the inherent capacity for near-infinite growth and the ability to adapt to virtually any environmental or physically inflicted stimulus.
The sheer potential of this subject dwarfed the objectives of even the famous Weapon XXV projects. Meta humans previously cataloged—those who could fly, augment their muscles, or control magnetic fields—were now retrospectively deemed lesser achievements, or even failures, when contrasted with Alex's endless, adaptive potential. Simply possessing samples of his blood, tissues, and spinal fluid were considered assets of immense, irreplaceable value. The scientist mused on the exponential possibilities: if Alex's current evolution was this spectacular, what secrets would future, more highly evolved biological specimens yield? What new doors would they unlock?
The data gathered was staggering. In just two months, Alex had achieved an endurance level allowing him to survive a burning pit sustained at 500 degrees Celsius for an entire hour before the risk of fatal system collapse emerged. Equally impressive, he could withstand cryotherapy temperatures of - 200 degrees Fahrenheit for over ninety minutes before showing signs of irreversible cerebral damage. Most astonishingly, his regeneration allowed him to fully recover from the extreme damage induced by both thermal tests in a record time of only two days. The scientist deemed this the most monumental discovery ever made toward mastering the next critical step in human evolution. If APEX could successfully decode Alex's genetic sequence, the immediate creation of meta soldiers would be a minor footnote. Their true prize was the creation of a perfect, undying, and eternally evolving army—a force of truly unkillable soldiers reminiscent of the mythical Draugr of Old Norse sagas.
Designated "I-039," Alex was considered an impossibly lucky find. Initially, the team had assumed his ability would be mundane, easily categorized within their existing mutant database. But this—this unique, adaptive regeneration—represented nothing less than the secret to godhood. The scientist believed Alex's genetic code possessed the blueprint that would allow humanity to finally step into the fabled, immortal domain of the gods. This discovery served as absolute validation for APEX goals, proving their quest was both true and noble. With this power, they could mimic the legendary, immortal persistence of the mythical hydra itself and build a truly invincible, constantly upgrading military force.
The discovery of Alex was also linked to a revolutionary breakthrough in understanding reality itself. APEX had learned something that conventional, technologically limited science could not: every living and non-living thing in the universe vibrates at a unique Frequency. Humans fall within a specific, shared range of vibrational frequencies, though no two individuals vibrate identically. This established the foundational difference between humans and mutants: mutants operate within a distinct, elevated higher frequency range, regardless of how simple or spectacular their powers might be.
This groundbreaking realization was made possible by the presence of another captive subject, one possessing the extraordinary ability to read and interpret these frequencies. This subject could decipher words spoken over a static radio as clearly as if the source was speaking directly to her. Extensive study confirmed her ability to distinguish the basic form of an object purely by listening to its frequency, even when blindfolded. After rigorous training and repeated calibration, she successfully learned to differentiate between normal humans and mutants based purely on their distinct vibrational frequency ranges.
During a routine transfer, this Meta human "oracle" detected an anomaly: a frequency signature that would spike dramatically to meta human levels before quickly dropping back to the human range. Intrigued, APEX immediately dispatched her for a multi-day operation to pinpoint the source of this fluctuating signal. They eventually determined that their target—Alex—visited a gym daily, which was the location where his frequency would oscillate wildly between human and mutant ranges. They observed him for a full week, confirming the pattern, before making the strategic decision to "recruit" him to their cause. The scientist marveled at the sheer serendipity: it was a decision made largely on a whim, yet it yielded a monumental discovery. The universe, it seemed, had truly sided with APEX.
The ultimate biological power had been delivered into their hands, perfectly suited for the creation of their ultimate, self-perfecting army
Hail APEX!!