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It had been more than a year since I entered Ghost training. And I had gone through everything: torture disguised as training, impossible trials, and a brutal physical change. In the days following the injections, I began to grow at a sickening speed. During the first month my body shot up both in height and width. My muscle and bone mass increased out of control, and I was close to two meters tall in very little time. And with that came a monstrous hunger.
But part of the damn training was learning to endure hunger.
I had been assigned a huge committee of instructors: veteran Ghosts tasked exclusively with destroying me physically and mentally. Every trial pushed me to the edge of breaking. The only reason I hadn't lost my mind yet was my hatred. I would make them pay. The doctors. The kidnapper. And my parents.
I also had a special "honor": the director of the Ghost program and his assistant —the same bastard who kidnapped me— trained me personally. Both had class 10 psionic index. But when I read their minds, I understood why they bothered: I had been classified as psionic index grade 11, off the scale, impossible to determine using normal standards.
Because of that, my training was completely solitary, designed to turn me into a weapon in the shortest time possible. I skipped entire phases of the program because I showed control others took years to achieve. And I discovered something else: Ghosts could read each other easily… but my mind was a wall. Not even the director, with his level, could get inside it. And that made them nervous.
It didn't take long before I mastered my abilities: projecting psionic discharges like electric bolts, controlling fire, generating explosions, telekinesis on heavy objects, and multiplying my physical strength by amplifying it with psionic energy. All my training focused on increasing my power to the maximum, as fast as possible.
Until I was assigned to a special project: Shadowblade. A program that aimed to bring human psionics to the next level using terrazine, a compound that regenerated brain cells but could also drive you into absolute madness.
That was the worst day of my life.
The pain from the terrazine made everything before feel like child's play. I felt my head about to split open, my blood vessels bursting one by one, and my muscles tearing while my body bled from my mouth, eyes, nose and even ears. By the time it ended, my pain inhibitors were on the verge of burning out.
I survived by sheer luck.
They kept me in the laboratories for days to run experiments on me. A constant nightmare.
Among all that, I noticed something: not only were there dozens of experiments with zerg —mind-control devices on captured beasts— there was also… another alien being. A different one.
A protoss.
I rose from the table, breaking the restraints with telekinesis. My vision shook, but I could clearly see the creature. It was suspended by a machine holding it by its stumps: it had no arms or legs.
"How did you get free?" asked one of the scientists, pale when he saw me standing and conscious.
"What experiments are you doing to him?" I asked without taking my eyes off the protoss.
"Return to your table immediately. We need to continue with the tests," the scientist said, raising his voice with false authority.
I began choking him with my power while reading his mind.
"So… High Templar implants in a human. They're using you as a forced donor…" I said, looking at the protoss.
The alien simply stared at me, without blinking
When the scientist was already purple and about to die, I released the pressure.
"You haven't spoken since they captured you… and no one can read your mind. They're using you for Ghost experiments, huh?" I said, finishing digging through the scientist's last memories.
The protoss kept watching me, but now there was something different in its gaze.
"Well… nothing…" I said as I tried reading the protoss's mind. I moved around, hearing the desperate wheezing of the scientist on the floor.
I tried to stop looking for thoughts and went to memories, like I did with humans. But I ran into an incredibly solid mental barrier. It was like trying to break a steel wall with fingernails. I couldn't get through.
"Hm… you're not thinking anything… are you? That's why there's nothing," I said, staring at him.
"A terran with a brain. Rare to see. Your young minds are incapable of thinking beyond the most basic," said a voice inside my head.
"Telepathy, I see… and advanced enough to translate your language into mine in my head," I replied, watching him.
"Correct," answered the psionic voice.
I tried entering his memories again, but his defenses were ridiculous. Nothing I had faced compared.
"Your mind is immature and lacks control… I could end your miserable existence with a single thought. Your own power will be your downfall," the protoss said.
"So I'm that far from you?" I asked, curious.
"You are not even comparable to me, terran. Your raw power is useless in a fight against someone like me."
The protoss's blue eyes lit up. I felt such brutal psionic pressure that I thought my brain would liquefy inside my skull. My nose started bleeding immediately.
"Ugh…" I spat blood. "Son… of a…"
"Your mind appears more… developed than most young terrans. If you survived a feedback, it means you possess some control over your abilities," the protoss said.
"An agent escaped!" shouted one of the marines entering the laboratory.
Suddenly, an entire squad of marines stormed in surrounding us. They aimed at me from every direction. Before I could move, they placed reinforced shackles on me. Even then, I made one last attempt to enter the protoss's mind. For a second I almost managed it… but he increased the psionic pressure at the same time, and my attempt failed again.
After that incident —in which I almost killed the scientist— my training doubled. The fear among my instructors grew when they realized they had no real method of controlling me, and that the terrazine had made me more unstable. I had gone too far that time. I had no choice but to lower my head and accept the consequences.
After a few days of "good behavior" and several tests proving I didn't suffer permanent terrazine side effects, they granted me some leisure time. I spent almost all of it with the protoss. Every day I visited him to try to break his mind and steal his knowledge; every day he blasted me with feedback meant to tear me apart. And every day I resisted.
Five years passed like that.
My training did not stop for a single day. But my biggest advancements came thanks to the protoss. During the first year, our psionic battles became almost entertainment for him. He no longer crushed me easily; I still couldn't enter his mind, but I began pushing him a little further every day.
Eventually, he began teaching me. I never understood the protoss's reason for teaching someone who was keeping him captive, but I appreciated it. My revenge required killing important people, and I would face serious problems. Anything that increased my survival was welcome.
He showed me fragments of how the protoss controlled their energy, how they contained their power so it didn't consume them. He taught me to keep my mind still, focused, to shape my thoughts like a weapon instead of a desperate scream.
With that foundation, my abilities grew in massive leaps.
In the second year, I managed to read his mind for the first time. It was a flash, a fleeting memory: an elite squad of Terran Ghosts surrounding him. He had killed many… but in the end they overwhelmed him. And captured him.
In the third year my training with firearms and my psionic blade began. That weapon was stolen protoss technology adapted for the Ghosts: through crystals installed in the gauntlet I could channel my own psionic power and materialize it into a blade capable of cutting almost anything. When I couldn't pierce a material, all I had to do was channel more energy… though that also increased the risk of an explosion, or that the gauntlet would need a more complex mechanism, one only the Khalai caste protoss could craft correctly.
That year I also received a gift of Terran engineering: a Hostile Environment Suit, Crius model. The best the Dominion could produce. According to the minds of the scientists, making one cost a fortune. But it was perfect for a Ghost: not only could it make me fully invisible without absurd amounts of energy, it could maintain invisibility indefinitely.
The suit amplified my physical abilities. Before, I could triple my strength by combining my body with my psionic power. With the Crius Suit, I could multiply it by ten. I once sent a full Terran marine flying with a kick, heavy armor and all.
In the fourth year they started pairing me with the most promising Ghosts of the program to train as a team. It did not end well. I had spent too much time learning to compensate for my flaws alone, without depending on anything or anyone. And when I trained with others, the result was always the same: my teammates were eliminated by the opposing Ghost team while I completed the mission on my own.
Fights began soon after.
I didn't send them to the infirmary because I wanted to… but I was tired of being called "Blondie." One good lesson was enough to shut them up.
Experiments with terrazine continued, which meant long periods of training with the High Templar. In several sessions I could already enter his mind and read it, and that allowed me to study the secrets he didn't want to teach me.
Even though I didn't have the protoss Khala or their collective energy, I could use my own power to unleash my abilities in far more catastrophic ways. After several months I even mastered the protoss psionic storm.
By the fifth year they were getting me ready to send me to war. But while I was passing my final training cycles, the news came: the UED had collapsed.
Throughout the war, the UED had won nearly every battle. They had crushed the Terran Dominion, destroyed most of the zerg, subdued and controlled the hive mind, and shattered the protoss. But they fell to an unexpected alliance between protoss, terran and zerg… apparently, one of ours had been infested with the zerg virus.
A Ghost, infested, became one of the zerg generals and coordinated the fall of the UED.
The very day I could finally put my abilities to the test, the war had ended.
I waited for orders for days, but they never came. And I could feel it: the patience they had with me as "an uncontrollable weapon to win the war" had evaporated. It was only a matter of time before they decided to wipe my memory or install permanent mind control.
Then a mission arrived.
Return to my home.
I was to assassinate political enemies of the Dominion regime who met in the luxurious resorts of Tyrador IX, a place with minimal military presence.
The trip was fast. A battlecruiser transported me to the outskirts of the planet and, using a Dominion black operations craft, I descended to the surface with my camouflage active. At the spaceport they handed me the list of names I had to eliminate.
The first night was clean.
Four politicians fell off balconies. Two drowned in the crystal waters of Tyrador. Another was run over by a transport truck. And a commander who had insulted the Emperor ended up "committing suicide," shooting himself with his service weapon.
The only reason I didn't eliminate the full hundred targets stored in my ship's files was simple: if they all died the same day, it would be obvious a Ghost was acting.
As the days passed executing the Emperor's political purges, I began my own investigation. I wanted to find something —anything— to incriminate my parents and get official authorization to kill them.
Because killing them on my own would put the entire Dominion against me.
And even though I trusted my abilities, I doubted I could kill the assistant director of the Academy with a maximum alert tagged as a "rogue agent."
I had to do it legally, with the government's signature.
So I infiltrated my parents' mansion for days: checking files, reading minds, inspecting military arsenals, searching for any clue I could present to the Emperor. But my father was clean. No corruption, no conspiracies… only Tyrador IX's oppressive labor system, something that had existed for decades and would continue because all workers were indebted for generations.
But while checking supplies in one of the hospitals, I found something in a doctor's mind.
I had a brother. And a sister.
That I already knew.
But what no one else knew —and what that doctor had hidden— was that my brother had a psionic index of grade 9 and my sister grade 8.
And they had never informed the Emperor.
I got to my transport immediately. I entered emergency access codes to establish direct contact with the Emperor. I waited almost half an hour, but finally the communicator linked with the Imperial Palace.
"Be quick," the Emperor said, his tone severe and impatient.
"Emperor… I have information. The governor of Tyrador IX has deliberately hidden sensitive data: his two children are high-level psionics, and that information was concealed on purpose," I said as soon as his image appeared.
"Hiding information from me again," the Emperor growled. "he is still loyal?, keep observing him," he added, almost dismissive.
"Three out of three children with high psionic index. Their genome may hold the key to creating future Ghosts," I said, trying to keep my voice neutral despite my frustration. If I didn't get what I wanted… I would need another approach.
"Hmm…" The Emperor paused for a few seconds. "We need to study him… study them. The Dominion's safety depends on it."
His gaze hardened.
"Bring me his children for the Ghost program. Bring the governor and his wife for study… DO… NOT… DISAPPOINT… ME."
The transmission ended immediately.
My inhibitors blocked many of my emotions… but I felt happiness.
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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