Prologue
View Online

Command and Conquer: Equestria

Prologue

Day... don't even know anymore, Nod has kept me here for longer than I know, GDI likely stopped looking for me for a while now, probably considering me dead, and the copious amounts of drugs they keep injecting into me kept me up at night, trying to figure out why I felt so sore afterwards, even though the first one was always an anesthetic to keep me in a sort of artificial coma. If Kane was developing some sort of Tiberium weapon it obviously wasn't working on me for whatever reason, or it just worked at an agonizingly slow pace, far slower than normal Tib spreads, they've done this four times, and after each one I wake up back in my cell; a windowless, very small room with just a basic bed, a sink, a door to the lavatory, and the only way in or out was guarded at all times by at least four soldiers, two right outside the rust-red steel door and another two at opposite ends of the hallway. I heard the distinct series of clicks and clacks, followed by a beep to signify that someone was entering and I stood up, trying to make my less-than-clean body look somewhat presentable for them, and found that Kane himself, followed by three pairs of guards, were waiting for me outside. I just stared at him and stood, unmoving, waiting for him to give some speech about how my sacrifice will save humanity, or some other BS from this guy, but all he said to me, were two, simple words "forgive me", before one of the soldiers at the door came in with a pair of very heavily-built cuffs, built for human limbs but obviously made to hold in something much stronger than a normal person, and the other shot me in the chest with some sort of dart that contained another type of drug that almost instantly started taking hold. I tried to fight it but the anesthesiac in it was far more potent than the others, as I dropped to the ground I heard Kane say "cuff him, bring him to the chamber and prep him, then send him to the portal" then everything faded to black...

I woke up some time later with a severe burning sensation far under my skin, like someone was taking a blowtorch to my bones and then put what was left into a blast furnace. I opened my mouth to try and scream but what came out was a crystal-on-metal screech that made me silence myself from it's pitch and volume, and when I saw Kane look at me with a sort of admiration I tried to lunge for him, only to stop when I found myself tightly bound by my wrists, then wrapped vertically around a metal pole and bound to that as well. I just looked at him with as much contempt as I could muster, but what he said next caught me off guard, "I may have the blood of your friends on my hands, but Dostya's blood isn't, she is the only one aside from you to have survived the procedure, I brought a mirror in case you want to look" the last part was said as the pole turned me around to face a full-length mirror. My body was covered only from the waist down and I was equally surprised and shocked at what I saw, the entire left side of my head looked more like an organic circuit board, with red lines going across it and stopping at the middle point between the left and right side of my face, a USB port, barely hidden by my hair, reflected the light with it's black paint, and my irises were as green as Tiberium compared to their originally emerald color. I closed my hanging mouth and gave a death-stare to Kane, who just stood there, impassive, watching with what looked like admiration and regret, I never saw those things in his eyes unless something was related to some amoral Tiberium experiment or other, yet I could not deny the fact that whatever happened to me was quite a bit more complex than simple Tiberium experimentation. His work came from the Tacitus he prized so much, but I am not certain that he got this idea from it; organic circuit boards are far-fetched and if he could make them, than the amount of information a human could process would be multiplied by a factor of the type of CPU implanted in. I tried turning my head to look for where the chips would be, and next to my ear, found a small list of pale-white lettering that I could barely make out, saying:

'APX-2-54-D-153-2

5.2 GHz Quad-Core CPU

Gen-2'

I looked for any more types of implantation and found a pair of hexagons on my forehead, a square bevel on my right cheek, another core on the other side of my head, and when I opened my mouth, my tongue had the appearance of a piece of grid paper, two of my teeth were metal, my left forearm had a rectangle going down from the elbow to the wrist, my right hand had a barcode on it, the middle of my neck had a circular indentation where my vocal chords were, my chest looked about the same as my head, but the circuitry covered it and lead to different portions of my body. I couldn't see what my lower body looked like but I had a decent idea. I saw Kane walk into my field of vision, asking "you seem to be admiring your new look, fortunately I can give you back your armor, if you are willing to listen to me"

"you waste your breath trying to get me to your side"

"you knew how the Tacitus worked, but when you asked to give it a go, they denied you"

"for good reason"

"you can access it without worry of destroying it accidentally, you had a theory on how to translate it and it would have worked, but you were denied because of simple fears"

"yeah? so what? least I get to try and take a potshot at you"

"if you think that threatening me will get anywhere, take a look around you, there's no escape"

"who says I need to escape?"

"your family, your friends, they all want to see you alive and well, I am not trying to bring back the Scrin, only to ascend"

"yeah, and you go to a Scrin tower to do it, seems awfully suspicious"

"I know you're angry, but you work under Colonel James, correct?"

"...yeah?"

"your mother and father were killed, but did she say the truth?"

"she said you did it and that's all I need to know" that's when I saw the report of their deaths, instead of saying 'Nod attack, it said 'Friendly Fire incident ordered by Colonel James'

"she forgot to say that, didn't she?"

"y-you could easily edit the documents"

"yes, and she could have just as easily, but what do I gain by editing the truth?"

"lots of things"

"and any of those include your person?"

"no"

"but what does she gain by doing that"

"...my loyalty... and hatred of you"

"she decided to make her hatred of me become yours, she wanted an ally when she defected GDI, she thinks they're corrupt and don't see any danger"

"that's because they have to play nice"

"it's not that, James doesn't realize how the TCN was built, or how it works, she thinks I am bringing back those abominations"

"and why wouldn't she?"

"she is blinding herself to the truth, I brought the scrin here to build this tower, it can power the entire network on what it is designed to control, the Scrin's usefulness ended when this was completed successfully"

"and how do you know this won't bring them back?"

"because I know where this goes, and it's not to the Scrin Homeworld, I want you and your friend to be the first to go through and see if it's safe"

"and what happens if it isnt?"

"then the tower will bring you back here before you or her are injured too badly, both of you are unique genetically"

"really? I didn't know that"

"you're a hybrid, a mix between the two species, Scrin and Human, they rejected you because they thought you're an abomination; a stain that needed to be wiped clean, GDI knew that and they came to your aid, implanted memories into your brains, made you loyal to their cause. You are capable of so much more than what they allow you to"

"I'm not listening to this!"

"why do you think you are implanted with so many pieces of technology? because I want you to be cannon fodder? you and only you can break down the mental barriers that GDI placed in your mind. Your brain holds the Tacitus within! Her brain houses the information of what we should expect at the other side of this portal! Why are you blinding yourself to this?"

"because that's not who I am!"

"it is what you are, you cannot run from your past"

"watch me!"

"I cannot allow you to do that"

"and why not? your buddies say so?"

"because the real Tacitus was destroyed! don't you get it! I saved you from death and this is how you repay me?! Your incompetent GDI-loyal mind is slowly destroying the last hope of humanity, and the key to my ascension with it! if you want to leave, I won't stop you"

His outburst left me unable to reply, he just said that I could walk out of here if I wanted to, and leave all this behind, but that would have me to turn my back on humanity. I just sat there, not saying anything until I finally answered "alright, I'll help you, just tell me how to unlock the Tacitus"

"simply by rejecting GDI indoctrination will allow the Tacitus to resurface, but the memories will stay."

"and how do I reject their indoctrination?"

"that, I do not know, only you can figure that out, but I suspect that wherever this leads can help you with that"

"and so you're sending me and Dostya through?"

"yes"

"where is she?"

"she will be with you, do nor worry, but there's one last thing that needs to be done first..." he trailed off as one of his followers came in and held a syringe out, I did not fight the inevitable and soon I drifted off to a deep sleep...