Short Story:

They don’t let me outside often, only when it’s part of training. They’re always testing things, needles with different colours. It concerns me, but it doesn’t frighten me. When they strap me down and shine a bright light on me. They’re always talking with concerned looks on their faces, then sending me to do more training. They feed me a lot. They tell me I need it to become big and strong. ///

I don’t remember how or when it started, I was too young. There are rumours about where we came from, about how we got here. I don’t listen to them, I just focused on the training. It’s funny how things worked around there. There were a lot of us training some slightly older and some slightly younger, but we all trained the same. Although many of the others were ranked higher than me, they still looked to me as their leader. They all did. I’m wasn’t the smartest or the strongest, but they all agreed I was the bravest. It became a reality I was the de facto leader when we were sent on a training mission when I was 8 years old. We were transported to a forest in a snowy mountain range and were expected to get to extraction safely on our own. There was one catch. The last one of us there was to be left behind or we would be severely punished. I refused to let that happen. I was surprised at first that during this mission the others looked at me as their leader, but I eventually accepted it. When we came up to the extraction point, I noticed it was guarded. I didn’t know at the time they were Friendlies, so I planned an attack and hijacked the transport ensuring I was last on so no one would be left behind. The chief was not happy I had caused severe injuries to his men, but he and the Dr both recognised my initiative and promoted me to squad leader. It was this mission that solidified my leadership over all of us as a whole. I soon went through dangerous augmentation procedures, I was one of the lucky ones to survive this process. Dr always said I was lucky. It was said I had the body of an 18-year-old Olympic athlete at the age of 14. We were moved to a special environment to recover. Upon my first visit to the gym I was confronted by 4 soldiers, their sergeant had ordered all 5 of us in the boxing ring. During the fight, I killed 2 of the soldiers, leaving the other 2 badly injured. This incident gave a bad view of our ‘unique’ training program to the entire marine corps. It was seen that this event was orchestrated to test the augmentations I had received. One thing was presumed by many, our pre-adult life was nothing like a regular soldier’s. We are super soldiers.