✧ Birth ✧
30/01/2026
Notes:
Contains violence. Hiromi's birth was not a pleasant one.
“You can’t call that thing human because it isn’t!” Doctor Franko’s lab coat snapped as he turned with a hunched, awkward gait. The room fell silent, nervously lifting with murmured breaths from fellow employees. Another agonisingly tense meeting from the scientists board ensued. Every Wednesday the lab closed its doors early to accommodate the large group of researchers, doctors and therapists in it’s spherical conference room. Unlike staff rooms, each shard of the glass dome encapsulating the space was littered with cameras, almost a sixth focused on a room where a tall transparent tube occupied the centre. Caught between the pane of glass a tall figure bobbed motionless in thick fluid, bubbles occasionally trickling from it’s mouth like a string of ants.
“If we’ve created a weapon, we can decommission it just as easily. But the military’s predictive combat simulations are already flagging 'behavioural latency.' According to the neural mapping, when the stimulus is set to Aggressive, the Subject doesn't simulate a counter-attack; it’s motor cortex primes for an exit. In a weapon, hesitation is a manufacturing defect. We haven't even drained the tank and it’s already failing the specs,” Continued Franko.
“If I may, Doctor.” A meek voice cast out among the attendees, “I’m an ontologist. My name is Sarah Pittman. From what I’ve gathered from the auditory monitors, the subject isn't 'hesitating”, rather it is... processing. It reacts positively to certain frequencies, certain sounds-”
"Do you think the Senate signed off on a $4 billion 'miracle' so you could play him music?" Franko barked, "They didn’t fund the Seventh Initiative for a behavioural study, Sarah. They funded a kinetic deterrent. If that thing doesn't show combat viability by the end of the year, they won't just pull the plug they’ll liquidate the entire floor. We are building a soldier, not a son. A scalpel that doesn’t care what it cuts. Dismissed. All you seem to care about is when payday is."
Eventually members of the meeting gathered their belongings and fled the room, leaving the Doctor and his coworker, a stout man with a tuft of white hair like a worn paintbrush, alone in the middle.
“How much are we paying these chumps?” Franko spat.
“Alistair,” the shorter man replied, his tone surprisingly jovial. “We’ll get it done. You just enjoy spooking the new blood, don’t you?”
“Wait until we haul this thing out. We’ve created hell on earth with our own two hands. God help them all, myself included.”
Doctor Alistair Franko and his cohort paced in silence to the exit. Switching off the light, the doors swung open to a corridor bleached with florescent bulbs. This would be the only light the experiment would ever know for the time being. The subject in question was known simply as Heavy or Seven. Seven to most, being as it was Wellholt Laboratories seventh attempt at creating life. Nothing to do with the Doctors prior religious remarks as rest was non-existent.
Another week dragged it’s feet along sluggishly. An alarm down a labyrinth of corridors bleated out. Within the surveilled room the aforementioned hell drew it’s first deep breath. A large bubble burst from it’s lips, encouraging several more. The first day of Seven’s life started in a controlled state. Drain the liquid, keep the doors locked, arm yourself. He crashed into a table of medical instruments, steel buckling. The heavy legs of the table groaned and splayed outward under his weight, the high-pitched shriek of warping metal striking the floor like a percussion hit. All he knew was that he was born in a room and was now in another. Seven’s eyes fluttered open, blinking rapidly as they adjusted to the brightness of the new room. His naked body rippled with goosebumps, the sensory change forced his mouth open to scream but the desired sound caught his throat. His low groans were met with hands set on silencing him. Seven’s body rattled in an attempt to shake the scientist away. Thrashing seemed to do some good at first. As his arm connected with a white-coated figure, there was no solid thud of muscle against muscle. Instead, the man felt like wet paper, a flimsy, structural failure that offered no resistance before tearing away into the distance. Seven recoiled, confused by the lack of counter-pressure. Sarah Pittman watched the "predictive defect" become a reality from the observation room above. She began to type.
Project Objective: The Seventh Initiative
Wellholt Labs is mandated to produce a Singularity Soldier. The goal is not tactical proficiency, but total battlefield dominance through hyper-dense myofibrillar hypertrophy.
In simpler terms: S-7 is designed to possess a skeletal structure reinforced with carbon-lattice deposit. It is being calibrated to act as a Kinetic Deterrent. If S-7 enters a zone, the physics of the encounter should dictate that the opposition simply cannot win.
Wednesday, October 31st 2012:
05:13 – Post-Gestational Consciousness (Phase 1) S-7 achieved pulmonary independence following fluid evacuation of the primary containment unit. Immediate musculoskeletal failure noted upon bipedal transition (vestibular disorientation).
Pathology: Superficial lacerations and ecchymosis (bruising) localised to the thoracic and abdominal regions, consistent with high-velocity impact against surgical steel instrumentation.
Status: No personnel casualties.
08:41 – Motor Control & Acute Behavioural Volatility.
Subject transitioned from tonic immobility to active kinetic engagement. S-7 exhibited signs of acute sympathetic hyper-arousal (extreme "fight" response) in the absence of environmental acclimation.
Incident Summary: During a standard physical restraint protocol, Subject S-7 applied an estimated F (force) sufficient to propel an 180lb male approximately 4 meters.
Casualty: Dr. Aaron Thorne, Lead Biologist.
Cause of Death: Fatal blunt force trauma to the occipital bone, resulting in a comminuted depressed skull fracture.
Forensic Evaluation: The velocity of the impact induced a classic Coup-Contrecoup injury pattern. Secondary analysis suggests instantaneous cessation of vital functions due to massive herniation and brainstem compression. Subject Seven’s motor output is currently inconsistent with known human physiological limits.
Conclusion: The Subject did not strike Dr. Thorne out of malice. The data suggests S-7 experienced the victim's physical trauma as a reflective neurological event.
Doctor Franko didn’t enter the room, instead speaking through the overhead mesh of speakers, his voice booming omnipresently. Below, Seven was hunched over, his massive shoulders trembling as he glared, petrified of the crimson smear on the far wall.
"Don't look away, Seven," Franko’s voice coached, devoid of any empathy. "What you feel is recoil. You’ve just experienced your first successful discharge. Doctor Thorne was an unfortunate necessity, a mere structural test. He was soft. You are hard. You have simply corrected a flaw. Well done.”
Seven didn't look up. He pressed his forehead against the cold floor, his weight causing the reinforced concrete to spider-web under his skin, trying to disappear into the earth. The voice of the Doctor was the first he’d heard clearly, the others muffled from the containment glass. Not that it mattered, he didn’t understand. “Structural test”, “discharge”, none of this made any sense. Every syllable from the overhead mesh hit his sensitive eardrums like a hammer against a bell. Within the monitoring station, Miss Pittman watched the biometric feeds. Franko was wrong. Seven’s brain wasn't processing a "successful discharge"; it was screaming in sympathetic agony. It was as if he had felt his own skull crushed against that wall.
His hands, thick with hyper-dense muscle still damp from the tank fluid, rose instinctively. He pressed his palms against his ears. At first, he pressed lightly, but the Doctor’s voice, “...a kinetic deterrent, Seven, act like one…”, still bled through. He growled, a low, tectonic sound, slamming his palms harder against his ear canals. The booming voice of Franko was suddenly underwater, distant and pathetic. In its place rose a deep, oceanic noise, the sound of his own accelerated blood-flow surging through his carotid arteries, amplified by the vacuum he’d created. It was the first beautiful thing he had ever felt. It sounded like the tank, but warmer.
"He’s unresponsive," Alistair Franko snapped, leaning toward the glass. "Is it catatonic? Pittman, look at the vitals."
Sarah leaned in, her eyes widening. "No, it’s … self-soothing. Doctor, look at the posture."
Seven was no longer crouched in a defensive ball. To hold the seal on his ears, his elbows were flared out wide, exposing the soft, unreinforced skin of his armpits and the vital notch of his throat. His head tilted back in a trance-like state, leaving his jugular completely unprotected.
"It’s neutralised," Franko whispered, a predatory glint in his eye. "The ultimate soldier, and it just found its own 'Off' switch. Send in the recovery team. If that thing is busy listening to its own pulse, it won’t hear them prime the prods."
"Doctor, if we trigger a high-voltage response whilst it’s in this state-"
"Then the monster will learn that silence has a price," Franko interrupted. He pressed the comms button. "Recovery Team Alpha, enter. Non-lethal saturation. Aim for the axilla- the armpits. It’s the only place the lattice hasn't fully hardened."
The hydraulic locks on the lab floor let out a hiss that would usually have sent Seven into a violent spin. However, with his palms fused to his skull, the sound was nothing more than a faint, metallic ghost.Three men in matte-black tactical gear slid into the room. They moved with the practised grace of hunters, their boots clicking on the concrete. Seven didn't move, imagining he was back in fluid where nothing hurt and no one spoke. The lead guard levelled a heavy, wide barreled rifle. A crackling hum emanated from its tip, a localised EMP discharge designed to disrupt the very neural mapping Sarah had been studying.
"Ready," the guard whispered into his helmet mic.
Seven couldn't hear them, but felt the displacement of air, the static electricity from prods prickling the fine hairs on his skin. His eyes snapped open. He didn't drop his hands. He was too terrified of the noise returning. He stayed frozen, a wide-eyed prisoner of his own making, as the first harpoon-style electrode fired, trailing a copper wire straight toward the exposed skin under his left arm. The "white noise" was replaced by a scream that shattered the observation room glass.
The current didn't travel over Seven; it travelled through him, finding the carbon-lattice of his skeleton and turning his entire frame into a live wire. Inside his head, the soothing rush of blood was replaced by an electronic shriek. He didn't drop his hands. He couldn't. His muscles had locked in shock.
"Look at that," Franko remarked, tapping the glass as Seven’s body arched so hard the concrete beneath him finally gave way, crumbing into dust. "Total muscle retention even under five thousand volts."
Sarah didn't answer. She was looking at Seven’s eyes. They weren't focused on the guards or the pain. They were fixed on her, through the glass, wide and pleading. His face asked a question: why had she let the music stop?
The hum of the prods died out. The room reeked of ozone and scorched copper. Seven collapsed a second time. He didn't fall so much as he simply ceased to be a solid object, hitting the fractured concrete with a colossal, wet thud. His hands finally fell away from his ears, twitching with residual static. The recovery team moved in to tie his limbs with industrial-grade restraints, but they moved with a new kind of hesitation. They had seen the floor crumble.
"Sedate him and move him to the Level Four containment suite," Franko ordered, his voice echoing through the glass. He turned to Sarah, a thin, satisfied smile on his face. "You see, Pittman? The 'processing' you were so worried about is just a latency issue. We just needed to find the right reset button."
Sarah didn't look at the Doctor. She watched the monitors as Seven’s vitals began to plateau into a state of shock-induced catatonia. But then, she saw it. A tiny, rhythmic spike on the secondary audio feed. Seven was humming. It wasn't a song. It was a low, jagged vibration in the back of his throat, an attempt to recreate the white noise manually since he no longer trusted his hands to do the job.
"It’s terrified," Sarah whispered, her voice finally finding its edge.
"No, it’s calibrated," Franko corrected.
The Level Four suite was less a room than a tomb of polished steel, a cold, sterile cathedral where the air held its breath. No medical instruments were left out this time; the floor had been swept clean, leaving nothing for him to crash into. Seven sat, no longer humming. He had surrendered to a silence that felt heavier than the mountain of muscle he inhabited. Pittman watched him through the reinforced viewport, her reflection ghosting over his silhouette. Her hand trembled as she tapped the command into her handheld unit to bypass the audio scrubbers. She felt the sudden, sharp weight of her own heartbeat.
"Seven," she whispered. The word felt like a curse.
In the room, the giant’s head twitched. He did not look up, but his shoulders braced against the air, the carbon-lattice in his spine tensing like a drawn bow.
"I’m sorry about the music," she said, her voice fracturing. "It wasn't supposed to be a trap.”
Seven slowly turned his head. He didn't see a scientist, only the witness to his birth. He began to move toward her, a slow, ponderous shift of weight. Each step was a low, resonant thud that Sarah felt in her core, a rhythmic pulse that seemed to demand the floor surrender beneath him. As he approached, his sheer scale blotted out the light in the observation booth, casting her into a sudden, artificial night.
The weapon stopped just inches from the glass. He did not strike the barrier. Instead, with deliberate grace, Seven raised his hand. He placed a single finger against the pane, right where Sarah’s shadow fell. The glass let out a faint, melodic creak under the pressure. Sarah stared at that finger, powerful enough to crush stone, as it rested tenderly against her reflection.