Heartstone - Chapter 33: Chapter 33

He was called Unit 7-K, but once—long ago—his name had been Ashen Locke.
Now, he sat on a steel bench inside the barracks, his augmented muscles twitching beneath synthetic armor. Tubes ran from his neck down his spine, and his veins pulsed faintly with the blue of the enhancement serum.
Around him, the other Engineered Soldiers moved in eerie unison, emotionless, perfect. They didn't blink when commanded. They didn’t dream.
But Ashen… dreamed.
It had started two nights ago. Flickers. A forest. A woman laughing. A child’s voice calling “Papa.” None of it made sense—but it tore at something deep inside him that the injections couldn’t reach.
As the others filed out for combat simulations, Ashen remained still. A voice rang in his head, not from the neural implants—but from somewhere else:
> “You are more than what they made you.”
He flinched, gripping the side of the bench, teeth clenched. Something was wrong. Or maybe something was waking up.
Later that night, he stood in the chamber of Dr. Helena Graves, who inspected him with cold detachment.
“Serum levels are stable. Neural compliance holding. No anomalies,” she said, noting his metrics.
Ashen looked at her.
“Why… do we need the ?” he asked, voice strained, like pulling thoughts through barbed wire.
Dr. Graves froze. “You’re not programmed to ask questions.”
He stared. “What if I was… before the program?”
She reached toward the override panel—but he caught her wrist. Not violently. Just enough.
“I remember trees.”
Graves looked at him—now truly alarmed.
“You’re not supposed to remember anything.”
But Ashen did.
And somewhere in that memory, he felt a choice returning. A dangerous, human thing.
The next morning, beneath the towering hangars of the X-3 compound, General Ryker Voss stood on the platform before his army of augmented soldiers—hundreds of them, lined in perfect, silent formation. Their eyes glowed faint blue, their skin scarred from countless injections and enhancements. Each wore a variant of the military exosuit, reinforced with carbon alloy and fueled by the chemically altered essence of the .
The air was cold, sterile. The wind outside howled against the massive iron doors of the facility. Voss stepped forward, arms behind his back, and addressed them.
> "You are not like them," he began, voice amplified through hidden speakers.
"You are the future—rebuilt, remade, redefined. You will not age. You will not tire. You will not fear."
> "And in five weeks, when we descend upon the mountain and crush their rebellion, you will not hesitate."
His voice echoed, sharp as steel. The soldiers remained motionless, except for Unit 7-K, a soldier with platinum wiring along his arms and a flicker of something strange in his eyes.
He blinked. Then again.
His vision shimmered. And for the first time in months, he remembered something.
A village. A scream. His past—one Voss had tried to wipe with chemicals and code—was clawing its way back.
General Voss’s voice continued, but Unit 7-K, no longer heard him.
Somewhere deep inside the soldier—beneath the armor, the programming, the synthetic adrenaline—a human choice stirred. One that could tip the coming war.