Chapter 113: Going Home

When Jason awoke, he was greeted by the soft hum of machinery and a familiar ceiling. He was back in the medical ward near the captain’s quarters.

He was incredibly dazed. His memories were fragmented and shattered; for a terrifying second, he couldn’t even remember his own name or how he’d been knocked out. His ingrained combat instincts kicked in, forcing his heavy eyes to scan the room. It was a safe environment. An IV dripped into the back of his hand, and biometric sensors were plastered across his chest and temples, monitoring his vitals and brainwaves.

Jason stared blankly. The familiar surroundings offered a sense of warmth and security, but the fog in his mind refused to clear. He furrowed his brow, pushing hard to recall what had happened, but his subconscious was still boiling over with residual threat-responses, keeping his heart rate erratic.

Suddenly, A flood of terrifying memories violently crashed into his conscious mind. A blinding, searing pain spiked through his skull, feeling as though someone was driving a rusted spike through his brain. Unable to suppress the agony, he let out a guttural roar.

The scream instantly brought two guards and three nurses bursting through the medbay doors. One of the soldiers was Marcus. Despite his own leg injury, Marcus had stubbornly insisted on standing guard outside the room. Half-relieved and half-panicked, Marcus shouted, “Captain! You’re awake! What’s wrong? Get the doc! Get the doc in here right now!”

Jason cut off his scream, violently clenching his jaw as he rode out the wave of pain. Heavy beads of cold sweat rolled down his forehead. Through the blinding headache, the missing pieces of the puzzle slowly slotted back into place.

The chief medical officer rushed in and immediately administered a heavy dosage of painkillers and sedatives through the IV. After a few agonizing minutes, the tension bled out of Jason’s muscles, leaving him staring exhausted at the ceiling.

“…Do you know how many fingers I’m holding up? Can you focus on them?” The doctor held up two fingers directly in Jason’s line of sight.

Jason gave a microscopic nod. He was so physically drained that even that tiny movement felt like bench-pressing a truck.

The doctor ran his penlight over Jason’s pupils and finally breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Neurological responses look stable. The Captain is officially on the mend.”

He turned to the others in the room. “Initially, his brainwaves were dangerously erratic. We were looking at severe risks of brain death or total retrograde amnesia. But it seems he’s pulled through the worst of it. The wound on his chest and leg were clean, the blades didn’t hit any major arteries or organs, so physical recovery will be straightforward.”

“…He does have some minor barotrauma in his lungs, likely from rapid decompression when his suit was breached, but nothing permanent. A few weeks of bed rest and he’ll be back at 100 percent.”

The doctor repeated the prognosis a few times until Marcus and the other guard finally let out long, shaky breaths of relief. They immediately tapped their communicator to update the rest of the command staff.

Jason caught the tail end of the conversation before the painkillers fully kicked in, washing away the residual throbbing in his skull. His mind felt a bit sluggish, like moving through molasses, but his breathing leveled out and he could finally form coherent thoughts.

I’m alive, he thought. I actually made it out. He had a hazy, fractured memory of his final moments before blacking out. The strike team must have managed to drag him out of the breach.

Marcus limped over to the side of the bed, leaning heavily on the railing. “Captain? You still know who I am?”

Jason managed a weak, exhausted smile and nodded. He didn’t have the energy to speak.

“Alright rookie, front and center. Thank the man. He went back to hell just to drag your ass out!” Marcus reached back and roughly shoved a young man forward. It was Henry, the combat medic.

Henry had been incredibly lucky. He had been unconscious for the entire ordeal, only witnessing the horrifying truth later through the playback of his suit’s tactical cameras. If Jason hadn’t injected him and carried him out, Henry would have sleepwalked straight into the clutches of that grotesque organic mass.

Jason had practically traded his own life for Henry’s.

“Captain…” Every time Henry thought about the footage, ice water ran through his veins. What did that massive, pulsing nightmare actually want with living humans? Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.

In a lethal combat scenario like that, leaving a man behind was completely justified. Risking everything to save dead weight was above and beyond the call of duty. Henry was profoundly moved, but the words “thank you” felt incredibly hollow. A simple ’thanks’ didn’t cover a blood debt.

He suddenly snapped to attention, his back ramrod straight, and delivered a crisp, solemn salute. “Captain, I’m not good with words, sir. But from this day forward, my life belongs to you.”

“Damn right it does!” Marcus barked, looking thoroughly satisfied. It wasn’t just Henry’s life on the line; Jason had put himself through hell to save every single one of them.

“Alright, that is quite enough. This is a medbay, not a barracks. The patient needs to rest. Everybody out!” The head nurse stormed over, glaring fiercely at Marcus as she shooed them away.

Marcus and Henry chuckled awkwardly, quickly backing toward the door. “Get some rest, Captain. Communicator are open if you need anything. We’ll be standing guard right outside.”

Jason smiled faintly. There was no need for grand declarations of loyalty. Being a commander meant bearing the weight of his squad’s lives. If he had the power to save one of his men and chose to walk away, he’d never be able to live with himself.

Besides, the suicide run had yielded an incredible prize: he had secured that jet-black metallic sphere. He knew in his gut that the alien device was going to change everything for humanity.

He stared up at the ceiling as an unimaginable wave of exhaustion crashed over him, pulling him back under.

“Mom?” He was dreaming about his mother. Like many Enhanced Superhumans, Jason had been cultivated from an optimized embryo, meaning he biologically had parents. However, his specific genetic profile had been pulled from a classified gene bank, and all records of his biological lineage had been mysteriously scrubbed.

He dreamt of his surrogate mother, a woman with short hair, sharp eyebrows, and a warm, constant smile. Jason had been carried in her womb for nine months and held in her arms right up until the day they were permanently separated by the military.

Because he had been so young, even his genetically enhanced memory could only pull up vague, fragmented images of her. He only remembered how she used to rock him gently, smiling as she whispered, “Sleep, little one. Sleep, and you’ll be full of energy when you wake up.”

“Sleep, little one… sleep, and you’ll be full of energy when you wake up.” Every time the memory surfaced, it lulled him into a deep, peaceful slumber.

As he grew older and rose through the ranks, he had tried to track her down. But no matter how deep he dug into the classified archives, she seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth. His biological parents’ files were purged, and his surrogate mother was a ghost. The entire cover-up was highly suspicious. He never found out if it was a deliberate move by the pre-Collapse government or part of a darker conspiracy…

“Sleep well… you’ll have more energy when you wake up…” her voice echoed softly in the dream.

After what felt like an eternity, Jason finally opened his eyes. He yawned, his hand instinctively coming up to wipe a stray tear from the corner of his eye. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. The searing headache was completely gone. The deep sleep had worked wonders.

Through the medbay doors, Jason overheard hushed, anxious whispers. “What’s the status? Is the Captain awake yet? He’s been out cold for twenty-four hours. Are you sure he’s okay?”

“He is just sleeping, Commander, not comatose,” a nurse replied patiently. “I just checked his vitals. There is no need to worry; he is recovering exceptionally well.”

Hearing the commotion, Jason cleared his throat. “I’m awake,” he called out, his voice a bit hoarse. “You can come in.”

Instantly, the doors slid open, and a massive crowd piled into the room, consisting of the Federation’s top brass and half the senior science division!

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