PS2 Chronicles - Acquisition: Rebirth

Acquisition: Rebirth. June 12^th, 2850.

The first sensation I felt was being enveloped in sublime warmth, followed by a sharp intake of cold air. Then I awoke, and the panic set in. The TR had come for me.

In the few moments it took the rebirthing chamber to open, I apparently clawed at an invisible assailant, still clutching at my chest where the chainblade should have been. When I emerged, surrounded not by a team of TR hitmen, but by a team of NC scientists, the gravity of the situation became clear to me.

I had been killed.

The details of the attack came back to me slowly, and then all at once. I had watched Felix die. I had watched Sam die. Security personnel whose names I still can’t remember laid their lives down to protect me, but they all had failed.

I remember getting a shot off at the assassin, but it didn’t seem to slow him. He came at me with a chainblade, and I was quickly overpowered. 

Then, pain in my chest. Hard to breathe. The taste of blood in my mouth. The barrel of a pistol being placed against my forehead. Blood covering my hands, sticky to the touch.  And then a flash.

According to test subjects, disorientation is a common side effect of the rebirthing process. It took me about three minutes to really get my bearings again. Three minutes of confusion to escape the clutches of death. Well, three minutes, stolen Vanu technical intel, and a year of eighteen hour days for nearly two-hundred and fifty of the NC’s best and brightest.

I should be ecstatic. We did it. What started with the acquisition of Sam Gornan and his stolen Vanu rebirthing research had reached conclusion. Rebirthing is a reality, and as far as we know, we’re way out in front of both the VS and TR. We’ve changed the game.

But I... can’t shake the guilt. It only saved me. Rebirthing is still far too costly to plug in more than a couple dozen people at a time. As the head of the project, I was the only one in my research division deemed important enough to get plugged in to the early prototypes. Felix is dead, and he doesn't get to come back. Sam is gone, too, when he was the one who had brought this tech to the NC in the first place! And he was, after everything, one of my closest friends.

I guess all I can do now is make it cheaper in the next iteration - find a way for it to protect more people. One day, I swear, we’ll have every New Conglomerate soldier plugged in, and we’ll all be spared the grief that comes with losing the people closest to us… but that wasn't today. Knowing that Sam and Felix could have kept their lives somehow has made everything so much harder.

Well, I am alive. And the NC is on the verge of kicking a lot of ass. If we play our cards right, this war is coming to an end.

After my ‘rebirth’, the techs verified my vitals and had me talk to a shrink. Once the appropriate hoops were jumped through, I left the rebirthing facility and headed home, less than eager to get started on the somber task of putting a message together for Felix’s wife. Along the way we drove past one of the biggest NC rallies I’d seen in years. I actually had my driver pull over so I could get out and listen to the speaker. It was odd being so exposed after so long under nearly constant security surveillance. Freeing.

The fervor of the crowd was intense. Whatever the corporate interests at the heart of the NC, we certainly knew how to brand the cause. Cries for freedom and liberty have toppled far greater tyrants than the Terran Republic. Those people craved it, and they were willing to die for it.

Hopefully soon, they won’t have to.