Author Note: Thanks, JayneParker :P you made me want to finally finish this. And to Dream Bound Nightmare, and anyone else still here. Hope you're both still around for it. I've grown as a writer in the last seven years, but you'll notice that it's got the same plot elements that Event added. The story is, and always will be the same, but I liked the elements she added. In this version I'm hoping I got the point across of a more… natural environment. More... human I guess? Jumping from perspective of a morally broke General, a conflicted Commander, and finally a drugged up teenager so far up a creek without a paddle it's not funny.

Let me know if I did that… and if the story tastes the same as before. :P No matter what, flamed to hell or no one reads it, I will continue this story till it's end.

Enjoy.

Semi-Automatic

Part One: Misplaced

Chapter One: Morals (Or the Lack there of)

"Readings remain the same," the lead researcher bemoaned, shoulders sagging in frustrated defeat. The woman, narrow-faced and pale, glowered at the scrolling screens as they spat corrupted and unusable data at her. Her project, her baby, was at risk of failure again and she doubted that the General would sign off on another bout of experimentation when this subject died. Her workers, all barely awake at their terminals, sat on a tight rope's edge of sanity with the consistent barrage unchanging and nominal results of a boy that should at least be dead. She didn't understand it, they didn't understand it - she doubted anyone could understand it.

"What did you expect, Dr. Sol?" The General placed his hands on either of her scrawny shoulders to sooth her. "It's only been three days. Patience, Yuma, it is a virtue." He chuckled softly.

"Yes," she conceded, dark painted lips twisting in frustration.

General Neverous almost pitied those that stood beneath her in rank. He knew the middle aged woman's short fuse and low tolerance for failure. He stood and watched the tail end of the procedure, always interested in the result, never truly in the show that Dr. Sol and her machines put on. His second-in-command, Commander Alec Vine, stood rooted near the door. A top ranked cadet he might be, but he was not a man capable of hiding his true emotions. He tried for steely indifference and only managed a half scowl and a stricken expression.

The General wheeled away from the two-way glass to stand at his Commander's side. The man straightened his back, rigid as a solider needed to be, and saluted sharply. "We will place him in the roster for this coming year's trainees." The General concluded.

Commander Vine turned his neck sharply, staring up at the man incredulously with his lips parted as if to object. As Commander, the man had every right to question the admissions to the South Ward. To allow the subject, a child by all rights, into the program was unheard of. Too skinny, too young, too inexperienced with life – the list against the child was long and weighty.

Yet, the General had plans.

"Sir," Vine protested, as he knew he would, "That child is no older than sixteen – if that." He jolted his chin towards the bullet-proof Plexiglas that separated them and the containment area. "He wouldn't make it past Hell Week. Consider the fact we don't even know if he's capable of being trained as a competent solider." Vine gave a lengthy pause, choosing his words with practiced decision. "Would it be wise to allow him into the general public, even? He's not willing in these tests." The Commander reasoned; a hint of bitterness thinly masked by his professionalism.

Neverous spared the man a terse smile, silencing him more effectively than any command would have. "Now, that is Murdock's job, isn't it? The boy will be under constant observation until I believe he's ready to adjust to his new station."

"Sir…" Vine attempted, but ultimately shrank back against the General's silent warning. "I'll retrieve him and get his minors, then." With a stiff salute, and an even stiffer turn of his heel, Vine fled Neverous's sight.

Neverous had never been a man for simple ideas and quick fixes. He wasn't struggling for power as politicians did in the cities or the capital. This was never him vying for a piece of the bigger picture – this was him vying for a place for his people in the future. With death at the door, Neverous knew when to toss away his humanity for the greater good. If history called him a murderer, or a saint, he didn't care. He cared for the here and now and could not bring himself to care for what they might call him.

Tyrant, savior?

He cared only that there would be people to label him so.

"Do you still think you can call yourself a good man, Alec?"

The Commander shakenly halted at the door,

"After everything you've done?"

He watched the man's struggle to keep form, to stop his own anger from showing on his face. Vine's hands shook at his side fisted tightly as he took a fortifying minute to catch himself before disappearing through the door.

Neverous could only smile in his wake.

In the dimly lit privacy of the corridor, Vine pressed the release on his helmet and yanked it away. He scowled viciously over his shoulder, damning the General. Vine then damned himself, wondering why he had ever thought the General could be beyond this damn project. Vine, after all, was the reason it had cause to continue. He had brought them a prefect test subject. He had promise the boy safety...

Had he only brought him to the city instead. The boy might have lived a long happy life without his to terrorize his final days.

Vine knew, in thoughts he'd never make tangible, that even if the boy survived the testing –or the training – he would no longer be 'He' but an 'It. And 'It' would be a deeply scarred thing they unleashed on everyone.

'He won't,' Vine reminded himself, pushing towards the lab, 'Neverous doesn't know the fire he's playing with.' He smirked in spite of himself.

Practically punching the lock release, and relishing in the sting that thrummed through his knuckles, Vine stepped into the sterilized 'Alpha Laboratory.' It was, on record, a decommissioned 'RnD' site dedicated to weapons development and improvement. It had since been converted, off the books, to a testing facility. Good men, ones that Vine had trained with, saw the end of their lives here.

When the death toll had reached triple digits, Vine had thanked the Precursors. It was a number that even Neverous couldn't reconcile with 'expected and considered loss' and ordered the immediate termination of the Alpha Project.

And then Vine had gone and been the idiot.

The researchers had practically groveled for the General to let them try again. The boy would promise immediate results, they haggled, 'if not immediate at least interesting' had been Dr. Sol's proposal.

The first time he had seen the boy strapped into the spider-like machine – the first time he screamed like the others - Vine made a choice. He demanded, no threatened, the foreign matter detected in the samples to be stricken from the records.

Once within earshot of the scientists, the White-Coats, as the rank and file called them, he wasn't surprised to hear their excited banter. They always took too much pride in their sordid work. He might not have understood the logistics of it or the science behind it, but he understood it was wrong. To them he was a 'Mildog,' only good at barking orders and being obedient, but even he had a fucking moral compass.

It would make their careers, they preached, once they were allowed to publish their findings. No one had ever seen a child like this, much less experiment on his physiology. They died well before the Precursor Wars, Eco – the books say – killed them off. They marveled at his samples like each specimen was made of gold.

The only damn difference Vine could discern was the shape of his ears.

"Do you think that is what causes the pain?" Vine caught as he made his approach, "I haven't a clue why. Nothing should be causing that much, less the delirium or crippling fatigue. Mutations aren't even due to start manifesting yet."

"Rejection, perhaps?" An assistant offered, eyes never leaving her touch-pad.

Vine cleared his throat pointedly.

With disappointment, Dr. Caleb Asters turned to face him. "Here to take him already? I had hoped for a few more hours to test his hypersensitivity-"

"He's not a toy." Growled Vine, unable to stop himself. His blue eyes flashed to the two-way Plexiglas, noting the absence of the General. "Yes," he amended with a clipped tone.

Dr. Asters waved his hand dismissively to the machine. Vine snapped his fingers and the two men assigned to 'containment' moved forward instantly to pick at the straps holding the child into the machine. The entire room smelled sharply of blood and the off mint smell of that damn serum the researchers had made. It was unsettling and all too cheap of a smell to be associated with this. Once his men got the boy released, they seized his thin arms up and forward as a muffled groan rattled the boy's chest.

Startled, they dropped the boy back onto the table. Vine winced at the metallic thud, breath leaving his lungs in a faded heave as he wheezed and choked.

"He's awake!" Dr. Asters nearly shouted in joy. "Take this down," he ordered, "perhaps it is a start to a resistance? Commander," he whirled, almost pleading, "Let us have him for a few more hours – to take samples and-"

"Orders," Vine interrupted with a shake of his head, "He's to go to his cell. Take him up," he ordered to his own men, "Gently," He added quietly.

Vine admired the mercy his men showed the boy and took the heated glare from Dr. Asters in stride. "Right, my mistake to think to bargain with a Mildog."

Reproachful, Vine turned away seeking some reason to why he still remained at his post. 'After everything you've done?' Neverous's words in the control room haunted him worse than the faces of the dead he had ordered burned. When he turned fully, he found himself eye to eye with the boy – bloodshot green staring back through a fringe of greasy black hair. Lucid and loathing; the boy's eyes damned him just as the others did. Yet there was a new sour taste to it that left him uncomfortable and agitated.

The soldiers had understood, on a faded level, why Vine had continued to stand beside the General. They hated, but not like this.

The Commander and his men found him as they left him in his cell an hour later. He had pulled up the collar of his soiled yellow tunic over his mouth and nose heaving as he cradled his knees to his chest. He twitched violently in what looked to be uncontrolled muscle spasms. Vine had never stayed to witness the after-effects of the sessions, but he had heard the patrolmen mutter about how the boy was groaning for hours after. Part of him had prayed they might not find him in a ball on the floor, but the sensible part knew that wasn't possible.

"Get him up, we'll take room four." Vine decided, grimacing at the heady smell of sweat, unwashed hair and filthy clothes wafting off the prisoner.

Consciousness was not a pleasant gift, not in his sorry state, but the boy seemed to cling to it. The guards waited for him to plant his feet beneath him, Salik muttering quiet instructions under his breath as he gripped the boy's belt to keep him steady. Corwin and Salik were both patient as he struggled to walk on his own down the corridor. It was agonizing to watch, but Vine allowed.

"Sit," Vine told him once they entered the room, the guards moving back away from his side. With the support gone, he swayed a moment before clumsily reaching for the tin chair. He felt for it like a blind man, eyes firmly shut, and groping at thin air before finding hold. Vine wondered if that last treatment had left him blind. He wouldn't have been surprised; he'd seen far stranger things happen on that serum. Once the boy had found the chair, he gasped in relief as he collapsed on to it.

Vine took the seat opposite him, folders laid before him with a checklist and application forms, and watched the boy attempt to look at him. He soon gave up, shoulders sagging in something akin to defeat, and let his head fall heavily to the steel table. The Commander winced, praying he hadn't knocked himself unconscious. He'd been forewarned the boy was prone to lapses in consciousness already; Vine didn't need him voluntarily forcing himself into impromptu acomas.

"This isn't an interrogation," he felt the need to explain, "I need a few of your personal details. Name, age, etcetera."

The boy must have recognized his voice because the moment Vine spoke he stiffened in his chair, hissing under his breath savagely. Clinging to fragments of sobriety, the boy rasped. "Why are you… doing this?"

And Vine would have answered, gladly, because he was secretly relieved to hear the boy speak after three days.

He never got the chance.

His Major, asked to supervise while Lt. Salik and Corwin waited outside, struck the boy with the blunted end of his weapon. The boy let out a sharp yelp, snapping his hands to the back of his skull in a vague way to protect himself from another hit. He gasped and sputtered, desperately spitting out blood that burst from the corners of his mouth.

A warning glare sent the Major retreating back to his corner as Corwin abandoned his post outside to force a wadded piece of gauze from his med-kit to stem the flow of blood down the boy's chin. After a few moments, when boy's labored breathing resided, Corwin removed the gauze.

"Your name?" Vine questioned, making a mental note to promote both of the lieutenants.

"… Harry."

Desperate to keep himself vertical, Harry's fingers wrapped tightly around the edge of the chair. His skin creaked at the action, dehydration making his fingers feel as if they were coated in dust. His palms and tongue ached, his mouth full of the coppery taste of blood that permeated his nose. He tried to ignore it, to push back the light-headedness in favor of not being sick on himself.

"Surname?" Vine coaxed.

"Potter," he stumbled, half afraid of another hit should he be to slow to answer. It was hard to focus. His world was blood and melting shapes moving too fast for him to make sense of.

"Age?" Vine continued.

Frantic, for a brief second, Harry tried to remember how old he was. Thirteen or fourteen? When was his birthday, had it happened already? How long had he been here? Weeks? Months?

"Four…" He attempted, but found himself mumbling as if he was daft.

"Fourteen?"

Harry nodded shallowly, tongue stinging with every action. The mass of blue and black before him scribbled on something that might have been paper. "Younger than I thought… Can you," He started slowly, "perhaps manipulate objects? I've heard it referred to as magic in some old books, but I never put much stock into it."

"What do you know about it?" Was he even allowed to talk about it to these people? They weren't human, he knew that much, but if they didn't know already… Should he?

White light burst across his vision as black pain exploded across the back and front of his head. The force sent him crashing into the steel table with a wicked crack, breaking his nose, and if not his two front teeth. For a brief moment, Harry was blissfully unaware of the pain devilishly spreading across the bridge of his nose. It came like cold, wet slap to the face as it joined the agony erupting across his brutalized tongue. He whined, helpless, and cradled his head in his hands.

Vine sent his chair screeching across the concrete floor and Harry could only cringe in fear as the man's voice boomed in a suddenly too small room. "Hit him one more time and I will have you demoted!"

"Sir I was only-" The man defended,

"Don't confuse curiosity with defiance, Major!" Vine snarled like a mad dog, "I need this done and he needs to be coherent for it." His voice dropped in pitch as he retrieved his chair.

The familiar voice of one of the guards that took him to and from his cell came from just behind him. "Creators, you bastard, look at the kid – do you honestly think he needs more abuse?" He felt the hand on his shoulder again, something wet and smelling of rubbing alcohol being pressed to his mouth and beneath his nose as a hand on his forehead bent his uncooperative neck back.

He found himself wishing the guard had hit him harder, if only so he didn't have to go on with this horrid headache.

"Sir," the man apologized.

'Let me go home,'

Vine sighed irritably, "To answer you, we know nothing. Only that some could, some couldn't. For your first question." He paused and Harry had to turn his ear to him to hear past the pounding, "this is a project to create better, stronger soldiers and you were selected to participate in it."

"I didn't give…" Harry choked, squinting at the mass. He vaguely remembered Vine in faint flashes of a fight near a waterfall. Lean and tall, muscled, and imposing in full combat armor. The only feature Harry distinctly recalled was his eyes. They reminded him of Albus Dumbledore, a man Harry trusted with his life.

"Harry, did you understand me?"

With a shaky nod, Harry hummed his affirmative.

"Hm," Vine grunted with little inflection, "Final question, when is your birthday?"

"Ju..." he swallowed painfully, "July 31st 1981."

Vine's silence was long, stretching to an uncomfortable length. "What month is July?" Vine eventually asked.

"S… seventh?"

The sound of shuffled papers greeted him next, eyes still firmly shut, and he waited for the outcome. "Take him back. We have what we need."

Relief coursed through Harry like fire, the thought of his cell invigorating for all the wrong reasons. Just as the hands that were holding his head back moved to help him out of the chair, the sound of the door made him jolt.

"Sir, your presence is required in the Hall. Baron Praxis has arrived."

Vine muttered an oath. "You are all dismissed," he snapped, infuriated for a reason Harry couldn't fathom. With effort, Harry attempted to pull himself out of the chair with the support of the table. A hand touched his arm, tugging upward, and Harry let out a surprised shout. In a spur of panic, he smacked it away as if it burned him.

The hand, Vine's he realized, reached forward again and took hold of his forearm tightly. Fingers bit into the infected cut left by Wormtail. He cried out again, sinking pathetically to his knees as the pain twisted his stomach. "Please, stop!"

"For Mar's sake…" Vine groused, hauling Harry to his feet. He let Harry stand on his own for a moment – swaying back and forth in his daze. Cold metal pressed to his skin, snapping his wrists together painfully with a metallic click. For a moment, he thought Vine had left him to stand there, but the touch of cloth to his face told him different. He gasped, bodily jerking away, and felt leather on the back of his neck. Confused, he shuddered as Vine kept him steady and wiped his face with the rough material. "C'mon kid," he said softly, "tough it out… It's almost over."

He turned Harry, pushing his shoulder forward. Vine kept him straight in the blind darkness Harry kept himself in to avoid being sick. When the ground gave slightly beneath his unsteady feet, he nearly toppled over. Vine's grip on him was the only thing to keep him balanced and upright. "Hold up," He muttered, spinning Harry slowly around. Something touched his face again, this time cold, and he instinctively flinched away. The solider grunted in annoyance, seizing both sides of Harry's jaw and dug his thumbs into broken cartilage. Harry sharply groaned as it cracked.

Vine slipped the metal across his temples carefully navigating the tender flesh. It took Harry longer than he wanted to admit to recognize the feel of his glasses.

"My…"

"I found them before we left the falls. I didn't realize you were blind without them."

Harry's world came slowly back together as he blinked away the haze. It wasn't perfect, but he could make a little more sense of the shapes. Vine stretched his arm between them, hitting several buttons on the elevator control, and sent it lurching upwards in a smooth crawl.

"You lied," Harry dared to say, the Commander inhaled his lips without even looking to him. "You lied." He accused. His fists curled in anger as the Commander continued to stare ahead of him. He wanted something. Some sort of answer, for him to at least give him a reason for this. Anything to allow him to at least forgive Vine for what he had done…

If only to count himself less a fool for trusting him…

"It is what I do," Vine sighed, the lift pulling to a stop.

"Bastard," Harry hissed.

"Yeah, I know." Vine answered wearily.