The Mech Touch novel Chapter 186

One of the biggest fears any human faced was the prospect of never waking up after sleep. This especially crept up when you were being operated immediately after being knocked out. The prospect of never knowing when you died haunted Ves when Doctor Jutland forcibly sapped his consciousness.

It came as a small relief when Ves eventually woke up. That relief quickly made way for pain, as his entire body ached.

The most prominent pains came from the incisions in his chest and in his head. Jutland obviously hadn’t wasted much time cutting him open. The recently cut flesh still radiated a lot of pain as his flesh actively worked to recover from the damage.

Several new portions inside his body emanated a lot of pressure that constantly washed over his flesh and bones. A portion near his heart constantly released a stream of omnipresent pressure that constantly pressed against his body as if he was a dam about to burst. Having nowhere else to go, the scalding hot energy washed inside his body, forcing it to accommodate the excess.

His body couldn’t take the sheer amount of energy flowing out from the organ next to his heart. However, a strange sensation swept from a spot near his spine that forced the volatile energy to submerge in every cell of his body. Ves could vaguely sense that the energy brutally transformed his flesh and bones through a constant cycle of destruction and rejuvenation.

Each time his cells got destroyed, new ones grew in their place that were able to contain a little bit more energy before they reached their limits. Ves didn’t know how many cycles his body already went through, but it grew to the point where he could breathe the foul-tasting air of Groening IV without suffocating to death.

His eyes and all of his orifices only lightly stung when they came into contact with the toxic air. A constant prickle suffused his body from his surroundings. They weaved through his flesh and entered the organ besides his heart without stopping. Ves took that to mean his body drew on the ambient heat and radiation to fuel his ongoing transformation.

"Ah, you’re awake!" Doctor Jutland entered the makeshift hut with a smile. A small, salvaged light taken from a mech hung from a wire extending from the ceiling. Jutland’s face took on a mock-fatherly appearance as he studied the readouts from a medical device strapped to his bed. "Your life signs have stabilized. Good! You’ve passed the most difficult test!"

Jutland turned around and brought up a bucket filled with freshly butchered meat. He grabbed a random thigh of a juvenile hexapod and ripped the hardy scales from the flesh with his bare hands, coating it with greenish blood. After he finished removing the inedible scales, he extended the raw piece of meat to Ves. "Here. Eat! Your energy is limitless, but your body still needs nutrients!"

His overarching hunger suppressed usual disgust when presented with a raw piece of meat. Ves grabbed onto the shank and sank his teeth into the hardy flesh, not even taking note of his strengthened denture. He finished up the shank in only a couple of minutes. His stomach finally subsided from its constant nagging for food.

The urge to sleep overtook him. Ves tried to restrain his fatigue but his strengthened body overwhelmed his feeble desire. He returned to slumber just as Doctor Jutland injected his body with a strange solution.

Over the course of an unknown amount of time, Ves kept waking up with hunger gnawing in his stomach. Each time, Jutland entered the hut and eagerly handed him another freshly butchered hexapod limb.

Sometimes, the doctor fed him their organs. Ves even got to sink his teeth into a juvenile’s heat organ, which instantly scorched his mouth despite its increased tolerance for heat. Just a tiny bite of the underdeveloped heat organ had surpassed what his stomach was capable of digesting at any single moment.

Minutes later, the organ besides his heart flared up as if it had been injected with chicken blood. The torrent of energy that flowed out from his chest almost physically pressed against the insides of his toughened skin. When the waves finally subsided, Ves blissfully returned to sleep.

After his twentieth-or-something awakening, Ves woke up devoid of excessive hunger. His body had finally finished whatever Jutland had initially spurred on. His exposed flesh withstood the alien atmosphere without any signs of degradation. Though his body still generated a lot of energy, most of it threaded through his body in a circle and returned to the strange organ in his chest.

When Jutland finally returned to check his body, he cackled maniacally. "Hahahaha! You not only survived the process, but exceeded my expectations!"

"What did you do?" Ves asked weakly.

Though the excess of energy invigorated his body, he had a hard time gaining control over it. It was as if the energy didn’t belong to him but merely rented space in his body. Sporadically, it even showed signs of erupting, which Ves suspected would be really bad.

Jutland grinned at the opportunity to brag. "I put in twenty-seven years of focused research to use. My Jutland organ is carefully designed and grown to incorporate the best traits of a hexapod’s heat organ. Meanwhile, the regulator I’ve implanted in your spine has spurred your body to renew itself along a modified genetic makeup. All of your cells down to your bone marrow have fully adapted, just as I intended!"

"Did you change my genes?"

"Of course! It’s the only way I can force your body to transform with the failing tools I have on hand. Be glad that I found out that you took an initiating elixir. Without that gene boost as a primer, I would have never been able to spur your cells to swap their DNA so effortlessly!"

Ves recalled the M-21 Initiating Elixir gifted by his master. He only received a small boost in attributes from the injection, but he’d been told that it only laid the groundwork for further gene boosts.

If Doctor Jutland recognized that he used that gene boost, then his earlier rants about the relationship between the MTA and the Five Scrolls Compact might be true. Ves tried hard not to think too deep about that connection.

"What else did you do to my body?"

Jutland cackled again and rubbed his hands in a nefarious manner. He rambled on a bit about the various enhancements he developed over the years. His Jutland organ formed his magnum opus, but he didn’t limit his research on the humanized heat organ alone.

Overall, Ves received two other major enhancements.

First, his digestive system received a large enhancement in order to be able to process food that regular humans could never stomach. The doctor expanded the range of foods he could digest.

To his relief, Ves did not lose the ability to digest conventional human food. He hadn’t lost any capabilities in that area. Instead, his digestive system became even more effective in extracting every possible nutrient out of everything he ate. Combined with the energy provided by his heat organ, Ves required a lot less food to make it through the day.

Next, Jutland implanted a small growth next to his spine that initially directed the transformation of his genes. Now that his body adapted to his revamped genes, the regulator organ mainly functioned as his heat organ’s central processor.

For example, the energy cycle within his body had only come into being with the help of the regulator organ. Its cells contained extensive biological programming that coordinated his central nervous system with all of the changes in his body.

After all, a baseline human didn’t have anything like a human-sized heat organ. Without some form of instructions, his body wouldn’t know what to do with it. The regulator essentially augmented his baseline central nervous system like how his Full Stealth augment added a new function to his Privacy Shield.

That reminded Ves to check his gear. He found out that Jutland stripped him of all clothes and gear, replacing them with a spare set of hospital clothes that must have been stewing in a box for a couple of decades.

"Ah, wondering where your devices are? I confiscated them both! Thank you for your spare shield generator. As soon as I decipher its identity lock, it will make for a useful guarantee of my safety! That blasted lock! The latest system is too tricky!"

Ves already expected to be stripped of his shield generator when Jutland stumbled upon it. After all, without it, he’d be at the mercy of his deranged captor. He could only give up on that avenue. Instead, he focused on his comm. He had to get his hands on his System.

"What about my comm?"