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Alinafe couldn't move. Or open his eyes.

The last thing he could remember was walking home from school with his boyfriend. They had kissed, before going their separate ways to get home. But Alinafe couldn't remember what happened next. He had carried on home, a route he had travelled many times during his five years at secondary school. He had reached his front door, reached out to use the biometric scanner, and felt something sharp jab into his neck.

He'd been drugged.

But why? Who would want to drug him? Who would be stupid enough to kidnap him?

His mother was a hero of the empire. A highly decorated captain, she featured prominently in the empire's propaganda as an example of the ideal citizen.

Whoever had kidnapped him had just made themselves a target of the empire.

Over the next eternity, feeling slowly started to come back to his extremities. Flexing his fingers, he confirmed that the drug was wearing off. However, with the receding effects of the drugs he came to realise that he was strapped down. Something else wasn't quite right, but Alinafe couldn't quite work out what it was.

He slowly wriggled and wormed, testing the limits of his bindings. There was very little give in the straps holding him in place, but the limited movement seemed to speed up his recovery from the drug. With great effort, he finally managed to open his eyes.

The room started off blurrier than usual, but quickly returned to normal. He still needed his glasses to see clearly, but could still make out most of the stuff in the room.

He appeared to be in a normal hospital room, filled with various monitors and pieces of medical equipment. Some of it was even already connected to him. Following the cables back to his body, he saw at least four straps holding his body and legs down with two more on his wrists. That was when he saw the issue that had been niggling at him earlier.

He was completely naked.

"So you're finally awake."

It was little more than a whisper, coming from behind his bed. The voice was most definitely feminine, but it was impossible to tell anything else about the speaker.

"Don't you know who I am?" demanded Alinafe. "My mother is Captain Pretorius. The entire empire will be on the lookout for me. You can't get away with this."

"Quite the contrary, my dear child, we already have gotten away with this."

Stepping around the bed and into his eye line, Alinafe could finally get a look at his captor. She was slightly shorter than his 6' 4", but not by much, with her platinum blond hair tied up into ponytail. However, the most striking thing about her was her military uniform.

"Let me explain." the military figure stated, using a patronising tone that would put most teachers to shame, "I am General Yount, and the only reason I'm even here is because of your mother; because she disobeyed orders. Something about not wanting to use orbital bombardment weapons on defenceless civilians. So she must be punished. Now, her position stops us from punishing her directly, but we can punish her indirectly. You father has been sent off to fight in a penal legion. However, we have a worse fate planned for you. You will become one of our living computers."

With that she walked over to the door and knocked. Alinafe was reeling. The penal legions were practically a death sentence, with worse weapons and armour than the militia of even the poorest of the rim worlds. But his fate was unknown. Living computers were an urban legend. Said to be the key to military's ability to holdover the empire. The only thing that Alinafe had ever seen to suggest that they were real was a box being escorted by twenty armed guards onto a new class of starship that his mother had been unveiling.

So lost in his thoughts, Alinafe only noticed that someone else had entered the room when she started speaking in a flat tone that almost sounded bored.

"Alinafe Pretorius, designated unit X25647-S56985-B56246, to undergo the living computer transcendence. Please hold still."

The speaker was a doctor, or at the very least trying to dress like one. She was wearing the usual doctor scrubs, but also carried a pistol at her hip and had police issue armour covering not only her vital areas but also everything that would normally be exposed skin. This was the full void suit version, designed to rely completely on internal oxygen. It was only ever used in situations where lots of toxic substances were expected to be encountered.

The doctor was carrying a tablet in one hand and a tray in the other. She was currently reading off the tablet, before smiling and putting it down on the foot of his bed. She picked up a large syringe that seemed to be filled with a silvery liquid that Alinafe didn't recognise off the tray that she was carrying.

"What... what are you going to do with that?" Alinafe tried to demand, fear flooding into his system. The doctor didn't respond, the mask that she was wearing hiding her emotions, if she even had any. Alinafe started to thrash, trying to escape from his bonds.

The doctor continued to advance until she was stood right beside him. From there she casually leaned down and jabbing him with the syringe, fully depressing the plunger and stepping back quickly.

After that the doctor and general quickly left, as if escaping from a room that also contained a dangerous animal, leaving the syringe stick in his neck. However, Alinafe didn't have enough time to wonder why, as pain started to lance through his body. Muscles contracting, he convulsed violently, even managing to snap some of the restraints.

Alinafe screamed.

Alinafe sat in the corner of the room. It had been over a week since he had been captured and injected with ... something. In that time he had only seen the one guard who gave him food three times a day. No one else had come to visit him or to run any tests.

Having quickly run out of things to do, he quickly settled into a routine of eat and then feel sorry for himself.

That routine was interrupted when the door to his room was flung open. In stepped General Yount and the mysterious doctor. The doctor had removed her body armour, but was still wearing a surgical mask over her face, obscuring her identity.

"Are you sure that he's ready for these tests, doctor?" asked Yount.

"I am. If you look at his right forearm you will see the first sign of the transcendence." Came the doctor's response.

Yount reached down and yanked at Alinafe's right arm, inspecting it. Just as quickly as she grabbed it, she let go, a predator's smile on her face. Looking at his own arm, Alinafe quickly saw what she had seen, there was a small patch where instead of his ebony skin there were small, crimson scales. Reaching out to touch them, he found that they felt like metal, but still sent response to his brain as if it was normal skin.

"Enough time exploring, X25647." Came the suddenly demanding voice of the doctor. "You need to come with us. We have tests to do."

"My name is Alinafe Pretorius."

"Not anymore it isn't."

Before Alinafe had a chance to object further, two guards came in and hauled him onto his feet. They practically carried him through the facility, still naked, although there was no one else to see him in such a state. The facility itself was a maze, and Alinafe quickly found himself lost.

Before long, he was being dragged into a room which looked like a gym, except for all of the medical equipment. Alinafe was quickly shoved into the room, before having the guards level their weapons at him and stepping backwards.

The doctor quickly followed, but Yount seemed to have disappeared.

"We're going to test your progress," explained the doctor. "To do that we need to assess your physical strength, speed and stamina."

The doctor then proceeded to hook Alinafe up to the machines at the first station, a set of weights.

Alinafe had never been an active person, have the almost stereotypical nerd look of being as thin a rail, and looking quite spindly because of his height. Due to this fact, he never really took part in any sports and had never done well in any physical assessment before.

Despite this fact, he was now capable of lifting his own body weight, and as they cycled on to the later stations, he found that he could now sprint faster than some Olympic runners and could then go on to outlast some of the soldiers at the bleep test.

Once the tests were done, he walked up to the doctor, ignoring the rifles getting raised at him.

"How the fuck am I capable of doing all of that." He demanded from her.

"It's the formula we gave you." She explained, sounding exasperated. She probably had to explain this a lot. "The best way for us to track your progress at this stage is to see how well your physical abilities improve over the coming weeks. Now come on, we need to get you back into holding, someone else will need to use this room soon."

With that statement, the soldiers led him out of the room and back into the maze of corridors.

He was changing. The doctor had just confirmed it. But even without that confirmation, he could see the effects with his own eyes. He could now do physical feats that were beyond him just a week ago. And the physical change couldn't be ignored either. It looked and felt metal, yet still responded like skin.

Alinafe was jolted out of his thoughts as the soldiers escorting him came to a stop. They had come to a heavily reinforced door, which the soldiers struggled to open. Once they had it open, they shoved him inside and let the door swing shut. Alinafe could hear the bolts scraping as the door was shut, then nothing but silence.

His new cell was completely blank. There was nothing on the walls or the ceiling, not even a window or computer monitor. The only thing in the whole room was a bed.

Alinafe collapsed against the wall, sliding down until he was sat on the floor. He now felt like the prisoner that he was.

It had now been about three months since he had been captured. In that time, he had been taken for physical assessments once a week, watching as he first matched and then surpassed Olympic athletes.

At the same time, his transformation had continued. What was once a small patch of metallic skin had spread, turning his whole right arm into a crimson scaled copy that was entirely metal. The metallic scales continued halfway across his chest and back, with one wing about the size of his forearm growing from his back.

His mental facilities seem to have been growing as well. He was now capable of tracking the time accurately, even without a reference point. The doctor had also started testing his mental faculties. She could put almost any equation in front of him and he would solve it, and he could perfectly recall anything since he had been given the injection.

And his next test was due to start in three...

Two...

One...

Right on schedule, the bolts holding the door shut scraped and the door was heaved open.

In stepped the doctor and an unexpected guest. General Yount was accompanying the doctor for the first time since X25647's first physical test.

No. Not X25647. Alinafe. Alinafe Pretorius.

"He looks hideous like that." Commented Yount.

"They all look hideous at this stage of conversion," replied the doctor, as if Alinafe wasn't there. "I'm interested to see what he becomes. Most take after a mammalian species of some kind. It's refreshing to see some variation."

"That doesn't really matter though. Let's see how this test goes."

"Right, the test. X25647, we will no longer be performing the physical tests now that your spine has started conversion. From now on it will just be the mental tests."

That surprised Alinafe. He didn't think that the tests would stop so soon.

The tests started the same way they had in the previous session. The doctor would hold up a card with an increasingly complex equation on it and Alinafe would answer it. This would repeat until Alinafe couldn't answer a question, heralding the end of that day's tests.

It took longer than previously this time though, as the doctor had started back at the beginning in what seemed to be an attempt to impress Yount. That didn't stop the general from smirking when he finally did get one wrong though. The doctor seemed to be eager to carry on though.

"Now for the next stage of this test," she started, with hints of what might be glee sneaking into her voice. "I want you to turn this on."

She produced a phone.

X25647 reached out to take to phone, only to have it yanked out of his reach.

"Turn it on without touching it." Chastised the doctor.

That threw Alinafe for a minute. How could he turn it on without touching it? Was it voice command? If it was, what was the activation phrase? He could try guessing it, but there was no guaranty that voice control was even turned on. That was when he remembered the doctor's comments from earlier. The conversion had reached his spine, but he wasn't losing the feeling in any of his limbs, which means that it must have been replaced by something other than a solid lump of metal. Something like a computer.

It was worth a shot. Focusing as hard as he could on the phone, he tried to beam the word "On" to the phone, but nothing happened. Maybe the word wouldn't be enough. He tried to dredge up everything he could think of to create a concept of "On", and tried to beam that concept to the phone. The phone suddenly flashed to life.

"Well done," exclaimed the doctor, "you got that faster than most subjects. I'll leave you to explain his new role to him, General. The guards will be with you the entire time."

X25647 had gotten so used to the guards that he hardly ever saw them anymore.

"Thank you, Doctor Smith." Yount watched as the doctor left the room before turning to face Alinafe. "Your new role is simple, you will calculate jumps for the military."

"Why? Normal computer are perfectly capable of calculating jumps." Retorted X25647.

"Of one lightyear," snapped Yount, "with a large amount in inaccuracy. A ship can be up to a whole light day away from their planned destination if they jump a light year with a normal supercomputer. To arrive accurately, a jump of only a few light minutes is needed. This is impractical. We need a way for ships to jump many light years in one go and still remain pinpoint accurate in order to keep our edge. Normal supercomputers can't do this. Only living computers like you can. You will be assigned to a military ship and act as its jump computer.

"You currently aren't capable of the calculations needed to perform in that role," she continued, "but that will come in time." She began to leave. "Oh, one more thing, this room is a faraday cage, you can't connect to any computers outside of this room. Sleep well." And with that, Yount left, the door slamming shut behind her.

It had been a year since X25647 had been captured, and his transformation was finally complete. He had become a dragon. His body had warped and twisted, until he could only support himself on all four of his limbs. The crimson scales had continued to spread, until they now covered his entire body, including his new tail. His face had pushed out into a muzzle, but he couldn't open his mouth anymore.

The testing had really fallen off since the third time he had seen Yount, down to just once a month. Then other changes started to sneak into the regime that they forced him into. They had stopped feeding him six months ago. The last time he had felt a need to drink had been three months ago.

And now he was apparently ready to take up his new role of ship's computer. Twenty armed guards had appeared escorting box that was big enough to fit him. Before his transformation he would have been as tall as many of his guards, if not taller. Now, he was only rose up to their hips at best.

The doctor followed the guards in, but the general didn't appear to be with her this time.

"Be quick Doctor Livingstone. The crew will be boarding soon." One of the guards demanded, their voice being distorted by electronics in their mask."

"Yes, sorry. I'm just always speechless when I see this one. I've never seen one of the subjects become a dragon before."

The doctor stepped forwards, producing a syringe much like the one she had used a year before, only empty this time. She quickly stabbed X25647 with it and pulled out the plunger. When she pulled back he could see that the syringe was filled with a liquid that was mostly red, but quickly turning silver.

"No!" he screamed, his whole body vibrating to produce the noise in absence of a mouth and vocal cords. "You will not use me to turn someone else." Turning to pounce at the doctor, he was stopped by the sound of twenty guns being cocked.

"This one still has some spirit," chuckled one of the guards, "but that will go soon. Now get in the box."

With all of the guns being aimed at him, he had no choice but to climb in. The box was quickly sealed, leaving the glowing green orbs that functioned as his eyes as the only source of light. The box shuddered as it started moving, likely taking him to a nearby space elevator. Assuming that he hadn't been take too far from his home of Birmingham, Paris would be the nearest space elevator. However that one was purely civilian, so he wasn't going to be taken there. The nearest elevator connected to a military shipyards was the Vienna one, which made it his most likely destination.

Assuming that he hadn't already been taken to the other side of the planet.

The trip took ten hours in total. There was a faraday cage built into the box, preventing him from connecting to any external computer, ensuring that he couldn't do anything for the entire trip. He heard raised voices at one point, but no gunfire, so there couldn't have been any major problems with his transit.

Eventually, all of the clanging of moving him around finally stopped. Had they finally reached their destination?

The cover being pulled off of his box confirmed that they had, with his glowing green eyes quickly adjusting to the light. Out of habit, he tried to reach out, to find any computers that he could access, not expecting to find anything. However, he did manage to find one computer that he could access, and quickly sifted through all of the data that it contained.

It didn't tell him much.

All that he really learnt was that he was on the courier ship L582BG9, a ship so insignificant that it didn't even warrant a name. He would spend the rest of his life, however long that was, flying this ship throughout the empire, delivering the military information that it needed to hold itself together.

"Move!" shouted one of the soldiers, and X25647 complied, stepping out of the box that they had used to transport him. The ship's interior was a classic military design, tight corridors to maximise the useable mass of the ship, with lots of handles to help personnel manoeuvre in the microgravity of orbit and the zero gravity of deep space.

Civilian ships made use of centrifuge sections to simulate the effects of gravity, but those sections acted as vulnerabilities on a warship, so the crews had to live, work and exercise without gravity to help them.

The solders led him through the ship, which didn't take very long due to the compact nature of a courier. They brought him to the centre of the ship where they forced open a door just like the one of the cell that he had spent most of the last year in. Only instead of a decent size room with a bed, he was presented with a cupboard. Stepping in, the solders closed and bolted the door, leaving him in complete darkness.

He preceded to try and access various ship systems, and found limited success. He could access internal and external sensors, allowing him to see everything that was taking place inside and outside the ship and run diagnostics on the ship. However, he couldn't send instructions to any part of the ship except the jump drive, and even then there was a diagnostic computer connected to it that he couldn't access, making sure that he did everything right.

As he watched his crew start to board the ship, which might as well be his new body, he came to a crushing realisation. He was within arm's reach of being completely free to go wherever he wanted and do whatever he wanted, and yet he was one of the most enslaved beings in the galaxy.