What the Virus Made

The Seventh Ranger Company was the only one out of the original seven that didn’t go to Korea when the war broke out. While the other six ranger companies formed the tip of the spear and punched a hole through the forces of what is now the North, the Seventh stayed behind at Fort Benning. It was believed that when the other six Ranger Companies disbanded, the seventh did as well. That, however, simply isn’t true.

The Seventh Airborne Ranger company was trimmed down and apparently vanished, but they continued to operate in secrecy. It had been decided that this Ranger Company, now much smaller than it originally was, would be a covert unit. They performed a handful of Black Operations that weren’t meant to go public however, they were being primarily used for undercover reinforcements and recovery on special operations. If an operative for the CIA had their cover was blown, the Seventh Airborne Rangers were considered as an option to extract.

The conditions for those extractions were pretty clear-cut and extremely uncommon- an agent whose cover is blown winds up in a hostile environment and is otherwise unable to escape. Additionally, if an agent with important information was captured, depending on what they knew at the point of containment the Seventh Airborne Rangers were dispatched to assassinate the target. This actually occurred more frequently than what one would first expect..

It wasn’t until the Gulf War that the Seventh Airborne Rangers began to see significant use. Often they were the underline to the movements of the army- a covert advance force that moved quietly and cleared Iraqi scouts while themselves acting as scouts. They were very efficient. There is a reason Rangers are called the ‘Tip of the Spear’, and the Seventh was as sharp as they came.

The United States Military hadn’t grown out of its habit of conducting secret and unethical experiments on their own. The previous decades had seen several of these tests performed on sailors, soldiers, pilots and unknowing civilians. The operatives of the seventh were not exempt from this, and the particular experiment itself has never been declassified. Any evidence of tampering with their physical or mental condition is not present in their combat reports. They performed optimally as they always did. Aside from some of the more intensive psychological damage and a few physical injuries, the soldiers of the secret seventh never experienced from their experiment, whatever it was.

Some details escaped the lips of those in the know, but not enough to put together exactly what happened. A strange mixture which contained an unknown virus was slipped into their routine vaccinations before they were deployed, and that virus was based on research done with the HIV vaccine. The virus itself was extradimensional in origin, and the research with HIV was apparently to complete its damaged RNA sequence to give it a method of transmission. The Virus is essentially an STD. That’s what the source says.

A cautious overview of the individuals who were infected with this lead to a tracking of their medical history. As there were no females in the Seventh, no females were ever inoculated with this virus. As a result there only exists information for male carriers. Nothing observable that could be confirmed as an effect of the Virus transpired at any point in their lives from birth to death. Instead, it is believed that the children of these characters were the beneficiaries of the effects of this rather peculiar retrovirus.

Henceforth, this will focus on the children of the carriers. There were thirty-nine children altogether. Some displayed enhanced traits from birth, some manifested in puberty, some never showed any signs. In one particular set of seven, the children displayed incredible healing abilities, even being able to revive themselves from total death caused by heavy damage. Tests on this set revealed that the ability had alarming effectiveness. As long as the subject remained mostly intact, they would spring back to life.

There were very specific caveats and limitations to this trait. Regeneration could not take place in these individuals as long they were suffering sustained physical trauma. Mental state seemed to play a role in the speed of the regeneration after sustaining trauma, but the set was too small a sample to be able to thoroughly test how various conditions would affect it over a broad range. Repeatedly damaging the same area in a consistent manner would eventually lead to the formation of irregular scar tissue. The scar tissue was hard and metallic in nature. This scar tissue was very difficult to cut through or damage again without significant time and effort dedicated to it.

Despite developing metallic scars, the subjects were not innately magnetic. Further inspection of this substance revealed that it was a composite of iron found in blood, and ultradense chitin with no biological basis for appearing on a human body. Subjects were prone to acute anemia when the metal scars formed on their body, and further examination shows metallic tumors began to take root on the interior of their body. Of this first set, no subjects survived.

The second set of ten subjects healed, but much more slowly. These subjects were not capable of resurrection. They healed even while sustaining damage however, and the metallic scar tissue developed immediately upon being wounded. They also had a peculiar deformation of the chest- they had a large plate and no ribs. The plate itself, without being acted upon at all, was the same iron-chitin composite that we found in their scar tissue. Breaking through their chests took tremendous time and effort- they were resistant to gunfire and standard operating tools, but they did not resist industrial mining equipment.

On these subjects it seemed the chest had developed to protect the heart for unknown reasons. Further experimentation showed nothing unusual about the state of the hearts of these subjects. These subjects also seemed to demonstrate a very specific form of Empathetic Sense. As the experiments progressed certain staff had to be pulled from the program, as the subjects were able to detect feelings of guilt and began to make emotional appeals to them. Certain staff attempted to free the subjects, but were eliminated alongside those subjects. The remaining subjects died during testing.

The third set consisted of another ten. Nine of these subjects possessed no obvious physical advantages, but had a slew of heart-related problems. It was assumed that the tenth was going to be the same, but that was not the case. The tenth specimen seemed to have bioluminescent eyes and night blindness. Compared to the previous subjects the tenth specimen’s healing ability was weak, but it was still far above a normal human. Bone fractures were healed in under a day, as a reference.

The tenth subject also possessed greater empathic powers. It was able to identify any staff with a negative state of mind, as well as the specific emotions they felt. Moreover, in its presence those staff seemed to be alleviated of emotional ailes. There was evidence to suggest that it was even capable of curing psychological damage by being in the vicinity of other staff, but it was at this point the experiment was interrupted and the majority of information this particular subject as well as its set, and the previous sets, was lost.

The exact details are unknown. The tenth subject eventually escaped the facility and was confirmed at that point to be the sole survivor of its set. During its escape, it apparently enlisted aid from sympathetic staff to assist in the ransacking of the facility and destruction of relevant records. The identities of the remaining nine children were lost, as well as the identity and origin of the tenth subject. While the identities of the nine were quickly re-established, their locations were not. Leads on subject ten are still being pursued.