Page 4 of Designation Prey

Liam’s in medical ten minutes later. They’ve been waiting for him, a nurse hovering around the intake desk, and an extra guard in the corner of the room. He doesn’t know the night nurse on duty, but she must know him because she buzzes him back and tells him to go to room three.

The medical ward is fairly quiet.Most of the patients are seen during the day, and anyone seriously hurt will be transferred off base to a better equipped medical facility. A light flickers overhead as he walks down the hall and passes an empty nurses’ station with the computers all turned off.

The door to room three is open and he peers inside. There’s no one in there. Room three stinks of blood and misery and hasn’t been cleaned yet. There’s bloody gauze on a tray, and a pile of used stitch kits.

“Commander Stone,” Dr. Chang declares, sounding relieved. “Good. We’re over here. A clean room with a bit more privacy.” He looks tired. Is it the patient that’s exhausted him, or the fact that it’s the middle of the night? Probably both.

“Patient is a submissive who is designationally off the charts and very difficult. Well, the circumstances surrounding him are difficult; I don’t think he actually is.” He shrugs and puts his hand in his pocket then realizes there’s blood all over his jacket. “Sorry, it’s late. I’m not speaking clearly. I’m at my wit’s end with this one. Well, with the whole damned situation, if I’m being honest. But you didn’t hear me say that.”

“Okay,” he says, curiosity already piqued. He’s become friendly with Dr. Chang over the last couple of years and has found him to be calm and competent. Finding him frazzled and annoyed about a patient is a new one.“What can you tell me about the patient?”

He sighs and closes his eyes for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. His gaze flicks around the empty hallway to make sure no one is listening. “He’s got a complicated presentation. Probably one of the most unusual I’ve ever seen.”

Liam doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. Chang is an expert on submissive health. Soldiers are flown from all over the country to see him, and he thought the doctor would have seen it all. “Wow. Okay.”

“You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. He’s just about as submissive as you can get. Which is rare nowadays but not impossible.”

“I’ve handled very submissive soldiers.”

“I know. That’s where he started. Since he became submissive, he’s had an incredible amount of experimental treatment performed upon him, all of it attempting to correct his submission. From surgeries to brainwashing, conversion therapies, and drugs. Any agency that had a treatment lying around they wanted to try out, this poor boy was an available guinea pig. Frankly, if you told me his father hated him and did this to torture him, I’d believe it. Everything they did just made him worse.”

His curiosity intensifies. The submissive designation isn’t new. And it isn’t reversible. God knows the military has tried to fix the problem over the years and it always ends badly. Policy nowadays is to leave the soldiers alone whenever possible.

“Unless there’s some radical new treatment I don’t know about, what’s done is done. You can’t unbake a cake and get it back to separate ingredients, and you can’t unmake a submissive. I thought the science was pretty settled.”

“I haven’t heard the cake analogy in a while. I try not to use metaphors because they are imprecise, but this poor boy….”

Liam is pretty sure he knows where the doctor is going with this, but raises an eyebrow in interest anyway, wanting to hear his take on the submissive he’s about to meet. “Go on?”

Dr. Chang sighs. “Sure. Why not? I find this example trivializing and unscientific, but I understand the appeal. And I actually tried telling this to his father. I was so desperate to get my point across—not that it made any difference,” he says, and then takes a deep breath. “Before the designation process, a soldier is basically clay. He goes through the designation process and he emerges as a durable plate. Microwave safe, dishwasher safe, can withstand various temperatures, shatterproof, etc. Further modifications to get a better plate weaken the creation. You get chips, cracks, and if the plate breaks, then a very good glue can be used to piece it back together, but it will never be as strong as it was in the first iteration. Just like you can see where the plate is broken, we can see where further attempts are made upon the body and the DNA to alter the soldier, and the improvements aren’t there. It isn’t possible. Once you get the plate, you have to accept the plate and move on.

“This poor boy has the unfortunate honor of being the son of a very high-ranking military official who does not like the word no. It’s clear no one has told him no in a long time. He also appears to hate plates and wishes his son had been a cup. So he has smashed him to pieces and glued him into something and it’s not worked. At all. And the plate might believe he is a cup or could be a cup.” Dr. Chang glares at him. “Do you perhaps see why I dislike using metaphors for people? He is a person and deserves respect and to be accepted for who he is. He isn’t a disposable piece of crockery.” He shakes his head, running out of words.

“Who is his father?”

“General Burrows.”

Liam whistles. “That’s unfortunate. I met him once. I think he’s a psychopath. And I mean that he literally meets the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy.”

“Right. You know a majority of political leaders, CEOs, and those in charge of the military are typically psychopaths. And this poor boy did what his father wanted by joining the military and becoming enhanced. He was turned into a submissive, which was unacceptable to his father. Every time he undergoes a new treatment, he’s worse. It isn’t just physical issues that we’re dealing with now but mental. You’ll see his file and the things they did to him, and I can tell you that every time you see a glowing report about the potential and progress, that it was a lie. If anything worked at all it was temporary. I think it’s abuse. He could probably sue. Drugs, surgeries, psychological interventions—you name it, he’s endured it. Everything that has been attempted on this young man didn’t do a thing beyond making him incredibly unstable.”

“So what has changed that has resulted in us having this conversation right now?”

“His father has had a stroke and is in the hospital in a medically induced coma. His son’s care defaults to me until the general is able to make decisions again.”

“The son can’t make them?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Too submissive. His father arranged for me to be his conservator.”

Liam grunts in annoyance. If a soldier is too submissive to manage their own life, then they shouldn’t be allowed to serve. “I hate that. Either a submissive is mentally competent or he isn’t, but a conservator and active service shouldn’t both be allowed.”

“Exactly. And in my expert opinion,” Dr. Chang says, voice shaking with anger, “what Private Burrows needs is to be left alone and allowed to be himself. He needs time to heal.”

“Right. So I’m here because Daddy Warbucks can’t say no to you calling me in?”

“Yup. And the moment he’s back I have no idea what will happen, but my hope is that Daniel will be evened out and happy enough that his father’s heart will grow two sizes larger and he’ll just let him exist. Get him out of the military and settled with his owner.”

“Owner?” Liam asks, surprised at the word choice.

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