Medical officer Lieutenant Alan Marshal stood behind the heat-tempered observation glass and looked at Hunter’s resting form. Although the soldier seemed to be sleeping peacefully, a storm was brewing behind his tranquil countenance. The tangle of two hundred and fifty-six electrodes and wires attached to his head showed that he was suffering both a migraine and an epileptic seizure simultaneously. Yet there was no external sign at all. Marshal shook his head. Alex Hunter was both medical miracle and mystery. Hunter was the US Army’s first super-enhanced warrior – part of a special military project codenamed Arcadian. The army wanted to know how this soldier could be so quick, so strong and heal so quickly. Alex Hunter was the project’s only success; all attempts to surgically or chemically reproduce his abilities had been an abject failure.

Marshal looked through the records he held in his hand. Several years ago on a clandestine military mission in northern Chechnya, Captain Hunter had been wounded by a single bullet to the head – he’d been as good as dead. His commanding officer, Major Jack Hammerson, had brought Hunter’s comatose body back home. There were two options: watch the young man wither away to a shrunken grey wraith as he lay trapped within his own body; or try something different . . . something experimental. And so Alex Hunter was entered in the Arcadian program. Two weeks later, Hunter opened his eyes, sat up, smiled and said he felt fine. He was more than fine; he was a new type of human being.

Marshal pulled an X-ray of Alex’s skull from the file, holding it up to the light so he could see the small dark mass at its centre. The projectile was still there, but instead of causing a mass of surrounding damage as expected, it – perhaps in combination with the treatment – had triggered a range of physical and mental changes that had astounded the scientists. There was evidence of significant rerouting of blood to Hunter’s midbrain, the area largely responsible for selecting, mapping and cataloguing information. It was also the primary powerhouse of endocrine functions, which controlled responses to pain, and the release of adrenalin and natural steroids. The flush of extra blood into this relatively unresearched area of the brain triggered massive electrical activity, waking new or long dormant abilities. The young man’s agility, speed, strength and mental acuity had increased off the scale – all beneficial side effects that hadn’t been fully expected.

But as the changes to the soldier continued, it became clear that some were not so beneficial. And some worried the scientists immensely. A foot constantly jammed on an accelerator usually resulted in the engine overheating – or exploding. In Hunter’s case, his acceleration meant he sometimes experienced bouts of rage that were barely controllable; furies that boiled within him, barely chained by his will. It wasn’t yet fully understood whether the rage fuelled his enormous strength and speed, or if it was the complete opposite: his strength and other abilities, when they reached their peak, ignited the rages.