Kā has had a good run of leaving trashed and torched NESTS bases in his wake; quietly making the world a better, megalomaniac-free, place to live from the shadows. But when youāve made a track record of that without breaking much of a sweat? You start to get cocky. And cockiness leads to mistakes. Mistakes like getting captured.
The smart thing for whatever NESTS remnant(s) captured him to do would be to kill the cartelās biggest traitor. Instead, itās payback time for this particular renegade creation of theirs...
Theyāre going to completely strip Kā of the freedom and autonomy he fought so hard for.
Activating Program 70599 wonāt do; it still has too many kinks to be ironed out, and is still only fit to be used in bursts, besides. Instead heās relentlessly tortured, drugged, and brainwashed - sometimes all three at once - for months on end. Until eventually, inevitably, he breaks. His memory, so fractured and fragile to begin with, erodes away completely. He remembers nothing; is nothing. Just a freshly blanked slate for NESTS to reprogram as they see fit.
They decide to make him their attack dog, sending him specifically after the very people heād turned traitor alongside. As well as those heād unknowingly inspired to rebel from afar, or people otherwise presenting themselves as nuisances to NESTSā efforts to rebuild.
Speaking to him - pleading - will yield nothing. No response. No change in blank expression... nothing. People once friends are now merely targets to be eliminated. Heās essentially been reduced to little more than an order taking doll. Even outside of those missions heās a shell of the person he once was. He barely talks unless itās to acknowledge an order, and wonāt do anything unless ordered, sometimes including even the more mundane things like eating.
He even seems to avoid sleeping, but this is probably the only conscious self-made decision he makes outside of making snap judgements in combat. To sleep is to invite nightmares of people and things that inexplicably make his chest tighten and ache to the point he canāt breathe, and his skull to throb so hard and painful itās threatening to split at the seams. He doesnāt understand why this keeps happening and what it means, but it scares him. So as a result, sleep is eluded for as long as physically possible.
Perhaps this means thereās hope for him yet; that thereās still some tiny fragment of him buried alive under all that subliminal programming?
As a side note, I think would be interesting to explore Islaās thoughts on such a situation, whether she was the one that brought him to this, or was contacted by another sect of NESTS agents and put in charge of him. If itās the latter, maybe sheād come to realise that this is... wrong? Or at least, not at all what she wanted in terms of revenge; that such a victory is as hollow as the new look in Kāās eyes. Cuz I imagine ordering him to wait on her hand and foot is amusing af for the first couple of weeks but then itās just.... vaguely uncomfortable? Or just not as fun as it should be for some reason? ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ Idk if thatās something thatād ever cross the trashbabyās thoughts, but I think itās an interesting show of character growth imo.
