X4-44 is a serious looking synth, but with a soft heart.

~~~

With outstanding techniques, splendid way of thinking and great battle skills, Courser X4-44 had made his way into the Scientist’s expectations, truly one of the promising Coursers the Institute had made.

When he had his last training, every Scientist was shivering in excitement on how he would handle being outside the Commonwealth. Eventually, briefing him on his first mission; Retrieve a loose Gen 3 synth.

~~~

“He is defective!“ Furious and angry, was the first words X4 had heard when he came back... Without the targeted synth. “Put this junk back and reprogram ‘em! Now!“

The mission was clearly a failure... There were blood all over him. It wasn’t his, but the synth’s.

“It was... Terrible...” He thought to himself as he made his way to the Robotics room, together with the Scientists assigned to reprogram him. “Will this be... The same? Over... And over again?”

He should have known from the start, but he never imagined it would be this physically and mentally devastating.

~~~

Reset, reprogrammed and trained again, leaving the memories of his failed missions, maybe he might learn from that, the Scientists thought.

“Why bring the synths back if things like these happen in the Institute? Programmed, no free will, even slaves.” X4 ends up just taking their lives... With the regrets of not saving instead, haunted him. He can’t let himself do this anymore. This is torture!

As he was sent out again and again, he decided to change tactics; Save his targets as much as possible, place them some place where he thought is safe.

But the scientists are tricky. The moment he was being reprogrammed, they watched the things he saw, learning where he was taking the synths.

When he was sent out again. he discovered that some of the synths he managed to save were taken back, some are dead... It crushed his synthetic heart.

After all of that happened, he decided to work for the Institute with grief.

One of his retrieval mission was to hunt down Ethsbert. He found this synth very unusual so he watched him very carefully and learned, Ethsbert can be the answer to his burden.

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