#boredandblank

Whatever he is, it’s not human anymore.

The strangest thing about the progression of the Technocyte Plague is how, even as it makes its presence clear, tearing through the back of his mind, working its way through his thoughts and filling his head with its buzzing – it’s almost too easy to miss it as it happens.

Not… it’s not like it’s imperceptible.

All he has to do is turn his head to see just what it’s been doing to him. His flesh has slowly become chitinous, the alteration pricking at his nerves and weaving between the layers of his skin, too cool to the touch. He’s noticed, thank you, and weeks of getting accustomed to it have done nothing to dull the spike of dread that sweeps through him when he thinks about it too long.

Hayden Tenno is not a coward.

But he would have to be stupid not to fear this.

They’re subtle, some of the shifts. But he notices. He doesn’t feel hunger anymore, not like he did. That he is even in a position to miss the feeling of hunger rankles; he would hardly have considered it a favorite experience. But at least, he thinks, with the kind of angry helplessness that accompanies a situation like this, at least it was a sensory experience he had.

But while he may not feel hunger, the virus that is claiming him does.

He feels it: not like a yawning pit in his stomach, but intuitively. Celldeep. It’s not localized; it’s everywhere. Something writhing just beneath his skin, in the marrow of his bones, making it difficult to focus.

A fathomless, pitch-black want.

It’s almost primal on cursory examination. It’s simple, base, the way a plant’s roots seek the earth. Hayden is almost hesitant to examine it closer, doesn’t want to know what, if anything, lays beyond that patina. He scrubs rough hands against his face, trying to ease the tremor in his fingers, to alleviate the cinderblock pressure behind his eyes. He’s not hungry. He hasn’t been thirsty. He hasn’t been tired but he’s been exhausted and he does not want to know.

But you need to. The operative in him is adamant.

So he works up the nerve to focus on his subconscious. Once, going there had meant facing the disappointed voices of people he’d let down; once, it meant acknowledging the soul-deep guilt and the red on his hands, the constant, deep-seated anxiety. Now, though, that has been drowned out by (subsumed into?) something far worse. Even as he picks his way through debris, he focuses.

And that something is anything but base.

It’s…

He’s not alone inside his skin.

(When it was just him, abandoned, just Hayden and the fresh revelation that this was the rest of his life, he had wanted nothing more than not to be alone. Twenty-nine years of being closed-off and introverted and antisocial and all he could think of was how much he didn’t want to suffer this alone.

This isn’t what he’d meant.)

Hayden understands that the plague is mutagenic, adaptable. He knows that it is, for all intents and purposes, cleverly engineered to tear through its host with an almost strategic impunity.

What he realizes when he strains to listen, though, is that this is something entirely different.

This is sophisticated.

It is intelligent.

He understands.

(He wishes, so badly, that he was alone.)

It’s too open out here for this. Hackles raised and skin prickling with alarm, he’s overcome by the urge to find cover – and how stupid is that, when the thing he is seeking cover from is all but a part of him now? But instinct wins out over reason and he all but throws himself through the doorway of a long-abandoned structure with boarded up windows, slams his back to the wall, sinks into a corner, puts a hand on his gun–

Don’t panic. He thinks it before he even realizes that that’s what’s happening. Don’t panic. Focus.

He thinks, with an almost manic detachment, that his tremors have gotten worse. Digging his nails into his palms has historically done nothing for him; he tries it anyway. His tongue feels leaden in his mouth. He tries regulating his breathing. In through his nose, out through his mouth, slowly, evenly…

Can – it sense fear?

(He can understand it. He couldn’t understand it before.)

(It pounds through his skull like a migraine. Staccato, unrelenting.)

(He thinks, vaguely, that for anyone else this would be agonizing.)

(We are a vessel for all that lives. We transcend mortality through amalgamation.)

(Ours to subsume. Yours to succumb.)

(Assimilate.)

He is afraid.

Focus, Tenno. Concentrate. This is just another enemy. What do you know?

Even as he wills himself to his feet, his gait unsteady and breathing a touch too shallow, he laughs, humorless. When he places a palm on the crumbling doorjamb, ready to push himself forward again, he stumbles, crashes to the ground. Grit on his tongue. A fresh scrape on the palm that is still flesh and blood. He feels lightheaded, lost. He feels untethered.

His head hurts.

(His head hurts? That isn’t right.)

He bites out a curse.

Get up. You’re better trained than this. His voice of reason sounds far away, but Hayden scrapes himself together as best as he can. He didn’t endure RTI training to come apart at the seams here. Pain is nothing to him; fear is where his weakness lies, and uncertainty lies at the root of that.

So what does he know?

That he is the host of one of the most insidious viruses imaginable. That it is highly contagious and has no cure.

That every other victim on record died a miserable, excruciating death. That the virus robbed them of their identities, their thinking capabilities. That it stripped them down into husks and continued to shuffle their corpses around even after they couldn’t hold on anymore.

His fingers trail to the holster at his side, even as he realizes what little good it does.  

That he is still here, days, weeks after even the longest lasting person on file, and he does not know what comes next.

That this entire time, the plague has been sentient, and clawing at his psyche until he cracks – but he is already thoroughly fractured, and he has to focus to really feel the blows. They are at an impasse, fighting for control of his body.

He doesn’t think he wants to be at an impasse with an opponent like this.

But it isn’t like he’s unfamiliar with impossible odds.

Hayden releases a long breath, clenching and unclenching his fists to ward off the mild sense of vertigo. He grits his teeth, shakes himself as if he could shed the weight of his anxiety. There may be no saving him, but his fate hasn’t been sealed yet. He’s still himself, whoever that is, even as the infestation consuming him tries to choke him out.

(Succumb, says the myriad-voice in his bones. Revoke your flesh. Succumb.)

“In your dreams,” Hayden grinds out under his breath. He shoves himself to a stand.

He is afraid, yes.

 Hayden has been shot at, many times at this point, but he’s rarely been hit. That’s not his unusually unperceptive genes talking, though: it’s intuition. It’s his natural aptitude for positioning, an observant way about him that borders on superhuman. The latter is something that one of his trainers back in his early days had said, and he’d been so caught off guard by the wry irony of being considered super anything that he had immediately committed it to his memory.

 He is good at dodging bullets, but good isn’t perfect, and that makes all the difference sometimes.

 It always takes him time to catch on, though.

 Obviously there’s a problem. It’s one that’s escaped his notice for the first few minutes (more than that, he must correct himself: blood doesn’t look like that after minutes). The thing is, Hayden only realizes that he may have a problem on his hands when, as he is slipping down into one of the many empty subway tunnels in this ghost town, his left leg refuses to carry his weight through the motion. As soon as he takes that step, his knee buckles underneath him. Startled, he only barely catches himself – throws his weight against the wall to the side he clearly isn’t favoring. Slides down slow, listening for unwanted company. His breath catches in his throat.

 (Of all the possible outcomes for the afternoon. Now? This isn’t the time.)

 The bandages he has in the kit he’s got with him aren’t many, but they aren’t grit-stained and they aren’t damp and so they are worth far more than his long-sleeve could be. He takes the handle of the lightweight case between his teeth, easing himself down with both arms. Now that he’s paying attention, he feels it: the tightness just below the knee, as if his leg was being slowly eased into a hydraulic press. That, to him, is injury: it is a feeling he grew up with, the closest analog he’s got.

 And, there in the daylight seeping into his concrete resting place, he can see it: gunshot wound.

(Through this alley, take this right, had whispered his internal commentary. It really isn’t fair that they get assault rifles and you have an SMG and a knife. Grenades? Out of grenades. Should have packed more grenades. Scale this fence.)

 In hindsight, maybe he had felt a slight jolt in his stride as he had been pelting down the empty streets. Maybe somewhere in the back of his head, somewhere buried in the nonstop thought-rush that comes with high-adrenaline situations, he had realized that he hadn’t escaped unscathed.

(This place is so eerie. Knowing your luck, the data you grabbed will be useless. You don’t know this part of the map, do you? Where is the RV point? They shot you. Find cover. Keep running keep running keep running…)

Historically, it isn’t as if conscientiousness was ever one of his strong suits, anyway. He bites back a swear and swaps the kit in his mouth for his pocket flashlight, already sorting through the contents. Antiseptics. Needle and thread. This part, he knows. The art of the patch-job is a necessity for someone like him, in a dangerous line of work and unable to sense when something has broken. He still manages to feel more disappointed about having to shear away the lower half of his pants – the weather is damp enough as it is.

(This is miserable. Get a change of clothes once you hit the next safe-house. Once you find the next safe-house. How did you get so lost? Weren’t you paying attention? Stupid.)

 The flashlight doesn’t waver when he inspects and cleans the wound. The bullet’s punched through and left a nasty gouge, and along with the dark shine of blood he can already see the swelling, the purpled edges. A strange disconnect happens in the back of his head every time, he thinks. He is aware of the subconscious alarm bells that tell him your leg shouldn’t look like that and you should be very worried, of course, but he’s also aware that those thoughts had to be trained into him. As it stands, his brow is furrowed in concentration, not pain, as he cleans the wound with a clinical hand, as he threads the needle. He feels slightly far away, as if he’s watching someone else.

 The sensation that greets him when he starts a simple ladder stitch is somewhere between a tingle and an itch. The limited range of perception for these kinds of things has irked him at the worst of times, and it’s no different now. He knows how to handle these things. But he also knows that he’ll never be perfect at it: how could he be? Pain perception, both personally and empathetically felt, is irreplaceably vital when it comes to medical treatment.

 (You’d make an awful phlebotomist, in other words. Don’t quit your day job.)

 He bites out a truncated laugh at that. Smothers it an instant later. He’s still bleeding, sluggishly, but less so; he feels a slight featherlightness, a tiredness that probably means his body is none too happy about losing as much blood as he has. He should blame his awful sense of humor on it and move on. His palms are sticky. He wishes he had water on hand.

 He is also, he admits to himself, clipping off the final knot and reaching for the bandages, really, really tired.

 He doesn’t quite remember ever not being tired, either. Maybe that’s just the blood loss talking, though; better to chalk it up to that than to examine his poor life choices too closely. He isn’t trained to drown in his own shame.

 The pressure of the wraps feels good – or, well. As far as good goes, here. It feels secure, although it isn’t a complete fix. It doesn’t take long before red slowly begins seeping through the white fabric, and when he tests his leg, he ends up sliding back down the wall. No, his body is telling him, as best as it can, and he has to accept it. It is literally a bandage over a bullet hole, and he can’t afford to strain the patch job.

 Yet.

 His head makes a muffled thud as he slumps back against the concrete, listens to the distant drip, drip of runoff somewhere deeper in the tunnels, the sound of his own breathing. He ought to sleep; he knows he won’t be able to, though. He can do that once he’s on his feet again, once he reorients himself and gets to his next checkpoint. The pads of his fingers are rough against the  the bandages. Stray fibers catch on the tiny divots of his prints, the callouses and nicks. The price for completion here, for making it back alive, will be new scars and another assignment. Last mission, they’d told him, three missions ago. Last mission, they’ll tell him again, after a round of perfunctory therapy and a couple days of leave. And he’ll accept; of course he will. He’ll always continue the cycle.

 Bandages on bullet wounds. He is hardly a poet, not built for expression.

first off, Hayden Tenno is cynical and dour in a way that feels sharp and fresh - in darkSector, he's in the thick of the Technocyte outbreak and for a lot of it, he's either alone or being used. He's awake and lucid while the plague is eating him from the outside in, and while his congenital analgesia makes him able to bear that, the implication is that the plague still causes pain of a different sort. It's new and it's scary and he is worried, especially before he starts coming to terms with it! Behind enemy lines and expected to keep moving even while infected! Another character also mentions Hayden's psych profile declaring him "not fit for duty" and "psychotic" (both of which I'll take with a grain of salt because (a) Hayden does seem a little distant from the here-and-now at times, and he is reluctant and digs his heels in when told to go do something monumentally risky but he is clever and he adapts well, and (b) bro it's literally the antagonist who says it i dont think he's a bastion of truth and clarity lol). Hayden Tenno has it rough in a very... tragic mercenary kind of way. My guy is out here being angry and traumatized but he doesn't have an operator to balance it out - I know darkSector isn't really canon canon to Warframe, but imagining Hayden's transformation without the hope of the emotional bond that warframes and operators have is like... how lonely. and scary. and he just has to keep going post game? like how would the initial virus eventually render him???

1) Would Hayden’s personality be any different from Khyric’s if he himself was in the game?

I think that if you were to have Hayden Tenno's personality perfectly preserved in a warframe far past the events of his game, then you would have an operator with their work cut out for them. darkSector!Hayden is freshly wounded, he's tenser than anything - on the surface he's cold and disinterested in connection but a savvy operator will be able to feel the anger just roiling underneath that. I'd imagine a Hayden!Excalibur would feel very similar to Valkyr - this intense indignity and lack of direction - but with an added layer of almost apathy. Hayden is tired and pessimistic and he's always had this struggle with morality and I think that his regrets pile on so much that he can't even feel them anymore. recommend 60ccs of stubborn operator compassion and three units of found family, stat

I think that pure Hayden differs from Khyric in that Khyric is a little more reactive, overtly noble, a little more attentive to his surroundings, maybe a little more at ease, even? Khyric is Hayden!Excalibur both (a) after a bit of identity loss following ages of being fully infested, and (b) given the time to settle into himself a little bit. He's still scarred up and negative and full of past regret, but he's been in a partnership with Shinoda long enough that she's helped to lighten him up a bit. Khyric is stoic, a little bitter and a lot stressed about infestation for reasons he doesn't remember so vividly, but I'd imagine easier to wring a smile from, so to speak

2) If not Excalibur, which warframe’s abilities would Hayden have? What was his initial reaction to finding out?

Tough one! I like to think that if he weren't Excalibur-class, he'd likely be some wiry, damage-buffing DPS made for quick strikes and even quicker retreat. In keeping with his analgesia, maybe he'd have an ability wherein his damage and speed increase and he gains a brief resistance to stagger and knockdown effects - it doesn't protect him from injury, but it means that if he can get in and out before whatever he's after kills him, then they're probably dead themselves. No self-heal abilities or anything, for the dramatics. I'm also just barely reading the question correctly, as well, so I think my final answer will be that if Hayden was not an Excalibur-type, maybe he would be more of a Valkyr - just without the immunity and self-heal that Hysteria gives. Very mobile and very fast but very much a glass cannon!

3) Would anything have happened if/when the Technocyte virus fully covered his body?

Hm,, my tentative answer is going to be that once the Technocyte virus fully overcomes him, it both hollows him out inside and pulls his personality into a strange sort of dormancy. We know that on the average person, this infestation is agonizing and, honestly, pretty devastating against its victims - Hayden is unusual because he's able to keep his head even as he's slowly succumbing to it. I don't think full infestation would be able to erase him as a person, but if this proto-virus is anything like the strains we know in Warframe, then it's a virus that likes to communicate with itself. I imagine that Hayden would've ended up trapped in his own skin, hyperaware of the virus the way you are of a bad bout of tinnitus, or your own pulse in your ears when you are very sick. Enough to drive most over the edge, but as an ops guy, and esp. being the way he is, Hayden seems more equipped to just - check out of his current reality. just glazes over. bye hayden

4) Would he be willing to continue going on missions or would he rather have a quiet life on the plains?

I think that Hayden would immediately turn his back on missions and spend a long, glorious stretch of time not caring. Yes, the nightmares persist, and yes, he can feel the dermal layers knit together beneath the armor keenly and they itch, but even with the general lack of comfort he would fully take the opportunity to not have to be watching his back every two seconds, or putting his neck on the line for people he doesn't know because he's had an entire lifetime of that. Retirement for Hayden! ... until his conscience comes back to bite him a month in. Even with how done he is and how ugly and checkered his past, he can't quite seem to shake the need to get up and do something worth doing.

5) Would he prefer going solo on missions and only teaming up with other operators if required or is he more open to co-op?

This question is interesting bc it implies that in this realm of thought, Hayden occupies a very strange space between Warframe and Operator. like, he is both the will and the body it moves. almost like excalibur umbra, but maybe a little harder to copilot with someone as stubborn and present as hayden? Whatever the case, I think that once he comes around to the idea, it would almost come as a relief to him not to have to do everything by himself? he works well alone but that's also exhausting. he'd definitely spend a long time observing prospecive squad members before even thinking of tagging along with a group, though. have to know if they're good for it

6) Does he have any preferred weapon types? Would he favour weaponry from one faction or is he open to all as long as it gets the job done?

I think my main thing is that Hayden does. nnnot strike me as the valiant swordsman, which makes him very strange for an Excalibur. Hayden shoots things, and when he can't he cleaves them in half, and when he can't do that he will bludgeon them. Thrown weapons like kunai or, ofc, glaives are second-nature to him at this point - maybe he, specifically, has his glaive as his exalted weapon? tenno weapons like vectis and braton feel closest to the present-day style of weaponry - something that he would be inherently more familiar with, at least. although i think he would kinda vibe with sentient weapons too. yeah he's down with using the bones of the enemy.

oh and rumblejack. i think he can do some great work with rumblejack. shank and taze. delightful

7) Would he use infested weapons?

This early on, I think he still harbors a distaste for anything infested, but it's the same distaste he holds for his own altered body. So yes, if he needs to, but only after exhausting every possible alternative. He knows too well what it means to weaponize disease.

8) Is there anyone he would get along with in particular and are there any he can’t?

I think that Darvo occupies a space that is very familiar to Hayden. yeah, shady weapons dealer - he knows those. There's probably a comfort in knowing that Darvo is out there doing his thing, because it's very similar to what Hayden was used to during his missions. Prob doesn't hit Mr. Deal himself up just to chat, though. Eudico, too, is very much all strats and here's what's next. Though he might chafe a little when Eudi vents her frustrations at turns in the mission, he acclimates really well to her style and is a seamless operative in no time. I think the thing, though, is that Hayden gravitates toward what he knew until it tries to get closer to him in return - overt familiarity and reaching out will have him shying away really fast. Might be really chill with Ticker though bc Ticker is very matter-of-fact in all she does, and would nail the balancing act between casual interaction and personal concern. might think pedlek is a little funny. on the flip side he would hate alad v literally so bad

9) Would he have a companion? If so, what would it be and what would be its name?