#there's more kind of scattered and most of them like Jack still have lingering trauma

[dimensionalspades]

[ META ] + SEP ( for Jack LMAO )

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@deathsighs

As stated, the program was made as a sort of Hail Mary approach to creating enhanced soldiers to combat the Crisis. Soldiers would be approached about a program, very much lured in by propaganda about an experimental project that could save the world and all that, make them feel like heroes.

The program would put Soldiers into units under a commanding officer, Jack landed in Gabe's unit. The serum was administered in batches; first to unit a, then a week later, unit b, and so on. This meant that the serums would have a small incubation period to check for horrific side effects before moving forward. While there were some things put in place to help with the general strain of the program, this wasn't exactly a water-tight operation due to rushed implementation.

The biggest challenge was that because of the nature of the serum and what it was doing to the soldiers' bodies, there was no real way to predict how it would affect each soldier. So one dose could kill a soldier outright while another had much more mild symptoms.

The weekly injections gave the soldiers some time to recuperate, work out, etc between shots. Life was pretty scheduled in terms of recreational time and mock battles, workouts, etc. Still instilling military values, lots of propaganda in the halls, that kinda thing. It was a very 'serve your country, your sacrifice is needed' kind of shit. Side effects could range from mild, like muscle cramps and sinus pressure, to more serious, like seizures and cancerous growths. The general process was that the first few injections were the worst, and then as the body adapted and grew stronger, it'd get... marginally better. Enhanced healing would aid in managing pain and symptoms, but a serum could still kill a soldier even in the "home stretch" of the program.

In Jack's case, he struggled with a lot of the injections but got through them. However, nearing the end of the program, he had one that caused him to suffer a grand mal seizure and he was laid up for a few weeks. In general, the program was hell on everyone, and Jack spent a lot of time trying to keep the spirits of his fellow soldiers up. Many didn't survive the program, some were lost in the Crisis, and by the time Overwatch was formed, only a few of the enhanced soldiers were still alive.