REGEN
Chapter I
Not all mordesh were the great Doctor Lazarin. Very few were possessed of the same ingenuity and level of skill to curse an entire race to slow agonizing extinction, but many other great savants were unwilling or untrusting to leave the task of race-wide absolution solely to him. Parallel researchers and elite teams sought avidly the cure for the contagion alongside their patron saint of hubris.
Doctor Dmitriy Konstantinov was not one of them. Certainly he carried the drive to cleanse the corruption coursing through his corporeal form, if not for himself then for others perhaps more deserving of a second chance at life, but unlike his clever colleagues he did not possess that spark, that twinkle of potentiality lurking behind vitalus and rheum-laden eye.
None knew this more than he.
He was outstanding mediocrity, effectively skilled and talented at the abilities he had chosen to develop over the cold decades of death, but he often found himself pressed against the glass ceiling that kept him fettered between talent and greatness. He had witnessed some brave few wander between those barriers almost effortlessly, one of which quite close to his heart, but he was not of a mettle made to follow.
Still, he would make do, if only as a hobby centered amidst hope.
"Hold still, lapochka." Doctor Konstantinov chuckled as he attempted to hold the squirming pink squirg against the cutting board, slipping a large needle deep into the rubbery flesh of its under-mantle. Its large eyes bulged out at him in either confusion or discomfort. Mostly confusion, he reckoned, injecting the mixed concoction he had cooked up into one of the tentacles before it could wriggle free. Within mere moments the limb that had flailed along with its brethren went limp and placid.
"That wasn't so bad, was it Yaromir?" He added, tapping at the tentacle with a fountain pen lifted from his pocket. It was merely a cocktail of anesthetic and water, mixed with a trace amount of aurin herbal sleeping agent for his cephalopodic companion. Yaromir blinked at him unsteadily in response, one eye after the other.
"This is merely confirmation research, I must ascertain whether field reports are valid before I continue." Dmitriy explained to the creature, laying down the syringe and picking up another tool instead. "Should this work, there will be nothing to fear. If not… er… well, you will receive a decidedly more delicious dinner of grey matter in compensation, but my hopes are high. Hold still."
He waited a moment more for the deadening shot to circulate a little more through his fishy friend and once he felt satisfied enough time had elapsed he took the surgical mordesh cleaver and sliced the numb tentacle clean away from the body of its host. It came apart quite easily for the knife was sharp and the doctor was quite good at cutting, yet the young squirg squishling hardly reacted at all. Good.
Dmitriy took the tentacle and plopped it into a formaldehyde-filled jar before he continued. Perhaps it would fascinate a fledgling medic some time along the line, but that was not his focus for the day. "Apologies, my arguably less able assistant." He cooed through his synthetic voice box, past jaws made of metal and tough polymer hinges as he picked up the creature and carried it back to its tank.
Yaromir attempted to cling to his arm with its remaining tentacles before he pried it free and released it back into familiar waters again. Soon he would bring it a meal of scrambled roan brains and protein paste. Shortly afterwards, he hoped, the results would present themselves and he could continue developing his project.
Until then, Doctor Konstantinov worked a little more on perfecting his own version of miracle serum.
xxx
Eighty years had elapsed since his race had fallen to ruin, yet he could remember the Fall well. It lay crystallized within his mind, razor-tipped and sharper than any memory of a birthday, a celebration, or untimely death. Sometimes he could still feel his throat hoarse and raw from shouting and the sickly sticky sensation of clotted blood on his knuckles, the torch in his hand…
The roughness of the rope as he had tightened it about Doctor Lazarin's neck.
And then their bodies had begun to fall apart. The contagion kept them that way, wore away at them until he fancied one day they'd all be skeletons wandering about suffused in neon liquids. Doctor Konstantinov wasn't entirely sure he could purge the contagion from an entire race in one fell swoop. He was not that patron saint of hubris. He was not a genius.
He merely had an idea.
When he returned to check on Yaromir some two hours later with a soft tube of dinner for him (laughably more palatable than his own liquid-based diet, he thought wryly) he chuckled in delight. "A prionic package for my pinkish protégé!" He announced, then tilted and twisted the hungry creature within the tank with a thin baton as it attacked its prey.
He could not find the stump he had made some time earlier. Each squirgling tentacle was accounted for, even the new, slightly translucent one a shade lighter than its companions. To grow back an entire limb within two hours was phenomenal, but to have it fully functional and joyously squeezing the paste out with just as much fervor as its brethren was no doubt more encouraging. Dmitriy had heard tales of hostile squirg suffering massive damage to live and breed again, a creature most difficult to expunge, and maybe… maybe…
Maybe there was something to that after all, buried deep down within a twisted Eldan's fetishistic dreams of grandeur.
Dmitriy told no one of his research. Not his colleagues, not his fellow mordesh. Not even his lover. He kept to his outpost deep within Wilderrun and for some weeks he would often fail to return to his home in Whitevale with only datachron apologies and promises to make up for his absence. His sleep became irregular, his vitalus changing sometimes walking a razor-thin wire. Only his dedication to doctoring remained the same and for a while the only time he could be reliably reached was when his hands were bloodied and inside the chest cavity of an unconscious fellow exile.
He knew that he could not keep up this schedule forever, but he was getting close. He was getting so, so close.
It was around this time the Torine began to discover familiar, yet somewhat off creatures while on their hunts. Pumera with multiple tails and missing fur. Girrok with wounds that surely should have been fatal getting up and shambling away, unconcerned. Reports of a large dawngrazer stag laming a leg and then walking about just fine barely a day later. Was it the blessing of Vitara? They could not be sure.
And then, at long last, his research culminated with a final datachron call.
Doctor Dmitriy rubbed tiredly at an eye, momentarily forgetting that he was indeed in a video call. His usual green pallor had become pale, almost ashen in places. "I cannot come in today. You must manage without me." He explained, pulling on a cleaner lab coat. It was cleaner only by virtue of having been worn a few times less than the other. Laundry had begun to escape him somewhat as well.
"This is unprecedented." The other, artificially tinged voice on the other end of the call stated with a gaze most piercing and suspicious. Doctor Konstantinov's strange habits had not gone unnoticed, least of all by him. "Have you a reason why?"
"I must be sick." Dmitriy lied with all readiness, busying himself with tasks as he spoke, or anything that would give him a reason to remain out of the range of his datachron's screen. He could lie convincingly through his voice and his words, but with his face, his eyes, the way he furrowed his brow a little when he told a fib? Never.
"So it seems. When was the last time you managed a restful repose? I can't be certain, I haven't seen you lately. Or at all." The datachron replied, watching the doctor pace back and forth through the limited range of the screen. His jacket had vague blue stains on the sleeve. Vitalus, perhaps? Or something else.
"I am sorry, my sweetness. I just need more time. I would not dodge my duties unless I bordered upon a breathtaking breakthrough. You know this. I… I will make it up to you, I swear." Dmitriy sighed, but he was singing a tune all too familiar to the other by now and the scowl on the other mordesh's face proved it.
"No, don't stop your enigmatic experiments on the exiles account. I'm sure I will be able to pick up where you so succinctly left your patients in limbo."
"Artyom-"
Doctor Artyom Payne cut him off, his thick red eyebrows coming together like a gathering storm. "There is nothing left for you to say!" He barked. "You may vanish for days on end, you may leave your half of the bed as cold as you desire, and you are more than welcome to run your research separate and divorced from my own, but I will not condone the desertion of your duties!"
For a mordesh, no less than death would make it acceptable. Even Dr. Lazarin put in his work hours while fixated on the contagion's cure. Perhaps Dmitriy was hoping for too much after coming so far. His own 'miracle cure' was chilling in a refrigerator just waiting to be used, but his senior and superior had a point. Those he had left resting in a clinic bed covered in tubes or waiting for their surgeries did not care for progress. They cared only for their own lives.
As should he.
Dmitriy cleared his throat behind the cold blockade of metal and pipes worming their way down his destroyed neck and windpipe. He sat down at his desk, ran a hand through the long vitalus cables that passed for his hair and looked down at his datachron propped up against a wide container of girrok bile. Glowing angry eyes pierced his, lip curled back over somewhat crooked yellowed teeth.
He smiled. He loved that scowl.
"You're right. It would be monstrously irresponsible of me and unfair to you. I don't know what I was thinking."
The other mordesh eyed him suspiciously; silently. In truth, he hadn't known what Dmitriy had been thinking ever since this 'idea' of his had surfaced.
Doctor Konstantinov reached over and hovered a finger over the call button. He shrugged slightly. "My Bambi. Forgive me. You can rage all you like later. Should I vanish inadvertently… well… you know where to find me."
"OH YOU DMIT-"
He killed the call before the shout could become a roar of anger, half fancying that maybe he'd still be able to hear it from all the way in Whitevale to the jungles of Wilderrun. The doctor chuckled at that despite the pressure in his chest.
If he did not hit upon success in this next cumulative experiment then there was nothing for him to show in order to justify his activities. Test subjects now roamed Wilderrun that should rightly have succumbed to their injuries and only bore a few… niggling oddities in return. Upping the potency of the serum had increased those oddities, but Dmitriy was confident he had filtered out that randomness from the carefully-woven structure of squirg primal pattern and complementary elements.
Yaromir's blood was going to change Nexus. He was sure of it.
The doctor rose from his desk and stole away to the chilled laboratory to fetch his cure. Ideally, after extensive animal experimentation the only logical step forward was to document the results in humanoids, but Dmitriy could not ask another mordesh to risk their festering flesh based on his own eureka moment. His… idea.
If Artyom would have known about it, perhaps he would have interfered. He may even have volunteered himself as patient one of the project. For that reason alone the other mordesh had kept quiet.
No interferences, no other subjects. Only himself.
He would pass through the glass ceiling no matter the odds.
Dmitriy removed from a biohazard container a single syringe filled to the brim with a viscous, light blue liquid. He'd mixed it with his own brand of vitalus and wound the searching strands of squirg patterning alongside a sample of his own. They'd fit together deceptively well, all things considered. Better than pumera or girrok or dawngrazer, that was.
He had fasted and recently refilled his vitalus. Dmitriy rolled up his sleeve and fastened a tourniquet to his left arm, clamping the end between the hinges of his artificial jaw to hold it tight. Good god Kemos, perhaps he would not need it soon anymore. Perhaps, for him, the world would change.
The writing on the needle spelt REGEN. No reason why just yet, Dmitriy had just thought the acronym sounded apt enough. He would figure out the wording behind it later.
He sucked in a deep breath and let it fill his lungs as he felt out a familiar vein, injecting himself with the experimental substance before he could change his mind. He felt the coldness of the additional vitalus carrying his weeks of endless, sleepless work through his system before the chill dissipated, and he knew now that he would not be able to take it back.
Dmitriy sat down, waiting for a surprise that did not come. At least not yet. Several very long moments passed before he opened his jaws a little and allowed the tourniquet to pop free.
It would take time. Of course, all good things took time. It was just… relieving to know he had not immediately expired.
Or grown a few extra tails.