{Summary; He knew-he knew-that everything in Chernobyl would go wrong. He knew and yet no one believed him. Nikolai left home-both Pripyat and Russia-for America, with hope that their medical aid would be better... and finds much more than he could have ever wished for.
Guess who doesn't own DP? That's right, me~! This version of Technus is mine, I guess, though. :3 So's the plot. Which is totally. . . something. Yeah.
Hey all! First story that I'm publishing up in here. Don't kill me for it kay? You might have seen it on dA but I assumed there'd be more public. . . stuff if I did it here, too. So, here we go! Nonconcentricality (a word I totally made up, which is basically the state of not having a common center but is totally unrelated)-a Technus-before-he-was-Technus fic. Totally taking so many artistic/writer's liberties with this! Like. . . like, a lot. A /lot/ a lot. I always saw him as Russian/Ukrainian, I'm not sure why. This is also an AU, although we will be seeing other characters from DP here! Since it's an AU they're probably going to be in some completely random city later on but for now, we start out in Ukraine. Or, somewhere like Ukraine. Yes.
Let me shut up before I totally lose you guys, yeah? Yeah.
R&R please! u}
He knew from the moment the wave of nausea hit him that he had been affected by the radiation more than planned. It could have been one Gray, two Grays-or maybe more, and he just wasn't feeling the affects right now. His stomach turned and he buckled over, holding back a moan and biting his lip hard, almost drawing blood. He could taste something like metal in his mouth and it only triggered his gag reflex even further. It had been a day since the Chernobyl accident and already he was feeling horrible. Yesterday he had a headache, and now it was coming back full force. He wondered vaguely if he had a fever but he was alone, on the road toward Belarus. His parents were back in Pripyat and were probably dead; he didn't know how much radiation they had absorbed or if they had absorbed any at all.
To keep his mind off the sickness as he continued his traveling, he repeated the date to himself. "27 kvitnya 1986." One day after Chernobyl. One day after he knew everything would go wrong. How was he not in Belarus yet? How was he still traveling, still making his way there? It had been a day already. He should have been in Belarus, should have been in safe in a hotel far from the Chernobyl plant. But the border of Belarus was 16 kilometers from Pripyat-just over nine miles. In the hour that he had to travel before the reactor had exploded, he wouldn't have made it. Even though he was biking, he was probably only part of the way there. He would be lucky if he had even made it a quarter of the way. Right now, he supposed, he might be halfway. But it was wishful thinking.
"27 kvitnya 1986." Yesterday, the 26th ofApril, he had left the presence of reactor number four after his fellow coworkers had announced that they wanted to run a cooling experiment-one of which he was certain wouldn't work. There were too many risks with it anyway. By powering down the fans that helped to deliver coolant to the reactor's core, they were running the risk of having the reactor overheat-even if the turbines could generate enough energy as they freewheeled down. That was the whole core of the experiment: could the freewheeling turbines even do as they were tasked? Would they create enough energy to force coolant through tubes to their destination?
It was his doubt of the experiment's success that drove him to leave. His parents didn't believe him-and he couldn't convince them to come along. Alone, the 17 year old intern took his bike and some food and started his journey to Belarus. Nine miles wasn't much of a difference than one when it came to nuclear fallout. And-depending on how bad the explosions had been (because there were two of them, he knew that)-the fallout wouldn't have just been restricted to Chernobyl and Pripyat. He wasn't sure how far it had gone, but he knew that the force of both blasts combined wasn't going to stick to one place. It was exactly why he had been trying so hard to get as far as he could, so that he would at least have been guaranteed better health than what he was undergoing now. (But would he really be healthier in Belarus than here? It didn't really matter, he supposed, because either way he was feeling Chernobyl's affects and there wasn't any stopping that.)
He held onto the handlebars of his bike and pushed it along, stumbling every so often when waves of nausea would hit him. His head began to spin and for a moment he wondered why he was here, what he was doing—but then the memory of an argument with his parents forced its way to the front of his mind. In his memory he heard the word Belarus come out of his own mouth, followed by a flurry of words that sketched the outline of his goal. He was leaving Pripyat, going to Belarus; something about Chernobyl—but what about Chernobyl? What had happened there? His bike clattered to the ground as he began to retch, though there was nothing in his stomach to give up. When had he last eaten? Why was everything swimming in front of him, why was his vision getting blurry? He dropped to his knees, dry heaving, clutching his stomach like a lifeline. Everything wavered in front of him.
Turning away from the bike, which sat on its side in the road, he retched again, putting an arm to the ground to try and support himself. His entire body was shaking, however; he couldn't keep himself steady. Another dry heave almost forced him to collapse. A tiny Ukrainian curse managed to pass his lips before finally his stomach gave in and another heave yielded what little food he had eaten before leaving home. He cursed again, wiping his lips. With one hand he searched around for the canteen of water he had brought with him; the other clutched sparse grass as he coughed and retched, quietly begging for the torture to be over. The nausea seemed to pass—at least for a moment—so he turned and grabbed the canteen, taking a swig of water to rinse his mouth.
Now he remembered what he was doing. He spit the water into the ditch on the side of the road and forced himself to stand, even though his legs shook beneath him and threatened to stop working completely. When he crouched to stand his bike back up, the world lurched heavily and he almost collapsed. But he managed to pull the bike up and held onto it for support, standing for a moment in the middle of the road as he tried to gain his balance and composure. He coughed slightly and started to walk, but hardly managed to make it ten steps before exhaustion hit. He couldn't do it. There was no way he could make it to Belarus, and no way he could turn around and make it back home to Pripyat.
Maybe, he thought, if I lay here for a moment and rest, I can try again in a few minutes. But as he moved towards the ditch, his body suddenly aching to lie down, something in the back of his mind disapproved of the idea and stopped him short. There was a chance that if he were to lie down, he might never get back up. He tightened his hands around the bike's handlebars and forced himself to continue walking. He knew it was bad to force himself into this but there was no way he would get help otherwise. He had no choice but to keep walking, even if it was a danger to his health. (Part of him didn't care—better to run yourself ragged than to die a coward's death on the side of the road, it said, but he tried hard not to listen to that.)
He took another shaky step, his body protesting every movement. His stomach began to churn again, his mind turned fuzzy. The world became a mix of colors, blurred together, but after blinking hard several times he managed to force the colors back into their rightful place. He could taste metal in his mouth again but instead of stopping he swallowed hard, forcing himself to ignore the impending nausea. No, damnit; I am not giving up. I'm not stopping until I make it to Belarus. If this is my last living action then so be it. But I'm not dying here.
Eventually the stumbling brought him closer to Belarus but with no map or anything to tell him so, he had no idea. But his bad health finally brought him to complete exhaustion. On his knees, he clutched his bike and panted heavily, too afraid to eat or sip water lest he just throw it up minutes later. His stomach had been churning earlier, even though it had gotten rid of everything it contained just hours before. Unwilling to undergo the unpleasantness of vomiting once again, he refused to eat, even when his stomach complained of both hunger and nausea. Part of him knew that slowly this would probably end up killing him, but his hopes of making it to Belarus were so high, he refused to listen to his instincts. It was highly possible that resting would lead to death—and he refused to let that happen.
But determined as he was, he found that he couldn't ignore the screaming protest of his body any longer. His muscles ached, his stomach refused to relax, his vision kept swimming, and his head was pounding. There was no way that he could keep going in this condition unless he wanted to kill himself. He had to rest, at least for a little while. He moved to the side of the road, putting the kickstand down on his bike so it could rest near him in the ditch. He sat down next to it, leaning back against the rise in the ditch's opposite side so he could see the road, and closed his eyes for a moment. He could slowly feel his muscles beginning to relax, their aching protest dying down. Even his stomach was starting to quiet. It gave a slight rumble of hunger and he put one hand over it, biting his lip. Did he want to risk trying to eat?
He licked his lips and sat up a little, reaching for the satchel dangling from his bike's handlebars. He dug out a package of crackers and opened it slowly, looking at the food apprehensively. There was still a bit of fear lingering in his mind; he didn't want to have to end up vomiting again. He clutched the crackers to his chest and closed his eyes, saying a tiny prayer in his head. Please, let this stay down. I need this, he thought. He took a tiny nibble and swallowed. A moment passed and his stomach said nothing, no protesting or even a sound of agreement. He took a larger bite. Nothing. Soon the entire cracker was gone, and his stomach had made no attempts to get rid of what it had been presented. A tiny smile flickered onto his lips—the first in a long while. He took another cracker from the package, and then everything went wrong.
The world swayed and grew dim. He was vaguely aware of the fact that his stomach had rejected the cracker: its hardly digested remains lay next to him in the ditch. (With bitter amusement, he noted that he'd had at least enough sense in him—despite seeming to lose all other mental functions—to have turned his head, so that the vomit was on the ground instead of all over his shirt. It was a tiny victory against a large defeat.) The colors around him swirled nauseatingly and he had to cover his eyes for a moment in an attempt to regain whatever he had just lost. (Sanity? That seemed like a good guess.)
He coughed, spitting in the direction of his vomit puddle, and reached for his canteen. What was left of his spirits sank when he realized how empty it was. Not knowing how far he was from Belarus only worsened the situation, because he had even less of an idea how much water to ration out for himself. He sighed, which only led to more coughing, but once the coughing fit was over he opened the canteen and swigged half of what was there. He rinsed his mouth and spit, scooting closer to his bike. After a moment, he took a sip of water, his hands shaking with nerves. This was it. He wasn't going to make it. He let out a groan of defeat and rested his head against the ditch once more, closing his eyes in disappointment.
"So..." A pause. "So, this is how I'm going to die. I guess it was... fun while it lasted?"
He snorted. He must have lost his sanity. Who was he even talking to now? His canteen?The sky?Himself? None of them were listening—not the sky, not his canteen, and hearing himself speak of his demise only made him upset. There was nothing good coming out of this. He perked up a little at the sound of what seemed to be a distant rumble, but certain of his newfound insanity, he decided that it couldn't be real. He laughed a little to himself, shaking his head. "And now, I am hearing things. Beautiful."
With one last effort fueled by hope, he opened his eyes to see if perhaps he wasn't as insane as he thought he had become, but the world seemed to swirl and flip around him. He thought that maybe he had seen the briefest glimpse of a car, but then everything went dark before him and his head fell back against the grass. His last conscious thought was that he had just died a coward's death, but his head suddenly seemed too light for his body and everything abruptly came to a halt.