A/N: For dinkyicarus, who planted the thought of some very twisted Jensen/Orlov in my head. I recommend reading the Black Light novel (or its page on the DX wiki) before proceeding to chapter two.
Even in soft soled shoes, Orlov's footsteps sound unnaturally loud on the vinyl floors of the facility. They set a brisk pace for the lab, fingertips touch a scanner, and hydraulic doors slide open with a hiss to reveal a stark space of glarings lights and shining chrome. In the center of the white room, technicians huddle around a specimen on an operating table, readying tools and instruments for the doctor's arrival.
"You're sure this is the one?" Orlov demands, striding forward so that they clear a path and he sees the sheet tugged back to reveal a pale, colourless face atop the table. "Patient X?"
"Cross referenced the aug serial numbers with records from Sarif," the head tech confirms. "This is him."
"Hm." Orlov nods in approval, expression turning to a frown as he notices the holes in the cadaver's temples. Lack of circulation has left little blood, most of it pooling lower down, but he notices the the perfectly round perforations in the skin. "There should be eye shields here."
"Damaged," the tech says succinctly. "Unsalvageable. We removed them, but we have the parts for reference, if you need it." He gestures to a dish on a nearby table where the broken frames and shattered lenses that were once Adam Jensen's mirror shades lie in pieces.
"Easily replaced," Orlov says casually. "I'll get a new model fitted once he's up and running. Any signs of life?"
"Heart's stopped. Nervous system's nearly completely shut down, but a deep brain scan showed some activity in the hypothalamus. We kept him cold. Didn't want to reverse any of the cryogenic effects from the water."
Orlov hums again. He reaches out a hand to touch the cadaver's brow, skin still like ice from the Arctic chill, and firmly tugs open an eyelid.
"Eyes are artificial," the tech reports. "Even with his his neurons firing, you won't see a response."
"On the contrary." Orlov plucks a penlight from the breast pocket of his labcoat and shines it into the plastic eye. "Internal battery held its charge. Retinal camera is still working. You see it trying to focus?"
The tech looks, but only catches a glimpse before Orlov straightens up again and pulls the sheet lower to reveal the body's chest. He rests a clean-scrubbed fingertip on the rivet bolted through the center of the sternum, circles the surrounding skin in what's almost a caress, and then turns to a nearby table in search of a tool.
With the tech looking on, Orlov selects a stethoscope and rests it on the right side of the chest. He taps a finger sharply on a space between the ribs, then repeats the action on the left. "Lungs are full of water," he reports, tone impassive.
"He didn't have an aug to prevent drowning? Seems like an oversight."
"I think in fact he did." Orlov replaces the stethoscope with a handheld ultrasound, pressing tight again Patient X's throat. "There's a valve right here, I suspect designed to close off the airway when underwater. Oxygen reservoirs in the lungs will probably reach maximum capacity from a single breath in around five minutes, after which the valve will open to expel CO2. Allowing water in regulates the pressure. Most likely what prevented his chest from caving in."
"Shall we get a pump to clear that?"
"Not yet. I want to get a better look inside first, see how it all works. We'll put him on a bypass when I need him revived."
The scanner gets set back on the tray. Orlov replaces it with his hands, fingertips tracing the shapes of a support bar bolted to the ribcage, warmth unfelt on clammy skin. "The skeletal reinforcements ought to have preserved most of his internal augs. Didn't the scans show titanium in his skull?" He moves again, a thumb swiping over a jutting cheekbone before fingers roam through thick, salt-stiffened hair. "Brain is intact."
"No damage that we can see," the tech confirms. "Just needs rebooting."
"Well, let's not let that happen too soon, shall we?" Orlov turns to his array of tools, tugs on a pair of white nitrile gloves, and reaches for a scalpel. "You got those experimental augs ready for me?"
The first thing Orlov installs is a new circuit board to accommodate the augs he plans to add to the limbs. He goes through the anterior chest wall, dismantles the support structure until there's room for him to play around in the chest cavity. Still ballooned with ocean water, the organic parts of the lungs are abnormally hard when he examines them, studying the interface between polymer bronchi branching into organic air sacs. There's artificial oxygen reservoirs, as he'd predicted, hooked up to the rebreather valve that can recycle a single a breath of air for as long as reasonably possible. The time period would have long expired by the time Adam Jensen was plucked from the water.
"Bring the bypass over," Orlov orders, snapping his fingers while his other hand locates the emergency valves on the pulmonary veins to plug it into. "Blood's going to need a detox filter, too. Get some warm saline into the arterial ports, see if we can get it flowing again. I'll get this wired into to the biocell circuits."
The chief tech, dutifully holding the swollen tissues clear of the circuit board Orlov has resting on the rear chest wall, bites his lip behind his surgical mask. "Sir? He was down there a long time. Don't you think we should make sure we can revive him before we start the installation?"
"You see this?" Orlov retorts, running an admiring hand over the transparent outer shell of the augmented heart and then tapping the carbonate armour of the aorta. "What's that brand stamped right there? Sarif. This Sentinel system is top of the range. If we can't get him back with that, his implants aren't worth shit."
Plastic tubes are plugged into ports. Warm fluids begin to flow into a body that's known nothing but the cold for weeks, and the bypass machine softly hums.
"Alright, you can vacuum his lungs now," Orlov concedes, his attention now on the subject's energy converter mounted on the heart's sinoatrial node. He screws off the cap encasing the mechanism to reach the bundle of wiring underneath. "I need them out of the way. And get me a soldering iron. I'll mount this on his spine."
As the doctor works, with fluids circulating through the bypass the first hints of colour begin to return to the patient's skin. It's not a healthy hue, still too yellowish, the dormant Sentinel having allowed toxins to accumulate in the blood, but gradually improving as the external machinery flushes his system.
Orlov is fighting back a smile as he finishes mounting the insulation. "Someone took a lot of care when they built you, didn't they?" he remarks softly, glancing up at the patient's face slowly emerging through the death mask. It occurs to him he doesn't just means the augs. That face looks like it's been chiselled by a Renaissance sculptor, strangely suited to the deathly pallor that had taken it as though cut from marble.
A thrill of anticipation runs through the doctor. "Alright, that's him wired up," he says. "Just need to check the connections. We're ready for a reboot. Get a shot of adrenaline to this port and mount an external charge unit on the heart. We'll jumpstart him."
"You want us to add a sedative too?" the tech offers. "It's unlikely he'll wake up, but situations like this, it can be unpredictable…"
"No." Orlov's refusal is abrupt. His gaze drift to the patient's eyelids as he imagines for a fleeting moment how they'd look opening of their own accord. The shifting shadows cast by dark lashes, the gold-green glow as retinal implants finally make contact with the brain…
"Restart his heart, get the magnet locks on his limbs but let his systems reboot on their own," Orlov says. "I want to see what happens."
Wires and tubes and cables run in and out of Patient X's chest like roots sprouting from a seed. They plug into blood vessels, into airways, into circuits and conductors and probes mounted on PEDOT clusters gathering data while the electrodes of an external battery run directly to the heart.
The resurrection is unremarkable. Two attempts, no more. The first shock fails, an error message reporting compromised calcium channels, followed by an attempt to manually calibrate the myomer, and then they go again. A green LED on a sensor declares success, and drawing on the energy of the external battery, the heart begins to beat.
Only partially satisfied, Orlov watches Jensen's face. It will take some time to build up to transferring him off of life support, biocells depleted, many of his organs in dire need of the Sentinel's attention, yet the doctor has to admit that part of him was hoping for more.
He's about to look away, decide on his next course of action with the augs lined up for installation, and then he sees it. A slight twitch of the facial muscles, a quiver of the lips, and then the eyelids flutter.
"Shit," Orlov hears the tech mutter under his breath. "Administering anaesthetic…" He's reaching quickly for an IV port, but Orlov halts him with a raised nitrile-clad and blood-coated hand.
"Wait. This is the first stimulation his brain has had in weeks. He needs to calibrate; to adapt. Let's not snuff it out."
Whether obedient or simply caught by surprise, the entire team pauses. Orlov watches a moment longer, plastic eyeballs revealed through the cracks, darting about in what might be panic, or more likely random nerve impulses from an abruptly revived brain. There's no pain on Jensen's face. Though, rather than true absence, it could just be the discordant firing of his neurons.
Orlov tugs off a glove, rests his palm on the warming skin of a still-pale cheek, and watches the gradually-stabilising eyes. "Welcome back," he says, with no real expectation the words will be understood, his face unlikely to be recognised or remembered. When those green eyes narrow, their shuddering gaze steadying to meet his with unnerving focus, Orlov is taken by surprise.
"...Sir?"
In the back of his mind, the tech's voice registers. It sounds nervous.
"There's a lot of resistance showing in the magnet locks…"
Magnetic restraints, designed to hold metal-cored augs.
Orlov looks away. "Then increase the field strength. You got his limbs secure?" He slips a hand back into the chest cavity, nudging aside organs to check the integrity of the circuit board. A small red indicator light confirms it's online.
"He's secure."
"Then open up his forearms and prep the nanoceramic. Let's get started."