Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Mind Switch

Consciousness came to Johan in fits and false starts, stretched across an indeterminate amount of time. Sometimes his stirring was punctuated by the sound of a cold, feminine voice, not so much speaking as harshly driving sharpened words into the ether like knives. Other times it was interrupted by the mutterings of a gruff, more masculine voice, tired and rumbling but nonetheless more genial and gentle than that of the other speaker.

During these fits of stirring, Johan’s mind couldn’t stay coherent and conscious long enough to process anything beyond how their voices sounded, but slowly, bit by bit, he dragged himself out of the abyssal depths of his psyche. It was slow and difficult, and his body and mind resisted every step of the way, but slowly and surely—

—Johan’s eyes creaked open.

The ceiling above him was made of dull grey concrete, lit by a single grimy panel of fluorescent lightbulbs which buzzed and flickered unpleasantly. As Johan tried to turn his head and sit up slightly, a flash of unpleasantness of a more physical sort made itself manifest all along one side of his torso and snaked its way up his neck to stab into his right temple. 

As though in reply to the sudden spike of pain, sensation started to return to his body. Chief among these was a bone-deep ache, most severe along the right side of his body but radiating across all of it, but Johan also managed to dimly register the pressure of an oxygen mask on his face. 

Absently, something in the back of his mind registered a wrongness , an unsettling but vague sense that he was missing something. Beyond the pain he was in, something wasn’t right —

Johan let out a hiss at the sensations flooding his mind and abandoned the movement. However, before that barely-born thought could fully form, it was interrupted by a voice – a familiar one, in fact. 

“You’re awake,” the voice gruffly stated the obvious, as its owner came into view above him, leaning over what Johan realised to be a cot sitting directly on the floor of whatever room he was in.

The man was tall and well built, with short-cropped brown hair and a goatee of the same colour. The bent spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose did little to soften the weathered scowl that seemed to be the natural resting state of his aged face. His clothes, too, were weathered, consisting of worn, torn cargo pants and an equally dingy shirt. One article of clothing, though, was pristine, almost unnaturally so – a white lab coat that could’ve come straight off the clothes rack were it not for how comfortable the man seemed in it, both hands crammed into its pockets. Despite his appearance and less-than-approachable demeanour, he gave off the vibe of a doctor.

“W-where am I?” Johan managed to croak. “W-what happened?”

The presumed doctor removed a large hand from one of the pockets of his lab coat and pushed up his spectacles with one finger. “Memory a bit fuzzy, is it? You’re in my lab, kid. You got lucky and survived that bomb, so I had you brought here to take care of your injuries.”

Johan’s head spun even as a chill ran down his spine. Simultaneously, the sense of wrongness intensified – there was something he was overlooking, something that he was missing, something that wasn’t right. In spite of the stomach-churning sensation, or perhaps because of it, his next words came out in a rush, almost a babble.

“In-injuries? Bomb?! What? Where? How? Why? Who even are you?!” When the words stopped tumbling out, Johan’s breath hitched, before he started coughing and the side of his head received another spike of pain.

The probably-a-doctor’s expression somehow managed to grow even more grim. “If you don’t recognize me, then this is more serious than I thought. Amnesia?” His lips turned down in a sour grimace. “Fuck. It wasn’t ready after all,” muttered the man, his hands tightening into fists at his sides as he paced from one end of Johan’s cot to the other, shoulders tense.

He refocused after a moment, then returned to Johan’s side. “Theo. My name's Theo Promise. I’m the closest thing to an actual doctor this shithole of a district has available,” the now-named Theo introduced himself gruffly, cracking a knuckle absently. “Do you remember anything? Your name? Who we… work for? Where we are?”

“I’m…Johan. Johan Lewis,” came the reply, as the prone man forced himself to breathe more evenly. “I…don’t remember ever working with you…” Abruptly, an unpleasant thought occurred to him. “We’re still in Carolina, right?” 

At the blank expression on Theo’s face, his stomach sank. “The East Coast?” he tried shakily, only to receive an arched eyebrow and a shake of the head. “Are we even in America?” he rasped, heart thumping wildly.

“America,” Theo repeated, a poleaxed expression on his face. “You mean, like, on the Surface?”

“The Surface?” Johan repeated, ice trickling down his spine for the second time in as many minutes. “What do you mean ‘the Surface’?”

Theo ran a hand through his hair and exhaled, shaking his head slightly. “I…kid, I dunno what is going on in that head of yours, but we’re in the Ark—the Outer Rim of the Ark, to be exact.” 

At Johan’s look of total incomprehension, Theo elaborated. “The Ark is a megastructure located a couple thousand metres beneath Earth’s surface—beneath the Rocky Mountains in what used to be Canada, specifically. It is, as far as we know, the last bastion of human life on the planet.” He spat to one side before muttering, “ Some bastion.”

“What,” Johan replied in a dead tone, the word not so much a question as an exclamation of noncomprehension.

“It happened…what, ninety-eight years ago?” Theo continued. “Ah, no, it’s closer to ninety-nine now, ain’t it?” the bespectacled scientist mused with a shrug. 

“Regardless, that’s when the Raptures arrived.” The word meant nothing to Johan beyond the biblical definition, but the context seemed wrong for even that—and Theo’s next words would confirm that assumption.

“Biomechanical aliens,” Theo explained, his words detached and toneless. “Hostile ones. The Surface was overrun within the span of a decade or two, despite the UFH’s best efforts. What remained of humanity retreated down here, into the Ark.”

The man exhaled, frowning. “Does none of that ring a bell to you, kid?” A reply was not forthcoming, however.

Johan, for his part, was staring blankly at the ceiling, trying to process the quite literally world-shattering information he’d just had dumped in his lap. Another flare of pain came, and once again that sense of wrongness accompanied it, this time distinct enough for him to pinpoint where it was coming from—his right arm and leg.

He turned his head to his right, forcing himself to ignore both the pain and Theo’s protests. He was covered by a thin, threadbare blanket, so he raised his right arm to throw it off—

But he didn’t raise his right arm. He couldn’t raise his right arm. After all…

His right arm was gone .

And judging from the sensation—or lack thereof—coming from below his right knee…

His arm wasn’t the only limb he’d lost.

His breaths turned to shallow, quick gasps even as spots danced in front of his eyes. Johan had never had a panic attack before, but that was surely what he was caught in the throes of now.

Distantly, he could hear the doctor’s voice, but the words and their meanings were utterly lost on him. All his mind had room for was panic.

Then, a sharp stinging sensation, followed by blackness.

Theodore “Theo” Promise let out a weary sigh as he set down the kid’s limp wrist and slid the injector into his labcoat’s pocket. “Pulse’s stabilising, at least,” he muttered before moving to the other side of the cot, considering the bandages all along Johan’s right side with a narrow gaze. “Didn’t reopen his wounds, either.” 

Next, the bespectacled scientist gingerly tilted his patient’s head back, slipped the breathing mask down, and shone a penlight up each of his nostrils. Thankfully there was no bleeding, so he’d at least done something right there.

All things considered, this Johan kid’s reaction to everything could’ve gone better…but it also could’ve gone worse.

Theo grimaced. Admittedly, part of the reason it had gone that badly was his handling of the situation. He’d have to apologise to the kid when the sedative wore off; his dogshit bedside manner wasn't an excuse for causing a panic attack. Until then, though, he had things to do.

…Best to get the most unpleasant of those things out of the way first.

With an especially sour expression on his face, the scientist pulled a dusty phone out of his coat pocket and tapped a terse message into Blabla then sent it off. For the life of him he didn’t know how that corvid bitch had a connection secure enough that it was obscured from even Enikk, and frankly, he was better off not knowing.

His phone buzzed. Speaking of the devil…

‘Amnesia? You’re lucky you’re still too useful to have shot.’

Theo’s lips pulled back into a snarl as a vein pulsed in his head.

‘You’re lucky he’s not a vegetable or dead outright. I don’t expect you to appreciate how goddamn delicate the procedure was, but the fact that he’s capable of moving, thinking, and talking is entirely because of my MINOS. At least a third of his brain was unsalvageable!’

About a minute passed before a response came, as terse as ever.

‘Whatever. As long as he can obey orders, it doesn’t matter. Make sure he can.’

The implicit “or else” hung in the air over his neck like a guillotine. Feeling spiteful, Theo sent nothing but a thumbs up emoji in response and shut off his phone. 

He’d definitely pay for that later, but that was a problem for future Theo—present Theo needed the dopamine hit he got from snubbing his gaoler too much to care.

God did he fucking hate Crow. Psychotic bitch.

Shaking his head to disperse the foul mood, Theo meandered his way into the adjacent room of his lab, where his next task waited for him. As he walked, he withdrew a box of cigarettes from his lab coat’s chest pocket and stuck one in his mouth.

With a quick snap of his left hand’s metallic fingers, the cancer-stick was lit and Theo took a puff. As usual, the synthetic tobacco substitute tasted like burnt, half-rotten ass.

He missed the Ark’s smokes almost as much as he missed not living in a slum. He sure as shit didn’t miss the people, though.

He shook his head and took another puff before he flopped down at his desk. No point in reminiscing; he needed to figure out what had gone wrong with the MINOS and where.

It was time for a diagnostic.

A noise came, abrupt as it was jarring. It was shrill, piercing, and altogether alien. Like an air-raid siren forced to imitate a bird of prey, the metallic trilling played herald to an incursion that was disaster and predator conjoined.

Then, inevitably, the foreign call was joined by an agonisingly familiar one.

Human screams.

Johan jerked awake with a gasp, eyes bulging. His chest heaved as his breath quickened, and he pawed at the oxygen mask covering his face, pulling it off and raggedly sucking in air. After a few long moments, Johan managed to steady his breathing, albeit only partially.

“What was that?” he muttered, rubbing at his face before stiffening with realisation.

Slowly, he turned his head to his right, absently registering a line of pain down that side of his face. When he looked down at where his limbs should be, his breathing threatened to become ragged again, and he let out a choked noise. He brought his left hand to his mouth with some difficulty, teeth gritting together as nausea churned his stomach and the acidic bitterness of bile tinged his breath.

“It…wasn’t a dream,” Johan croaked, squeezing his eyes shut as if blinding himself to his mutilation would make it disappear.

“No, I’m afraid not,” came Theo’s now-familiar voice, tinged with tiredness and a trace of sympathy. “Apologies, but I sedated you; I didn’t want to run the risk of reopening your wounds.”

Johan gave an absent nod but did not otherwise react, his attention occupied by the ruined state of his right side.

Theo sighed, then continued, “For what it’s worth, I do have some good news for you.”

Seeing his patient slowly raising his eyes to look at him, Theo raised the hand holding the stylus, shaking it from side to side and letting his lab coat’s sleeve slide down. Now that the man had drawn attention to it, Johan could see that his arm seemed to be made of metal from the elbow down. Some kind of advanced prosthetic?

“Now,” Theo continued, an expression of guilt flashing across his face, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make you anything near this good, not with the resources available out here in the Outer Rim.” The guilt was washed away by a bitter expression, and he continued, “I can, however, scavenge some decommissioned Nikke parts to get you a functional arm and leg. It won’t be pretty, and it’ll definitely take a good amount of time to get you used to the weight, but I’ll get it done.”

Johan’s eyes widened, and he let out something between a giggle and a sob. The sound, however messy, was nonetheless a sound of relief. “If you can do that, doc…” Johan paused, jaw tight with emotion. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, but I’ll damn well try.”

Theo’s weathered face reddened slightly and he let out a scoffing grunt. “T-that ain’t necessary. I’ve got the knowhow and means to help you out, so I will. Simple as.”

Johan gave a thin, shaky smile. “If more people thought that way, the world would probably be a better place—” He cut himself off abruptly, smile disappearing and eyes widening in rising panic. “Ah fuck I just remembered what you told me about the fucking aliens—!”

The younger man jerked himself into a sitting position, sending a cocktail of new and interesting forms of pain throughout the entirety of the left side of his body. Johan let out a noise somewhere between a yelp, a wheeze, and a groan, even as Theo rushed over to the side of his cot. If nothing else, the wave of pain yanked him out of the panic that was starting to rise, even if only momentarily.

“Doc, I’m freaking out here,” Johan croaked, eyes wide and faintly wild. “I need you to distract me—talk to me, get my mind off all this…” He gestured sharply with his sole arm. “All this bullshit .”

Theo looked at him with an uncomfortable grimace on his face as he stuffed a few threadbare pillows behind Johan’s back. “I, uh…have no idea where to start with that. I’m terrible with small talk.”

Johan let out a harsh, humourless bark of laughter. “You too, huh?” The younger man’s chest heaved as he leaned back, his hand coming up to rub his face as he desperately tried to focus on anything but the absolutely fucked state of, well, everything.

Finally, though, a thought occurred to him. “Wait, yeah; you mentioned something a minute ago—’Nikke’ parts? Was that the word you used? The hell is a Nikke?”

“ That’s a loaded question,” Theo replied, backing away from Johan’s bedside to set his tablet down on a nearby table and take a seat in a rolling chair.

“ Officially ,” he growled the word like a curse, “a Nikke is a ‘semi-autonomous, bipedal special ordinance android created and deployed under the express purview of the Ark Central Government’.” Theo spat to one side.

“That’s total bullshit, of course. Nikkes are, simply put, people whose brains were harvested—sometimes donated, but usually post-mortem and often non-consensually—and whose consciousnesses were then transferred into combat-specialised android bodies.” By this point, Theo’s face was a rictus of anger and disgust. 

“Of course, it’s more convenient for the fuckers running the Central Government for Nikkes to be considered tools and weapons rather than people , so it’s considered treason to actually acknowledge them as such, or to advocate for Nikke rights.” Theo spat to one side again, his prosthetic making a creaking noise as his metal fingers clenched tightly.

“Oh,” Johan managed to utter, voice tight and strained. His veins felt like they were filled with liquid nitrogen, a glacial, hateful apoplexy settling over him and seeping deep into his core. His hand came to rest at his side with slow, precise movements. Every breath he took, every beat of his heart, every motion of his body no matter how slight—all of them felt distant and mechanical, like they were being done by someone else and he was just watching them happen. 

Johan, generally, was not a man who angered easily, nor one who stayed angry for long. On most of the few occasions that he did, his pique burned hot, bright, and short; a bonfire with little kindling that faded as fast as it arrived. Very rarely, though, when something well and truly affronted the principles he held—then, and only then, did his rage run long, cold, and deep. 

Needless to say, this was one of those times.

The younger man’s strained tone of voice, when coupled with his corpse-still expression, were more than enough of an indication of how he felt about the revelation, even to Theo.

“Yeah,” the scientist rasped, before letting out a harsh cough and saying, “It’s absolutely abhorrent. But hey; look on the bright side!”

Theo gave a crooked, mirthless grin. “You and I don't have to give a shit about what the Central Government says. The Outer Rim, where we are right now?” He spread his arms wide as he spun his swivel chair in a half-circle, his expression becoming more and more bitter by the moment. “It’s where the Ark dumps everything it wants to ignore. Be it humans like you and I, or Nikkes who were sold like chattel; to the jackasses of the Central Government, nobody out here counts a fucking person!”

Johan stared at the older man, wide-eyed, his cold anger retreating slightly but very much still present beneath the surface.

“Of course,” Theo continued, caught between a ramble and a full-on rant by this point, “the dubious privilege of that ‘freedom’ comes at the cost of living in a run-down slum filled with criminals, terrorists, and otherwise just straight-up desperate people, and near empty of anything resembling hope.” He gave a spiteful grin. “To the Central Government, we’re known as Outlaws, but to one another? We go by Outcasts—because fuck the CG and their propaganda machine.”

The man finished his rant, exhaled, then let out a quiet, bitter chuckle. “...I’m probably not doing much to put you at ease, huh? Sorry ‘bout that.”

Johan let out a shaky sigh, unclenching the jaw he hadn’t even realised he’d been grinding. “Maybe not, but to be completely blunt, I’d much rather be pissed off than panicking right now. Ain’t healthy, but it keeps me focused on something .”

Theo grimaced. “I hate to say it, but I do know where you’re coming from, kid. Hopefully once I get those prosthetics built you can focus on something a bit more tangible and constructive, yeah?”

“Mh.” The younger man gave the barest grunt of assent as he stared down at the thin blanket covering his lap, hand clenched into a fist as it sat on his knee. “How long d’you think that’ll take?”

Before Theo could so much as throw out an estimate, a noise interrupted whatever he might’ve said. A series of three consecutive knocks coming from a door in another part of the building, the pause between each as precise as if it’d been timed by a metronome. Then, a pause—one that if either of the room’s occupants had cared to measure, lasted exactly seven seconds—and three more knocks.

Theo let out another sigh and levered himself to his feet and striding towards the knocking, which was continuing in the same precise pattern. “Gimme a minute, kid; I recognize that knocking.” His voice sounded as weary as ever, but underneath the tiredness was an additional current of sadness.

Perhaps half a minute passed before Theo returned, a shorter figure following in his wake with stiff, precise steps, carrying a metal case. The newcomer was clad in what looked to be a combination of padded tactical gear and genuine pieces of power armour, all of it a cardboard brown save for a jet-black visor protruding from an armoured helmet, the combination of which obscured much of their face.

“Set it on the table, please,” Theo instructed, his voice as gentle as it was sad.

“Affirmative,” came the reply, the voice clearly female but utterly absent of any inflection or emotion. After the girl in brown placed down the case with precise, near-robotic motions, she returned to a stiff posture, head turned towards Theo.

“Further orders?” she inquired tonelessly.

The older man frowned, then shook his head. “No, you’re free to go, Bri—”

Before the first syllable could even exit Theo’s mouth, he was interrupted. For the first time since she’d arrived, the Nikke, for what else could she have been, actually put emphasis on her words.

“ Product 12 , returning to base.” She snapped a stiff salute before turning on her heel and marching out of the room with the same stilted, artificial gait with which she had entered. Theo watched her leave with a stormy expression that mixed sorrow and anger.

For a long moment, Johan stared after the girl, the Nikke , as well. Finally, though, he turned to Theo, a single question on his lips.

“Doc, what the fuck was that?!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Pressure

The question hung in the air for a long moment, Theo sinking back into his chair with a weary sigh and producing a cigarette from his lab coat pockets. After lighting up with a click of his metal fingers and letting out a long puff of smoke, the older man finally replied.

“That,” Theo replied, shaking his head slowly, “was Bridget. She’s a Mass Production model Nikke, and…well. I don’t feel right going into too much detail about what was done to her, as it’s not my place to share personal shit like that.” 

He exhaled another cloud of smoke and stared at the ceiling. “Let’s just say that she was victimised to a deplorable degree and is coping with her trauma by forcibly divorcing herself from the idea of being a person.”

“Christ,” Johan grunted, face twisting into a rictus of discomfort. 

“I’d pay a lot of credits to get my fingers around her former Commander’s neck,” Theo admitted, voice just a little bit too calm before exhaling another puff of smoke. “But that’s nothing more than self-satisfaction, and besides: that motherfucker’s well out of reach.”

The scientist shook his head again and sighed. “So…yeah. She doesn’t answer to her name anymore, just her ‘product designation’—” the words were positively dripping with venom, “—doesn’t engage in any recreational activities…hell, she doesn’t even take off her combat gear except to clean it. It’s a goddamn miracle she hasn’t undergone a Mind Switch. ”

Johan brought his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes, nausea settling in his gut right beside the frigid shard of rage. “God…that’s so fucked up.”

“It fucking is,” Theo agreed with no small amount of bitterness. “And I can’t do a goddamn thing to help her, either; my specialty with brains is heavily slanted towards the physiological side of things.” 

He pinched his cigarette between two fingers and tapped the ash into an ashtray. “Hardware instead of software, so to speak. I’m barely even qualified to be a doctor; I’m damn sure not qualified to be a therapist or anything, especially with how shit I am with people.”

“...Fuck, man,” the younger man finally settled on, a reply essentially empty of any meaning save for commiseration. “Just… fuck.”

“Amen to that, kid. Amen to that.” Theo took another drag from his cigarette before snuffing it out in the ashtray and standing up.

“Tabling that for the moment…” The older man changed the subject with all the subtlety of an elephant flipping a Jeep, fiddling with the metal case that’d been delivered by the subject of their commiseration. “Now that this stuff’s here, I can get started on those prosthetics I mentioned.” 

The case opened with a loud, metallic pop , and Theo clicked his tongue. “Not in the best condition, but it’s what we’ve got, so I’ll make it work.” He reached into the case and hefted—

Johan blanched. “Is that a severed leg!?” squeaked the younger man, feeling slightly lightheaded.

The scientist, who was holding in his prosthetic hand what looked like a fleshy human limb , looked back over to his patient. “Ah, no, not in the way you mean. Nikkes are generally indistinguishable from humans, at least at a glance, so despite the way this looks, I assure you it’s entirely synthetic.”

Theo approached his bedside, gruesome prize still in hand, and turned it so Johan could see the severed part. Indeed, rather than torn flesh and bone, beneath the bafflingly realistic skin lay a complex interlocking mass of metal parts whose purpose was, presumably, to enable the leg to function as, well, a leg.

“I guess it makes sense that people would want to still look human even after becoming Nikkes,” Johan ventured, eyes still pinned to the limb with no small amount of squeamishness despite now knowing its true nature.

“Not just ‘want’,” Theo corrected. “Need. Are you familiar with the concept of dysphoria?”

Johan gave a nod, so the scientist continued. “Well, Nikkes are uniquely susceptible to a very serious form of psychotic breakdown, the most common cause of which is overwhelming dysphoria caused by being reminded that they are no longer human. This event is called a Mind Switch.”

The younger man’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Right, you mentioned that term in regards to Bridget earlier.” Johan’s brow furrowed. “But…if being reminded of the fact that they’re androids tends to lead to this ‘Mind Switch’, why is she able to use the fact that she is one as a coping mechanism?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Theo declared with a scowl. “Mind Switch is heavily tied into the mechanics of NIMPH, and even the brightest minds in the Ark barely know what the fuck they’re doing with that stuff. ‘S why I decided to create the MINOS.”

Johan cocked his head to one side, deep confusion showing on his face. “Doc, you’re gonna have to explain what both of those are, because I haven’t a fucking clue.”

“Right, right,” the older man said, dropping his hands to his sides and letting the foot dangle close to the floor. “NIMPH, meaning ‘Neuro-Implanted Machine for the Protection of Humans’ is a form of nanotechnology that the Ark uses to keep Nikkes in line…well, mostly.” 

Distaste was evident in his tone of voice. “There’s no record of who made it or where it came from – or if there is, it’s classified beyond belief. I’ve got my suspicions, but nothing concrete.” Theo shook his head. “Regardless, it’s used for a few things. The sole benevolent purpose of it is that it creates backups of Nikke memories, so that even if a Nikke falls in battle, as long as her head can be recovered, she can be brought back.”

Johan’s eyes widened. “Y’all have cracked memory uploads? That’s insane .”

Theo grimaced. “Less ‘cracked’ and more ‘stumbled ass-backwards into making it work’. Like I said, we barely know what we’re doing with the stuff. That admittedly beneficial use aside, NIMPH is also used to keep Nikkes from disobeying their Commanders and from killing humans.”

The scientist’s expression hardened further. “It’s not foolproof, again because of how everyone is stumbling around blindly with NIMPH, but as a general rule, most Nikkes cannot knowingly perform an action that would directly kill a human, and most Nikkes feel a strong compulsion to obey their Commander.”

Johan’s own expression grew blank. “As though what you told me before wasn’t bad enough; this NIMPH shit sounds like the nearest thing to outright slavery.”

“It might as well be,” Theo agreed bitterly, turning on his heel and walking back to the table. The doctor set down the Nikke leg and turned back to Johan. “That, in no small part, is why I decided to create a better alternative: MINOS, or ‘ Modular Inter-Neural Overhaul System’ . It’s still in its testing phase, but it damn sure doesn’t have any compulsions or shit like that, and I did my level best to make it malleable enough that it could serve as an ethical alternative to NIMPH and be used to augment human brains.”

Theo’s gaze shifted from Johan to the floor. “And on that subject, I have to offer my apologies. As I said, my MINOS is still in testing…but when you were brought into my lab, your brain was far too damaged for me to save in any other way. So…I took a risk to try and save your life.”

A chill ran down Johan’s spine, but despite that, he replied, “Well, clearly it worked, memory weirdness or not; what did you do?”

“I calibrated the MINOS to reconstruct the damaged parts of your brain, or failing that, take the place of those parts.” The words were quiet, calm, and even, but even so, Theo’s guilt suffused the words so completely that it was almost a physical force.

Johan went silent, blinking slowly as he processed the information. A new kind of nausea joined the writhing mass already squirming in his gut—the idea that his brain had been so catastrophically damaged…it was downright chilling.

Finally, the younger man spoke. “You said you had no other way to help me, yeah? The damage was too severe?”

“Much too severe,” Theo confirmed with a jerky nod. “ Maybe if we were in the Ark, their facilities could’ve done more than me, but…” The man scoffed. “If we were welcome in the Ark then you wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.”

Johan slowly nodded. “Taking all that into consideration… Well, there are definitely ethical issues here, but under the circumstances, I can’t say I’m upset you saved my life.” He raised his hand, palm up, as though to ask ‘what can you do?’. “As long as you intend to keep an eye on this MINOS stuff in my head, make sure nothing weird happens, I don’t plan on putting any blame on you.”

“That goes without saying,” the scientist immediately replied. “I’m the one who put that stuff in your head; though it did save your life, I’ve got a responsibility and a moral obligation to make sure it continues to do so.”

Theo coughed, then awkwardly added, “Plus, closely monitoring it will, uh, provide more data, so I can…make it work better.” He grimaced. “I don’t want you to think I’m just using you as a test subject though—”

“Doc. Chill,” Johan interrupted, waving his hand. “I get what you mean.”

The older man exhaled. “Right. Sorry.” He shook his head as though to clear it, then picked the Nikke leg back up, examining it. “Hm. Not quite long enough to be a simple attachment; I’ll have to do some internal tinkering to make it the right size for your leg.”

“You’d know better than me,” the younger man said, scratching the side of his head. “Oh, right. You never did answer my question: you got an estimate on how long it’ll take to get me up and about?”

“I can get the prosthetic done in a few days, and your leg fit with an attachment point in another two,” Theo answered, glancing up from said limb. “Getting you actually mobile, though, will take some physical rehab. We’ll start on that, and then I’ll start on the arm; getting you actually mobile under your own power is priority one, for a couple reasons.”

Johan cocked his head to one side. “I assume to keep me from going stir-crazy is one of them; can’t say I look forward to being bedridden for any amount of time. But what’s the other reason?”

Theo grimaced, a look of utter loathing flashing through his eyes very briefly. “...You remember when I asked if you remembered who we worked for?” The question was rhetorical, and the scientist kept talking. “Well, since it’s evident that you don’t, I’ll give it to you straight – I don’t know the exact details of what your job was before the bombing, but as things stand, both of us work for Heavenly Ascension. For terrorists .”

Johan made a strangled noise, jaw dropping open. “We fucking what!?” he managed to demand, voice cracking.

Theo spat to one side. “In my case, I wasn’t given the opportunity of not working for that rancid bitch Crow, and judging by what I’ve managed to gather of your personality based on talking with you, I’d be astonished if you weren’t in the same boat.”

As Johan was still boggling at the revelation, Theo continued his explanation. “Said bitch wants you on your feet and ‘ready to follow orders’ ASAP. While I’d like nothing more than to tell her where she can shove her orders…” He trailed off with a scoff. “Well, nevermind that; I’m sure you’re much more interested in the actual details of our… circumstances than my complaining about them.”

“Please!” the younger man wheezed, only just managing to keep his breathing under control. “An explanation would be very fucking appreciated! Terrorists, you said!?”

“Indeed,” Theo replied tersely. “They claim their goal is equality and personhood for those discarded and oppressed by the Ark, Outcast and Nikke alike—and at the time of their founding that goal was genuine—but all that Heavenly Ascension does now is lash out with indiscriminate violence.” 

The scientist scowled, clicking his tongue in disgust. “Bombings, shootings, arson, ransom…if it allows them even the slightest opportunity to take out their rage on the Ark, they’ll do it gleefully, and to hell with the consequences, for innocent civilians and for everyone else in the Outer Rim alike.”

“That’s… Christ .” Johan ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head with growing horror. “The fuck do I even say to that?”

Theo made a noise of agreement, then added, “I can’t blame them for their rage – hell, I feel my fair share of it myself. But I can't— won't condone the senseless rampage they’ve committed themselves to.”

The younger man nodded slowly. “Even though you abhor their actions, you’re here, unwillingly – forced to work for them. And…so am I.” Neither statement was phrased as a question, but the older man could hear the plea in Johan’s voice.

A plea that Theo could not give a favourable answer to, sadly. “Yes. Yes we are,” the scientist confirmed with a nod, expression grim.

Johan brought his sole remaining hand to his face with a strained wheeze, then choked out, “Doc…I think you should’ve let me—”

“Don’t,” Theo bit out, a spark of anger flickering to life in his eyes.. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. Don’t even fucking entertain that kind of thought, you hear me?”

Theo’s vehemence made Johan’s eyes widen, and the older man let out a haggard sigh.

“Believe me, I get it. This situation is awful, no doubt about it. But…” Theo transfixed Johan in place with an iron stare, before asserting with quiet intensity, “As long as you’re alive, things can change—there’s still hope .”

Johan was quiet for a long moment, then replied, his voice strained, “Not gonna lie to you, doc…I get the sentiment, but that really doesn’t help me right now.”

Theo grimaced and slumped into his chair. “Yeah, I…that’s fair. Fairer than I deserve.” He rubbed at his face wearily, then finally spoke again, looking at him seriously.

“Look, kid. I know it’s asking a lot, but I want you to put your trust in me. I…don’t have a definite or immediate solution for you, but I have something of an idea – a possibility to get you out of this situation.” 

The doctor folded his hands, fingers interlaced. “Can you do that? Can you trust me with your wellbeing, even though we’ve only just met?”

Johan stared at Theo for a good long while, no response emerging from him. Just as the doctor was beginning to think that he wouldn’t receive one at all, Johan let out a long, haggard sigh. “I guess I don’t really have much of a choice, huh?” The question was blatantly rhetorical, and the younger man continued speaking without waiting for a response.

“I guess if you can’t trust the doctor who saved your life, who can you trust?” The hoarse words were accompanied by a lopsided, wobbly smile—one would’ve had to be blind to miss how forced the brave face Johan was putting on was.

Theo gave a slow nod, expression solemn. “I’ll do everything in my power to live up to your trust – I promise you that, kid.”

Johan blew out another sigh and returned the nod. Briefly, a faint spark of curiosity crossed his mind, and he seized the distraction like a drowning man would a life-preserver. “Say, doc. Why do you keep calling me ‘kid’?” he asked. “You can’t be that much older than me.”

Theo scratched at his goatee, bemused. “Really? You look like you’re barely out of your teens.”

“Try adding a decade,” Johan rejoined with a shake of his head. “I’ll be thirty in half a year.”

The doctor stared at him, a poleaxed expression on his face. After a few moments, he asked, “You’re fucking with me, right?”

Johan cocked his head to one side. “No, I’m quite serious. What’s so shocking about that?”

“But the nanites in Splendamin don't kick in until you’re totally done with puberty, and…” Theo muttered with a frown, before the man shook his head and replied. “Lemme get a mirror; it’ll be easier to show you.” The man left the room briefly, returning after about half a minute. He had a cheap hand mirror in one hand, which he presented to Johan.

For the first time since he’d woken up, Johan looked upon his reflection.

It felt like something settled fully onto his shoulders. The sensation had up until that moment been weighty yet indistinct – a seemingly sourceless unease that had been lurking just out of sight in the periphery of his subconscious. Now, though, the source was laid bare, plain as the nose on his face…no, that wasn’t the right phrasing. 

After all, the face in the mirror wasn’t his.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: The Dam Breaks

The reflection was foreign, unsettling, wrong —the face of a stranger.

The man in the mirror stared back, features twisting into an expression of incomprehension that was three parts painfully familiar and seven parts utterly alien to Johan. 

The sharp, high cheekbones and long mane of brown hair he’d inherited from his mother were utterly absent, replaced by wide, sunken eye sockets and a head of short, matted, dirty blond hair that barely passed the bottoms of his ears. The colour of the stranger’s skin, too, was wrong—somehow even paler than the sunlight-deprived tint of a nocturnal shut-in.

Worst of all, though, was the muddy gaze that met Johan’s own. Gone were his sky-blue irises, the last memento that had remained of his late father, replaced by a dim brown that seemed absent any real spark or liveliness.

Abruptly, he heard a cracking sound, and felt a sensation running through his hand. Lines spread across and through the stranger’s face, rendering it all but incomprehensible and after a moment he realised—his grip on the mirror had become so tight that it’d fractured.

“Oh. I’m bleeding,” Johan remarked dully, staring at the shards of glass embedded in his palm. The pain seemed… distant, almost like it was happening to someone else. As though to contrast his muted reaction, Theo let out a shocked shout before practically catapulting himself out of his chair.

Some small part of Johan that retained a degree of awareness realised that something was very wrong with how he was reacting, but the rest of him felt too muted to do much more than simply sit there, staring at the bloodied glass. Even as Theo rushed over with a first-aid kit and began the process of removing the glass and bandaging his hand, Johan could scarcely muster the will to do more than blink.

Finally, though, the doctor all but demanded, “What was that about, kid!? You’re, uh, really worrying me right now.”

A long, tense silence elapsed as Johan blinked slowly, dumbly, as he tried to muster up a response. Finally, a reply spilled from his lips. “That’s not me.” He twitched his now-bandaged hand in the direction of the ruined hand-mirror. “I don’t…I’m not…” The younger man swallowed thickly, then repeated himself in a quiet, intense whisper, “That’s not me.”

He shook his head from side to side, as though to dislodge the image of the stranger whose face he now wore, but it was futile. It was seared into his memory, far more haunting than the face of a gaunt but otherwise unremarkable young adult had any right to be.

Absently, he felt one of Theo’s hands come to rest on his left shoulder. The older man then spoke clearly but gently, as though speaking to a scared-but-dangerous animal. “Johan. I need you to talk to me. I need you to explain what you mean by that. Can you do that for me, Johan?”

The younger man’s fingers twitched again, and he rasped, “I’ll try.”

At first, Johan’s explanation was slow and unsteady, filled with pauses and uncertainty. After a time, though, the trickle of words became a stream and then a deluge, as grievance after grievance, worry after worry, memory after memory poured from his mouth like an ocean of bile. Theo quickly realised that he wouldn’t be able to remember everything the younger man was imparting to him and silently started the text-to-speech function of his phone’s notepad app.

By the end of things, Johan was hollowed-out, wrung-out, and altogether worn -out. Theo, for his part, had received an answer as to what had tormented his patient so, but that answer had caused numerous more questions to arise. Among that throng of curiosities that needed answering, though, three in particular stood out to the older man as being the most important.

Why did Johan remember living in a body so different from the one he was in now? On a related matter, why did he remember living on the Surface, in a time before the Raptures had descended?  

The brain fabricating false memories following traumatic brain injury wasn’t something unheard of, but the sheer scale and detail of everything Johan had described made Theo doubt that explanation—especially his descriptions of the Surface. How the hell could some Outcast who looked barely out of his teens speak so fondly and familiarly of life up there? 

Sure, it was possible that Johan had been part of some scavenger group that looked for scrap up on the Surface; despite the Central Government’s best efforts, they didn’t control every access point in the Outer Rim, and those Outcasts who were particularly brave, particularly desperate, or some combination of the two took advantage of that. 

There was a problem with that theory, though.

Theo had spoken to scavengers like that. Hell, no small number of the people he patched up were the few who had the right combination of luck and skill to survive making multiple trips to and from the Surface. And each and every one of those scavengers spoke about the Surface in a specific way, in a tone of awe mixed with fear. They spoke of the Surface as though it was an alien land, because to those of them born beneath the Earth, be they citizens of the Ark or Outcasts, it very much was.

That wasn’t all, though. Once upon a time, when Theo was a much younger man, full of hope and grand ideas, he had the occasion to speak with a particular man – a man who, through the marvels of nanotechnology, gene therapy, and extensive, expensive cybernetics, yet lived even though he had been a man grown before the Raptures had even set foot on Earth. A man that was one of the very few denizens of the Ark that had Theo’s respect even now, so many years and so many disappointments later.

The man had spoken to Theo of many things, but of note now was the manner in which he’d spoken of the Surface, and the life he’d lived there, before all had fallen down. There had been wistfulness and nostalgia in his words, but so too had there been a familiarity and fondness—the very selfsame familiarity and fondness that had filled Johan’s voice as he had poured out the contents of his psyche.

Theo was not privy to every facet of the human brain, but he had studied a great deal about its intricacies. It was that very understanding, then, that led him to a conclusion. The brain could fabricate false memories in the face of blank spaces caused by traumatic brain injury, this was true. However, Theo didn’t think that even the complex, incredible organ that was the human brain could create memories of something it hadn’t experienced, much less a counterfeit so complex, vast, and entrenched as this. This wasn’t just a memory or two, this was nearly thirty years of life , lived on the Surface a century ago.

Thus, the weary doctor decided to proceed under the assumption that the memories Johan had so painstakingly imparted to him were genuine, as unbelievable as such a thing seemed. That conclusion, then, led him to his third and possibly most important question.

What the fuck had the MINOS done to make this happen?

Theo had a few theories, and he liked each of them less than the last. All of them were troubling, and none of them were worth sharing with his patient until they were more than theories. The kid—no, the other man , he had to stop going by his appearance—was already suffering enough; there was absolutely no way Theo was going to fill Johan’s head with even more horrible shit until he knew beyond a reasonable doubt what was what.

Theo slowly shook his head as he regarded his patient. The younger man hadn’t moved since he’d finished speaking. Were it not for small twitches of his bandaged hand, slow blinks as he stared into the middle distance, and the shuddering breaths causing his chest to quiver, one could mistake Johan for a wax statue.

His state only served to reaffirm Theo’s decision. Johan was visibly hanging on by the barest of threads, and it was up to Theo to give him a hand back up over the edge. 

Anything beyond that would have to come later, with time.

Johan didn’t know how much time passed after he finished speaking. All he knew was that Theo had been quiet for a time, no doubt digesting the rambling, barely-coherent rant he’d vomited out.

Provided he even believed it, of course—

Johan cut the thought off before it could fully take root. He was already teetering on the edge of a full-on breakdown, he did not need to add pessimism onto the pile, thank you very much!

He grimaced and ground his teeth, bandaged hand slowly curling into a fist. The pressure of his molars pressing against one another and the sharp pain of his injured palm were unmistakably unpleasant, but they were also unmistakably real . The sensation seemed to ground him; it gave a small measure of clarity to a mind that otherwise seemed all-too-content with the option of drifting away, abandoning thought and emotion altogether in a self-destructive attempt to protect itself.

As far as solutions went, it was a mediocre and temporary one, and even that was giving it perhaps too much credit—but it worked. It kept him present in the moment, and that would have to be enough for now.

“Johan.”

The younger man jerked, jaw unclenching as he exhaled sharply. Right, he wasn’t alone in the room. “Y-yeah?” Johan managed weakly, turning stiffly to regard Theo.

The doctor regarded him with a calm, even expression, then spoke. “I’ll be frank, here—I don’t know why you remember living on the Surface, let alone a life before the Raptures came. I don’t know why you remember having a totally different body than the one you have now. All I can really say with any confidence is that the MINOS must have done something outside what I programmed it to do.” He shook his head slowly, frowning. “But I promise you this. Just as I promised to get you back on two feet, I promise I will do everything in my power to figure out just what’s going on with your memories.”

Johan swallowed thickly, the invisible, immaterial, but all-too-tangible pressure weighing on his shoulders lightening ever-so-slightly. “You…believe me?” he rasped, blinking slowly as wetness threatened to blur the corners of his vision.

Theo nodded firmly, meeting Johan’s eyes. “As crazy as everything you told me sounds, I can tell you’re not faking a damn thing – and like that old saying goes, once you’ve tossed out everything impossible, whatever’s left has gotta be the truth, even if it seems crazy.”

Johan let out a surprised croak of a chuckle. “D-didn’t expect a Holmes quote of all things,” he muttered, half to himself and half to Theo. For a long moment, he simply stared at his hand, still balled-up and still providing him with shooting, grounding pain. 

Finally, Johan spoke again, his voice quieter but steadier, even if only a little. “Thank you, Theo. I…I’d be dead if not for you. In more than one way.”

Theodore Promise had no words he felt sufficient to reply to such a statement, and so settled for laying a calloused hand on Johan’s shoulder and giving a light squeeze. Though Johan Lewis received no words in reply to his own, the simple act of a hand on his shoulder told him everything he needed to know.

In that moment, even such a simple, small act was worth the world.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Chicken Soup for the Soul

Alas, the moment of silent solidarity between doctor and patient could not last forever, and all too soon Theo removed his hand from Johan’s shoulder and straightened. “I’d better get to work; that leg ain’t gonna retrofit itself.” 

The older man rolled his neck and let out a grunt as he coaxed a pop from his vertebrae. With a final look at Johan, Theo added, “I’ll bring my tools in here, so if you need anything, I’ll be available.”

Johan gave a slow nod, then tiredly asked, “Any shot you got a book or something? To keep my mind busy.”

Theo rubbed his chin. “I’ll lend you my phone; I’m not expecting any calls and it’s got a few time-waster games on it. Books ain’t too common out here; most folks are more focused on getting by than reading.”

The younger man gave a shrug that was, by the very nature of his injuries, one-shouldered. “Good enough,” he said with a sigh. “Even though I’m right-handed I can probably manage.” 

The doctor gave a nod and ambled out of the room, returning with a battered smartphone in one hand and a toolbox in the other. The latter he plopped unceremoniously on the desk, beside the case that’d contained the eerily lifelike Nikke limb. The former, he pressed into Johan’s bandaged palm, advising, “Don’t be too hard on your hand; the glass didn’t cut you too deep, but better safe than sorry.” He turned away, paused, then added, “Oh, right. Password’s the number ‘four’, followed by the word ‘thought’—all lowercase.”

“‘Precciate it,” Johan replied, his words mumbled but sincere as he fiddled with the phone one-handed. Theo gave an equally eloquent grunt in return, before crossing the room and flopping into his desk’s rolling chair then scooting forward to get to work.

For a time thereafter, the room was devoid of conversation, and indeed much noise at all. The only sounds that broke the otherwise grim silence were the dull hum of the room’s fluorescent light, the tinny scraping of Theo’s tools, and the crunchy, retro chirping of the game Johan was playing—albeit at the lowest possible setting so as to avoid disturbing the other man. 

A few hours passed like this, Theo deep in the zone and focused on the intricate innards of the Nikke leg even as a peppy victory jingle played, signalling that Johan had cleared another wave in the oddly mesmerising yet charmingly retro game. Whoever’d designed it had done a bangup job; it’d sucked his attention in like nobody’s business.

Both men, though, were torn from their respective hyperfixations by the sound of knocking. This time, the knocks had no particular pattern or rhythm; presumably, this visitor was someone other than the deeply troubled Bridget.

And indeed they were; this time, a man and a woman entered the room, and were they ever a study in contrasts. The woman was slender, petite, and very pretty, her green eyes bright with warmth as she cheered, “Theo!”, rushed over to the man, and promptly pulled him into a hug. The embrace was made perhaps a bit awkward with how her waist-length, straw-blonde sidetail whipped around to bop the gruff doctor on the nose, but Theo didn’t seem to mind overmuch, judging from the soft expression on his face.

The man, on the other hand, was an absolute bear—he was easily six feet tall if not taller, and had the build of a strongman. His hair was cropped short, jet black sprinkled with streaks of grey, and his full beard matched the coloration. His expression was stern, but between the laugh-lines on his face and the way his brown eyes sparkled at his companion’s antics, Johan suspected the man was a fellow sufferer of that dreaded affliction: Resting Bitch Face.

Both of them were clad in clothing that was quite ‘well-worn’, though a less charitable person would probably describe their garb as threadbare—cargo pants and a featureless tee for the man, and dusty jeans and a cardigan for the woman. It seemed more and more likely that Theo’s immaculately maintained lab coat was an outlier in terms of clothing quality in the Outer Rim, which was sadly unsurprising the more Johan pondered the matter.

Before he could get too wrapped up in considering just how neglected his new home apparently was, Theo’s voice broke him from his thoughts.

The slightly red-faced doctor, having apparently extricated himself from his assailant’s clutches, cleared his throat and remarked, “Now, I was expecting Isabella, since I specifically asked her to come by, but I wasn’t expecting you to come with her, Luca.”

The now-introduced Luca gave a grunt and hefted a plastic bag, jiggling it in Theo’s direction. “Came ta make sure ya ate,” he rumbled. “Ya forget all th’ time, daft man.” He glanced at Johan, and his stern expression softened fractionally. “Brought extra for yer patient. Enjoy.”

As though on cue, Johan’s stomach let out a prodigious rumble, and all at once the younger man came to the realisation that he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d regained consciousness—longer, even, considering the comatose state he had… this body had been in.

Isabella let out a tinkling laugh, full of good humour and utterly devoid of anything approaching malice. “Sounds like his stomach agrees with you, Luca!” She crossed her arms and fixed Theo with what was probably supposed to be a stern glare. Unfortunately for Isabella, her features and demeanour strongly undermined her, and she just ended up looking cute instead.

“As for you, Theodore Promise ,” she said, undeterred by her natural disadvantage in the field of intimidation, “you need to take better care of yourself! Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘physician, heal thyself’?” Isabella tapped her chin with one finger before musing, “I guess in this case it’d be more, ‘feed thyself’, and you aren’t actually a proper physician—” The blonde cut herself off before shaking her head and planting her fists on her hips. “But the point still stands! You gotta eat to live!”

Theo gave a fond sigh and raised his hands in surrender. “I know when I’m beat; I’ll do better, I promise.”

“You better,” Isabella demanded, shaking a finger at the doctor. Theo let out an exaggerated sigh in response. 

“Would it make you feel better if I ate in front of you, Isabella?” There was no real exasperation in the doctor’s tone; clearly, the man was weak against well-meaning people—or at the very least, well-meaning attractive women.

Johan remained silent about his observation; he wasn’t about to throw stones in glass houses.

“As a matter of fact, yes it would!” Isabella replied, planting a fist on her hip. 

 Johan coughed into his hand, struggling to hold back his amusement at the way Theo was getting (rightfully!) lambasted for not taking care of himself. His efforts to conceal his amusement were ultimately fruitless, though, as Isabella’s gaze turned to him in turn, eyes widening in realisation.

She tapped a fist into her palm as she spoke, “Oh, we’ve been rude; we haven’t even introduced ourselves properly!” The blonde nodded firmly and continued, “I’m Isabella; I help Theo here and there with repairs and first aid, when he needs a spare set of hands. It’s lovely to meet you!”

Isabella then turned her gaze to Luca, who gave a short nod. “Name’s Luca. I cook, mostly. Good to meet ya’.”

“Luca’s a man of few words,” Isabella added, “but don’t let that fool you—he’s a sweetheart.” Luca, for his part, rolled his eyes but didn’t refute the claim.

Johan nodded to each of them in turn. “I’m Johan; it’s a pleasure. I’d greet you properly, but, well…” He glanced at the right side of his body and winced. “...You get the picture, I’m sure.”

Luca gave a sombre nod, sympathy softening his otherwise sharp gaze. Isabella, however, crossed her arms and met Johan’s eyes with a determined expression. “Then we’ll just look forward to that once your prosthetics are done. Between me and Theo, it’ll be no time at all!”

Johan blinked at the blonde’s encouragement, before giving a small, cautious smile. Isabella seemed to appreciate it, though, as her own expression broke into a grin.

“As right as you are, Isabella,” Theo interrupted with a grunt, “what say we break for that lunch you wanted me to have?”

“You’re absolutely right!” She exclaimed, before pointing dramatically to her burly partner. “Luca! The stew!”

The quiet giant gave an affirming grunt, producing two battered thermoses from his plastic bag, passing one to Theo and turning to Johan with the other. “Made yours thinner and lighter,” the man explained gruffly as he passed the pleasantly warm thermos to Johan. “Can’t have heavy stuff yet.”

And indeed, while Theo was digging into what seemed to be a thick stew with meat and potatoes, Johan sipped at a chicken soup that barely deserved the classification—it was more of a broth, really. He was shocked to find, however, that it didn’t taste bad at all! Certainly, it wasn’t a rich or complex flavour, but the taste wouldn’t have been out of place at any diner or greasy spoon worth its salt.

His surprise must’ve showed on his face, because Isabella gave a grin. “Good, isn’t it? You’re probably not used to food this good in whatever district you’re from, but Luca is a miracle-worker with Splendamin. Even though we get the most bare-bones flavourings and the lowest quality Nutrium, he makes the best stews I’ve ever had.”

The big man’s cheeks pinked and he scratched his beard bashfully. “‘S no big deal; soup n’ stew are easy.”

Isabella looked at Luca with an affronted pout, but before she could retort, Theo set down his spoon and interjected, “Don’t you start with that crap again, Luca Angelo. You know damn well that if you just tossed some Splendamin in a pot of water and let it boil, it wouldn’t taste like a damn thing.” He spooned out another helping of stew, but rather than eating, he held it at eye-level, as though examining it. “And that’s not even considering the work it takes to give that shapeless goo the texture and flavour of so many different ingredients—in this one spoonful you’ve got beef Nutrium, potatoes, carrots, onions, and is that a mushroom I see?”

Theo shoved the stew into his mouth, chewed carefully, and swallowed before pointing his spoon at Luca. “That many different ingredients, with the cheapest, lowest-variety flavour packs and a bare handful of texture compounds? You’re a wizard in the kitchen and I won’t hear a word to the contrary.”

The large man, face now properly pink, let out a defeated grumble before throwing up his hands with a sigh. “‘S not fair when I get ganged up on,” he complained without much heat.

Theo snorted at that, while Isabella was more vocal about her amusement, letting out a bright laugh.

Johan, meanwhile, sipped his soup quietly, basking in the friendly atmosphere. He also added “Splendamin” and “Nutrium” to his mental list of things to ask Theo for clarification about; there’d been context clues, of course, but better to ask than to assume.

Even as the atmosphere soothed his spirit, though, in the back of his mind a bitter thought began to take root. This brightness, this amusement—it was all fleeting. It was all false, at the end of the day. Nothing more than a distraction from the unbearable reality he was a prisoner to.

Johan’s fist tightened around his thermos, and he pushed that line of thought away. So what if it was a temporary respite? Far better to grab hold of those small moments of hope with all the strength left to him than to wallow in misery helplessly. Theo had been right, after all. As long as he was alive, things could change for the better.

Or rather, as long as he was alive, he could change the things in his life for the better, even if only in small, incremental ways. And that would have to be enough, for now.

As he shook himself from his introspection and went to take another sip from his thermos, Johan made a most heartbreaking discovery—he was out of soup. A sigh left his lips as he screwed the lid back onto the thermos.

“Thank you for the meal, Luca.” Johan gave a nod and a small smile. “It was delicious.”

Luca returned the nod, and though it was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, he returned the smile as well. “Anytime. ‘S what I’m best at.” The chef pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and collected both thermoses before nodding to Johan and Theo in turn. 

“I’ll send more soup by tomorrow; but for now I’ll head out. I got a… stray to feed.” Luca and Theo shared a meaningful glance whose context was utterly lost on Johan; another thing to add to the list, he supposed.

The trio bid the burly man farewell each in their own ways, receiving a wave of his meaty mit in reply as Luca ambled out the way he’d entered. 

For a few moments the room was quiet, but before the silence could linger for too long, Isabella took action. She walked over to Johan and dragged a stool from outside his periphery right up to his bedside before plopping herself down on it with the sound of creaking metal.

Green eyes peered at Johan inquisitively as Isabella tented her hands, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin atop her knuckles. “So, Johan; tell me about yourself!” 

When he arched an eyebrow at her, she elaborated, “Ol’ Theo called me up to help out keeping you healthy and stuff—like a nurse or orderly or whatever—so he can focus on getting everything lined up for your prosthetics.” Isabella gave a bright smile. “I figured it’d be good to get to know each other a little, make things a bit friendlier.”

At this, Theo interjected, not looking up from where he was tinkering with the scavenged limbs. “I’d go with it if I were you, Johan. Ain’t no winning against that friendship monster when she’s made up her mind.”

Isabella’s response was surely the height of maturity: she stuck her tongue out at Theo and blew a raspberry at him. Johan certainly did not chuckle at the exchange, and anyone who claimed he did was doubtless a slanderous cad!

Johan coughed into his fist before speaking. “Tell you about myself, huh? Well, that might be a bit difficult. Did Theo, uh, tell you about my condition?”

Isabella nodded, frowning slightly. “Amnesia, right? Along with memories that don’t quite add up?”

Johan paused, then nodded. “That’s about the gist of it, yeah.” 

If that was how Theo had decided to describe it to her, then he’d follow the doctor’s lead for the time being. That Theo actually believed him seemed like nothing short of a miracle; it was probably for the best to be vague and not make people think he was crazy.

“ Well… ” Isabella drew out the word with a thoughtful hum, before seeming to reach a conclusion. “Even if you don’t remember everything right now, you still have some idea what kind of person you are, right?” Johan nodded slowly, and the blonde smiled. “In that case, just try and give me a bit of a picture: just who is Johan?”

The man in question hummed, putting his hand to his chin. “Who am I , huh? Hmm…I’m not the most social guy, for one.” He gave an embarrassed laugh. “I like stories more than I like most people, that much I can say for certain.”

Johan gave a one-armed shrug. “Not like I hate people or anything, but…I definitely like to have my space at times.”

Isabella nodded along with his words, then spoke up when he finished speaking, a concerned expression on her face. “Wait, am I bothering you? Because we don’t have to do this if it’s a bother!”

“No, no,” Johan denied, waving his hand, “this isn’t a bother at all; in fact, it’s the opposite.” His expression tightened a bit before he admitted, “Having someone to talk to is preferable to dwelling on, well…” He gestured broadly to his body rather than elaborating verbally.

Isabella winced in sympathy at Johan’s words, but then her expression firmed, once again becoming determined. “If that’s the case, then I’d be happy to shoot the breeze for as long as you want.”

Johan’s expression softened marginally, and he gave a slight smile. “I appreciate it.”

And for a time, the duo conversed, Isabella largely leading the chit-chat and Johan responding as best he could while taking care not to speak of things that might tip his conversation partner off about his memories of the Surface. 

Much of their discussion was relatively mundane, but Johan did learn what Splendamin and Nutrium were: the former was a highly nutritious plant-based jelly that was given different shapes, textures and flavours via chemical additives and various processes so as to mimic a variety of different foodstuffs. Nutrium, on the other hand, was a distinct and specialised subcategory of Splendamin which underwent specific processes to make it into an extremely convincing meat substitute.

Naturally, since the Outer Rim was a slum and dumping ground of undesirables, getting one's hands on high-quality Splendamin or pretty much any variety of Nutrium more fancy than beef, pork or chicken was essentially a pipe dream. Even low-quality Splendamin was coveted enough that it was considered the de-facto currency of the Outer Rim, since the Ark’s digital currency was useless to those who lacked ID chips—a deficit that every denizen of the Outer Rim had in common.

The more Johan learned about the state of the place that was to become his new home, the more he disliked it, and the more he began to understand the resentment that this ‘Heavenly Ascension’ held towards the Ark.

“Understand” was as far as it went, however. Johan couldn’t claim that he knew what the right way to go about righting the wrongs and repairing the injustices that so permeated the Ark and the Outer Rim, but he knew that the indiscriminate violence Theo had spoken of wasn’t it.

As Johan ruminated on these thoughts, a question entered his head, and almost without thinking, he blurted it out.

“How do you stay so bright in such a dark place?”

Isabella blinked, processing the seeming non-sequitur, then her expression gained an air of weariness—no, rather, she let her cheerful mask slip off to expose the weariness that had always been there. “Bringing out the tough questions, huh?” 

She tapped her fingers together, then gave a sad smile. “I take things day by day, so I don’t get overwhelmed. I lean on the people who care about me, and make myself available for them to lean on me. Most of all, though, I always keep a thought at the front of my mind: ‘if not me, then who?’”

Despite her wearied countenance, the determination in her emerald eyes burned brightly. “Everyone out here is suffering in one way or another. If I can help balm even a fraction of that pain, then I damn well will.”

Johan stared at Isabella, awestruck and a little bit intimidated by her intensity. “That’s…” He searched for words, then finally decided, “...an incredibly admirable attitude.” And perhaps a bit worrying, depending on just how thin Isabella was stretching herself, but he refrained from voicing that train of thought.

The duo were shaken from their intense discussion by a metallic clack , the sound of Theo setting down the part he’d been working on. 

“It’s getting a bit late, so we should all get some rest.” the doctor remarked with a yawn. “I finished refitting the conjunctive nodes faster than expected, so we’ll do the surgery tomorrow. The limbs themselves will still need more work, though.”

Johan blinked.

Surgery?

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Rehabilitation

Johan’s sleep that night was fitful, more so even than he was generally used to. As ever, the minutiae of his dreams remained out of his reach, but he woke the next morning with a stiff neck, crusty eyes, and a nosebleed.

A miserable way to wake up.

Mercifully, he wasn’t given much time to dwell on how gross he’d woken up feeling; as though summoned forth by his own awakening, Theo poked his head into the room. “Morning. I’d ask if you slept well, but…” The doctor gave a grimace as his gaze swept Johan’s expression.

The younger man gave a grunt of vague agreement. “Mh. Slept like shit, but it could be worse.” He scratched the back of his head lethargically, then let his hand flop to his side. “So…what’s the agenda for today? Before the whole surgery deal, I mean.”

Fully entering the room, Theo rubbed at his goatee before replying. “Well, since I’ll be putting you under for the operation, we’ll want to do it as early in the day as possible; you won’t be able to eat until after because of the anaesthetic.”

Johan nodded, idly musing, “I remember reading about that when I got my wisdom teeth removed.”

The doctor nodded absently as he sank into his oft-used chair. “Other than that…well, I’ve been doing my best to maintain your cleanliness while you were comatose, but I imagine you’d probably like to take a proper bath.”

Johan blinked, then looked down at himself. “Yeah, that’d be nice. But…” His expression turned displeased. “You’re probably gonna have to help me with bathroom stuff for a while, huh?” Though phrased as a question, the words were spoken with resigned certainty.

Theo pushed up his glasses. “I mean, unless you want Isabella to—”

“Absolutely not.” Johan replied flatly, his expression having gone entirely neutral…save for the slow reddening of his face. 

As embarrassing and frustrating having to be helped with his various ablutions was going to be, there was no doubt in Johan’s mind that being assisted by an attractive woman would be several degrees worse. It was for entirely emotional and irrational reasons, but after being blown up and transmigrated into a stranger’s body, Johan could have a little emotional irrationality—as a treat.

Theo, gentleman that he was, didn’t comment on his patient’s vehement denial and merely moved on. “Then yeah. I’ll need to finish modding the leg and then you’ll need to get used to walking on it enough that you can walk with crutches before I’d be comfortable letting you handle that solo. For your own safety, you know?”

“I get it,” Johan grudgingly allowed, “but I don’t have to be happy about it.”

Theo let out a bark of laughter. “Ain’t that the truth.” The doctor shook his head. “Anyway, what say we get that out of the way now so we can start the surgery as soon as Isabella gets here, yeah?”

Johan’s only reply was a grunt and a nod. He was probably being a brat, he reflected internally, but he couldn’t especially bring himself to care at that moment. He was about to get bathed like he was a child, after all.

Unsurprisingly, the experience was unpleasant for Johan, though for somewhat different reasons than he’d initially expected. All things told, while the physical aspect of being helped to wash was more… intimate than Johan was comfortable with, what really galled him was what it was emblematic of: his own reduced agency .

Suffice it to say, it fucking sucked , to the point that being put under for the surgery was practically a relief.

Once more, a discordant duet clawed at the ears. The wails of the dying provided the macabre melody, and the inscrutable chittering that seemed at once animal and mechanical harmonised to hellish effect.

It was a concerto of unnatural disaster, a capriccio of slaughter dedicated to human death and backlit by the incineration of human hope.

It was Hell.

Johan jerked awake with a sharp inhale, a jumble of barely coherent, quickly fading images bouncing around in his head. Just like the last time he’d been put under, it felt like no time had passed between him falling unconscious and reawakening, but the stiffness and weight at the end of his residual limbs put paid to that idea.

He rubbed his head with the one functional hand he had to his name. “Weird fuckin’ dreams again…” He muttered, slowly levering himself upright and rolling his neck to work some of the stiffness out. Inevitably, his gaze fell to the unfamiliar weight that capped what remained of his right arm. He had time for little more than a cursory glance at the flat, thin cylinder of metal before he was interrupted, though.

“Oh, you’re up!” Isabella remarked, standing from where she’d been sitting at Theo’s desk, the man himself notably absent. The blonde quickly made her way over to Johan, inquiring, “How are you feeling?” 

Johan let out a half-shrug. “Stiff and a bit groggy, but fine beyond that.” His stomach growled, and he snorted. “And hungry, I guess.”

“Well, good news!” Isabella rejoined with a smile. “Luca sent some more soup over while you were out, so I’ll go grab you some.”

The upbeat woman left and returned in short order, a familiar thermos in hand. As Johan drank his brunch, Isabella wasted no time in explaining what the plan was for Johan, post-op: physical therapy.

Apparently, while the supplements he’d been administered while comatose had mitigated the worst of the muscle atrophy from being bedridden—as evidenced by the fact that he could sit up under his own power—it couldn’t mitigate all of it. So, after he’d given his food time to settle, Isabella would be helping him through a few exercises, though nothing too strenuous to start.

And indeed, the next several days followed a similar pattern of activity: wake, eat breakfast, a session of light yoga, then leisure until lunch, another session of stretches, and then the rest of the day was left up to him. This usually meant messing around with the game on Theo’s phone or reading one of a narrow few books the doctor had managed to scrounge up in the interim.

Speaking of Theo, while he’d shown his face at least once a day, the majority of the doctor’s time was spent in an adjacent room tinkering with the Nikke limbs that would become Johan’s, sooner or later. Johan privately hoped that it would be sooner, as while the yoga sessions did alleviate some of the feelings of helplessness, being able to walk again, with crutches or not, would surely have more of an impact.

As though in answer to his silent hopes, four days after Johan had his surgery (and five after he’d woken up in the body of a stranger), Theo emerged from his lab for longer than a handful of minutes, a prosthetic that looked for all the world like a severed leg tucked under his own, more metallic arm.

At that time, Isabella had just finished effortlessly lifting Johan back into his bed following their afternoon yoga; her superhuman strength had given away the fact that she was a Mass-Produced Nikke on the first day of their training. She’d seemed amused with Johan’s awe at her strength, though the sentiment had faded rapidly when she’d recalled his “amnesia”. Johan couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about the deception, even if he knew it was probably for the best.

Isabella turned to the doctor, eyes brightening. “Oh, is it done?” At her question, Johan perked up, the soreness in his steadily recovering muscles shoved directly into the back of his head as he paid closer attention to Theo.

“Just about,” the doctor confirmed, setting the eerily realistic limb down on his desk, “just need to do a couple last minute checks on the nodes, and then we’re pretty much good to go.”

The doctor ambled over to Johan and did just that, lifting up what remained of Johan’s right leg and delicately tinkering with the cylindrical device that had been installed just under his knee. The oddest part, at least to Johan, were the dull sensations he got from the process—a consequence of the conjunctive node having to bridge the gap between his nerves and muscles and their synthetic counterparts in the prosthesis, or so it’d been explained to him.

After a few more minutes of tinkering, Theo was apparently satisfied, and straightened. “Alright, Johan. Before we attach the leg, I’ll warn you: when your nerves connect to the leg’s, there’ll be a shock. It ain’t gonna be pleasant, and we’re going to have to strap your leg to the bed so you don’t accidentally hurt yourself. You get me?”

Johan swallowed, then nodded. “I…yeah, I understand. Let’s just, uh, get it over with. Like when you get a shot. Anticipation just makes it worse.”

Theo exhaled a bark of amusement. “Fair enough.”

In very short order, Johan came to realise that comparing something as minor as an injection to having every nerve in his leg simultaneously stimulated was…a remarkable understatement, to put it mildly. For a scant handful of moments that seemed to last hours apiece, lightning ran from the base of his brain stem, down his spine, and down the length of his right leg, terminating at the base of his foot.

As the pain began to slowly subside and he slowly unscrewed his face and ungrit his teeth, he finally noticed it: his foot. His right foot. He had one now. He could feel things with it, albeit more dully than with his left. He could move his toes , however slowly.

Johan began to tear up, and it was only half because of the lingering pain. He let out a sound that was half a sigh of relief and half a sob, before beckoning to Theo. The doctor approached, a concerned expression on his face—one that softened almost immediately when Johan wrapped his arm around the doctor’s shoulders and weakly pulled Theo into a hug. Isabella, ever the life of the room, wasted no time in joining the hug, making both Theo and Johan let out twin grunts of surprise.

Perhaps mercifully, Johan was much too choked up to pay much mind to just how pretty the woman hugging Theo and him was, instead just murmuring “Thank you” over and over like it was a mantra.

He wasn’t whole yet, and he wouldn’t be able to walk unassisted for a while—but the fact of the matter remained that he had two legs again . Words couldn’t adequately convey his gratitude, but he damn well tried nonetheless.

After his new leg was attached, Johan’s daily schedule changed…actually remarkably little. The largest change was that the latter half of each rehab session was devoted to breaking in the limb, so to speak. Largely, this meant getting used to the weight of the prosthesis, and it was heavy. 

Apparently, the minimum weight of a Nikke tended to hover somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand pounds. While Mass-Produced Nikkes were generally at the lower end of that spectrum, and part of the refitting process Theo had put the limb through had been specifically to trim some of its weight, the prosthesis was still the better part of fifty pounds, about twice the weight of a normal adult leg—and the prosthesis only made up the lower half of his leg!

Unsurprisingly, even once he was able to walk without the crutches he was using to practise with the leg, Theo was going to provide him with a weighted boot for his opposite leg, and when his arm was ready, a cane as well. Considering his right side was only going to get heavier when he got his right arm, that was probably for the best.

Regardless of the increased difficulty, Johan persevered, for a number of reasons, and after another handful of days, Theo was sufficiently satisfied with his progress that he cleared Johan to walk around the building with his crutches—under observation, of course, but even still! His world expanded ever so slightly beyond those four drab walls, and even if that expanded world was equally drab, that much was a wonderful change for Johan. Slowly but surely, he was wrestling his agency back from the grasp of his disability.

It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that the piper—or more accurately,the Viper—came calling during this time of progress.

She arrived at the tail end of Johan’s rehabilitation exercises for the day, sauntering into the building with an air of casual confidence that would’ve drawn Johan’s eye even if her appearance hadn’t—and her appearance most certainly did.

Johan had met two Nikkes prior to this, Bridget and Isabella. The former, he’d not been able to gauge her appearance particularly well on account of her going about in full combat gear. The latter was conventionally attractive, to be sure, but Isabells’s beauty was a more comfortable, girl-next-door type of attractiveness.

This new, third Nikke—Viper, as he would later learn her name to be—was altogether different from the previous two. She was gorgeous in a jaw-dropping, aggressive sort of way; Viper very clearly knew exactly how beautiful she was, and not only did she own it, she wielded it like a sword . 

From her sleeveless, nearly skin tight top and iridescent miniskirt that rippled with colour to her barely-visible fishnet stockings and stiletto-heeled shoes, the devil-horned brunette had dressed herself to leave an indelible impact on whoever laid eyes on her. Even her otherwise unremarkable pink jacket hung off her shoulders like an accessory rather than a proper article of clothing, drawing the eye naturally to the rest of her outfit.

Suffice it to say, Johan had frozen like a field mouse beneath the gaze of a wildcat when Viper’s wine-red eyes came to rest on him—and judging from the little grin this elicited from her, that’d been the reaction she’d been looking for.

“Viper.” Theo bit out, freeing Johan from his stupor both by breaking the silence and by diverting Viper’s attention from him. “This is a surprise.” And an unwelcome one, judging from the stormy expression the doctor was wearing.

“Oh, don’t look so grumpy, Theodore.” Viper crooned, drawing out Theo’s name into its constituent syllables in a way that could’ve been flirtatious were it not so saccharinely mocking. “I won’t be bothering you for very long; I’m just here to deliver a message…and a package.”

Her well-manicured fingers slipped into one of her jacket’s pockets and reemerged with a small box, which she tossed carelessly onto the bed. “You’ll be needing a phone to get orders.” she explained as she turned back to Johan, her smirk widening to show a flash of teeth. “Crow is getting impatient…but since you look like you can walk, you can do some light work.”

Johan blinked slowly, then managed to voice a single word. “Huh?”

Theo, for his part, shot to his feet, hand banging on his desk. “Now hold the damn phone!” He snapped. “The kid is far from ready to be up and about with no help, let alone doing whatever field work she has gotten in her head to put him through. And that’s not even considering his amnesia—”

“Theodore.” A new voice interjected, her tone cold and final like a gravestone. Viper had produced a phone of her own from within her jacket, this one on and displaying an ongoing call. “I tolerate your attitude for the same reason I do Viper and Jackal’s: you remain useful to me.” 

Theo froze, clearly recognizing the voice on the other end of the call. “Crow.” Theo spat the name like it was poison on his tongue.

“ Johan , on the other hand,” the now-identified Crow continued, showing emotion for the first time only in the way she drawled his name with disdain, “has not proved comparable usefulness. Add on the amount of trouble I went to to acquire the material for you to produce your beloved MINOS, only for you to fuck up and lose me access to the knowledge of where—”

Crow cut herself off, her voice having broken its cold distance and inverted, becoming an inferno of rage in bare seconds. A few moments passed before she spoke again, voice frigid once more. “The point I am making is that you can say whatever you like about whether that boy is ready or not—just be prepared for the consequences it will have for him .” 

The call cut off with a click, and the room went silent enough that Johan swore he could hear his own heartbeat. It was, unsurprisingly, beating like a jackrabbit at the implications of what Crow’d said.

So keyed up was Johan, that when Theo spun and punched the wall with a wordless shout, his heart nearly exited his body out of startlement. The doctor’s shoulders heaved as he wrenched his metal fist from the small crack he’d made in the concrete and turned to Viper, a hateful glare on his face.

Viper’s own expression had changed as well, eyes narrowing and smirk widening into a serpentine sneer. “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” the appropriately-named woman sing-songed. “If Crow wanted little Johan here dead, she would just have him shot.” Her voice was inappropriately cheerful for discussing his death , in Johan’s opinion.

The fatal woman strutted over to where Johan was rigidly sitting on his bed and leaned forward, cupping his chin with a gentleness that even felt false. “Just follow instructions, and you’ll be nowhere near harm’s way—okay, sweetie?” The double meaning of her words was so blatant that an amoeba could’ve parsed it.

It took every ounce of strength Johan had to reach up and place his hand on her wrist. “Please,” He forced out, “don’t touch me without my consent.”

Viper’s eyes widened. With a giggle that was three-quarters mockery and one-quarter mirth, she acquiesced to his “request”. “Got it! I’ll be sure to ask first next time!”

Johan couldn’t stop from shivering as the venomous Nikke sauntered away from his bed, wiggling her manicured fingers over one shoulder as she walked towards the door. If he was lucky, Viper had missed that reaction…so there was no doubt in his mind that she’d noticed.

“Be sure to keep an eye on your phone, Johan!” Viper chirped, drawing out his name in much the same way as she had done with Theo’s. “Ciao!”

The sound of the door closing behind Viper was no different than it’d been for any prior visitor leaving the building. Nonetheless, it reached Johan’s ears with a sort of finality usually reserved for things like a gunshot, the fall of a guillotine blade, or the lid of a coffing snapping shut.

The last comparison was especially apt, given how Johan felt in the wake of Viper’s visit.