“We did it. Right?” My stomach is in knots, and my hands are shaky from adrenaline and shock. I lock eyes with Dr. Sam Vesalius, my partner of ten years, and hold my breath. He nods slightly, looking just as shell-shocked as I feel.Holy fuck—we did it!Excitement lights my nerve endings in a flash, and I grab hold of the procedure table in front of us to steady myself.
“We should wait another few minutes.” His eyes dart to the monitors, where he stares at the vitals of patient zero. The stable vitals! Giddiness floods my veins in a flash, and I nod as he continues, “After we’re sure she’s stable, we’ll wake her and run some tests.”
“Should I go tell her parents while we wait?” I can hear the breathy eagerness in my voice, but I don’t care.
Eilidh, patient zero, is a six-year-old half-orc girl who has been stuck on a waiting list as a candidate for our project for the past two years. I’ve had to watch her slowly deteriorate right in front of me, knowingthat I could potentially save her if we could just move a little faster. Her parents have had so much faith in this, even when it seemed like Eilidh wouldn’t make it to the trial phase.
Realistically, she wouldn’t have made it if we had followed protocol and been stuck on the waiting list for permit approval. Pride makes my heart swell as I stare at the delicate yet fierce features of the sweet little girl who will finally get to live a normal life, free of pain and disease.We really did it.
“No, not yet.” Sam winces and looks at me apologetically, “We don’t know if the Lazarus transfer has any cognitive side effects. I—I don’t want to give them any false hope.”
My shoulders slump, and all the energy from the high of this seemingly momentous feat whooshes out of me. I nod, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. A flush stains my cheeks, partially from the rapid change in my emotions, but also partly from embarrassment.A real scientist would have remembered that. My imposter syndrome causes a tightness in my chest that settles as a dull ache right above my heart.
Dr. Vesalius was a well-respected alchemist when I approached him over a decade ago and pitched this pipe dream to him. We call it somaplasia—a new specialty field requiring a pseudo-organics alchemist (Dr. Vesalius) and a necromancer (me) working together. It's a pioneer experiment, as nothing like this has ever been attempted before.
Necromancers generally only reanimate the dead. Being able to raise the dead into a new vessel is something I’ve been playing around with since I was a child. My cat, Wentworth, had been hit by a car, and I refused to let him go. I went to an occult shop and got a preserved kitten from the spells and talismans section. It’s crazy that it actuallyworked—I had no idea what I was doing at the time. I was just a heartbroken kid who couldn’t let go of a beloved pet.
It took me the better part of a year to be able to emulate it with mice, and after that, I would occasionally help friends’ pets the same way that I had saved Wentworth. Still, transferring small animals differs from human soul transfer on a large scale. For one, if you don't want to end up with a mindless shell of a person, the new body can't have already been dead.
My family hated all of it. My parents are, unfortunately, stereotypical necromancers—very deeply rooted in dark magic. Raising animals is an embarrassment to our lineage, according to them. They believe it's beneath us, which is rich, considering the shit they encourage is absolutely vile.
That outlook is a huge part of the reason I left home as soon as I could and avoid my family like the plague.
The catalyst, though, was an article Sam had written about realistic golems inMetric Magic,a scientific journal. The idea behind Lazarus transfers hit me like a brick to the face. It became a sort of obsession for me—a way to distance myself further from my family and do somethinggoodwith my life. To create something positive from a power that can be so destructive.
I did some light stalking and introduced myself to Dr. Vesalius at a conference he was speaking at, pitched him my idea, and we’ve been working together ever since. He designed amazing lifelike golems made of synthetic flesh that can be printed as a replica of the subject. Then, I gently remove the spirit from its original diseased body and reanimate it into a new, perfectly healthy one that will grow organically along with its new spirit.
We’ve spent the better part of our partnership refining it, and the past couple of years getting ready to start trials on test subjects. Theonly major downside? If it doesn’t work, we risk losing the patient for good, or having to raise them back into the original diseased body—with an increased likelihood of advanced decomposition.
“Okay, let’s wake her up slowly.” Sam deftly pushes the plunger on the needle into Eilidh’s IV, his gruff voice pulling me out of my wandering thoughts. I spin on my heel and quickly pull the sheet up over Eilidh’s now lifeless origin body before turning back to wait for her to wake up.
Dark eyelashes flutter against pale green skin. Her little nose scrunches up, distorting the olive-green colored freckles scattered there. Little tusks glint in the bright lighting, and I marvel at how perfect she is.We did it. Please, please let it work.I need this. I need this more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life. My heart pounds against my ribs, and I gasp as mossy green eyes blink open and hold my gaze.
“Ryn…am I a new me now?” Her little voice is raspy, but full of hope.
A sob escapes me, and I nod, “Yes, Eilidh, you’re new. It worked.” I can hear sniffles coming from across the table and smile as a tear slides down my cheek.
Sam clears his throat and smiles, “We’re going to run some tests with you now, if you feel up to it. After that, we can call your parents in. How does that sound?”
Eilidh scrunches up her little face and purses her lips to the side, “Is it graded?”
“What?” Sam blinks and tilts his head as he reaches for a tablet.
“The test! I didn’t study nothing.”
A laugh bubbles up my throat as Sam’s eyes crinkle with mirth. “No, dear. No, it’s not graded. In fact, I’m sureyou’ll do just fine.” He meets my eyes across the table, and my heart soars. She’s going to be okay.
We fucking did it!
I scrub a hand over my face and sit back against my oversized reading chair with a huff.
My laptop slides to the side of my lap, and I reach out a hand to catch it and pull it closer to me. Wentworth protests the jostling from his spot near my feet, and I coo at his handsome, furry little scrunched face. His orange eyes are a striking contrast to his long, black fur. He blinks back at me with mild tolerance that I choose to perceive as abiding love, and then makes biscuits on our shared blanket. It’s soothing enough to lessen some of my anxiety, but unfortunately, my stress levels are so astronomically high that not even his fluffy cuteness can calm me down enough to breathe easily.
Finding donors to help fund the costs of creating more synth golems has been harder than I anticipated. We can do it, but we’ll probably have to coordinate with multiple donors in order to reach our goal. Sam has more experience with this kind of thing and was really hoping to only have to deal with one donor, but with our pitch being more altruistic in nature, most of the interested parties can’t afford what we’d need to get operational.
I scroll through the grant proposal I’ve been working on and sigh as my phone vibrates on the side table next to me. The good doctor's name pops up on the screen, and I scoop up my phone to answer, “Sam, hey! How’s it going? How’s Eilidh?”
“Good, good, everything is good. Eilidh has one more day of monitoring, and then she’ll be cleared to go home, with weekly check-ins for the next month.”
