Chapter Text
It was true—and obvious to almost everyone—that Karl Heisenberg hated Mother Miranda with a violent passion.
But he wasn't an idiot. Heisenberg had learned early on in his life that if he wanted to stay on however much of a good side she had in order to keep her as far away from the factory as he could, feeding her ego by complying was necessary.
So he was more than just thankful to have a break from all of the metaphorical ass kissing when Mother Miranda retreated into her lab several months ago.
It was pure bliss.
No family meetings to attend to. No more spontaneous visits. No one there to tell him what to do. Nothing. Just several uninterrupted weeks to work on his metal army and experiment with new soldat designs; after Sturm had turned out to be such a failure, it felt good to finally be able to work on something new.
But alas. After four months of no real breakthroughs, Heisenberg found a letter on his doorstep from none other than his own so-called ‘Mother’. He contemplated not opening it or even just throwing the wax sealed envelope into one of his furnaces, but—knowing Miranda—it would probably just result in the more unfavourable possibility of her visiting him in person. It was better to just get it all over and done with, so he opened it.
“To Heisenberg, my son,
I hope my letter finds you in good health. However, I am not writing to you out of concern for my absence's effects on your personal well-being. I am aware that you thrive in seclusion.
I require a personal audience with you in my laboratory today at no later than the fourteenth hour.
Sincerely,
Mother Miranda.”
Great. Just wonderful. A private meeting all to himself.
He would rather give Sturm a hug.
But just like with the letter, if he didn't go to her, she would certainly come to him, which definitely felt like a much worse way to spend his afternoon. It just felt like Miranda had made it her personal habit to linger for far longer than she needed to whenever she visited the factory, maybe it was because she could see through Heisenberg's act and just wanted to watch him mentally squirm as he choked down his bubbling venom.
As much as he'd love to wait until the latest time possible—just to get on her nerves—Heisenberg did have more important things to be getting on with, so with a very frustrated groan and many mumbled curses he headed out into the frozen wastes of outside his factory to walk to Miranda's laboratory.
The walk there was just about as pleasant as Heisenberg thought it would be, which was to say: not at all. The cold wind bit at the exposed skin of his face and neck while fractals of ice blossomed around the rims of his dark tinted glasses, and to top it all off he would still have to speak to Miranda at the end of this miserable walk.
It must've been years since he had been in there, but her laboratory was still as cluttered and dank as Heisenberg remembered it from his childhood. The papers containing diagrams may have been slightly different, but it still all felt the same.
Every time he found himself in this place, Karl mourned the loss of his freedom that Mother Miranda had so recklessly stripped away from him. He was reminded of the weeks and months that he spent in this basement as a preteen in fear and disgust for what he had become after the surgery to make him into the “perfect vessel”. It didn't work, of course it didn't. All that it did was ensure that any chance he had of running away from this forsaken village was crushed.
He dragged his gaze across to a cadou specimen suspended in a murky liquid that sat in its jar on one of the tables. The bulbous mass twitched and pulsed in its glass container; Heisenberg could swear that he felt his own do the same within his chest cavity along with a painful buzz like an electric shock from inside of him, it sent a shiver down his spine. Next to it was an empty jar of the same size with documents and anatomical diagrams scattered around it. Each paper detailed a chain of surgeries on a humanoid specimen that looked and sounded more like mindless butchery for the sake of tearing something apart and putting it back together rather than real science.
“Ahem.” The announcement of Miranda's presence immediately pulled Heisenberg's attention away from the documents he was reading. “I am pleased that you were able to make it here upon such short notice. I have something you should see.”
She didn't even wait for a response as she walked over to the lab's built-in cell, her tone controlled yet undoubtedly swimming with anger and frustration. “It has been one hundred and twenty-eight days since I last properly left my work, but in that time, I have endlessly been working on my newest vessel for Eva. Unfortunately—just like you and your siblings—it is defective… I was, however, much closer this time.”
“Yeah, yeah, that's great and everything.” Heisenberg made a point to follow Miranda across the room as slowly as he could.
“But what does that have to do with me?”
“I want you to take it.”
“Take it?”
“Yes. Take it. Kill it. Experiment on it for all I care.” The exasperation in Mother Miranda's voice was evident. “As long as it is disposed of.”
“And this is my problem?” Heisenberg knew he was playing with fire asking questions while Miranda was on such a short fuse, but he didn't like where this was going and he may as well have some fun with it while he could.
“Because,” If there wasn't a chip in her composure before, there most certainly was one now. “Lady Dimitrescu is at too high of a risk of taking pity on it, just like how she is with her daughters. Giving Lord Moreau more attention than necessary is undesirable, though he would most likely fulfil my wishes without question. Lady Beneviento was a likely candidate. However, she is closed off even to me, giving her my failure was too unpredictable, especially with her unstable mental state. But you, Lord Heisenberg, are the most apathetic amongst the lot of them, and do not think that I have not noticed how villagers tend to go missing around your factory; I know that you have a part to play in that.”
Heisenberg's level of discomfort rose for each word she spoke, especially when using his title.
“Right… So then, let's cut to the chase, shall we?” He impatiently gestured his leather clad hand towards the bars of the darkened cell, wanting to get out of there with whatever pitiful creature Miranda had created so he could throw it to his soldats and be done with all of this.
“If you wish, Heisenberg.” Mother Miranda unlocked the heavy barred door and stepped inside. She cornered something in the darkness of the cell. The vessel made a noise similar to the whine of an injured animal as she dragged ‘it’ out by the sleeve of its nightdress.
What Heisenberg saw even made him recoil slightly. A girl. She couldn't be any older than ten, but it was hard to tell with all of that stitching holding her face together. Now that he noticed it, the stitching spread across far more than just her face: down her neck, on her arms, although the full extent of it was obscured by the nightgown, that was far too large for the kid, he thought it to be likely that the stitches spread throughout the entire surface of her scrawny frame.
Underneath the stitching and seams of her skin, she looked so much like Miranda, just younger, weaker, and frightened out of her mind, with the patchiest buzz-cut he had ever seen. There were even a pair of wings on her back that looked to have been half-plucked, and the feathers that did remain were ratty and stained with grime.
It shouldn’t have disturbed him, or at least not as much as it did. He had done similar things to innocent people himself—with the addition of metal and wire—in the creation of his army, after all. But perhaps it was because of how young and fragile she looked, or perhaps it was the uncanny resemblance she had to her ‘Mother’, or maybe it was how much she reminded him of his own childhood: being the failed living experiment of an insane woman, left to rot.
“What the fuck…” The words came out much quieter than Heisenberg expected them to, and if Miranda had heard him, she ignored his profanity.
“Its affinity to the cadou is incredibly favourable, and the regenerative abilities it possesses are highly impressive too, though they are still nothing in comparison to Lady Dimitrescu. Unlike you and your siblings, this vessel was crafted almost entirely from the megamycete with only a few parts from a human host. Its mutation has allowed it to be incredibly susceptible to surgery and other modifications.” Mother Miranda let go of the girl's sleeve and let her fall fully onto the ground before grabbing and fanning out one of the girl's wings as a display of her modification. “It's impressive how much this one looks like my Eva, but unfortunately, its will and consciousness are very much its own.”
Heisenberg began to open his mouth to speak, to yell, to say or do anything, but for the first time in a very long time, he felt himself rendered speechless. He just stared down at the child Miranda refused to acknowledge as a person.
The kid's eyes—so wide with irises so pale they almost looked silver—flickered between himself and Miranda like a caged animal as she began to push herself off of the stone floor. It was almost as if she was expecting to be shoved back down the instant she stood, Karl didn't blame her. He had been chosen to carry out the act of her disposal, after all, in her eyes he was probably just as bad as her creator.