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David had been vaguely aware of the Crows since the Alina and Second Army had worked with them to kill the Darkling. Of course, David had spent most of that victory unconscious and bleeding severely, but he was present when Zoya and Tolya were sent off to get them. From what he had heard, they were really quite helpful. He imagined he would get to see that first hand soon enough.
He pushed open a door that led into another, darker hallway, lit by the firelight of torches. Not very good design, he thought, that the hall from which the Materialki laboratory split off was lit by fire. A lot of chemicals reacted badly to heat. Most organic peroxides, really. Putting the room in the basement was, perhaps, an even worse choice. If anything reacted badly at all, it could bring the whole palace down. He turned the corner and found himself facing a pair of large wooden doors.
The room was filled with tables, all neatly organized in rows. It was far from the room at the Little Palace, but that was, from what David understood, in shambles, at the moment. The perfectly lined tables were deserted, both of people, and of tools. It really was very eerie.
Somebody cleared their throat and David’s head snapped up. The room was still empty, where- oh. No, there was somebody else in the room. They were in the furthest corner, shrouded in shadow.
“A-are you David Kostyk?” A quiet voice asked.
The man stepped into the light. He was rather short, with a pair of goggles nestled into his messy brown hair.
“I’m- uhm- Wylan Van Eck.”
His voice went up at the end of the sentence, making him sound almost unsure of his own name.
“The demolitions expert?” David questioned, dropping his satchel onto the table beside him.
“Y- hm- yes.” Wylan’s gaze darted around the room for a moment before stopping on David’s bag, “Yup. That’s me.”
“I am, by the way.” David waited for an unfortunately long amount of time before looking up at the confusion on Wylan’s face and realizing that what he had just said made no sense at all, “Uh- David Kostyk”
“Ah, right.” Wylan nodded curtly.
He lifted his hands and reached for the bag on the table but hesitated for a moment before picking it up. He cast David a very brief glance before finally pulling the bag upright and opening it. There were a few chunks of metal, but mostly it was filled with carefully packed vials of chemicals, which were not David’s main area of expertise, but he knew enough about them to be helpful. In fact, at the moment, as far as he had found, it was all he could do to be helpful. He did not know much about the drug they were working to counter, aside from that it was incredibly addictive, and very dangerous.
“Um- So-” Wylan was already unpacking vials.
“Mhm” David hummed before dragging his gaze from the corner of the table to just over Wylan’s head. This, he had learned, was close enough to eye contact to be socially acceptable.
“I think you’re here because we need- oh! These shouldn’t be so close to each other.” Wylan shuddered and placed each vial carefully down on the table, about an arm’s length away from each other.
He picked up another vial, this one filled with blue powder, and placed it beside a bottle of purple liquid. He continued to shuffle bottles and vials around for a while. The order meant nothing to David but he was sure it was important. Wylan cleared his throat and looked up at David again.
“Sorry- ehm- I was saying…” He trailed off, tapping two fingers against the edge of the table for a few seconds before snapping and making a very brief second of eye contact, “Right, I think you’re here-” he went back to moving items around, this time taking them out of their neatly made lineups, “because we probably-” he pointed loosely at David, “won’t be able to just give people the antidote.” he motioned to the cluster of chemicals now in the center of the table, “So we may have to-” he gestured vaguely around the air in front of him, “force them to take it?” he smiled, though it was really more of a grimace, and clapped his hands together quietly.
“I-” David tilted his head to the side. That meant weapons. Guns, likely. That was a job for a Fabrikator, yes, but he was not exactly a fan of guns. Then again, they wouldn’t be hurting anybody, in fact they would be helping them, “I can help with that.” he nodded, “Shall I, um..” he pointed toward the table beside the one Wylan was working at.
“Ah- um- go ahead.” Wylan nodded back, pulling his goggles over his eyes and turning back to his work.
David grabbed his satchel by and walked over to the other table. It nearly slid off the other end but he connected with the metal buckle on its handle and pulled it back up before it hit the ground. He pushed the chair that was tucked under the table away and began unpacking.
—
It had been a few days since David and Wylan had started working together. Despite the fact that they spent nearly all of every day working directly beside each other, they spoke roughly twice per day. David had made several designs and mockups for devices to administer an antidote. Some were guns, some were more like spray bottles. Which one got used would depend on what the antidote looked like and how much of it was necessary, which Wylan had not yet figured out due to the fact that the only proper sample of the drug they had was what little remained in the bottle used for the attack on Nikolai’s coronation, which was very little. A significant amount of progress had been made on it, but exactly what was necessary for the antidote was still unclear.
“If you-” David cringed at how loud his voice sounded in the quiet of the room as Wylan looked up at him, “If you do find an antidote, how will we know if it really works. Aside from-” he flailed his hands around but failed at making the motion actually mean anything coherent, “-well, everything neutralizing.”
Wylan frowned, removed his goggles, and set the vial he was holding down on the table carefully.
“I’ve been worrying about that, actually… There are a lot of unpredictable factors.”
“Hmm. Not what you want for a chemical reaction” David chuckled, more to himself than to Wylan, “Especially not if you need it to work every time.”
Wylan nodded and laughed quietly. David hardly noticed since he was already scanning over Wylan’s collection of glass containers. He stepped away from his table to get a closer look at them. Most of the powders and quite a few of the liquids were recognizable to him. At least he was fairly sure he recognized them, none of them had proper labels. They were all marked with music notes.
“Your labels are-”
“Ah- yeah- uhm…” Wylan cut him off in a hurry, “It’s nothing.”
He quickly snapped back into his work.
“Should I- hmm- should I not have brought it up?”
David regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Clearly he shouldn’t have brought it up. Wylan removed his goggles, placing them back into his mess of brown hair.
“Oh, no- it’s- it’s alright.” Wylan’s brown eyes met David’s as he glanced up but the eye contact did not last long, “It’s just… easier this way.”
He did not elaborate and David did not ask him to. He sensed he had already overstepped.
“Sorry.” David muttered.
He stayed where he was for a while, still looking over the collection of jars. He could identify some of them by simply sensing them but some were completely foreign to him. He was vaguely aware that Wylan was staring at him so he began walking back to his own table. He was more focused on a jar containing a fair amount of orange-red powder than his own steps. What was that? He was sure he had seen it before but-
He heard the clang of his left leg against the leg of Wylan’s table and turned on his heels, mentally grabbing hold of the contents of several jars, stopping them in mid air, before they could shatter on the ground and cause something that would probably kill them both.
“Close..” David breathed once everything was safely back where it had fallen from.
Wylan was staring at him, his brown eyes even larger than normal.
“A-are you okay?”
“Mhm” David nodded with a frown, “Er- why?”
“Just-” Wylan began.
David replayed the moment in his head, the loud clang that metal against wood caused.
“Oh, that- it’s nothing to worry about, really.” he hurried, “Well, it was at some point. Eh- but it’s not anymore.”
Wylan visibly relaxed a little bit but he still looked confused.
“Just- it’s- um-” David sighed and stepped out from behind the table so Wylan could actually see his legs and then he pulled up his left pant leg to just under his knee so the metal below was visible.
“Oh,” Wylan inhaled. David let go of the fabric in his hand and opened his mouth to speak but Wylan beat him to it, “Did you make it yourself?”
David just nodded.
“Wow… That must’ve taken a while.”
“Uhm…”
Really, making a functional human leg had not taken as long as David had expected it to when he first realized he would have to. Then again, that realization hit while he was lost somewhere in the middle of a forest with a freshly missing leg. Conditions under which it would have taken significantly longer to make something.
“Oddly enough, it didn’t.” He shrugged.
Wylan’s eyes widened again, this time in what looked to be awe.
“Really? I mean, I’m no Durast, so I can’t really say but that’s- I mean- very impressive. I think.”
David smiled and made a short moment of eye contact before directing his stare elsewhere, “Thank you.”
“Mmm” Wylan hummed and gave a small, genuine smile before returning to his work.
David’s eyes had already fallen back onto the orange-red powder.
“So sorry, what’s that?” He pointed at the jar.
“Ah, that’s Datura Meloxia powder.”
Now, it was David’s turn to stare wide-eyed.
“Really? Dat- but- there’s- there’s so much of it.” So long as his memory was not failing him, Datura Meloxia were incredibly rare, “How did you-..?”
“Actually, when we went to find the Neshyenyer, I saw a group of cyan morpho butterflies pollinating them!” Wylan beamed, his voice filled with so much wonder that it sounded like he was watching it happen in front of him right now.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did! There were people there. Well, they weren’t- they were busy at the time, but they saw the butterflies. Well, they ate them, but-”
“Sorry, they what?”
“It’s a long story.” Wylan trailed off but before David could speak, he picked up the sentence again, “They were being poisoned by the Datura Meloxia so-”
“The butterflies would neutralize it, right, yes.” David unintentionally motioned as if brushing somebody off, quickly realized it, and shoved his hand in his pocket, “That’s fascinating.”
—
Neither David n’or Wylan got anything done for the rest of the day, which neither of them were particularly thrilled about by the end of the day, however, the conversations had were, as they later decided, much worth the delay since they were interesting and contributed to collaboration. David was just glad that, now, somebody around knew what he was talking about most of the time. Wylan was glad for it too.