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His empty laboratory is all that’s left behind. No machines running, no half-filled beakers…not a sound. Only a stillness that brought the sharp knife of reality into the one person left who might even want to be here.
Impeccably clean but cold, this place holds more of Pantalone’s memories than any other single location in the world. If not for his numerous medical emergencies, he would often find himself here for the sake of the person—persons sometimes—who operated the various projects that frequently l cost him a healthy handful of mora.
He’d give that mora over in an instant if it could turn the lights back on and illuminate life back into this place where death has become no stranger.
Fingers run over the empty tables as he passes through, remembering where endless pages of research would once pile. Five projects, ten, possibly more, but always something. Often, his name would be at the bottom of these pages—his approval for funding left in a place all of them would remember.
Not that it ever stopped them from sometimes sabotaging each other. A faint smile touches his lips, remembering the Doctor’s 45 year old segment setting the 18 year old up for rejection because he teased 8, the baby. And Pantalone played along unquestioningly, more than happy to put off another chunk of mora being siphoned out of him. Having six Dottores to manage could stress even the toughest man.
What he wouldn’t give…
The funny thing about loss is that it doesn’t quite hit until later, when the absence becomes a canyon too far and too wide to ever cross. Anymore, he can’t even see across. That canyon started growing long before, when he lost the original.
That loss came sharp and suddenly, but at that time, he had the comfort of self delusion. The essence of that Doctor surrounded him daily. A child with an Aranara obsession. A teenager with an attitude who couldn’t help but pick on his younger self. The young adult who spent most of his time in the lab, but would explain his theories and projects until the heat death of the universe if you asked. The middle aged man who, coming down from his prime, calmed down significantly and found amusement in the things others didn’t. The elder who hid his face but made much deeper, more analytic observations.
And the one in his prime. Theatrical, motivated, intellectually brilliant, if a little crazy. The last one he had until his trip to Sumeru.
Only after coming back and stepping into the lab, does it really sink in. They are all gone. The last segment marked the closing of Zandik’s book. It took over four hundred years for the world to put the heretic to rest—the man who tore himself apart, and drove himself crazy to break shackles he wouldn’t even be alive to see.
The laws of this world are cruel.
He finds a lamp in the documents storage area, clicking it on so he can take a seat at the desk where they would manage the files. Centuries of carefully kept documents now belong solely to him. As the Doctor’s investor, in light of his passing, all of this falls to him to sort. Many have already offered to buy the contents of Dottore’s lab, and he has refused them all.
Those experiments can not be completed by anyone else and he won’t let them try. Not even for Sandrone, who asked if she could salvage some of his materials. His feelings toward her are complicated at best, and vitriolic at worst. Naturally, he does not let his emotions leave the very close place to his chest, and his face barely shows the suffering that comes with that canyon widening into an endless void.
He may be the only person in the world to see Zandik as human. It’s no wonder the Doctor turned out the way he did.
“Zandik…” he sighs, taking a seat and looking around. “You left me quite a burden.” But the burden isn’t in the physical things that remain, instead, it’s in the longing he didn’t expect to be hit so hard with.
Sitting at the desk, he can look over and remember the two of them at the table across from where he sits. Zandik—the original, his Zandik—would show him things he engineered. Breaking apart small robotic parts to explain them even if they went in one ear and out the other. Pantalone remembers none of the words, but he remembers the sound of his voice. The way he took his time and showed patience toward him—despite Pantalone knowing that Zandik could be incredibly volatile towards those who didn’t keep up with him.
He never showed that toward him, though. At that table, he built things for him. Sometimes he patched up his injuries there too, sitting him on a stool with his emergency kit spread open. A time or two, Pantalone was the one on the table…
Sitting in the hollow domain left behind, he sees…well he sees nothing at all. But he feels the nostalgia and he imagines those scenes. Some of them feel like yesterday, many of them feel like they are on the horizon at the edge of the canyon, waiting to slip away forever.
From his coat, he fishes a lighter out to break open a fresh pack of cigarettes. Zandik would admonish him for this, smoking in the lab. That man snapped more of his cigarettes in half than he probably got to smoke, and as he lights the first of probably many, he quietly wishes a hand would come from somewhere and do it again.
“Just try and stop me,” he whispers to ghosts that won’t even show themselves. He’s not even worthy of being haunted, it seems. Pressing the filter between his lips, he takes a deep breath. It does nothing for him at the moment. Doesn’t calm him, or ease the complex vortex of emotions he would prefer to ignore. This time, they’re just too large—filling more space in his body than the smoke he breathes out.
The scent of burning nicotine is nothing like the smell of a burning world tree, but for so many reasons, it’s all he can think about. Seeing the last vestiges of something extraordinary….precious…wisp away like the embers of his cigarette falling into ashen dust.
Absently, he remembers the small things.
Behind the back of the elder segments, he once humored their teenage self, who threatened to smoke all of his cigarettes if he didn’t stop. To prove a point, he said. The poor thing nearly choked himself out halfway into the first one, but Pantalone promised to stop for the day as a reward for his dedication to the cause. He promised to keep it between them, at least.
And if he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the child coming over to him and climbing into his lap to hide himself in the inside panels of his coat when the forty-five year old self had other things to do.
He can smell the Sumeru blend tea that the elder perfected, sharing with him on quiet afternoons when his work concluded and no one else came knocking on his door—a rare happening, but cherished moments nonetheless.
He exhales another mouthful of smoke, slowly…miserably. Coming here is a mistake and he knows it.
The delusion is telling himself the burning comes from the smoke, but the reality is the burning hasn’t gone away since it started. It’s like a permanent wound he hasn’t figured out how to absolve. Perhaps, he hopes that coming here will give him a kind of closure.
That closure could come any time now…
Pushing his daydreaming aside, he looks around the room and focuses on what’s real and physical before him—not illusions he can’t touch anymore.
Stacks of books and files line a big shelf next to the desk, and it catches his attention while he’s seeking a distraction. These are all his documents now. There’s no one to stop him from pulling them all off the shelf, throwing them around the room, or tearing them into confetti to throw around like he won himself a prize.
None of those things happen; instead, he pulls a few files he recognizes from the shelf—ones those segments, and Zandik himself, had opened when he visited for his various health conditions. This file holds more documents within it than any other single file. Four hundred years or so would do that. He brushes his fingers over the old lettering, once penned by the original Zandik.
His own name. The first occasion where Zandik wrote his name. He hasn’t heard it spoken in a long long time. Not since Zandik, who used it almost exclusively toward him…although…
…No, that’s not correct anymore. He has heard it recently, like a knife to the chest. Those words gut him open and leave him spilling feelings where he prefers to pretend he has none of them.
“Goodbye, Feofan.”
This folder is filled with years of his own records, painstakingly kept by every facet of Zandik. Every last one of them had Zandik’s dedication built into them. That sliver of his soul, that placed Pantalone on a pedestal like a patron saint, held a grip on all of them.
Hundreds of years worth of documentation in a shared handwriting. The early pages show signs of fading but remain no less clear to read. His progression from Specimen, to person, to harbinger could be dated back to the altered file entries by the Doctor. From when he talked himself out of being a test subject, to his promotion to Harbinger, to every check up and surgery performed.
An unnaturally long life lay documented thoroughly on the table before him. In truth, Zandik never showed him this file in depth. He’s seen it, he’s watched them…him, make notes on it numerous times. But he never held interest in reading through the details, because he always felt that the less he knew here, the better off he’d be.
With each page, he realizes that still holds true. A sense of dread tells him to stop looking, burn the file and never cast a second glance. But his morose curiosity and suffocating need to be close to anything that’s left of Zandik presses him forth.
He never knew there were so many footnotes added to his folder; in the margins of incident records, additional timeline sheets, and sometimes even small notes stuffed between other pages.
Subject Addendum: Patient mentioned seeing floating elements in his vision, consider potential vision issues in the future and refer to updated texts in preparation.
Subject Addendum: Patient favoring left hand lately, despite right-handed nature. Schedule an examination to coincide with the next check up.
Subject Addendum: Administer smoking cessation injection. Patient has the right to bodily autonomy. Coach patient on the importance of prevention.
Subject Addendum: Patient won’t stop flirting with acting physician. Considering solution: Tranquilization.
Subject Addendum: Patient exhibiting symptoms of insomnia. Recommendation: Alter diet, leave work early to reduce stress. Reassessment one week. Secondary consideration: Tranquilization. Third consideration: Sumeru blend tea + guided bed time.
Subject Addendum: Patient resting well following surgical procedure, and responding positively to experimental drug trial. Ensure the patients well being, no matter the cost. Period.
No matter the cost.
No matter the cost.
Patient is not allowed to perish.
Patient has the right to bodily autonomy, confer with patient for a follow up treatment plan.
Note after note like these. Some of them written in calm, elegant handwriting, some of them scrawled like a man desperately making a footnote in the wake of a pending disaster. Despite their medical sterility, Pantalone can feel the personal nature of these blurbs. He can almost hear the frustration, concern, fear, and…desperation written in ink from centuries ago.
It stalls the breath in his chest.
So much time dedicated to keeping one man alive. He always knew that Zandik placed him above others in a unique way, but to see all his words collected and laid out…reads like a love letter. A sterile, formulaic, medical-jargon filled love letter, but one nonetheless.
Zandik…
His head hurts, but he turns the page. He’s not sure when the trembles started in his fingers, but he rests his head on his other hand to steady himself. Ashes flick across the table when he turns another page and it forces him to set the cigarette down. Who cares if the embers burn marks into the wooden desk? The only one to scold him isn’t here to do so.
The next records are familiar to him. Several following drug trials, a couple following minor injuries. He signed off on several of these and some of them follow significant events. By this point in the record, Zandik—his Zandik—had already passed. The records don’t change in their nature, though, because all facets of Zandik took his record keeping exceptionally seriously. They all had one thing in common outside being fragments of the same man: their devotion to Pantalone.
Reading these documents does nothing but deepen his melancholy. Instead of ripples, the grief comes as a rising tide—like he’s punishing himself just to be here. Maybe he is.
He really can’t imagine how it can feel worse.
Of course, with Zandik, it’s always something.
When he turns to the next page, it clicks immediately that it’s not like the others. The format is different, the writing is different, and the document has a name and title that don’t belong to him. How he wishes he threw the whole file away instead of opening it.
Autopsy Report: Zandik
Time of death: ____
Place of death: ____
Investigators: 8, 18, 25, 35, 45, 65
Summary: Acute coronary failure, no underlying system infection, samples taken for testing with blood results negative for abnormality. Brain death occurred approx. 2 hours prior to extraction of remaining healthy tissue.
Action plan: Prep body for organ harvesting. 8, 18, and 25 to prepare appropriate storage for: liver, kidneys, and lungs in particular. 35 and 45 to perform extraction. 65 to observe tissue and organ biometrics. Apply results to Drug Trial ___.
Secondary objectives: Assess possibility of tissue preservation post mortem.
The rest of the sheet blurs from his sight as it drops out of his hand. He put a cold exterior on when he walked in on the scene detailed on the page, but it becomes more like knives now than ever before. Now that all of Zandik is gone, his memory of that moment comes at him with a fresh punch to the gut.
Back then, he knew Zandik would die eventually, but also not really. Though his segments were him, in many ways, they were not him. They lacked the growth and personal memories their original held and grew with. They could not replace the whole person—the one who became his only safe space in the world. But they sure softened the blow. He could feign his smiles and soothe the heaviness in his chest with the living, breathing remnants the Doctor left behind.
Even when it came down to the last one, that bold and radical form still carried the spirit of Zandik, even if that one preferred the moniker of Dottore. The presence was enough.
But now, there’s nothing.
Continuing feels like a special kind of torture.
The next page reads with a series of follow up notes about the autopsy. The experiments done, the tests, the methods of preservation. He’s known since the final formulation of the elixir that the research following his autopsy perfected the formula. His own aging stalled because of the death of his…cherished person. Not words he ever thought he’d acknowledge.
Reading them over is really a game of following scribbles with his eyes, because he isn’t processing the words. It’s a motion that he’s going through. A blank stare that looks but sees nothing. He didn’t come here for self flagellation, but it’s what he received.
The word transplant catches his eye and takes him out of his vacant stare.
Perhaps he should have shred the page into confetti instead of allowing his eyes to continue down the page. A stab in the chest might feel better.
Procedure: Lung Transplant
Time elapsed:___
Procedure performed by: 35 and 45, with extraction assistance by 65, and tissue monitoring by 25 and 18. Record log by hour maintained by 8.
Operation Notes: Subject has accepted organ replacement with no rejection by system. The source sample has adapted to the effects of the serum in conjunction with the subject’s blood, as seen in previous testing. Integration of lung tissue remains stable. Rejuvenation techniques have proven effective, and long term storage has not diminished the tissue.
Post operative conclusion: Patient’s compatibility with transferred lung tissue justifies maintaining the other organs harvested from the deceased.
Receiving Patient: Feofan Sergeyevich Veksel
Organ Donor: Zandik
He stares at the words.
For so long that he doesn’t realize he’s held his breath until he has to gasp for air. Air that he’s breathing with Zandik’s lungs.
He never knew.
They never told him. They never would have told him, and he would never ask. Why would he ever even consider it? Zandik died many years before that operation. Yet they…stored pieces of his body for so long, keeping those parts alive when they couldn’t even delay the death of the whole man. Morbid, everything about it is morbid, and so very in character for him.
But the comfort of it being a very Dottore thing to do, does not lessen the devastation that follows. His hands move through more sheets of paper, not concerned if they flutter off the desk in his rush. More procedures, more notes, more test results, another operation, another organ of Zandik’s living in his body. The corpse of the only man he might consider tying the word love to, has been with him the whole time.
It hits him with a wave of nausea so hard that he drops everything in his hands. The sourness in his stomach nearly makes him lurch, but he pulls himself back just enough to keep it from overtaking him.
He pushes himself away from the desk with his hand to his chest, forcing himself to breathe. Even this feels cursed. Every breath, every word that passed through his lips, every cigarette he smoked… Suddenly the taste of nicotine disgusts him beyond measure.
It hurts in ways he hadn’t considered existing.
All around him is evidence of the man who changed the trajectory of his life.
Everything in the lab brings pain, deep despair, and anger. So much anger. Rage even. His fingers dig into his shirt where he holds his chest, breathing as deeply as he can with lungs that aren’t his. In his mind, it burns. Tears him apart, and he struggles with every breath he takes. Despite the closed fist that slams into the desk, he can’t hear anything other than his own heartbeat. He can’t feel anything. Not as he smashes the glass beaker on the desk, and not as his hand swipes out along the shelf of abandoned documents.
It flings an endless rain of paper to the floor; those carefully organized pages reflecting turmoil that’s breaking him in pieces in a way his practiced resolve can’t stop. Every breath is a fight, shuddering his body and filling the empty laboratory with echoes of his ragged panting.
To feel the loss so hard could be seen as a weakness. He should be cold and analytical, and find ways to use this event to his advantage. But ultimately, he’s only human. He’s a disparaged human who, despite all of the miserable things stacked against him, found one soul that aligned with his.
And that soul is gone. Pieces of his body remain, but his essence is gone.
The sourness returns and it takes everything not to lean over and expel whatever could be in his stomach—he hasn’t eaten in days. Zandik would frown about that.
Zandik would…
Zandik would…
Zandik…won’t…anymore.
His glasses start to blur and he can no longer read the words on the papers below, where his blank stare has been trained. So he removes them—setting them on the desk, where the wet drops slide off the glass and stain the pages underneath.
Drop. Drop.
Drop. Drop.
One after the other.
It takes a while to understand what’s happening, because tears haven’t fallen from his eyes in over four hundred years. Not when he lost his livelihood, not when Zandik died. Not when his prime build destroyed the rest of them…only now that they are all gone.
Alone in this laboratory, the weight of everything finally snaps him and he puts his head in his hands, leaning back down on the desk to watch the rainfall.
What is eternal life if it costs everything? If time had hands to turn back, he might run back to the beginning, take Zandik by the hand and flee away from everything. Start over somewhere far away from the scheming, the lying, the bitterness, and maliciousness. But…he knows that’s a fantasy at best. Neither he nor Zandik could ever accept their fates.
It has always been destined to destroy them in one way or another.
But defying fate has always been the goal.
He should be happy for Zandik, through his insane machinations he stepped over what the gods dealt him—choosing self desecration over acceptance.
A selfish man at his core.
But as it turns out, he’s quite selfish himself.
He picks himself up and wipes the last of the wetness from his face. Zandik tore himself apart to keep Pantalone—…Feofan alive.
Now that all he has left is his few years of solemn misery, the very least he can do with it is attempt to return the favor. Blasphemy for blasphemy. If he fails, he’ll join him soon anyway. If he succeeds, then the scales tip back into place as they should.
This time he’ll take him by the hand and walk him to a warm place where the sun will kiss them both and leave the cold behind forever.