Morgana set 8 vials on the stainless table, one by one, face flat, eyes cold. Liquid ticked down their glass walls like second hands. As her fingers left the last cap, a memory unspooled—the lesson she'd drilled into Selene.
"Death isn't mystical. It's disassembly. Molecules fall apart. Cells collapse because their code carries defects—copy errors, bad alleles, corrupted instructions. Fix the code, upgrade the blueprint, restart the machine.
"And if you push the blueprint further—beyond baseline—you don't just revive what was. You can fabricate a superior construct from what remains."
She slid a tray closer and emptied a pouch of labeled baggies: hair roots, marrow smear, cardiac tissue flecked with brown, a sliver of liver, a scrap from beneath a fingernail, the faintest ring of cartilage. Dorvak, reduced to samples, each tucked into its own microtube.
"Nanobots?" Selene's voice knocked at Morgana's head from across the bench, equal parts curiosity and dread.
Morgana's mouth twitched into a brief, sharp smile; she threw Selene a quick wink.
"That's my name for them. Not elegant, but accurate."
She pulled open a drawer and lifted a cassette rack—dozens of pepper-gray pellets nested like seeds.
"I built a lot. Look."
She tapped one pellet with a nail.
"Think paper mills. Feed them wood and they remanufacture pulp into sheets. Same ops model here—give them a cell lineage, they ingest, analyze, and reverse the defect graph in the genome. They don't just 'rebuild' tissue; they output upgraded substrate—cleaner, tighter error budgets, higher tolerance. If I didn't screw the architecture, the new material trends upward—self-optimizing growth curves with no hard cap."
Selene stared at the cassette like it might blink.
"And what exactly are you planning to do with all of this?" She nodded at the stacked racks inside the cabinet Morgana had just opened—the same one she'd pulled the six vials from.
Morgana raised her head, pausing to think for just a moment. "I haven't decided." Then she said, clearly and practically: "I thought about Making human organs... That will bring in big profits."
Selene dropped heavily into a chair, rubbing her forehead.
"Just like you. You only ever think about how to make money."
Morgana was already moving. She palmed the six vials, pushed through the swing door, and crossed into the isolation room. Positive pressure hissed; the glass wall sighed shut behind her.
At the center, a vertical biotank rose like a monolith, full of nutrient medium the color of watered honey. Soft lumens glowed under its skin.
She broke each seal with a steady snap and poured, slow and exact, letting the swirls settle before moving to the next: marrow, epithelium, myocardium, hepatic, cartilage, dermal scrap. As the last ribbon of fluid threaded into the tank.
A corner of her mouth lifted. "Dorvy 2.0 won't kneel to anything." she whispered, the words fogging a faint oval on the pane.
She leaned forward until her forehead touched the glass. Heat climbed her cheeks—an involuntary flush she didn't fight. Arms slid around the tank; she hugged the column lightly, as if it could hug back.
"I'll be waiting on the other side..." she murmured, a private promise cupped in breath. "When it's done... I'll be right beside you... I promise."
She stepped out, sealed the door, and thumbed the lock. The corridor beyond felt too bright, too open. She parked herself on a low stool opposite the observation window, elbows on knees, hands steepled under her lips.
Inside the tank, the medium stirred. The pellet swarm dispersed in a slow corona, then broke again into finer haze, like ash taking on intention. Sensors along the shaft flickered from green to amber to a disciplined, pulsing white.
"Al I need now is time... just few hours.", She whispered softly, her eyes barely open.
Her gaze was fixed on the wall clock, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. The second hand completed its slow, scornful circuit. She emptied her lungs and then refilled them in time with the waveform's beat, grounding herself in the measured rhythm.
Across from her, the progress display in the observation window crept the last fraction and clicked over:
PROGRESS: 2%
Morgana tipped her head back against the chair's headrest. The vinyl gave a small, tired squeak.
"Ah... I'm exhausted," she murmured. "Can't keep my eyes open for longer."
Her lashes sank despite her fighting it. A warm tear slid from one eye; her mouth stayed slightly open, breath soft and uneven. The room kept its low, mechanical hum—the fans, the pumps, the heartbeat of the tank behind the glass.
Behind her eyelids, the room flashed—white cutting through the dark like a camera flare. The digits on the display didn't crawl; they snapped.
2% → 100%