Ange had made a small operating room and lab in the infirmary of the energy wing. The tools they had scavenged from the monorail, the ones she created herself, the corpses scraped from the walls, and the heavy-duty gadgets used for maintenance were all she needed.
Flesh and metal, all she needed to craft something interesting under this sickly white light oozing from the LED above her.
The main hospital of the bunker was situated in the barracks; however, since the huge horde of undead kicked them out of there, she didn't have time to reclaim it and turn it into a proper base of operations.
Her powers did not need fancy tools, and if they did, she could craft them out of simple parts, both biological and inorganic. Triggers needed to be followed to ensure the operation would work. It was more like a material request rather than tools needed to ensure the survival of her target.
Fixing was the core of her power. The blessing given to her by the Guideline. But it could be abstracted more. Was it really fixing something if the cause of the damage would go back? Was it really fixing something if it would break again in a second?
Asking, testing, and asking again. A constant cycle of testing, the boundaries of her power, and constantly forcing it to define new barriers for her to cross.
It was logical that eventually she would reach the limit, something she would not be able to do. A wall that denied her will.
Anger? Frustration? Despair? No, Ange didn't feel any of that; she couldn't.
Another puzzle, another problem to solve, another barrier to break.
A problem that she needed to break into easier and more manageable pieces. And if that was not enough? Cut it again, and again, and again. A steady hand moving forward and back with a bonesaw. Or, in this case, a thin needle shoved far too deep inside her nose.
The problem? These brains needed movement and a body. However, the state she had left them in ensured that they had no consciousness or sense of self; they were merely biological computers. Processors were waiting for commands; inputs were needed to ensure the survival of the patient.
They needed to move, they needed to feed, and they needed someone telling them what to do. Something that Ange would gladly supply, as her power allowed it.
"There we go, buddies!" Ange finally exclaimed as the first of many was done.
The mechanical creature, the size of a wolf, made the first step commanded by the radio signal bursting out of Anathema's brain. Eight metallic legs twisting at the same time, powered by a tiny nuclear battery that leaked enough radiation inside that thing to give each single type of cancer in the next week. However, the spherical torso perfectly insulated the exterior from any possible leaks, making it perfectly safe to be around it. The best part was that if it got damaged, it doubled as a dirty bomb with a nice explosive kick.
"So nostalgic . . ." The monster mumbled, her finger tracing over one of her favorite designs. One done, five more to go.
She made a tiny spin and looked at the jars that contained the reclaimed compasses. "I can't wait to finally get a proper working room!" Ange exclaimed, her face twisted into a maniacal smile. Imitating, copying, replicating, trying to twist her brain into emotions she knew she should have. However, in her core of self, she was honestly looking forward to this horrible and abominable event. The same sickening curiosity that pushed her to mutilate her own compass.
"You will become sooooo beautiful, my darling," she purred, her fingers curling with pure desire. This was no longer about surviving; it was all about herself and Max.
The perfect canvas for her to work on.
Cat looked at herself in the mirror, her new outfit stretching a little bit on her waist.
There was something about bathrooms that always kept her calm. The social contract of privacy kept her safe.
You could scream, cry, and spend hours looking at yourself in the mirror, and nobody would interrupt you.
She loved being alone, nobody asking to heal them, nobody pushing her, nobody squeezing until she cried.
This one was particularly clean; the zombies must have gotten all the people before they managed to hide in here. Well, as clean as a women's public bathroom could get.
Cat took a deep breath, her weight resting on the washbasin, searching for an answer to her problem. Olivia had lied to her; it was Olivia, so thinking that was expected. Now, the hard part was how much was the degree of truth in that lie. That was one thing that made that woman so dangerous: she never completely lied; there was always a grain of truth in her words. Something like a toxic drop that polluted each ounce of information with doubts and second-guesses.
Cat would work with the worst case possible. The radiation had given her some type of cancer, the most deadly one, just to be sure that she needed to act fast.
"Ok . . . Cat . . . remember your years in college . . . " she mumbled to herself. Before getting cursed with powers, she was getting an arts degree. There was something about the arts that always helped it as her guideline turned hard sciences into something a lot softer.
You couldn't just draw something from scratch. First, you needed to make a basic skeleton of the figure or composition. Just lines vaguely arranged to form the desired form. Then turn them into 3d dimensional objects like cubes, cylinders, or spheres. If this did not match your intent? Just break the form into smaller geometrical shapes.
Break the problem into smaller pieces until your tools can fix it.
The problem with radiation poisoning was that the core of her cells was fucked up. They didn't know how to properly duplicate again. So, the current ones that were working but damaged would not be a problem; the ones that would come after them would start to mess with her body.
That was why she had a timer inside her. She would work fine until things began to go bad exponentially.
Nothing new for Cat.
The girl's power couldn't not change her; that was the fundamental flaw she had. If she could use her power on herself, it would take seconds to fix herself. However, some things could affect her.
Her biological husk that pretended to be power armor increased her strength and speed. That affected her. Cat even needed to alter that disease all those years ago so she would be immune to it.
The realization struck her: what if she didn't give herself immunity but made herself the only valid target? Vaccines were a thing after all, and she had created a few in the past.
A virus that would change the core of her cells, that would get in and "fix" her DNA. Instead of creating more copies of itself, it would hijack the cell to make more copies of the original. This had two huge problems that she needed to solve.
First, there was getting the original blueprint. If all her cells were fucked up, that would be impossible.
Second, it was threading the needle, just doing the perfect virus that would not give her a new kind of cancer from uncontrolled cell duplication.
The key to fixing both problems was relatively simple. She needed a test subject, someone that could just survive her screwing up and could mutate themselves to create some sort of genetic template that gave her cells the basic functions.
A deep groan came out of her lungs as what she needed to do weighed on her a lot. She needed to ask Max to be her test subject.
The worst part was that she knew he would say yes no matter what. He was that kind of person. Everybody was that kind of person around her most of the time. Cat was too valuable.
She didn't want to be a freeloader, so the girl decided to trade his help for something useful for him.
Max, Olivia, and Helga would love to spend the rest of the day together. Well, both wanted to spend it with Max without the other one present, but each refused to leave them alone. However, the man needed time alone to work on his body.
That gave Helga the perfect opportunity to prove that she was the most amazing female he could ever have. She would craft something that any man would desire, an object so wondrous that it would make her favorite minion understand how lucky he was to have her.
"Your eyes will weep, your jaw will drop to the floor, and you'll tell that sly fox to fuck off when you see this, number 2," she muttered, getting proper protection on her eyes, nose, mouth, and each inch of her body as she walked inside the storage area while holding the thorium rods for the reactor.