The cold of winter had been rocking the city of Cleveland, an unseasonably late snow storm had blown down form the north. It was cold, even for northern US, and a certain steam plant in the city center was not holding up to it well. The old plant had been chugging along for almost a century and 32 hours from new years, a boiler stops producing steam. As workers desperately try to diagnose and fix the drop in steam production, a set of labs, lecture halls, and research facilities start to their frigid environment.
A single Jr lab technician, one Alexi Morgan, sits alone in a research lab bundled up under his lab coat, fresh out of college with a degree in biomedical engineering, he had moved to Ohio to pursue research on organ transplants and had severely underestimated how cold northern winters could be. He had put on as many items of clothing on as he could fit under his lab coat, resulting in it being pulled taught over his body. "I thought this lab had heaters" he spoke to himself, something he seemed to do more and more as of late. His voice carried southern tint to his speech. He contemplated heading home for the night but his roommates would have already started pregaming for new years. Shuddering from either the thought of his roommates or just the cold, he turned his attention back to one of the organs suspended in a vats before him. It looked ugly as sin, sporting spots of pale tissue and even some areas being slightly translucent but it was still identifiably a heart, a diseased heart but still a heart. And it was beating, suspended in a bioreactor, softly beating away.
The town of Curlna sat isolated by the snow, no guards on it's substantial wall, no patrols through it's many streets, and even the gates seemed abandoned. A layer of frozen snow covered all, but the town was far from looking disserted, lights could be seen through the windows and smoke poured from chimneys. There was little to do during the short days and cold nights outside of eating preserved foods and burning wood, rarely would anyone venture outside even if they had the equipment, skills, or abilities to survive outside for extended periods of time. It was Peaceful and quite, but it wouldn't last, once the first fall passes, the town would return to its usual bustle.
The steam plant fault had been located but there was not much that could be done about it, repairs would take at least two days and it was less than 20 hours to new years, not to mention it would take time to cool and empty the boilers. It was decided to have the buildings hooked up to the plant to instead use their emergency boilers for the moment, till repairs could be completed. And as hospitals and research facilities across the district switched to emergency boilers, a research building boilers failed to ignite. The fault sent a service request to University maintenance, which had been inundated with similar requests but as it was approaching new years and no body was scheduled to be in said building, the request was swept under the rug for more pressing issues.
Alexi had decided that the lab coat could be put under parka, it had started to grow considerably colder over the course of the day, he was even able to see the steam from his breath indoors. What had really started to concern him was the plummeting temperatures of the experiments in the bioreactors. They were very fragile at this stage and a significant drop in temperatures could cause severe damage. There were three of them, a heart, a pair of lungs and a kidney. There wasn't really a protocol for emergency sample transport, so he had to improvise. If he got it wrong and the organs died in transport would be the same result as if the organs freeze to death in the lab. The Bioreactors the samples had been set in were made in house and he had been one of the people who helped in designing and building them in the first place. All he had to do was make a portable version of one that could hold all three. Piece of pie.
The Curlna guard had little to do on the day of first fall, anything smart enough to be a threat to the town sought out shelter from the cold snow, and everything else hibernated of migrated away. This meant the guards spent most of their time cooped up in the gate houses and guard barracks, someone usually sneaks' in a barrel containing social lubricants and some snacks and the entire stationed force spent the first fall making merry. But not all members of the guard were so loose, a good number of the higher leveled guards took their jobs seriously enough not to drink themselves to oblivion, but their number was a the minority.
Alexi had jury rigged a portable bioreactor, It had to use the containment vats of the other already holding the three samples and he didn't have enough batteries to fully power the heater so it would have to ride under his parka to keep warm, but it was portable and oxygenated the suspension fluid without circulation issues. It was crude and looked strange but it worked and that's all that mattered. Quickly, the Technician loaded the samples into the devise and strapped it on him, it was a snug fit under the parka but it was only a short walk from the lab to his apartment. He stopped dead as the automatic door opened to let in a visible wall of cold to sweep over him. " I could have stayed in Texas, but no. Here I am freezing to death in ohio" He cursed to himself, he had left home to get away from his parents. The relationship between them had been strained before leaving the state, but when he did his relationship with his parents fully broke down. When a job opportunity was offered by one of his previous professors to study at a school across the country, he took it faster than the blink of an eye. He was starting to regret that decision as he stumbled across the snow covered ground, it was still snowing and it was heavy enough to seriously hinder his sight, he didn't notice the subtle change from concreate to grass under his boots.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
It was cold, that's what It decided. Not painfully cold but still unpleasantly cold. It Then Realized It could think, that it was thinking. It felt the gentle jostling of movement, walking, it had no idea how it knew what walking was but it knew. It also knew it didn't have any appendages to walk in so something had to be carrying it. A friend perhaps? How much it hoped it was a friend. Being alone seemed so very lonely. It then felt a staccato set of notes, whump-whump, whump-whump, whump-whump, it was so very familiar. It was producing its own set of beats, only slower. It had tried to match the beats of its new friend only to realize it was not strong enough to do so. Inexplicably, this had saddened it greatly, it felt like it had some how disappointed its new friend. It then noticed that it was getting colder, and the staccato beats were coming much faster and the once gentle jostling became staggered and jerky. At the apex of this the world suddenly lurched and the shell that seemed to contain it seemed to explode.
Something was wrong, Alexi lost the wall that he was walking along and the ground became too uneven to be the concreate he was used to. Even the cold had changed, it seemed worse, it was like it had infiltrated his very soul. His thick insulated boots seemed to do little and the snowy wind seemed to be able to carve straight through his wind and water proof parka. His Lungs were on fire. All of a sudden the bitter cold became searing hot, unbelievable heat seamed to sear through him. He was entering the latter stages of hypothermia, "Why the hell did I tempt fate" he slurred. The technician was stumbling and tripping over his own feet, it was so cold. Tripping and stumbling on until he eventually tripped over nothing and fell face first towards the hardened snow. Then came the crack of glass and sharp stabbing pain in his stomach and chest but he couldn't care less, it was so cold.
Rudolf Butler was a Scout, and it wouldn't be braggadocio to say he was the best scout in Curlna. He had heard the sound of breaking glass. It would be expected to hear that sound coming from the town but it wasn't, it was coming from beyond the wall. That was important, the sound of breaking glass was not a natural occurrence, it could be a bandit hiding from the snow breaking a bottle or a caravan trapped by the first fall. Normally this would only be a issue that would be noted in a report but on the day of the first fall, its an issue that warrants a full investigation. Anything powerful enough to withstand the cold of the ambient frost mana that comes with the first snow of winter was a serious threat to the town. The sedated guards barracks exploded into a flurry of activity as guards found ways to negate the alcohol they imbibed and took warding potion to protect themselves from the unnatural cold. And as the town went to alert, A squad of scouts charge out of the city towards the noise they heard, at its head, Rudolf led.
It was cold, Painfully cold, but that didn't matter what mattered was that its new friend was injured. That in itself was a strange concept. Injury, damage to a living thing. It could taste its new friend's blood, It tasted good but that didn't matter. the ground itself seemed to be attacking the new friend, sort of. The ground seemed to be channeling something into the new friend but the new friend doesn't seem to be able to acclimate to the unknown something. The channeled substance seemed to rampage through the body of new friend. It didn't know what to do, the substances didn't seem to affect them maybe it could help the new friend. It proceeded to climb through the cuts and lesion on the new friend, into the new friend. It desperately spreads itself out to go throughout the new friend. The new friends insides were a mess, crystals of ice had formed every where, cutting and rupturing things that seemed like they should be together. It was cold inside. There were recognizable structures, parts inside new Friend that looked like itself. So it fussed itself with what was there, trying desperately to repair the damage where it could. It tried to save as much as it could, and most of it was fine, but the lobes that held air, there were massive crystals that jutted through it. It started to fuse its own lobes to replace the damaged ones, slowly consuming the old ones, what could it do. It spread more and more, it realized the more it consumed the stronger it became, so it ate though as much unnecessary material as it could, until it found the thing that was beating. There was a blade of ice slowly piercing through it, It fused itself to the organ desperately trying to help the damaged organ but it was a loosing fight, it just wasn't strong enough. So it did the only thing it could do, it ate the beating organ. even then it was still only barely holding on. Suddenly the ground seemed to stop its channeling and the wounds started to close themselves, even the wounds it had climbed in from. It finaly felt a good sensation, it was finaly warm.
Rudolph and his group found the man hanging on to life by a thread, he had been wearing clothing unlike anything he had ever seen, a red heavy coat seemingly stitched together at the front and black pants, both of which were made from a material he had neve seen before. The poor soul clearly ran out of warding potion and had been overwhelmed by the rampant ambient mana. Quickly, Rudolph poured a warding potion down the unconscious mans throat, the garrison had delivered a surplus of healing potions so he poured one of those down the man's throat as well. Immediately the man seemed to look healthier but seemed to drift in and out of consciousness, that was to be expected. He would still have to overcome the exhaustion from repairing his injuries.
As Alexi slowly drifted in and out of sleep the words
NAME: ALEXI MORGAN
AGE: 23
CLASS: NECROMANCER Lv.1, HOST Lv.1
ABILITIES: MANIPULATE MANA, STORE MANA, MANA RESEARVE
SKILLS: N/A
SPELLS: N/A
TITTLES: N/A
Alexi's last waking thoughts were "well, That's new", before the embrace of sleep consumed him.
