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The laboratory lies somewhere near the capital, beneath snow-covered plains. Isolated and hidden from the world, yet not spared from the noise of heavy machinery exhaling steam at high pressure—its gears turning all day long, murmurs slipping through the walls, and the constant echo of footsteps. The corridors were lit by a harsh white light, and beneath it, walking with his back straight and his patience silently eroding, was Il Dottore.
Snezhnaya’s cold seeped into the very core of him, piercing his skin and stiffening his joints. His eyes felt heavy, while his legs protested with every step. One hand—the left—rested against his right arm.
He stopped in front of a door and entered the access code, which announced his arrival with a sharp beep. The warmer air inside embraced his body and eased his muscles, though he did not allow it to distract him. The door closed behind him, and he glanced around in displeasure. He had to duck to avoid an exposed live wire, and he heard a faint splash against the floor. Lowering his gaze, he found a pool of bright blue liquid.
He sighed, running a hand across his forehead before turning to face the one responsible for such disorder. Across from him sat one of his segments, Zandik, looking at him with mild surprise from his seat.
“Prime…” —the segment looked him up and down— “you haven’t come just to talk.”
Dottore approached the metal table, worn down by hundreds of prior experiments and buried beneath messy stacks of papers from some ongoing project. Impatient, he swept everything aside to sit, letting many of the sheets scatter to the floor.
Before Zandik could complain, he raised a hand to silence him.
“A quick check.” He calmly unbuttoned his blue shirt, freeing only his right arm. “I’ve been hearing a very irritating noise all night.”
Zandik sighed, setting his pen aside. His gaze settled on the limb—a prosthesis that should have existed centuries ago, connected to what remained of Dottore’s real arm.
“Nothing else?” he asked, rising to retrieve a toolbox.
“No.”
“I’ll remove it first.”
Zandik carefully detached the right arm from Prime’s body and laid it on the table beside him as he examined it. He was more cooperative when no one stood behind him.
The prosthesis does not attempt to mimic flesh. It is deliberately mechanical: silver filaments, segmented plates, a lattice of conductors pulsing with a faint warmth, almost organic. Almost. Zandik knew its structure with obsessive precision. It had been during his own stage of life that Prime created the first mechanical arm prototypes. Zandik even retained memories of their construction. When Prime created his earliest segments—including Zandik—he had always been involved in the limb’s modifications and maintenance. An intrinsic interest of that phase of himself.
Now, staring at the absence where his limb should be, Prime feels something in his arm. Not the mechanical one resting on the table with its palm open, but the other—the one that exists in his bodily memory.
He feels fingers curled into an unbearable pressure. Nails digging into a nonexistent palm. Tendons drawn tight in perpetual contraction. Countless times he has tried to imagine opening that hand, moving that arm. Nothing happens, yet the sensation of it still being there has never entirely faded.
At least an hour passes in silence—not for lack of topics, but because Prime had closed his eyes and drifted into a light sleep, until Zandik finally spoke again.
“There is nothing out of the ordinary in its structure, but I recalibrated it anyway so you won’t keep hearing anything,” the segment concluded with a deep breath, reassembling the pieces.
The young man studied the arm beneath his hands for a moment, then glanced at Prime, then lowered his gaze again.
“Why are you taking so long?”
“Ah, I was just thinking. I was about to put it back on… However, there’s something I’ve been working on that I’d like you to try.”
Prime raised an eyebrow. That was enough.
Zandik moved to a cabinet behind him, crammed with spare parts and half-finished components that threatened to spill out. From the clutter, he swiftly retrieved an arm. At the end meant to connect to the stump, the mechanical system was clearly visible, but the exterior was coated in what appeared to be synthetic skin. For a moment, Prime almost questioned whether it might be real.
“So you were prepared for this moment, I see.” Prime leaned back against the wall. “Very clever.”
He folded his arms—an awkward gesture when one only has one.
“At least use it this once. I’ve been refining it with the help of a few soldiers, but your experience would be decisive.”
Prime had gifted each of his segments with an ideal body. As their creator, he ensured they were in optimal condition before releasing them into the world. They would never need to worry about physical limitations. Yet Zandik refused to abandon the idea that something better could still be made.
“Go ahead.”
Deep down, it did not surprise him to end up as his own test subject.
Zandik hurried to prepare what was necessary. After applying creams and wrapping a bandage around the skin, he carefully connected the prosthesis to the uneven base of the stump, where flesh and alloy met. Prime moved his arm slightly, but the motions in his hand were irregular, out of sync. Zandik adjusted it as he worked.
“The transmission latency has decreased,” the segment murmured without looking up. “You should perceive a smoother response. Try again.”
Prime did not reply. He cooperated with the subtle movements Zandik guided him through—flex, extend, rotate. The prosthesis complied, the articulated fingers bending with precision. The sound of metal shifting was clean, soft, almost imperceptible.
But the memory of his fist remains tightly shut.
While Zandik examines the arm, Prime allows his gaze to travel slowly over the segment’s features: the unmarked smoothness at the corners of his lips, the absence of that permanent tension already embedded in his own jaw, the contained energy humming beneath the skin like a newly activated circuit. His mask rests at the edge of the table.
He admires what he sees. When the segment looks up, his gaze is an almost perfect mirror. But there is something clearer in it, more centered, more resolute. Zandik had been created from the years of his youth, when motivation and physical endurance were still on his side. Somewhere within himself, Prime can understand the ambition for repairing his body.
The segment pauses. His eyes—identical, analytical—register the micro-tension in Prime’s jaw, but he quickly looks away. After a few simple motion tests, he turns back to a portable screen to review the programming details. He hesitates before speaking again.
“The delay isn’t purely mechanical,” he concludes.
The segment tilts his head by a few degrees—a gesture improper for the current Dottore. On his face, the frustration of not receiving the expected result is evident.
“Then what is the other flaw?”
“…I have a few ideas. We can determine the exact cause.” His voice weakens as he speaks.
Prime often wonders whether he was truly ever like this or whether Zandik is simply too devoted to the project. A mixture of both, he decides.
After all, it was during his student years at the academy, on an expedition, that a projectile launched by a Ruin Guard reduced his right arm to ashes. He survived long enough to disable it and receive medical attention. Yet within the segment’s programmed memory lives the sharp recollection of Dottore’s discomfort at still feeling the arm there, uncontrollable, absent and incomplete, yet above all stubborn in its refusal to let him be hindered. To a greater or lesser extent, the sensation never entirely vanished. It returned periodically at the most vulnerable points of his life.
Zandik does not feel it, but he remembers it.
“What exactly do you need me to do?”
“Describe the sensation.” He gestures faintly toward the prosthesis, though he is not speaking of the arm built in the laboratory.
A dense silence settles between them. Prime hates describing what he cannot dissect.
“Compression,” he says at last, massaging his shoulder with his left hand. “Joints forced out of place. As if the hand were trapped inside something too small. It burns.”
The segment nods as though listening to the report of any ordinary patient, though he feels a flicker of anxiety at the possibility that the fault lies within his own system.
There is something everyone knows but no longer mentions. Prime hates being treated. Is the muscle pain that keeps him awake on nights like this.
Even so, he came to see Zandik.
“Persistent neurosensory memory,” the young man murmurs, jotting something down on the screen. “The cortical map hasn’t relinquished the absence… Soldiers who have suffered similar losses report something alike.”
Prime offers a faint smile, a sharp curve of the lips.
“The brain is obstinate.”
“You are more so. You could have fixed this long ago.”
The segment adjusts a cable in the mechanical forearm and types further commands into the display—a simple voltage test. The prosthesis responds with a low, nearly imperceptible vibration. A steady, rhythmic signal. The index finger moves up and down.
“Synchronize the impulse,” the segment instructs. “Imagine the hand opening at the same time as the prosthesis.”
Dottore regards him as though assessing the audacity of the suggestion. Nevertheless, he complies. He commands it.
The prosthesis opens its hand, metal fingers sheathed in synthetic skin extending with precision under his direction. In his mind, the other fist resists.
The current in his arm increases slightly. Then the sensation shifts. It does not settle, but it yields by a fraction. As if one of the invisible fingers had loosened.
The segment notes the change in his breathing.
“Interesting,” he whispers, a half-smile forming. “As I suspected, the stimulation appears to recalibrate perception.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself before you see tangible results,” Prime replies, though his tone has lost a trace of its rigidity.
The segment brings his own hand—real flesh—and places it deliberately over the palm of the mechanical one. He is confident, tapping lightly with his fingers. Firm. Yet when his fingertips press along the edge of the implant, Prime feels the contact… more vividly.
As though someone had brushed the tips of his nonexistent fingers.
An electric tingling runs through the phantom hand. It is neither painful nor exactly pleasant, but distinct. His pupils constrict.
“You perceive it,” the segment states with satisfaction.
“Yes.”
The answer is low, contemplative.
“Seeing a more realistic arm alters your brain’s perception.”
The segment adjusts the pressure, brushing his thumb lightly over the artificial wrist, then moving slowly up along the forearm with deliberate softness.
The invisible fist loosens a little more. Prime exhales slowly. The pain has not vanished—it never truly does—but it is no longer a clenched claw, only a tension he can endure. He moves his fingers at will and truly, genuinely, feels them move. Not completely free, but no longer trapped.
The segment cannot hide a faint smile of satisfaction, the same one Prime wore the first time he managed to lift a knife with his artificial limb. For several seconds, neither of them speaks. The current continues, soft and steady. The mechanical arm remains extended over the table, Zandik’s curious hands tracing along it.
Prime watches him with genuine interest. Not satisfaction, interest. He leans forward, bringing his face closer to the segment’s.
“Is this the secondary project you’ve been wasting your time on these past few weeks?”
The segment nods repeatedly.
“I see.” Prime straightens. “So this is why you kept disappearing.”
He runs his own hand along the right arm, tracing its contours, the faint almost-human warmth it emits, its remarkably accurate pigmentation.
He extends his arm forward, blocking the laboratory light with his hand.
“The brain does not miss the flesh,” he says, closing his hand in the air, opening it, then closing it again. “It misses having structures to command.”
For a moment, he almost feels whole again. He touches Zandik’s forehead with the tips of his fingers, gliding along the curve of his face until reaching his chin, drawing him closer. He applies only the slightest pressure, yet it is enough to make the fragment shudder, as though that small gesture alone could tear through his skin.
The segment allowed himself to be guided without resistance, bracing his hands on the table at either side of Prime’s legs. So close that he could feel his real breath, the faint rise and fall of his chest, the warmth escaping his body with each exhale, parted lips and tired eyes fixed on him as though he could be reabsorbed. No longer resisting, he closes the distance and rises onto his toes to press a kiss to Prime’s lips.
Truth be told, Dottore lacked nothing.
Zandik clenched his fists, expectant. If he possessed a heart in his chest, or blood running through his veins, he is certain a visible flush would have bloomed across his skin.
“However, your remarkable progress” his voice comes out lower than usual, catching the segment off guard“still has inexcusable flaws.”
Zandik opens his eyes in surprise, embarrassment following as he lowers his head. “What is it?”
“The escalating overload. If I were to use this arm for more than an hour, it would calcine the rest of my body.”
“Oh. I hadn’t—”
“Didn’t you say you tested it on soldiers?”
Leaning forward, hesitant to raise his gaze to meet the doctor’s judging eyes, Zandik murmurs, “Brief component trials. Besides… I assumed that with the cold outside… I didn’t consider that it might—”
“Don’t give me any more excuses, that won’t fix your mistakes.”
Prime looks past him, drifting into thought. While each segment possessed the capacity to develop its own interests, in the end they were merely deviations of the original. Zandik held a certain fascination with the desert monuments of Sumeru. An early prototype of his lay deactivated to one side, multiple loose components scattered around it. A shelf of books detailing ancient records of the desert gods. Detailed sketches of the mausoleum and its automatons pinned to the wall, annotated with notes about their mechanisms and the movement of those old gears. Studies about elemental energy. On the desk beside him, a small Sumeru rose.
His body resided in Snezhnaya, but his mind always returned to Sumeru, to the land that had rejected him more than once as another illegitimate son.
Dottore was selfish.
He despised that nation, yet it was not something he could pass on to his segments. He was not indifferent to the few moments in which he had felt some measure of happiness upon those lands. And so, there stood Zandik, far removed from everything that interested him, simply because Prime preferred to keep him close. It was the price he paid for remaining at his side, for wanting to help him.
“What were you trying to achieve with this?”
“To be useful to you,” he answered too quickly. “I will make myself useful to you.”
“And how long will that take? Months? Years? Decades?” He rested a hand against the warm arm. “In that time, I or another segment could have finished it already.”
“I’ve made significant progress in very little time, you don’t need to—”
“If this were your primary project, you would complete it faster, wouldn’t you, Beta?” A faint smile curved his lips, a detail anyone else might have easily overlooked. “That is, if you had the proper funding and more cooperative volunteers. If you stopped pursuing what lies beyond your reach. When you have me standing before you, the process would be less tedious, the results more immediate. I want you to finish this before considering any other experiment.”
“Ah…” Zandik finally hesitated. His creator’s expectations were painfully clear, even if his own desires were compromised.
He knew it well enough: the primary project no longer mattered if the Creator was not satisfied.
It would only be the third time he postponed his journey to Sumeru—much to his own regret.
“Of course,” he agreed in a low voice.
Prime hummed in satisfaction.
“You also need to put this place in order.” His disdainful gaze returned to the entrance, where the exposed wire still lay across the floor. He followed it upward with his eyes until they reached the ceiling, where the entire torso of a Ruin Guard hung suspended in the air, connected to further wiring, a faint light glowing from within.
Zandik glanced in that direction and offered a weak smile.
“Incredible, isn’t it? That’s what generates the twenty degrees. With a few adjustments, all the energy it used to move is converted into heat, like a fireplace. I’ve seen hundreds of these across all sorts of ruins. Once you extinguish the internal energy source, it’s little more than a heap of metal to study, so with this one I opted for a more… domestic use.”
Prime was not surprised by the waste of resources; at least this time it provided some comfort.
“Though you could send me a bit of help to finish this.”
Zandik hated anyone else interfering with his work when he was more than capable. Even so, the idea of spending more time in Snezhnaya was not particularly appealing either.
“I heard you’re making another batch of segments,” he mentioned casually. “How long…?”
“Two weeks,” Prime said, leaning closer to the edge of the table, “four if they go rogue.”
Not everyone could bear the weight of being Il Dottore.
“Very well, I can wait for them.”
And he knew patience.
When Zandik’s gaze met Prime’s, he noticed sweat accumulating on his forehead, a faint drop sliding down the side. A marvel of a purely human body. Prime rested his hand on Zandik’s, letting him feel how warm it was.
His prosthesis had overheated even faster than expected.
“Of course, I can remove it now.”
“No, there’s something I want to do before that.”
Prime placed his hands on Zandik’s shoulders. He could even feel the fibers of his coat brushing against his fingers—a swirl of excitement and curiosity stirring inside—as he wrapped his hands around the segment’s neck. No pulse, no intrinsic warmth. At most, he could sense the way Zandik breathed, more out of habit than physical need.
He did not press further. Instead, he let the coat slide off the segment’s arms to the floor, leaving him alone in his white tunic.