The coach traveled up to Duncan’s practice at impressive pace. He was in good spirits, Mr. Blackwood seemed to be the type to leave those loyal to him alone and his reaction to the undertaker’s rejection seemed to show what to expect if he had tried to turn down his offer. Still he wondered if it would be wise to bring this up with a government official. Leaving the coach, Duncan walked up to his practice encountering the Nurse in his employment Ms. April Falon, just leaving the practice. She stopped in place and greeted the doctor.
“Good evening Dr. Lavoisier how was your appointment?â€
“As well as to be expected but I didn’t resolve the issue. They may request my time more frequently.â€
“Well I’m prepared to fill in, if needed.â€
“Thank you April, your assistance is invaluable to my practice. Oh did come you come across anything remarkable, while I was out?â€
“Well a Mr. Stevenson seemed very interested in receiving anti-aging treatments, though when I mentioned the price of those procedures and post-treatments he got a bit cross. He’s already booked another appointment with you; I think he’s going to badger you to lower price.â€
“How bothersome, I’ll have to get June to reschedule.â€
With that Duncan wished the nurse a good evening and entered the practice and met with his secretary June. She had decided to wait for the doctor’s return and informed him of the large animates corpse that now rested in his morgue. After seeing June out, Duncan turned his attention to the large animates corpse. He couldn’t possibly leave it any longer, the impossible construct of a corpse held many secrets that had to be uncovered.
Duncan wheeled the corpse into his makeshift laboratory, changing into his lab coat as moved into the room. Observing it for just a moment he thought about how small it looked. It was really just whatever hadn’t been confiscated from his mother’s laboratory after she passed away pieced together in this smaller room. He was always so focused on the work at hand to notice, but the thought of expanding it filled him with excitement.
Duncan began his research into the animate slowly with very limited non-invasive testing. He sampled the blood, saliva and bone marrow from as many of the stitched segments he could identify. From these samples he treated them with chemical reagents and mechanical force to purify the genetic material. The analysis itself was fairly simple if time consuming.
[HIDE]2d10 + thanatology
(1 + 2 + 2)
5 = Failure[/HIDE]
Examining plague ridden nucleic acid and protein was always frustrating, the virus integrated itself into practically every cells genome at a semi-random locations. Trying to make sense of such a breadth of information without assistance could take weeks. Still his limited automated equipment was left comparing the samples to previous strains of the plague; perhaps he would find an interesting contrast later on.
Moving to alchemical methods he sampled and purified the components of the blood, stomach acid and saliva. First using mechanical force then a specialized filtration process and a comprehensive distillation. The fluids and some soft tissues from the animate were purified into its chemical components. The process was fairly mindless he had done the procedure again and again as part of his own research but he was captivated by the monstrosity. Was some unknown concoction was responsible for its animation.
[HIDE]2d10 + thanatology
(4 + 6 + 2)
12 = Failure[/HIDE]
As it stood however there was nothing truly unique about the creature as far as he could see. An impossible fact anyone simply looking at the thing with their own eyes could tell. It was an abnormal beast of stitched together flesh, animates naturally defied death but never to this extent. He had collected enough samples; he had to understand just how this thing functioned.
[HIDE]2d10 + thanatology
(9 + 7 + 2)
18 = Success![/HIDE]
It had been almost 12 when he had begun and now it was soon approaching the faint morning. Duncan’s night had been filled with Scalpels, bone saws and jars of preservatives. The creature had been disassembled down to its core and each and every organ and tissue sample was labelled. Duncan had looked over his notes and double checked the genetic analysis that was still ongoing.
