Fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck. The truck swerves around a corner, and I fall backwards into Tuesday. We drive over a pothole, and Nobody's body bounces against the ground. He's unconscious, but he's not bleeding; the laser seared a hole straight through him and cauterized the inside—little victories. There is still a very high chance that the wound will reopen. That's on top of the many possible infections he could get from having an exposed wound, especially in this truck that's got so much blood splatter it could qualify as a Jackson Pollock painting. I can't do anything for Nobody until we're back at the base. Opening him up now would only invite disaster. If he dies, we're fucked. My face heats up while my mouth dries as the nanites counteract the growing panic I started exhibiting. My system is flooded with the Pam posse, the only women I've ever had feelings for. Lorazepam, Diazepam, and Clonazepam.

"We're almost there. How's he doing, Kai?" Rorschach asked.

"Well, he's got a hole in his torso large enough we could use it to practice our golf swings, but besides that, I'm sure he's fine," Tuesday joked.

"Could you just shut the fuck up for once? God, not everything is a fucking joke!" Roschach yelled exasperated.

"Dr. Honeydew believes that laughter is the best medicine!" Tuesday replied cheerily.

"Then that doctor is as stupid as you are," Rorschach sneered.

"HOW DARE YOU! Doctor Bunsen Honeydew graduated top of his class. He is respected by his peers and the greater medical field as well," Tuesday said, offended.

"Can you two be quiet? Your cat fight is not just annoying, it's distracting," I said.

The two of them thankfully relent, and the truck is silent. I won't lie, a part of me is excited at the prospect of fixing Nobody. This is unlike any surgical problem I've faced before. This isn't about stitching closed a wound or setting a bone back into place; the rib is easy enough to replace with a metallic or artificial replacement, but the missing chunk of lung, singed blood vessels, and missing chunk of chest will prove harder.

I could attempt to use my new nanite chemical distribution project to restore blood flow once I reconstruct the arteries. It's been successful so far, but it's also only been tested on me. It isn't perfect by any means, but it is doing a pretty good job of counteracting the side effects of the shrinking power so far. I've worked on Nobody before, but that was before I knew him. Before I worked for him, before he made my dream come true, before he allowed me to know his greatest secret. I can't let Eryk die. He'd probably fucking haunt my ass forever. That's if one of the others doesn't kill me for letting him die. I'm loyal, but some of the other members of our group are almost fanatical. I look at Tuesday, and she waves at me. Without Nobody to keep her leashed, there's no telling what she'll do. That gives me an idea. It'll have to wait till we're back at base even to consider it. You just have to survive the rest of the ride.

Isaiah gets us back to the base in record time; it's expected considering he didn't stop at a single light or stop sign. He parks at the back and tanks the door open. His mask is gone, and he looks anxious. I step out of the way so he can lift Nobody out of the truck. A combined table drone comes through the double doors at the back of the base. Isaiah carefully lowers him onto it, and the straps secure his body in place. The vial injector tails draw blood and give him some base antibiotics just in case.

"Out of the way. I'll be in my lab, do not disturb me," I shouted, shuffling past the others and out of the truck.

The table drone takes off immediately, racing back into the base toward the lab. I chase after it, ignoring Isaiah's questions. I don't have time for everybody's questions. The base is a hive of activity as all types of construction drones get to work. The sound of gears, engines, drills, beeps, and chirps fills the first floor. It'll still be another couple of days before they finish. Despite Nobody's issue with my lab being finished first, it is now what will be the difference that keeps him alive. It wasn't selfishness, it was prophetic foresight.

The table drone is gone; it's taken one of the tunnels to get down faster. I step into the elevator and punch my code into the keypad—the digital display changes to display the numbers 003, and then the elevator drops. Whenever one of our codes is punched in, it deactivates the safety measures and starts violating building code to go much, much faster than it's supposed to—the box races to the bottom, two hundred feet below the ground floor of the base.

The doors open, and I emerge into my new lab. While it lacks the wonder that my Tinkertech collection gave the last lab, it is no less advanced. Nobody had me make it even bigger than the last one, so that's how I ended up with forty-foot ceilings and the size of a football field. The walls and floor are reinforced concrete wrapped in layers of steel, lead, and plastic polymer. The same Faraday Cage wrapping that the main base has is also present here, except it wraps everything to the point that no signals can be sent or received here. My lab is a complete dead zone, a black site the CIA would drool over. The cells I designed for the experiments we ran in Crimton have been upgraded several times over. I'm confident that they can contain nearly any possible Neuvohuman.

Nobody is inside the see-through cube I use as my sterile operating room. The table drone had already moved him to the grayscale slab, which is my operating table. The floor opens as multiple emerald metallic arches extend out of it, revealing they're actually rings. They wrap around Nobody as the rod the table is attached to starts to extend upward. It cost a pretty penny and some greased hands, but I got my Stryker-Siemens-Cardinal International Molecular Electromagnetic Resonance Imaging Unit. Once it is fully extended, it looks like a mix of a gyroscope and a Stargate from that old show. The six stationary rings start to rotate, the speed increasing until they also begin to move on the y-axis. Nobody's body disappears behind the green blur.

This will give me an idea of what I'm dealing with. Neuvohuman powers are one of a kind. There are no two powers that are exactly the same. Even something as simple as fire manipulating powers has infinite varieties. The Cowl Burnblast has pyrokinesis for his ability; Miles can mimic nearly every single part of Burnblast's power, except he can't create his own fire. There's no telling what the laser that hit Nobody was composed of. It could be radiation, heat, light, or some kind of energy unique to the Cape. The worst thing I can do for Nobody is to rush into a diagnosis that isn't one hundred percent correct. While the machine works, I need to start on possible solutions for the lost mass. I no longer have access to any of the Tinkertech that would have been an extremely easy answer for nearly any problem.

My drone workshop takes up a significant portion of the total space of the lab. Schematics cover the multiple tables I have spread out. Whiteboards with ideas scribbled on them, half-assembled machines that I abandoned due to a material limit or a redundancy hang from chains, and bins on wheels full of parts scattered around all contribute to the organized chaos of the workshop. I sit down at my programming center, which is really just a laptop hooked up to the nanite production setup, and turn everything on. Forty conveyor belts the size of a tape measure with all the different parts in the assembly line shrunk down to 1/16 scale boot up. The first belt starts up, and soon the prepregs are getting produced and stacked, going down the line to the copper cladding section. That gets hot pressed together, followed by a photoresist being applied so etching can begin. While that belt goes, the others start up, crafting the sensor units, the frames, the joints and limbs: everything needed to craft the tiny drones. All of the parts and components land in the assembly zone, where tiny robotic arms put all of them together and weld them shut. The nanites, each one smaller than a grain of sand, are poured into a steel cylinder the size of a thermos. The container is securely locked into the processing base that is connected to my laptop. Here is where I can dictate what each nanite's singular focus will be.

Stolen story; please report.

There are several folders with prewritten programming codes for the different forms of my arm. Then there's a folder labeled manic panic V2 that contains all the notes and codes for the nanites that are inside of me, regulating my emotions via a scheduled distribution of psychotropic drugs. I haven't noticed any unintended side effects. Beyond the obvious of using the nanites to distribute antibiotics, I need to find a solution for his missing organ. He isn't showing any signs of breathing differently, but I do not doubt that the harmlessness will pass. The rib is an easy fix; I can easily create a replacement made of nanites. I could also set up a cycle to constantly check his body for foreign substances if he wants. It'll end up making him healthier. I briefly consider if I could create a drone that prints organic material like tissue, cartilage, and produces bioink. Then I could shrink it down and insert it directly inside him to avoid surgery. A mobile 3d printer. But I feel the beginning of a headache start, and I scrap the idea. That's got to be the T.I.D.E. stopping me. Despite being a trained and graduated doctor who has used organic printers before, my power considers a drone printer as me attempting to circumvent my specialty. I can't seem to crack how to get drones that create other drones or any material; a limitation that continues to plague me.

I make a note to purchase several bioprinters in the future. Nobody is still stable inside the scanner. An alert goes off as a couple of the base's cameras show Isaiah's smoky form spiralling down the elevator shaft toward me and the lab. That man's devotion to Nobody isn't exactly healthy or normal. It's a faith bordering on worship. Nobody isn't a god; the fact that he bleeds is proof of that. And that he's an underage college student. The stoic, handsome soldier emerges from the black cloud, with thin coils of smoke trailing off his body. He certainly knows how to make an entrance, and I am not mad about getting a show.

"How is he?" Isaiah asked.

"Unconscious. I'm monitoring his vitals and doing a full set of scans to analyze his condition. No, I don't know how he's doing, and no, I don't have a solution yet," I said, preemptively answering the questions I knew he was about to ask.

"Alright. Let me know if you need anything. And I mean anything. Whatever it takes to save him, there is no price too high to pay," Isaiah declared ominously.

His pretty brown eyes are so intense. There's an edge to his deep voice that comes across like a growl. I can't lie, it's hot as hell. Focus. I'm going to need to think outside the box to come up with an idea. My computer goes off as the table holding Nobody lowers back down. The rings separate and descend back beneath the floor. Isaiah looks like he wants to ask, but he intelligently stays silent. Radiation poisoning negative, blood cells look good, no abnormal chemicals or cell degradation present. Zero traces of lingering energy or changes present to insinuate that there is any kind of danger from exposure to the laser. Even his cholesterol and blood pressure are perfectly within normal ranges. Tuesday was right, despite the hole in his chest, he's not doing badly. Tuesday. That's it.

"I need to talk to Tuesday, right now," I said.

Isaiah doesn't even question me, disappearing in an explosion of smoke and racing to her. It isn't just that she can create copies of her limbs. She made working mouths and eyeballs. Suppose that ability extends to the rest of her body, such as her brain, her spine, bones, and other organs. I can harvest stem cells from her. Then, using my nanites, I could control the differentiation process to basically mass grow his missing pieces. If this works, I could make him stronger, smarter. I could grow neurons and enhance my own cognitive functions. I could give myself an eidetic memory. I can't help it, I start laughing uncontrollably. I'm on the verge of a scientific breakthrough the likes the world hasn't seen in hundreds of years. I am a fucking genius. Isaiah comes back in less than five minutes, carrying Tuesday by the back of her sweatshirt like a cat that's been sprayed by a skunk.

"Listen, I already told you I have all my shots," she said, swiping playfully at Isaiah.

"What do you need with her? How can I help?" Isaiah asked, not even looking in her direction.

"You've shown that you can replicate body parts at no real cost to yourself. Is there a limit to what you can make?" I asked her.

"Okay, yes, you caught me. I can, in fact, make the rumored fifth hole. All I ask is that you guys go easy on me. This is my first time," she sighed dejectedly.

Isaiah shakes her violently. "We don't have time for your usual nonsense. Answer his question, or I'm going to start breaking your fingers one at a time. Don't test me on this," he threatened.

"Ya'll, is it just little ol me or is it getting hot in here?" Tuesday asked in a southern belle's accent, fanning her face with her hand.

"It's not just you," I agreed. "But, please answer the question."

"UGGGH! First, nobody knows who Jim Henson is, then Nobody doesn't know who Jim Henson is either, and now a girl can't even do a little bit without being threatened with foreplay," Tuesday whined.

Isaiah moves to grab her wrist, and she speaks again.

"Easy, easy. I haven't tried it yet, but from the knowledge of my powers, I shouldn't have any issues. What do you want me to try?" She asked.

"I need you to try and create your spine, your brain, and your lungs," I answered.

"For what?" Both of them asked.

"I am going to extract all the adult stem cells from those locations and use them to reproduce all the cells and organic material Nobody lost," I said with a smile.

"Hell yeah! I am in," she replied.

"You two get started on that. Don't do anything to the boss until I get back. I'm going to see if V is back yet. She should be the one to make this call," Isaiah said before leaving.

"Now that it's just the two of us; I have this lump on my breast and I'd like you to cop a feel, I mean check it out," she coughed awkwardly.

"Nope. Come over here, I have a sterile surgical station over here where you can start trying to make those parts," I said.

"God, you're the worst magician I've ever seen, David. And I just fought that Chokus Strokus guy like a week ago," she complained.

What the hell is she talking about? Maybe I could do a neuropathological autopsy with one of the copies of her brain. I might even figure out what is wrong with her. The two of us enter my sealed surgical station, and I take a seat in a chair while she stands in front of the large stainless steel pans I have set out. Time to test the limits of your power Tuesday.

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