The face of the noblewoman was both a mixture of disgust and annoyance. She had expected more from the remnant harvested genetic leftover which she had paid a high price for, both in status, money and her own personal assets.

The cost of the Doctor alone had cost her in personal favours and Battlezone passes for noble events which she had already scheduled into her yearly allowance as a gift from the Ice Empress and those close to her.

A trick. Or a failure, not of my making though. I need to understand, was I given access on purpose?

The rewards were meant to be high, far more than she could ever even achieve given her position. She wasn’t one of the elite who commissioned elite warriors to fight for her in regional Battlezone Events and had taken the opportunity to try and create something worthwhile. Something new and exciting which would have granted her further opportunities to enter the presence of the aged Ice Empress and her crowing noble admirers.

Clearly, the corpse of the preserved Flame Emperor was a complete fake, a fabrication by a sad, lonely old woman who wanted a reminder that she was once married to what most of the population of the kingdom had once considered a living god.

Worthless. I paid for an assassin in preparation that a newly awakened being would decide to attack me and the worthless thing dies from a single blade to the eye. I’’ll be a laughing stock if word if this escapes. Best to clean it up and sell it onwards as fast as possible.

The truth was far more that she had either made up the story or someone had long ago stolen and destroyed the original body. The harvested DNA from the cloned almost entirely burnt out corpse had been a trick.

One of my enemies wishes me to present the Empress with another worthless flesh clone, a thing of little value in the Battlezone Games. Javier. He would do such a thing. I’ll have words with his husband about this. He’ll regret his actions.

‘Leave us. I don’t need any further protection now the slave is dead. Dispose of your blade, it’s been tainted with the marks of the production process. I’ll not accept any trace of it in my presence. You may requisition a new one in my name. Be discreet. Go!’

The figure turned and left the room without a word of protest, a sigh of relief almost came from the man in the white coat before he held in it and tightened his self-control. If he lost his composure in front of the noblewoman when she was in this state then she would simply order her pet assassin to send a blade spinning into his own eye socket and he would be lying on the floor next to the corpse of the slave.

He wished that he hadn’t chosen to draw upon this extra duty and cursed his colleague for taking the time to go gambling at a small-scale Battlezone event held locally.

Just leave. Please. He’s dead and we can bring him back again but please don’t kill me. Please don’t notice me. I’m nobody.

With a slight huff of her breath, the noblewoman shifted her attention towards the figure wearing leather equipment. She had lost interest in the sweating of the Overseer, he was literally shaking and likely to soil himself if she pushed a little harder.

The fact was that it was enough he knew his place to obey a noble of her station. And if he chose to talk about her little experiment with forbidden harvested genetic material from a burnt out corpse of a clone of a once living god then his entire family would serve as her next form of entertainment as a present.

‘No. Filth. Dispose of that filth. Do it quick and discreetly. You will clean and bathe him before notifying me of your success next time. He looks disgusting. That’s no way for a gift to appear. And if you don’t get it right….I like the sheen of your skin Overseer.’

With a shudder that he kept hidden as much as possible he watched the lady noble hastily leave the room. He held in his breath, keeping his stomach from turning out of fear and hoped that she would leave without further punishment. The Overseer prayed to the only gods he knew.

Praise the Ice Empress, Bless her Frozen Heart. Bless the lost Fire Emperor. May he return to us to protect and cleanse once more.

Other female voices were heard just outside, simpering and fawning as she expressed her distress to her maids in waiting. He heard her clearly cursing his name and his previous generations in all manner of colorful ways and the unknown flesh clone which had for some reason failed to live up to expectations.

Makes no sense. Why was she so angry? A flesh clone doesn’t know a thing besides conditioning during the incubation period. I followed procedure. And to bring a Doctor here? Even worse than an assassin.

Clearly she had expected something but he didn’t quite understand what. Flesh clones were humans who needed to be conditioned and trained as normal people did, to expect one suddenly born to be able to fly through the sky or to beat a hired assassin made no sense in his mind.

The Overseer looked down at the now dead, pile of meat which had once been alive. He walked around in a circle before crouching down to examine it further. Given that he was used to working with both the growing tanks and then simply cleaning up flesh clones he was used to spending time by himself.

Talking to himself was nothing new in his line of work, talking to the growing bodies and freshly born flesh adult clones was another matter entirely. He wasn’t that far gone yet, not like his colleague who had decided to gamble his life savings on the local Battlezone event to improve his station in life.

‘Plenty of fresh material to work with. Simple enough for a rebirth. Not much damage except that eye socket and brain but as long as the blade is removed he can fixed up. Not much to look at though, I’d wager that he’s about as tall as I was. Strange reaction though, immediate obedience should have been a given. The samples used to build him must have either been severely damaged or old. None of mine though. I did my job and I’ll do the rest without fuss or bother. ’

Rather than try to grow a new body from scratch, he’d simply throw this one into the vat to regrow the damage. In order to make sure that he’d get it done on time he needed additional help with this. There was no way that he was going to be working late at night when his colleague was havi-

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‘Overseer? Why do you hesitate with your holy work? The blessed lady has given her instructions has she not? Do you need suitable motivation to do your work? I am most disappointed in your behaviour to one of your beloved nobility. This work is simple, far too simple for me but I will undertake it if I need to. An eye for an eye and a brain for a brain. I believe that you have both. Am I clear...Overseer?’

The Doctor spoke with a degree of insane happiness and malice combined. His tongue rolled around as he spoke and his goggled face showed a fierce intensity which made the Overseer realise that he was one of those who had an interest in self-experimentation and improvement.

Realising that he was still not entirely alone in the room the man in the white coat nearly fell to his knees again as he held up a hand as though warding of the menacing nature which threatened to overwhelm him.

The figure with the mask and goggles had been so silent, so still that the Overseer hadn’t even heard him taking in a single breath. If half what he heard of the Doctor’s who accompanied select nobility then it could even have been true that they could breath through their skin rather then their faces. Not that he wanted the insane man to remove his mask and goggles.

That would be bad. Very, very bad. Think. Think!

‘Doctor. Please. The process is delicate, your sheer intelligence has made me unable to focus. I will reuse the existing physical structure with your permission but will reduce the amount of nerve ending materials. The slave will awaken faster and be clean in preparation for the Lady. Please forgive my failure. My apologies to you for my lack of clear understanding of your expectations. I’m an idiot. My wife and children often tell me so. Truly.’

‘Overseer. It is not my concern that need bother you, we are both patrons of the Lady are we not? I’m sure that you would not prefer your family, beloved they are to you, to have a…arrangement with the assassin or participate in my experiments with the flesh vats. Mmm. Yes. You would not. Do you know how rare second chances are from the blessed Lady? She is a member of the court of our beloved Empress after all. Get on your knees. Crawl to the subject and inspect him. I want to see your true humility. You embarrassed me in front of a High Born.’

The man in the white coat, letting the slime on the floor seep into his clothing and ignoring how it began to burn into his exposed skin just nodded his best, letting his hair become filthy as he crawled over to the rapidly cooling corpse.

He let his fingers run over the body, wiping off the excess slime before sticking one hand into the ruined eyeball and pulling out the gelatinous material, holding it loosely inside one partially closed hand. The slime remaining on it began to burn his exposed hand as he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stop shaking or crushing the half-liquid mess in a closed fist by accident.

‘Overseer. Stop and hold the eyeball correctly. Your pathetic shaking annoys me. Do not move, my grip has failed me at time and I would prefer not to squash your head akin a rotten melon. Your wife and children would be most displeased with a father without brain matter for all they call you idiot. Wouldn’t you agree Overseer?’

The figure in the leather bound outfit and wearing the heavy hard, leather robe walked over and crouched down. One hand trailing along a heavily muscled leg of the corpse. The other hand reached out and grabbed the back of the stained white coat, the arm slightly extending unnaturally as it reached onto the middle of the back.

A leather gloved hand opened and closed before it increased in size, the materials of the glove expanding like a balloon and grabbed hold of the coat, lifting the Overseer up above the corpse as like a doll hanging in the air.

‘I thought you were appreciate a better view of your handiwork….Overseer. Tell me, do you see the strength that has been granted, the blessing that originates from the living god who created our Empire along with our beloved Empress?’

‘Ye-yes. I need to-to work now. I-I und-understand Doctor.’

The Overseer felt his stained white coat tighten around his neck as he was held above the corpse of the creation. He wasn’t sure about why the Doctor was being so extreme, yes they were considered erratic but not to this extent. His hand holding the eyeball involuntary squeezed it tightly, the watery mess running through his fingers.

His fear turned into sweat and he struggled to hold in his urine. If he let a single complaint then it would be his own death and his body thrown into a vat for repurposing. There was a wrongness here, an issue that he hadn’t foreseen. His own fault for being overly greedy and taking on the commission in which the paperwork had been warned to be an extra.

A damned assassin. The noble brought along an assassin for a cloned slave. Madness. The whole lot of them are, but the Doctors are even worse.

‘My work..the lady wants the work done. I will fulfil her desire. I promise on my family! On my life!’ said the Overseer.

The collars of his coat continued to tighten as the Doctor with his grotesquely expanded hand held him over the body of the cloned corpse and as his breathing began to become difficult as the collar around his neck tightened he was suddenly dropped.

His face fell directly into the slime covered body, hands slipping off as he tried to push himself away from the body. One bloodied empty eye socket and the other in contrast wide open gazed in his direction as the Overseer pulled his hands back, not judging him but the look inside the single remaining eye held a promise of hate.

The face remained defiant even in death. That in itself was impressive. The Doctor would have been keen to harvest the brain for his own experiments to find exactly how the in-built conditioning for all flesh slaves had been overwritten. There was clearly hesitation there despite the clumsy attempts of the Overseer to hide it.

The noble Lady had not noticed and the Assassin had simply not cared as he didn’t see a threat judging by how easily the fresh born adult flesh clone had died but there was something there. A spark which he could use but sadly he had been promised enough by the Lady and his own personal work was far more important.

He had been clearly instructed to hold his silence and paid in sufficient resources to make it happen. The assassin he could kill if he wanted to. They had largely relied on the rumours of their once mythical levels of training from the god being called the Flame Emperor.

The truth was that their skills had diminished and they no longer followed the direct orders of the Ice Empress and she made it open that she simply did not care.

‘Overseer.’ said the Doctor. ‘You are permitted to reuse the remains, such as they are, replace the eye cavity and breath life back into your work but you will never present to the Lady a flesh form that is not appetising. Increase the obedience bonds on this one and clean him off thoroughly. You have three hours to work your skills. Four if you beg.’

‘Yes, I..please. Please Doctor, grant me another few hours more to work my skills. The Lady will be pleased with my work. He will respond accordingly this time. I promise. And clean! He will be fully clean and prepared for even a gathering of High Nobility! Praise to the Eternal Ice Empress!’ said the Overseer.

‘Good. Good. You show promise and understanding. My experiments and the patronage of the Lady of our Empresses Court are both vital. I will not lose the support and resources of my experiments on behalf of a half-intelligent baker of human flesh. Time and essence both play a role. Don’t bother me until you’re finished. Praise until the Ice Empress, Praise to the Eternal Flame Emperor.’