[[Rewinding many hours back]]

Harvey finished charging his batteries as the sun rose over the horizon. Being located right over a waterfall, he could see the wide stretch of untamed forest over which the sun’s golden rays shone. Off in the distance, not far from the waterfall was the city of Thoreni, about the size of a coin from his perspective.

This cabin was his base of operations, his clinic, and his home. He had spent a good year and half building it slowly, through the summer heat and the winter’s cold. It looked like a large log cabin from the exterior, but that was merely aesthetics. The building had steel frames and concrete walls, with clean white tiles lining the interior to give it a pure, untainted look, not unlike a hospital.

The first floor was mostly dedicated towards producing a steady supply of electricity. There was a huge water wheel built into the building which spun rapidly and constantly thanks to the river. Turbines were connected to the water wheel, and they generated enough electricity to run the entire building as well as charge himself. There was a room specially dedicated to charging mobile power banks the size of car batteries with which he would use as reserve batteries when he goes out on his trips.

Outside, the cabin was connected directly to a bridge that ran across the river, connecting both banks. The platform for the bridge was pitch black, made entirely out of solar panels to supplement the huge energy needs of the building.

The second floor was where Harvey had allocated rooms for fabrication, material storage, data servers and medical care. The fabrication wing had the sole purpose of fabricating materials using matter from the osmium storage next door. It could construct atoms both ways, either from the osmium alloy, or to the osmium alloy. The hospital wing was actually made of several rooms, one for triage and diagnosis, the other for actual surgery which was kept as a clean room, free of dust and pathogens. There was a separate room for running tests and diagnosis of patients, which was equipped with scanners and x-ray machines of all sorts which Harvey had painstakingly fabricated and assembled over the year.

The data server however, was the most secure room in the house. It had password protected access and within it, stored his spare body parts as well as back-up data in case his body was destroyed by accident. He had even integrated a chip into himself which would alert the room the moment his current body was no longer functional to begin assembly of a new body. The most tedious process though, was uploading his consciousness into the home server which controlled most of the functions within the building. Up till now, even after a year and a half, he was still only 3% integrated, and hence still could not afford to be careless. He had no idea how the implosion merged his consciousness with KAOO so quickly, but he had no intention of replicating the process.

The third floor was mostly for storage purposes, keeping medical supplies for use immediately without the need to fabricate them. It had syringes, scalpels, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, painkillers, you name it. There was even a guest bedroom with 8 beds within. Naturally, the whole building was temperature and humidity controlled, keeping it a nice cool 23 degrees celcius within.

On the bank of the river, not too far from the bridge was the old cabin he used to stay in. Right now though, it was a little run down and was used to store all his heavy duty tools, especially the ones he had used for construction. He had not touched them since the completion of the house and they had been collecting dust ever since. However, he knew he was going to need to use them again soon.

Right now, Harvey was working on 2 projects concurrently. One was the integration of his consciousness into the home server, while the other was mapping the surrounding landscape to generate an accurate map. To do so, he had been setting traps in tree tops within the forest to catch birds. He would then attach a small camera-scanner to the birds which would then transmit topographical information back to the home server. The problem he was having right now was the short range of the devices, which meant he was going to have to build relay towers to better receive the transmissions.

Making his way towards the forest, Harvey began walking on his usual route towards the various traps he had laid out. The birds were usually the most active during dawn, and would most likely be caught in the traps in the morning. However, because he had not wanted to injure the animals in anyway, the traps were designed so that given enough time and a little luck, the birds would be able to figure out a way of escaping. So, he had to make his move early in the morning.

With cameras in hand, he spent half an hour simply looking for any trapped birds, but it would seem that luck was not on his side today. He currently still had 6 birds flying around with the cameras that were still within transmission range. Hence, there wasn’t a big hurry to find more. As long as he could map out the surrounding 50km or so, it could be considered very good.

It was already 3 hours since he started inspecting the traps and he was a fair distance away from the cabin. Noon was approaching quickly and he had intended to spend the rest of the day fabricating materials for the relay tower. Then the night would be spent making progress on the integration with the home server.

Just as he was about to reach the last of his bird traps, a loud anguished roar resounded from deep within the forest. Wondering what the commotion was about, Harvey cautiously made his way towards the roars which were gradually turning into pitiful cries. Coming up to a tree with a low hanging branch, he saw what looked like a full grown panther with its hind leg caught in a bear trap.

The cat immediately glared at him, growling threateningly. As Harvey approach the cat, it suddenly stood up, its face wincing in pain as it swung its tails at Harvey’s chest. The bladed tips bounced right off his chest, leaving not even a scratch mark on his sturdy chassis. With its leg stuck in the trap which was chained to the tree, its claws could not reach him, so it kept swinging its tail at Harvey in an attempt to injure him.

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Ignoring the whip like tails, Harvey confidently walked within the range of the cat’s arms, and immediately came under attack from its powerful swipes. While the impact did make him stumble a little, it made absolutely no impact to him otherwise. Picking up the large feline by its scruff lie a giant overgrown kitten, Harvey used his other free hand to transform into a reverse vice, prying the trap open and freeing the poor cat’s leg.

Proceeding to retrieve a tranquilizer dart from his waist which he carried around as a precaution, Harvey injected the large black cat with the dart, putting it to sleep within 5 minutes. He then immediately dressed the bleeding wound, tying it up with what’s left of his shredded cloak before continuing to destroy the trap, leaving it as a pile of mangled metal.

Throwing the large limp cat over his shoulder, Harvey then quickly made his way back to the house. Once there, he began to shave the fur off its leg to reveal the bite wound from the trap. He cleaned it up, disinfected it and then stitched it up neatly, all while the animal was unconscious. Bandaging the wound up nicely, he injected some prophylactic antibiotics before carrying it outside and chaining it to the foot of the bridge.

It was close to midnight when the cat awoke from its drowsy stupor. Its leg stung, but it was more intrigued by its surrounding. No longer was it within the comfort of the forest, resting lazily on a branch, it was out in the open, vulnerable and exposed. The roar of the waterfall seemed to helped in waking it up. Feeling quite thirsty, it reached out to lap up some water from the river before the light clinking of the metal chains caught its attention.

Roaring in anguish once more for getting caught, it tugged at the chain futilely, trying its damnest to break free. Slashing with its tails or claws didn’t help break the chain. Even its powerful jaws could do nothing to the chain. Then, a familiar figure emerged from the tall pile of logs nearby. This man was the one who had come for it in the forest, the one it could not injure no matter what it did.

Preparing to attack once more, it reared up against the bridge where it was chained. It knew it needed to lure the man as close as possible before pouncing since the chain would restrict its range. Sure enough, the man came up close enough quickly, and with that, it leapt, chomping down on his arm.

Harvey looked at the large cat with pity. It was grinding its teeth furiously at his forearm, but not making any headway. Lifting his arm above his head, he carried the cat by its jaw and took a look at the bandage. It had become undone and the stitches were on the verge of reopening. Gently putting the cat back down who seemed obsessed with biting his arm, Harvey took out a squirt bottle and sprayed a few jets in its face, causing it to loosen its bite on him. After a quick inspection to see that no damage was done, he grabbed it by the scruff once more, and gently repositioned the cat on its side.

Seeing how helpless it was, the Pritor gave up, knowing full well it could do nothing to this man. As Harvey gently caressed its body and redid the bandage, he looked at the animal and sighed, before leaving it alone. Returning from within the house, he brought with him a large fish he had caught that evening from the river. He placed the fish in front of the cat and left it alone, still chained to the bridge.

And so, a night passed peacefully, with Harvey returning regularly to change the dressing and disinfect the wound. The Pritor quickly got used to him and understood that he was helping it recover. Henceforth, it had stopped attacking him and chose to be a little more docile.

The next day went by in a pretty much similar manner. Harvey spent the morning checking the bird traps. However, he did not stray too far from the wounded Pritor so that he could make it back every 4 hours to check up on its wound. He fished in the river for a few hours in the afternoon, catching a fish that oddly resembled a gator, with elongated fins that looked somewhat like limbs. The Pritor made quick work of the meal, finishing a fish half its size in under 2 hours. Harvey washed the Pritor and redressed its wound before returning inside the house to catch up on his integration process.

Evening came around when his scanners picked up activity outside his home. It was a party of human adventurers. 3 swordsmen, 2 archers and what looked to be an unconscious person. He peeked out the window and concluded that they were hostile towards his patient, and so he grabbed the closest thing he could before heading out to greet them - a hammer. Just as the swordsman was about to decapitate his patient, Harvey accurately calculated the trajectory of the sword as well as his hammer, throwing it to intercept the sword.

Switching to Thermal vision, he could tell that woman at the back was running a very dangerous fever. From his experience he knew it was highly likely that she had a septicaemia. Her breathing was extremely shallow and fatigued and despite the roar of the waterfall, he could isolate the sound of her wheezing. From the aggressive nature of the cat and these new intruders, Harvey could vaguely guess that there must have been some history between the 2.

And so, while completely brushing off the pointless attacks from the male archer, Harvey stepped up towards them and controlled his cat. Then pointing at the unconscious girl behind the party, his voice reverberated from the speakers in his shoulders.

“Your Friend seems hurt. She’s running a fever. Bring her in. I’ll treat her.”