People were dying out there. Getting hunted, eaten and torn apart by a wildlife gone mad.
I hope my mom’s okay. If she’s got this healing, then yeah. She’s a tough cookie.
But despite the System’s magic boon, getting attacked continuously would keep you from healing, so unless you managed to get enough distance to allow for the magic to get started; then clearly people could still suffer fatal damage. The images from this past day flashed through Damon’s mind, and it was all too easy picturing those bodies as having been all the people from back home. We gotta stay focused on survival, but we might already be running out of time. I doubt this healing thingy is gonna last forever, it might even be strictly for the duration of the Shuffle.
But for right now, they were safe, even immune to a degree, to any amount of non-fatal damage. So long as we don’t get trapped.
It all served to make Damon’s idea sound pretty logical in his own mind’s isolation, smart even—in a gaming-mechanics sort of way—yet he couldn’t help but still feel certain it was actually utter insanity. He needed someone to bounce the idea off of, but when he listed the available people in his head Damon found a long list of strangers who might well react in gut-wrenching horror. They might even try to stop me, even if we conclude that it will probably work.
Damon realized he didn’t know these people, even if they might understand what he was thinking; if they were normal people they’d be more likely to laugh him out of the room, thinking him a kid who’s read one too many superhero comics.
Even Ken who was currently keeping busy in the storage—updating their constantly changing inventory, which the System kept burgling—was naturally a no go. He fell off the list due to Damon’s fear of failing in front of a fellow martial artist, one who might very well take it upon themselves to complete the experiment should Damon flunk it somehow on the first go.
In the end he decided he’d rather do this without the stress of only getting one attempt hanging over his head. Hell, it might even kill the old man.
Looking over at the tired-looking, older fellow—Damon genuinely felt like he couldn't take that risk. I’ll be subtle.
When Damon left the room the stack of Beralumin was two ingots shorter. Which meant twenty eight more remained. Hopefully he blames the System. First ever real use I get out of this System lady, using her reputation as a thief for a scapegoat. Hah. I’m gonna remember that’s how our relationship started.
For now, Damon felt like what he needed most was some solid advice.
Who better to turn to than an old friend?
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In the end Damon would have to tell somebody the idea, since somebody needed to actually perform the operation. So, if he had to tell one person already, and with everyone else in the building being a virtual stranger; in conclusion the surgeon himself would clearly have to serve, for gauging the experiment's sanity.
Damon headed straight down to Tyler’s garage, where he found the man tinkering and soldering. Possibly welding. Hard to tell. “Hey Tyler, how’s it going in here?—You're still doing alright?”
The man took off his protective goggles and looked over his shoulder to see who’d come down. “I’m sure we’ve all been better, but I’m alright,” When he noticed Damon hesitating, he threw him a line. “Something on your mind?”
“Yeah, yeah sorta. I just got struck with an idea, but I’m not sure if it’s too crazy,” Damon meant to continue but Tyler was far too quick to interrupt.
“To go out there and fight, right? Hah. Just like your pops." Tyler shook his head at memories before continuing with a sigh. "Yeah, I feel you man, it’s just that it’s useless without some wheels, am I right? But look! I’ve been working on something, I call it The Unstoppable. It’s a fuelless engine, just sheer pedaling force—but it will be hard to stop us if we put it in my reinforced Bronco. We could potentially get out of here, once the Shuffle ends and as long as these Strength stats are actually a real thing, you know?”
They were quickly veering off-track, and now Damon’s expression turned appalled before he could think it through. “And leave everybody else behind!?”
“What, no man? We’d come back for fuck’s sake. Obviously. But someone will need to do some scouting for us once this island stops, to figure out where the hell we've ended up. It’s gotta stop, right? At some point?”
Phew. Yeah. That was more like the Tyler that Damon knew. Maybe he’d started assuming the worst of people over the years, but it really was different with people you actually knew from way back. Despite how they’d hardly seen each other except around holidays for the past decade, it felt just like old times whenever they got a chance to talk again.
Well, until the present circumstance made This Feels Like Old Time’s’ sentiments impossible with its disruptive arrival.
Things were going fine for everyone in the building so far, but Damon had seen far too many horror and disaster movies to not realize how it might be all too easy for some of the people out there to forget it, but in a survival situation everyone needed to cooperate, especially when fighting against alien invaders. Every single one of the survivors, they were all in this together.
Frankly they’d gotten quite lucky with their select group of people all having at least amicable relationships from the very beginning. Imagine getting stuck like this during the commute? There’d be every kind of prick around, probably even people who would have wasted no time trying to level on their fellow humans. I’d be a killer by this point, for sure.
Self-defense, mind you. It was still a sobering thought.
However, so long as they avoided other, larger groups then they should be fine out there, if they somehow managed to start figuring this level- and Class thing out, and to avoid ending up at some criminal tyrant’s mercy.
Big if.
Whatever happened next, one thing was for sure, they would all need to try and work hard at being prepared for hostiles in the future. Whatever form they may take.
Despite his distracted thoughts, Tyler kept on going, still attempting to bring Damon on board with the plan. “Of course we’ll need to go in pairs, or possibly trios, for protection. And I know who I’d wanna bring along,” He chuckled amicably, patted the younger man’s shoulder and gave Damon an earnest look.
That was nice, it was gratifying feeling needed for onc—
“Ken, obviously. But hey, if he needs to stay back here to keep the others safe, then maybe I can settle and bring you along instead,” He ended, eyeing Damon with clear expectations.
Damon’s genuinely offended expression made Tyler the first person in the building to really guffaw, in close to 36 hours.
Although Damon’s first feeling was genuine annoyance with being reminded of how Tyler always messed with him whenever his attention drifted, the laughter did serve to drag a reluctant smile onto Damon’s face as well, eventually, when it just kept going and going. “Hah, hah… Very funny. I get what you’re planning, I’m on board for sure—but I didn’t mean that I wanna go out there and fight packs of wild beasts, not right now anyway, or that wasn’t my idea rather.”
“Oh, what then?”
Here it goes. Just say it. “I want you to operate on me.”
Damon showed his childhood friend the ingots.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The mechanic’s eyes actually sparkled.
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When Damon pitched his idea, Tyler looked at him with a slack jaw throughout, but Damon refused to stop once he’d started.
He explained how despite the healing boon from the System, a continuous cut didn’t seem to trigger the process, so they could get in and not have it close up until they were finished, if they were careful how they worked it. They might need an assistant, but Damon glossed over the details for now, trying to get it all out.
They weren’t going to go crazy right away, but they were going to see if their crude technique worked at all, in order to plan out what else was possible from there.
The idea was simple. They were going to use the smelter in the basement to melt the Beralumin ingots down, then install brass knuckles in Damon’s hands. Basically hey were going to cut open the skin, expose the bone, and then pour it on to enhance him: Mutant-style.
It was a brain dead idea. If it weren’t for the healing magic.
Tyler knew all about enhancing the structure of something for heavy impacts, he could technically do this, and do it well—so long as you ignored the tremendous pain, the way the heat of the metal would warp and destroy Damon’s real bones, how he might end up with a stiff mess of a hand that broke and bled with every movement in the end, unable to even flex the fingers, etc. etc. All issues they were counting on the mysterious healing magic taking care of.
Oh, how they were acting willing already to trust this dubious magic. But Damon truly felt like he had no better choice. No other opportunities. Sure, the System had let them keep the Beralumin ingots thus far, but how long was that going to last for? There was no way to know. Soon they could potentially be getting forced to struggle against giant hordes of animals, with access to nothing but sharpened iron by way of their Class choices, and with no way of using the internet to look up how to even make a furnace hot enough to create steel.
And if they used these ingots to try and make more weapons instead, then just like with the coffee pot, the System might decide to take it all away at a moment's notice. There was no way of knowing for sure that modifying something with the metal, or even trying their hand at some actual blacksmithing or whatever, would make any sort of difference at all.
They were viewing this whole thing as one of the final opportunities left to preserve the remaining vestiges of their dying civilization’s weapons technology. They were going to turn Damon into a human experiment, true. But an experiment that was only made possible to conduct under these very specific circumstances. Possibly they might learn how to cast healing magic like this of their own, at some point in the distant future, but that left them still having to invent the magical equivalent of their experimental metal in the new world as well, something they both suspected might be difficult in ways you couldn't anticipate. These conditions simply weren’t replicable.
All amounting to a simple fact, which they both acknowledged: This was a Once In A Lifetime kind of opportunity.
And so, after several long hours of talking it through, and eventually planning out how to actually perform the procedure; they gathered what they needed and stepped to it. Hopped up on adrenaline, and with over 48 hours of sleeplessness tucked under their eyelids, they went right at it before either one had a chance to lose his nerve.
After several false starts, they finally began carefully cutting, while Tyler ran the smelter in the background, ready to switch seamlessly from the slicing over to the casting ladle to begin pouring. Staying awake was not the issue by that point anyway, although their nervous energy made it even more difficult to focus on the structural integrity of the new, enhanced knuckles—which was made difficult enough already, what with Damon also squirming about, despite his arms and legs being strapped down. He was making loud, involuntary noises, even retching from the pain, before they were even done cutting and had started out on phase two. All this while the two of them tried to remain somewhat discreet, in order to not disturb the others.
Not until they were finished, and could share the good news.
The two of them had prepared by ensuring that the coast was clear by the stairs down to the smelter, right as Ken went to go to sleep.
The rest was just a matter of cutting Damon’s hands open to the bone, in one continuous cut, to expose the sections with the barest muscle—then Tyler would start pouring before the healing started. One finger at a time. Then the rest of the hand and wrist. Twice, on both sides.
Simple.
It was the most excruciating experience of Damon's life, and he went through it in a disbelieving daze. Only once they finished with the first hand—finally allowing the healing to begin—did Damon start to receive his first wave of relief, after more than an hour of continuous pain and terror.
They didn’t have any painkillers stronger than aspirin, which was why they were starting small.
When they allowed the healing to begin—at long last—it was a thoroughly creepy process. Right in front of Damon’s eyes, he watched as the flesh of his hand reformed, the wounds starting to knit closed and repairing the cauterization all on their own, flesh layering across the foreign metal substance with an intense tingle, as the discarded dead matter sloughed off and dropped to the floor, to be instantly mopped up by Tyler.
They were leaving no trace.
By the time Damon finally felt those first hints of pain relief, just as they finished pouring over his splayed hand, he was about ready to pass out—for the umpteenth time—but for a different reason for once; sheer satisfaction that this round was over, for now.
It felt like his adrenal glands had been put into forced overdrive, and now had nothing left to provide him with but empty gas—his whole body feeling like it had been poisoned from the sheer effort. Yet the balm to his hand when the healing started, and it was all finally over, was still instant.
Indeed it seemed as if the boon was somehow also helping his body to not reject the alien substance. Rather the magic had successfully encouraged his body to incorporate and fuse the substance with his bones, even aiding the process of keeping the original structure intact underneath, all while they kept pouring along the palm and knuckles, dripping the white hot metal across his exposed skeleton. They had feared it would be more difficult for the healing boon to deal with fully cauterized flesh than the cuts they’d experimented with, but despite taking slightly longer; the magical end results remained flawless.
Tyler was sweating nearly as much as Damon by this point, so he offered to give Damon a break while they recovered for a bit. But Damon knew that might very well end up with him losing his nerve, so he squeezed the words out, despite how he was still shaking. “Keep going,” When Tyler looked shocked and still hesitated, Damon gave him a pleading look. “Finish it.”
Damon had passed out from seeing the liquid metal charring his flesh, multiple times, yet Tyler knew how important it was that they keep going through the wall of pain—lest the healing begin and force them to start all over, or give up—both things that Damon had made it clear he refused to allow.
Even then there was a point where Damon had to literally bite his tongue to keep himself from begging Tyler to stop. He knew it was already a tough enough task for his friend, who was really only a mechanic, and that Damon pleading would be adding to the trauma of what ultimately needed to be done.
He kept it inside, for as long as he could.
They finished him up.
The room stank.
I can rest easy. Now, I’ve more than earned it.
Tyler dragged him upstairs to his garage office and went back down to clean up, leaving Damon in peace to finish mentally healing as well.
Damon managed some rest at last. For the first time in this new, strange world he felt peaceful. Not yet safe, but like he was working towards it. At first he struggled with nightmares, but over time his sleep calmed and his body relaxed fully in the massage chair where Tyler left him.
A slightly less troubled Damon spent the following day sleeping like a baby.