Rosemarée rolled up his rubber-coated sleeves of the outdated and slightly old-fashioned chemwork coat, baring the forearm; series of inksigns were injected under his skin, marking with circles and dots the exact places for the injections and specific doses tailored to his weight and blood type. Skin did not fully recover after the last dosage, appearing reddish and irritated.
It's strange how sometimes even such mundane moments would snap him into a different mood, making him disturbingly aware of the path his life took. It wasn't the scientific hopelessness of his research, the nonchalance of his peers, or the disappointment of his remaining family members that provoked these fits of introspection. Rather, it was the slight annoyance of knowing that using the dampers again would cause uncomfortable pain and leave him uncertain about how long it would take to recover. It felt so mundanely wrong to keep doing this to himself. Was it a peculiar respect for his own biology? Or just natural distaste for pain?
Doesn't matter much, if he doesn't damp the immune system, his body will start rejecting the transfused Badbloods, and that means suffocating from the toxins that his lab was sprayed with. With that in mind, he pulled open the drawer and reached for a few elongated glass tubes, trying to recall where did he leave the piston.
As is often the case with things you're so accustomed to that you forget they can be lost, a piston dangled from chains attached to the ceiling of his lab. It was probably careless not to investigate the matters of previous tenants, but after a few months living there, he had formed a good enough idea of a prior occupant. Who else would need meat hooks hanging from the ceiling if not the Grafter? It was one of the most disturbing Chemidiáté specializations out there, but on the bright side, they at least left behind very useful, albeit grotesque, equipment.
The lab was an intriguing site. Nestled atop an ever-unfinished building, it had an excellent view of the city district. The building was erected during a period when rubber-bricks were not as popular as they are now, so stone served as the main material for most structures, along with valentic cement. Rubber-bricks are significantly cheaper, lighter, and simpler to assemble, although these characteristics cap the potential height of buildings; thus, the Old Town, the central district, with its stone edifices reaching five to ten stories high, towers over the newer ones. His lab was situated on the last, unfinished level of one of these newly built buildings, constructed in the old-fashioned way, with stone. Yet the costs were prohibitive, leaving it incomplete. This disposition provided an opportunity for an inexpensive, rough but practical place to work.
The lab was modest in size, with a single door and a window overlooking the city center. His worktable sat beneath the window, while tanks and canisters occupied the right corner. A metal trunk filled with odds and ends rested on the left, next to an old-fashioned cabinet storing ingredients and ancient schematics that Rosemarée will surely use some day. A tall metal contraption with an array of levers stood beside the cabinet, while across the room, a bookcase housed his research manuscripts. And there, in the corner near the shelves, his project was gradually developing itself.
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Speaking of... One of the hooks in this darker corner was used to suspend something that looked like a large skin sack, stretched over a round form at the bottom -- a protective environmental shell for his project. The construction was a tad questionable; Rosemarée didn't major in Affixative Collagens. And let's be honest, the thing looked completely gross, but it did its job, and since no new mass was supposed to be produced during the CT-Fold-Rearrangement known simply as folding, the shell should hold it together for the duration of the whole process. Well, at least according to his calculations... which he did major in.
Rosemarée forced himself to focus once more. His project irrationally fascinated him to the borderline manic degree. Harboring hope for something so seemingly hopeless was definitely not healthy, though most académistes assured their students that everyone goes through such phases. Before doing anything else, he had to stop putting off the injections. With a soft hiss, the piston in his hand depressurized the glass tube; the ensuing slight click indicated sufficient pressure. Repeating movements he'd performed thousands of times before, he administered the immunosuppressors one by one -- first, second, third, not stopping until all twelve doses found their way into his forearm's bloodstream.
Trying to deny feeling nervous before the scheduled test of his project, he walked over to the thick petriglass frame in the heavy metal door, probably made from irs-iron, which separated this room from the rainy gloom beyond. There are only three known alloys that negate 98% of most living cells, and the irs-iron is the cheapest one to use, hence this door's placement on this makeshift previously-grafter-owned lab on seventh floor of the old-school stone building.
Irs-iron of the door seemed to be indifferent to his impatience.
Part of the petriglass was covered by the adhesive warrant he'd placed on the other side, warning potential guests or bystanders about the indoor chemicals currently in use. It had been almost a century, roughly since Tryflin's Rule, when most projects became impossible to confine within isolated sterile containers. Now labs underwent complete decontamination any time a human maintained the project -- which explained why he'd spent the last four days here without opening the door. For a graduation project, it was far from the worst it could be.
Many aspiring biénventors get "contamination sickness" early on, which messes with their brains for the rest of their careers. Anxiety is natural when you lock yourself in a cramped space filled with toxins intended to kill anything outside the bounds of your research... yet that's exactly why specific Badblood transfusions exist, making you a friend of the toxins. Sort of.
Badbloods type V and VI should filter out most of the containment chemicals, and Rosemarée will probably vomit up the rest in the days after escaping the lab. Musing about going home, he realized this was just another thought meant to distract him from the ever-growing itch to check on the project, so screw it -- why not do it now?
