[ChicletPrime]

Chapter 2: Snowy Stairs

• going by the picture, this is another Zayne one as it looks like a medical terminal. and, you know, "snowy".
  
• yup! but we're starting off with ... dun dun dun... Carter!
  
• at least they already acknowledge that Zayne is a 'medical genius'.  that's my boyfriend. kowtow, peons.
  
• what the fuck is 'cabin 607's patient'? we are going to find out and its probably going to be gruesome. as it looks like they are or have just finished offering Zayne millions of dollars in salary that he's turned down to go with Akso Hospital, this has to be before the main story by a little bit.
  
•  okay 2048 has just started, we are now present day or close to it.
  
• Okay, so Carter's continued on with his research at Xander Sciences and has a protocore type now that can, at least by what's being described, reverse death / make the dead live again as he offers to revive a kid's dead dog. Zayne is really not pleased. 
  
• I am not sure that 'breaking free from the shackles of natural law' is going to be all it's cracked up to be. give a research lab a million dollars and they don't always come up with post-it notes.
  
• Zayne is working on 'evol tech... an artificial lump that needs to be charged in [their] heart'. huh. okay. which is apparently different from the protocore tech that Carter is slaving over. 
  
• okay, so Cabin 607's Patient has a rare condition and Carter's using it to tempt Zayne to the dark side.
  
• Zayne doesn't take the immediate bait though (best boyfriend!) 
  
• "lifepods" - red tubes suck away death, blue tubes inject new life and they are very expensive to run. currently Xander Sciences has 15 pods running.
  
• 607 is soaking in "the liquid", like a shriveled skeleton. heart regen surgery failed (because Carter isn't the genius Zayne is and continues to gnash his teeth over the gap between theoretical knowledge and applied knowledge). 
  
• so whatever Zayne shredded before he quit his medical research, Carter took his part and went to Xander with it, now the project is called 'X-Heart'.
  
• Carter seems like he got into this for the right reasons, but has happily fallen down the chute to hell in his pursuit of results.
  
• on his way out, a technician is wheeling a dead body out while the parents try to grieve. he's... missing a heart? 
  
• sounds like Zayne did a quick cosmetic job so the parents could see the body? 
  
• okay, a few days after this, Zayne officially joins Akso's Evol-Cardiac Medical Research Lab as its lead
  
• Carter is just bombarding Zayne with this 'opportunity' to erase death
  
• he sends a picture of 607 (Felix), lying on the floor outside the lifepod with a cluster of black crystals blooming on the left side of his chest 'like a magnificent dahlia'.
  
• oh fuck. Carter, you rat bastard. if i'm reading this right, he wants to find "us" because he knows that Zayne became a doctor for 'a girl' and all he has to do is get a list of which patients are being transferred from Noah's care into Zayne's and he can then figure out which is the one that will 'motivate' Zayne into jumping ship. 
  
• i find it interesting that Carter called this "God's mission to allow for God's descent".
  
• and apparently he's also excited to find out if i'd be even more interesting as a case than 607's patients as neither Noah nor Zayne have been able to help so far.
  
• a previous conversation between Zayne and Carter, the last time they met - Zayne: "Even if we can avoid death, we still need it."  interesting. why? 
  
• now Zayne sees our name on the transfer list as he sits in his office. 
  
• Memory Carter: "Wouldn't you use everything in your power to prevent your loved ones from dying?"
  
• ... Of course he would.
  
• No matter how many years have passed, his answer hasn't changed. He would do everything he could to prevent her death and save her. But the night is long. The fog is dense.. if the end of the road is truly what's left, at least he still has another option. His last one.
  
• jeez, that's ominous as fuck. that is something he also said in his Thorny Moon storyline - shit, what was it? i'mma go look it up again. yeah, he says it then too, there there is still one last choice he can make. i am very sure i am going to hate whatever that is with a fiery passion.
  

oh man, that's all we GET?!

i feel vaguely cheated. so Carter's actually the driving force of badness on the science side with his X-Heart Project and he still really wants Zayne and his intellect and incredibly steady surgeon hands on his side to speed up the experiments that will erase death from humanity.  

Xander does get swallowed up by Ever at some point but at this particular moment it seems like that is still on the horizon.  

i am seriously looking forward to Zayne's myth(s) as it has to give a pile of backstory as to what's going on with present-Zayne. even with all the mysteries of Xavier, Zayne is still the least explained and I am dying (cough) to find out what he knows, why he turned his back on it and why he thinks that evol manipulation is the way to move forward instead. 

hang on. the event cards for Death&Rebirth -- "He clutches the key to reversing life and death." argh, what does it MEAN. i have GOT to know what's going on here, other than Carter being a Jurassic Park fool.  how does my (now stable) aether core in my heart and Sylus' stable aether core in his eye correlate to these black crystals in the X-Heart Project, along with Zayne's black corruption in his evol.