♡ Angel Autopsy (Yandere! Il Dottore x Reader).
♡ Word Count. 5,105 words
The laboratory smelled of formaldehyde and burnt metal, a chemical haze that lingered like an extension of his own thoughts: acrid, unyielding, precise.
Zandik moved among the tables with the air of a surgeon who did not flinch, did not hesitate, because hesitation was the indulgence of fools and weaklings.
This room was the only sanctuary he permitted himself, insulated from the banality of academic ceremonies, the sanctimonious pontifications of priests, and the hollow moralities of men who fancied themselves virtuous.
He observed life—and its failures—with the cold, absolute curiosity of one who had no illusions left to betray him.
The specimens lay out in trays, preserved or freshly prepared, depending on the day’s experiments.
Some were cadavers, dissected to reveal the intricacies of musculature, vascular pathways, and organ interplay. Others were vivisections of smaller mammals, or, occasionally, the human analogs whose identities were irrelevant to Zandik’s calculations.
Nothing here was sacred. The gods had long been dismissed in his mind; morality was an archaic superstition, a shackle for the weak. Zandik’s morality was the equation of efficiency: utility versus consequence, and always, always, the pursuit of truth beyond death, beyond flesh, beyond the meaningless labels of “right” or “wrong.”
He had begun his day examining the cranial structures of a recently acquired specimen—one whose neural tissue had been preserved in a solution of ethyl alcohol and formaldehyde. Every fold, every gyri and sulci, was cataloged with a meticulousness that could make an archivist weep with envy.
Notes were taken in a small, leather-bound journal, the ink slightly smeared from the occasional tremor of a finger holding a scalpel too tightly. “The hippocampal volume deviates from predicted norm,” he murmured aloud, the words devoid of emotional cadence, more a mechanical observation than a reflection. “Synaptic density sufficient for higher cognitive function, but limbic regulation absent. Emotional processing inhibited or absent. Ideal candidate for controlled neurological intervention.”
He paused, knife hovering, and considered the theoretical applications. Reanimation, memory transference, induction of controlled hysteria—all potentialities.
The human mind was merely matter, and matter could be manipulated, reshaped, exploited.
Why praise a god for the mechanics of a brain when one could simply rewire it to achieve perfection? The thought amused him.
Gods did not experiment. They did not learn. They only issued decrees, and decrees were irrelevant to someone who understood causality.
Zandik’s hands moved with surgical precision, slicing along the dura mater, exposing the gleaming white matter beneath. He documented every incision with obsessive detail: millimeter depth, angle, resistance, and tissue response.
He experimented constantly with anesthetic solutions, a cocktail of synthesized opiates, paralytics, and sedatives, each iteration slightly more potent, more precise, more tailored to achieving his ideal conditions: a subject fully conscious yet incapable of disrupting the experiment.
Pain, he knew, was a variable—a stimulant to neural pathways. Fear was another. Both were tools. Both were instructive. Both were infinitely valuable.
A sudden hiss of an incubator drew him toward his next experiment.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
A series of embryonic tissues floated in nutrient fluid, pulsating softly, veins like fine silk threads, organs forming with uncanny speed.
Zandik examined them under the microscope, measuring mitotic rates, noting anomalies in development. One embryo exhibited abnormal neural crest proliferation.
Fascinating.
He injected a precisely calculated dose of an experimental mutagen, a formula he had devised over months. The response was immediate: the tissue contracted spasmodically, then reoriented, veins thickening unnaturally, neurons branching with hyper-efficiency.
The phenomenon was logged with ecstatic sobriety. “Deviation confirmed. Hypothesis validated. Potential for accelerated neural enhancement established.”
No one would understand.
No one could.
If he were honest with himself—which he always was—
He did not care.
Knowledge was the only currency that mattered, and it required payment in blood, in destruction, in ethical annihilation.
Humanity was a liability. Empathy was an infection.
Zandik existed to see the raw calculus of life unfold in precise, controllable sequences.
That was all.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Hours passed.
The world outside his laboratory—campus lectures, student interactions, communal events—was a blur, a noise he could not be bothered to decode.
He observed his peers occasionally, noting their predictable biases, their self-deceptions, their willingness to believe in higher powers. Each instance of naïveté was cataloged in his mind like a controlled variable, evidence of why the world was inherently flawed.
Morality, compassion, religious fervor: all were bugs in the system of evolution, to be studied and exploited, not revered.
He made plans quietly, as one might arrange chess pieces for a future game decades ahead: debates that would spark controversies, papers that would upend accepted scientific dogma, experiments that would tread where even philosophy feared to go.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Next, he turned to the experiment that had been his obsession for weeks: controlled autolysis under varying electromagnetic fields.
A cadaver limb had been meticulously preserved and suspended in a nutrient medium, electrodes running along the major nerves, monitoring every electrochemical impulse.
Zandik adjusted the current, noting the contraction of muscles, the flicker of reflex arcs. The limb twitched violently, sinews tightening, the skin curling unnaturally as if protesting the violation of its natural state.
He recorded everything: voltage, time, frequency, and the biochemical degradation of tissue. His lips pressed into a thin line.
The room smelled increasingly of ozone and charred tissue. He scribbled furiously, notating potential applications for muscle regeneration, nerve reconfiguration, and eventual control of reanimated subjects.
A soft metallic clatter broke his concentration.
One of the smaller specimens—a rabbit, prepared for vascular experimentation—had moved unexpectedly.
The fear in its eyes was irrelevant.
Zandik noted the autonomic response: increased heart rate, catecholamine release, pupil dilation. The reaction was textbook, predictable.
He injected a mild paralytic, watching the muscles stiffen.
Fascinating.
Fascinating and utterly mundane.
He jotted notes: “Autonomic pathways respond predictably to stress stimuli. Pharmacological modulation achievable. Behavioral conditioning potential confirmed.”
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Dinner was an afterthought: protein, water, no distraction.
Sleep was unnecessary if one’s mind operated at absolute clarity.
He did not dream.
He did not hope.
He did not fear—except perhaps fear of stagnation, the failure to manipulate, to control, to understand.
That was the only vulnerability he tolerated.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
As night draped the campus in darkness, Zandik worked with the most sensitive subjects: brain microsections under live imaging, observing synaptic transmission in real-time, applying minute electrical currents, watching dendrites fire in unnatural patterns.
Occasionally, a sample ruptured, a blood vessel bursting under the precise constraints of the experiment, spilling deep red across the slide. He cleaned it clinically, noting the viscosity, clotting rate, oxygenation of the plasma.
Sometimes, in the late hours, when the only sounds were the buzzing of equipment and the occasional hiss of sterilizing steam, Zandik allowed himself to muse.
If the world operated according to the dictates of gods, it was irrational.
If morality constrained knowledge, it was irrelevant.
If life itself was sacred, it was a trivial designation.
He existed outside such constraints.
His actions—each precise incision, each controlled chemical reaction, each manipulation of tissue and mind—were guided by the unflinching logic of consequence.
He pursued knowledge as a predator pursues prey, unrelenting and unapologetic.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
By the early hours of the morning, his journal was filled with graphs, diagrams, and notes of the day’s experiments: failures noted, successes quantified, theories adjusted.
He smiled faintly, a motion devoid of warmth, as he examined the efficacy of an experimental neurotoxin that had selectively inhibited aggression in a rodent subject without altering cognitive function. “Success,” he wrote, starkly. “Potential for controlled application in larger organisms. Ethical concerns irrelevant.”
Outside, the world slept, blissfully unaware of the calculations occurring in a single isolated laboratory.
Zandik remained awake, moving between tables, adjusting electrodes, observing vascular collapse and regeneration, altering chemical compositions, and testing boundaries.
The line between life and death, morality and pragmatism, beauty and horror—he did not merely blur it.
He dissected it, measured it, exploited it.
He paused finally, leaning over a complex mechanical rig he had constructed for autonomic feedback conditioning.
The wires were thin as hair, the electrodes precise to the micrometer, the nutrient solutions flowing with perfect circulation. He observed a small heart sample, pulsing erratically under electric stimulation, contracting, twisting, then stabilizing. He scribbled one final note for the night:
“All systems respond predictably to applied stimuli. Death is no obstacle, nor is suffering. Knowledge proceeds. Immortality—functional, controllable—is achievable.”
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
The clock struck three.
Zandik did not sleep.
He did not pray.
He did not forgive.
In his mind, the universe was a machine, morality an illusion, divinity a superstition.
There was only the pursuit of truth, the manipulation of matter, the mastery of life and death—and the cold, unyielding satisfaction of one who alone saw clearly.
He closed the lab, the smell of blood, alcohol, and ozone lingering in the air, a testament to the day’s meticulous destruction.
The campus outside was silent, unaware that in one isolated room, a future scientist of the highest order had sharpened his mind against the soft flesh of morality, bending life itself to the precision of his intellect.
Zandik smiled faintly.
Tomorrow, he would return.
And tomorrow, the world would inch closer to understanding, whether it liked it or not.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
The corridors of Sumeru Akademiya were alive with their usual hum of pseudo-intellectual chatter and the rhythmic shuffle of polished shoes on stone.
Zandik moved through them like a force of nature, detached yet omnipresent, eyes sharp and calculating.
Whispers followed him: a genius, a madman, a monster, a prodigy.
There was no in-between. Some admired the precision with which he dissected both theory and flesh; others feared the absence of empathy in every calculated gesture. He did not notice. He could not. Everything was data: behavior, reaction, hierarchy, probability. Human emotion was a variable to be measured, never indulged.
He entered the lecture hall for Advanced Alchemical Applications.
The room fell briefly silent as he passed, then returned to its usual muttering. Professors sneered at the audacity of his posture, the arrogance of his gaze, the subtle, almost imperceptible air that suggested mastery over life itself, not just the subject at hand.
Zandik’s seat was at the very front, alone, because no one dared share proximity for long. He did not care. It was more convenient this way: fewer distractions, fewer variables outside of his own control.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
The lecture began.
The professor spoke of reaction kinetics and catalysis in a tone meant to inspire awe, but Zandik was already several steps ahead, mentally simulating outcomes, testing hypotheses in milliseconds, adjusting for environmental variables that the human mind was incapable of perceiving.
His notebook was a jungle of equations and schematic diagrams, some so abstract they seemed more like the thoughts of a madman than a student.
He wrote notes on cellular necrosis under chemical stress, on neural pathway regeneration under extreme stimuli, on hypothetical pharmacological combinations that would make life itself bend to will.
He scribbled, cross-referenced, recalculated. Each mark on paper was a building block for experiments he would conduct in isolation, where morality was irrelevant, and truth was absolute.
A hand raised nearby. A peer asked a question about enzymatic efficiency in high-pressure conditions.
Zandik’s gaze flicked over them, assessing their ignorance in a blink, and then he muttered a correction under his breath, precise and surgical.
The air shifted: the speaker flushed, the professor paused, and Zandik’s lips twitched ever so slightly—a curve that was not a smile, not amusement, merely acknowledgment that the world had confirmed his expectations.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Later, he found himself in the library.
Vast halls of knowledge, yet insufficient for the depth he required.
He moved past clusters of students debating theories they could never hope to test.
Here, he could think.
He spread out journals, ancient texts, and chemical treatises across a long table, combining them with his own notes. He worked like a predator, piecing together patterns invisible to others.
Neural pathways, chemical catalysts, psychotropic compounds, bioelectric feedback loops—all interconnected under a single framework: the manipulation of life and matter toward perfection.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Classes ended.
Zandik walked the campus paths alone, mind still calculating. Each step was measured, the trajectory of his path noted and corrected subconsciously to avoid unnecessary encounters.
He passed students laughing, joking, dreaming, entirely unaware of the calculations in his mind: potential leverage points, experimental opportunities, the faintly horrifying possibility of chemical or neurological manipulation should circumstances allow.
He thought of his own schedule, of the hours to come, of the laboratory waiting like a cathedral to his intellect.
There was work to be done, always work.
In his private study, away from observation, Zandik spread out the day’s sketches.
A new hypothesis had come to him during lecture: the alteration of autonomic responses under controlled chemical stress.
He began drafting experimental procedures, noting dosage, tissue tolerance, neural response times.
Reality obeyed law, not sentiment.
He detailed every step in meticulous precision: what would happen if the adrenal response was inhibited in conjunction with selective parasympathetic activation, how organ failure could be induced and reversed with calibrated chemical intervention, how tissue regeneration could be accelerated or suppressed with electrical and biochemical modulation.
The work required time.
Hours became days.
And tomorrow, as always, he would return to lecture halls, to libraries, to corridors, performing the motions of student life while his true work advanced unseen.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
The first time the Akademiya formally discussed expulsion in Zandik’s presence, he learned something important about institutions: they did not fear cruelty.
They feared unpredictability.
The meeting chamber was circular, deliberately so—no corners to hide in, no obvious seat of power. Zandik stood at the center as if the geometry had been designed for him alone.
Stone walls absorbed sound. Ink, old paper, incense. The smell of authority pretending to be wisdom.
They listed his offenses in the flat, exhausted tone of people who had repeated the same complaints too many times.
Disrespectful conduct.
Unethical lines of inquiry.
Emotional callousness.
Failure to consider the “human cost.”
Zandik listened, head slightly tilted, eyes unfocused not from distraction but from parallel processing.
While they spoke, he reconstructed an experiment in his mind—vascular perfusion under induced hypoxia, calculating where endothelial rupture would occur first, imagining the precise shade of purple tissue took just before necrosis set in. He corrected a flaw in the model before the oldest scholar finished his sentence.
They never mentioned his results.
They never did.
That omission was the reason he still stood there.
The Akademiya tolerated monsters so long as monsters were useful—and Zandik was impeccable in the one metric that mattered.
He submitted everything. Early. Perfectly. With appendices so thorough they rendered peer review redundant. His data replicated. His hypotheses held. His projections were accurate to an almost offensive degree.
He did not threaten the institution’s image directly. He threatened individuals—and individuals were expendable.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Scar had made the mistake of threatening the structure itself.
Scar arrived like a blunt instrument wrapped in charisma. New Federation education, volatile brilliance, the kind of intelligence that burned hot and fast and demanded recognition immediately.
His work was impressive—at first glance.
Zandik had reviewed it once, privately, and dismissed it just as quickly.
Scar tested boundaries for the thrill of it, not for precision.
He liked watching people react.
That was his flaw.
Scar conducted an unauthorized demonstration during a public symposium. Not hidden. Not controlled. He introduced an unstable resonant compound into a live energy grid “to see what would happen.” What happened was predictable: feedback cascade, structural failure, three injured researchers, one permanently crippled from spinal nerve damage.
Scar laughed when confronted.
Not because he was cruel—because he was careless.
The Akademiya expelled him within his first year.
Zandik had watched from the upper gallery, arms folded, expression unreadable. He did not approve of Scar’s methods, but he appreciated the clarity of the outcome. Scar’s work could not be controlled.
Worse, it could not be hidden.
He made the institution look fragile.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Cristoforo lasted longer.
Cristoforo was subtler, and therefore more dangerous in a different way.
He was obsessed not with results but with people.
With narratives.
With control through perception rather than substance.
He treated research like theatre, experiments like scenes, colleagues like actors unaware they were on stage.
Zandik found him tedious.
Cristoforo manipulated data presentation to provoke specific reactions—fear, admiration, controversy.
He falsified nothing outright, but he curated truth the way a playwright curated tragedy. He began experiments that required emotional distress as a catalyst, engineering breakdowns, confessions, psychological collapses. His lab assistants quit in droves, some leaving the Akademiya entirely.
The problem was not the damage.
It was the intent.
Cristoforo wanted an audience.
The Akademiya tolerated unethical work when it was quiet. When it was productive. When it could be buried in sealed archives and cited selectively decades later.
Cristoforo published provocations.
He staged moral dilemmas in lecture halls. He framed scholars into condemning themselves. He made ethics committees look foolish by turning their own rhetoric against them.
The Akademiya expelled him not for what he did, but for what he exposed.
Zandik never exposed anything.
He concealed.
That was the difference.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
His interactions with the Akademiya’s other pillars were exercises in friction.
Alhaitham, the Scribe, was efficient in a way Zandik respected intellectually and despised philosophically. Alhaitham believed in structure—not as a means to an end, but as an end itself. He cataloged knowledge, preserved it, constrained it so it could not grow teeth and bite its keepers.
Their debates were quiet, surgical, lethal in implication.
“You optimize for outcome without accounting for systemic degradation,” Alhaitham had said once, voice even, eyes sharp.
Zandik replied without hesitation. “Systems that degrade under optimization deserve to collapse.”
Alhaitham did not argue further. He simply noted the response in his records.
Dr. Ratio was more vocal. Where Alhaitham dissected ideas, Ratio prosecuted them. He believed in responsibility, in oversight, in the notion that intelligence carried obligation. His objections to Zandik were formal, meticulously phrased, almost respectful.
Almost.
“You treat human variables as disposable,” Ratio said during a closed colloquium.
Zandik corrected him. “Incorrect. I treat them as renewable.”
That exchange earned him another mark in the disciplinary ledger—and another grant extension two weeks later, after his latest paper invalidated three decades of accepted biochemical models.
The ledger mattered less than the funding.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Between lectures and meetings, Zandik lived in a state of constant internal construction. His mind did not idle. While others rested, he refined. While others socialized, he iterated.
He took notes everywhere—on scraps of parchment, margins of textbooks, the backs of administrative notices. Equations bled into anatomical sketches. Experimental flowcharts overlapped with schedules for mandatory ethics workshops he never attended.
He learned how to appear compliant.
That, too, was an experiment.
When faculty accused him of lacking empathy, he adjusted his tone without adjusting his intent. He learned when to pause before answering. When to phrase conclusions as questions. When to cite moral philosophy he had never believed in.
Not because he cared.
Because it worked.
Most failed to understand institutions.
Zandik understood them intimately.
Institutions were organisms—slow, risk-averse, self-preserving. They tolerated parasites that improved function. They rejected pathogens that revealed weakness.
His own work continued in parallel, invisible to all but a few carefully selected eyes.
Medical treatises filled his shelves. Anatomy texts annotated until the original print was barely visible beneath his handwriting. He cross-referenced ancient surgical manuals with modern alchemical theory, constructing procedures no ethics board would ever approve and no review committee would ever see.
He tested his ideas on tissue first.
Then on systems.
The gore was not theatrical. It never was.
Blood behaved predictably under pressure. Organs failed in reliable sequences. Neural tissue screamed electrically before it died, a beautiful cascade of signals collapsing into silence. He documented every stage with reverence not for life, but for accuracy.
When experiments failed, he recorded them without frustration.
Failure was information.
Pain was information.
Death was information.
He sanitized meticulously. He disposed of waste properly. He left no evidence that could not be rationalized as theoretical work.
That, too, was why he remained.
The Akademiya did not expel Zandik because he did not embarrass them.
He did not frighten donors.
He did not inspire riots.
He did not challenge authority publicly.
He simply produced results that made the Akademiya indispensable.
In corridors, students argued about him in hushed voices.
Some idolized him.
Some despised him.
Most avoided him.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Potential without control was waste.
Control without visibility was power.
He returned to his quarters and resumed work, drafting a new hypothesis regarding induced regenerative paradoxes—how far tissue could be pushed toward self-repair before it collapsed into malignant autonomy. His notes grew dense, precise, horrifying in implication.
Outside, the Akademiya slept comfortably, reassured by the illusion that its monsters were gone.
Inside, Zandik refined himself into something far worse—quiet, indispensable, and perfectly justified.
Not because he was innocent.
But because he was correct.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
They summoned him in the middle of a lecture, as if interruption itself were a punishment. A junior attendant stood at the door, eyes flicking away when Zandik looked up. The class stalled. Chalk froze mid-diagram.
Zandik closed his notebook slowly, already calculating the likely parameters of the discussion: ethics violations, again; tone complaints, again; recommendations to “moderate his approach,” again.
He rose without asking permission.
The walk to the faculty chamber was familiar.
He counted steps. He always did. Forty-seven from the lecture hall to the western stair, twelve down, sixty-one across the colonnade.
Enough time to reconstruct the morning’s unfinished hypothesis: necrotic thresholds in oxygen-starved tissue, the exact point at which cellular self-preservation collapsed into malignant replication.
Fascinating.
Elegant.
Entirely wasted on an ethics class.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
The professors sat as they always did—arranged to imply unity, divided by ideology. Their faces were composed, rational, disappointingly predictable.
They did not shout.
They never did with him.
Shouting was for students who might cry or beg.
Zandik did neither.
“You understand,” one of them began, voice level, “that your commentary in class was… inappropriate.”
Zandik inclined his head by a fraction. “It was accurate.”
A murmur. Irritation. Not outrage. Accuracy complicated things.
They spoke of ethical frameworks, of moral safeguards, of the necessity of restraint when discussing human experimentation.
Zandik listened with the detached patience of a physician listening to a terminal patient romanticize recovery.
He could dismantle every argument. He did not bother. Winning was inefficient when compliance would suffice.
The punishment, when it came, was almost amusing in its banality.
An extracurricular assignment.
Mandatory. Collaborative. Community-oriented. Designed, transparently, to dull sharp edges and encourage “perspective.”
Zandik accepted without protest.
Then came the condition.
“You will be partnered,” another professor said, consulting a slate, “with a student who has also demonstrated… difficulty integrating with standard academic expectations.”
They said the name.
Zandik’s internal response was immediate and absolute: disbelief, followed by disdain.
He knew of you, of course.
Everyone did.
Infamous in a different way.
Not for brilliance weaponized into productivity, but for brilliance squandered into inertia.
Held back twice. Failed required courses.
Skipped lectures without consequence somehow.
A ghost drifting through the Akademiya on reputation alone.
A waste of space.
Zandik’s jaw tightened imperceptibly.
He understood the logic instantly. Pair the problem with the embarrassment.
Let genius babysit failure.
Humiliation disguised as pedagogy.
If he refused, suspicions would escalate. If he complied, the noise would die down. He chose the path of least resistance. He always did.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
That was how he found himself in a windowless seminar room two days later, seated across from you.
You arrived late.
Of course you did.
You slouched into the chair as if gravity itself were optional, expression unreadable in its emptiness. No anxiety. No embarrassment. No defensive hostility.
Just… nothing.
A faint, easy curve to your mouth, not quite a smile, not quite apathy.
Zandik cataloged it instantly.
Posture: careless.
Attire: compliant but unremarkable.
Affect: flat.
Eyes: alert in a way that did not match the rest.
Annoying.
He said your name once, curtly, to confirm attendance.
You nodded.
Slowly. Like nothing in the world required urgency.
“I expect this to be efficient,” he said. “I will not repeat instructions.”
You hummed in acknowledgment. Not agreement. Not resistance. A sound that conveyed neither.
Infuriating.
The assignment itself was laughable: ethical case analysis, historical review, reflective commentary. Designed for students who needed to feel instead of think. Zandik had already outlined the entire project in his head before you had finished leaning back in your chair.
You, on the other hand, contributed nothing.
You stared at the table. At the wall.
At him, briefly, without judgment.
That was the most unsettling part.
Students usually reacted to him in predictable ways—fear, resentment, awe, hostility. You did not react at all.
He found himself scrutinizing you the way he examined specimens before incision.
Why were you here?
You failed multiple classes. That was documented. Not borderline failures. Complete neglect.
And yet you remained.
No desperation. No visible effort to correct trajectory. It offended him on a fundamental level.
“There are minimum requirements,” he said flatly. “You have failed to meet them repeatedly. Explain.”
You shrugged.
A literal shrug. Shoulders rising and falling with infuriating softness.
“Didn’t feel like it,” you said.
Zandik stared at you.
Not because the answer surprised him—but because of its honesty.
Most students lied. You did not even bother.
“You are aware,” he said slowly, “that failure here carries consequences.”
You tilted your head. “Does it?”
He opened his mouth to respond—then stopped.
The data did not support his assumption. You were still here. Held back, yes. Mocked, certainly. But not expelled. Not even particularly pressured.
Interesting.
You smiled faintly then, easy and unbothered, like someone watching rain instead of standing in it. It was not mocking. It was not deferential.
It was… indifferent.
He despised it.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
Over the following weeks, the pattern solidified.
You did nothing.
Or rather—you did nothing visibly useful.
You attended meetings late or not at all. You let him handle submissions.
You read slowly, lazily, skimming texts he devoured, yet when you spoke—rarely—you did not say anything incorrect.
You simply said very little.
Zandik judged you constantly.
He noted your inefficiency.
Your lack of ambition.
Your refusal to optimize even when guided.
He mentally dismantled you daily, slotting you into the category of intellectual dead weight the Akademiya inexplicably preserved.
Most students radiated insecurity, ambition, hunger. You radiated… nothing. A quiet absence that put people at ease. You did not threaten their hierarchy. You did not judge them. You did not demand anything.
You were stupid in the way pets were stupid—incapable of malice, blissfully unaware of consequence, wandering through danger with unearned trust.
Zandik despised that kind of existence.
He had dissected enough humans to recognize goodness when it presented itself—not as virtue, but as softness. As lack of resistance. As tissue that tore too easily under pressure.
You were soft.
He saw it in the way you absorbed mockery without internalizing it. In the way you listened without reacting. In the way your gaze lingered on nothing and everything, detached but not empty.
It irritated him profoundly.
Humans were scum, fundamentally. Selfish, loud, desperate to matter. He had seen it in their insides, in the way stress calcified vessels, how fear ate away at neural integrity. Most people rotted from the inside long before they died.
You did not fit the pattern.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
And yet.
There were moments.
Moments where he caught you watching him—not with fear or admiration, but with a quiet attentiveness that made his skin prickle.
Moments where he spoke clinically of experimental ethics, of acceptable loss, of necessary suffering, and you did not flinch.
You did not recoil.
You did not condemn.
You simply listened.
Once, when he described a historical case of prolonged surgical experimentation without anesthesia, detailing tissue response and survival curves with academic precision, the room had gone tense. Students shifted. A tutor cleared his throat.
You leaned your chin on your hand and asked, “Did it work?”
The question was soft. Neutral. No accusation.
Zandik paused.
“Yes,” he said. “In part.”
You nodded. “Then I guess they learned something.”
That was all.
No moralization. No revulsion. No praise.
It unsettled him more than outrage ever could.
He began to observe you more closely.
Your gaze lingered on diagrams longer than necessary. Your attention sharpened, briefly, when he discussed limits—thresholds, points of failure, irreversibility.
You were lazy in execution but precise in comprehension.
You absorbed without effort and released nothing back.
A black hole of participation.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
He began to test you.
Small things. Incorrect assumptions stated aloud. Deliberate gaps in explanation. You corrected none of them.
But later, when reviewing drafts, he noticed subtle annotations in the margins you pretended not to care about—adjustments that fixed errors he had intentionally planted.
You never mentioned them.
You never took credit.
You never even looked pleased.
It was infuriating.
At night, he returned to his laboratory, hands deep in work that mattered. Gore greeted him as it always did—opened cavities, retracted skin, organs gleaming wetly under sterile light. He worked methodically, unbothered by the way muscle fibers parted, by the sound of bone saws biting cleanly, by the tremor of induced neural firing before silence.
He thought of you once, inexplicably, while documenting a failed regenerative trial.
The specimen had been passive. Unresisting. Accepting failure without struggle.
He discarded the thought immediately.
You were irrelevant.
⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅
And yet the next day, when you arrived late again, slouching into your chair with that same stupidly easy expression, he felt an unfamiliar irritation coil beneath his composure.
Not anger.
Curiosity.
Why someone like you—clearly intelligent, demonstrably capable—would choose stagnation in an institution that devoured the weak.
Why you did not judge him.
Why you did not fear him.
He decided, clinically, that you were defective.
A fascinating defect.
A useless one.
For now.
He would complete the assignment. He would reduce scrutiny. He would endure your presence like one endured an unsightly but harmless anomaly in a dataset.
And later—much later—if opportunity arose, he would dissect that anomaly properly.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of necessity.
Understanding, after all, required incision.
𝐆𝐨𝐝'𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 