“That’s…” he trailed off, having stopped himself from even beginning to say the word “impossible”. A deep sigh. There was as much point to questioning Zel’s inhuman capabilities as there was to questioning why old folk rituals actually worked. Perhaps he might find out the how, but not today. Today he only needed to know what she had so he could take it into account. “Right, what else? Get covered in any goop? Any bug try to climb in your nose?”

Silence. She furrowed her brow and looked aside, then looked back with a resounding, “No bugs on me, far as I remember. Got covered in blood and hemolymph. Probably a lot of locust guts, too.”

“Good, I’ll look out for common bloodborne parasites,” Makhus said, steeling himself for what he felt he had to say next. “Now uh… One more thing. While you were gone, I went through the material that the previous owner of this place left behind. Turns out, before he disappeared he had tracked down another alchemist’s notes…”

Makhus felt the need to go through the whole story for the sake of context, even if he did cut it down severely. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small leatherbound journal, into which he’d been rewriting what he decoded from the predecessor’s writings in an attempt to create a fully decoded version of the original.

”...And this other alchemist had been contracted by the Sage of Fog to work at a location that checks out with where you said you first emerged. Considering the information I dug up, your whole memory situation, plus your…” he continued, opening the journal to a particular page in preparation to show it to Zel. “...You-ness, I’m damn-near certain that you’re-”

“A homunculus?” Zel cut in, raising an eyebrow. She had known what he was going to say the moment he brought up her emergence from that bunker in the Exclusion Zone.

The stunned stare he reacted with provided an unrivaled amusement to her, such that she had to stop herself from laughing. Makhus shook his head and showed her the journal, stuttering: “Y-yes. Have… Have you known from the start?”

Zel shook her head, allowing her jesting tone to fade away in favor of actually explaining how she had learned of her own nature.

“It started with one of the bugs trying to insult me, talking about how I stink of the pretender’s handiwork,” she said, putting down the Tablet as she combed through her memory of the last few days’ events. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious. She just hadn’t cared enough to think about it with more pressing concerns at hand, and frankly, she still didn’t.

Zelsys remembered the moment with perfect clarity, and no surprise - it had only been a few days.

“The manic bitch talked like she expected me to be some half-sentient meat golem, at first. She also asked “how many stolen pieces did it take the blasted fool to build something approaching a soul” and “which stolen technique made you think the four of you could do anything to our hive,” which… Might very well have to do with how I came to be.”

As she continued to recount her memory of the pertinent events, Zel could see the cogs turning behind the alchemist’s eyes, his hand holding the journal slowly drooping down to the table. He clearly had something to say, but was waiting for her to finish.

“Then, around halfway through the dungeon, I spoke to this one locust that turned out to be an Ikesian defector,” she continued. The memory of that exchange came flooding back, she could almost see it playing out in front of her mind’s eye as she recounted small parts of the exchange.

“Called me an arrogant madman’s dream brought to life. Walking propaganda,” Zel chuckled, in full agreement with the second part. “Seemed particularly disturbed by the form my cleaver took. Brought up that they tested them with a “composite homunculus” and that even then the blade just turned into an oversized saber.”

That was as deep as she dipped in regards to her experiences in the dungeon. Even having told Makhus just that much she could see him fighting to maintain his composure, and she felt that any deeper would cross the boundary of absurdity from his perspective. No wonder - he’d solved a mystery through both luck and perseverance, only to find out that the subject of said mystery had also solved it.

The alchemist felt something snap in his mind. Perhaps it was the last of his skepticism, the last of the ideological connective tissue binding him to the hard scientific methods of modern alchemy, or perhaps the last vestiges of what blinded him to the reality of things.

It was easily discerned that she wasn’t lying, if anything it felt like she was going out of her way to only mention the parts directly relevant to her being a homunculus.

A laugh rumbled from his chest.

“Fuck me, I really wish I could say I was surprised…” he sighed, raising his eyes to meet Zel’s gaze again, and raising the journal just as well. He just handed it over, beckoning to, “Might as well see if what I’ve got fills some holes.”

And so she did, taking it from his hand. His handwriting was almost mechanical, every letter clean and identical.

It is vital that we do not suffer the pitfalls that our northern colleagues have. All Type-1s are to be recycled for their constituent essentia; the solution to our problem lies in a different method. No matter how lacking our resources are, we must stop attempting to iterate on existing methods and attempt something truly innovative.

With how little time we’ve left until the bunker sinks, our best option is using our remaining material for a composite. Yes, all of it - with that many layers in the base template, the nascent homunculus will have more to work off of than any natural embryo.

With some luck, the composite will be more than able to get by on its own.

“Get by on its own, huh. How’s that for an understatement.”