My Patients Are All Mythical Monsters

0019 - The Knock

The storm outside was not a natural event. It was a chemical purge, the clouds heavy with industrial runoff from the Upper City, weeping neon-streaked acid onto the slate roof of Blackwood Manor.

Inside, the silence was absolute, heavy enough to choke on.

Victor Corvinus sat in his high-backed armchair, his legs crossed, a cup of lukewarm tea balanced on his knee. The porcelain was chipped at the rim—a small, jagged defect that his thumb kept tracing, over and over again. The friction sent a dull vibration through his skin, a repetitive sensation that grounded him, pulling his focus away from the hunger clawing at his stomach lining.

The manor was dark, save for a single wax candle burning on the side table. The flame sputtered, drowning in its own pool of melted tallow. The power grid had flickered and died twenty minutes ago—a common occurrence in District 13, but tonight, the darkness felt deliberate. It felt heavy, pressing against his temples like a physical weight.

"Report," Victor whispered to the empty room.

He didn't need a HUD or a status screen. He felt the vibration first—a low, rhythmic thrumming in the soles of his feet, traveling up through the floorboards. It was the purr of a sleeping nightmare. Fenrisulfr is currently: Under the floorboards. Waiting for the command to 'Play'.

"Keep him there," Victor murmured, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses.

A sharp, rhythmic throb pulsed behind his left eye—a migraine, courtesy of the adrenaline crash from the Night Market. It wasn't just pain; it was a kaleidoscope of jagged light fracturing his peripheral vision. Every time he blinked, he saw afterimages of things that weren't there. His hands, hidden beneath his black leather gloves, were trembling slightly. Not from fear. Never from fear.

It was hypoglycemia. His blood sugar was crashing harder than the stock market. He needed sugar. He needed sleep. He needed the buzzing in his ears to stop sounding like a dial-up modem connecting to hell.

But first, he needed to deal with the patients.

The doorbell didn't ring. It died in a choked gurgle as it was smashed inwards.

The heavy oak doors of the manor didn't just open; they exploded. Wood splinters the size of javelins flew across the foyer, embedding themselves in the peeling wallpaper with the sound of wet meat being struck. One large shard spun through the air and landed with a splash in Victor's teacup, sending cold, brown liquid spattering onto his knuckles.

Victor stared at the splinter floating in his tea. It was old oak, dark and rotten at the core.

The wind howled in through the ruined entrance, carrying the stench of ozone, wet concrete, and the acrid, metallic tang of cheap hydraulic fluid.

Four figures stepped through the ruin of the entrance.

They were hulking silhouettes against the lightning, jagged outlines of metal and flesh. Cyborgs. Street-grade modifications—bulky, leaking, and loud. The leader, a man whose lower jaw had been replaced by a rusted iron grate, stepped forward. His heavy combat boots squelched on the foyer rug, each step producing a wet, sucking sound that echoed in the quiet hall.

Mud. Thick, radioactive sludge from the gutters of District 13. He was tracking acidic mud onto the Persian rug Victor had spent three hours cleaning yesterday.

Victor didn't stand up. He didn't scream. He simply lifted the teacup, blew a stray dust mote off the surface, and took a sip. It tasted like Earl Grey and sawdust.

"You're late," Victor said. His voice was soft, a dry rustle of leaves, barely audible over the storm. "And you didn't wipe your feet."

Iron-Jaw froze. The hydraulic piston in his knee hissed as he locked his stance. He had expected screaming. He had expected a chase. He had expected a victim. He did not expect a man in a shabby suit drinking tea in the dark, treating a home invasion like a scheduling error.

"Victor Corvinus," Iron-Jaw roared. His voice was amplified by a faulty vocal modulator, sounding like gravel churning in a blender. Static popped at the end of every syllable. "You owe the Night Market a tax. You walked out with a demon and a bag of gold. We are here to collect."

He raised his right arm. The limb was a mechanical monstrosity, a repurposed mining drill welded to a rotary cannon. The barrels began to spin, emitting a high-pitched mechanical scream that set Victor's teeth on edge.

"Collection implies a transaction," Victor said, setting the teacup down on the saucer. The porcelain chimed sharp and clear in the tense silence. "This is breaking and entering. And frankly, it's rude."

"I'll show you rude!" Iron-Jaw leveled the cannon at Victor's chest. The smell of burning grease wafted from the weapon's cooling vents. "Five seconds! Hand over the gold, or I turn you into paste!"

"One," Victor counted. He picked a piece of lint off his trousers.

"What?"

"Two." Victor stood up. He moved slowly, deliberately, like a man walking through water. His joints popped—a dry, brittle sound.

"Three."

Iron-Jaw's finger tightened on the trigger. The servo in his finger whined. But he didn't fire. Why wasn't he firing? The man was walking towards him. Not running away. Walking towards the g*n. It didn't make sense. The cognitive dissonance made Iron-Jaw blink, his human eye watering while his cybernetic eye whirred, trying to autofocus.

"Four."

Victor was now three steps away. He wasn't looking at the g*n. He wasn't looking at Iron-Jaw's face. He was staring intensely at Iron-Jaw's shoulder, where the rusted metal graft met the inflamed, purple flesh.

"Five."

Victor stopped. He reached out a gloved hand and, with terrifying casualness, tapped the barrel of the rotary cannon.

Hiss...

Steam curled off the leather of his glove.

"Overheating," Victor noted, his voice flat, clinical. "Your cooling vents are clogged with carbon buildup. I can smell it. If you fire this now, the thermal backwash will melt your pectoral muscles before the bullet even leaves the chamber. You'll cook in your own skin."

Iron-Jaw blinked. "What?"

"The vibration," Victor continued, ignoring the spinning barrels inches from his nose. He leaned in, his single monocle—the Loupe—glinting in the candlelight.

It started then. The headache behind Victor's eye didn't just throb; it split.

There was no blue window. No polite system chime. Just a searing, white-hot line of agony tracing the optic nerve. The world stripped itself n***d. The skin of the gangster became transparent, dissolving into layers of anatomy.

Victor saw the muscles—red, angry, inflamed. He saw the nerves—white lightning trapped in dying meat. He saw the infection.

Scanning cold machinery was one thing—a drone's circuit board was static, predictable. But living tissue? It was a chaotic storm of biological data, demanding a tithe of mental energy he didn't have. His blood sugar, already critically low, bottomed out. He tasted copper in the back of his throat.

"You feel it at night, don't you?" Victor whispered. His voice took on a strange resonance, a harmonic frequency that seemed to bypass the ears and vibrate directly in the skull. "A phantom itching deep in the marrow. And tonight... the storm makes it worse. Low atmospheric pressure causes the gas pockets in the necrotic tissue to expand. That's why you're really here, isn't it? You're not here for gold. You're lashing out because the pain is finally louder than the greed."

Iron-Jaw didn't step back. He stepped forward. The rotary cannon slammed into Victor's chest, hard enough to bruise bone.

"Shut up!" Iron-Jaw hissed. Spittle flew from his metal grate. "You think I'm stupid? I know a hustle when I hear one. You're trying to scare me with fancy words."

The barrel was hot against Victor's sternum. The smell of burning grease was suffocating. But Victor didn't flinch. He couldn't afford to.

"I'm trying to save you," Victor said, his voice flat, devoid of fear. "But you're too busy dying to listen."

"I'll kill you right now!" Iron-Jaw roared, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Five seconds! Give me the—"

"Turn off the auto-assist," Victor interrupted.

"What?" Iron-Jaw blinked, the non-sequitur derailing his rage.

"Your cybernetics," Victor said, locking eyes with the gangster. "The haptic recoil compensators. They predict your movement and fire the servos before your brain even finishes the signal. You think you're pulling that trigger? You're not. The machine is doing it for you."

"You're crazy," Iron-Jaw sneered. "I'm in control."

"Then prove it," Victor challenged. "Disable the assist. Try to twitch your index finger with just your own muscle. No hydraulics. No software. Just flesh."

Iron-Jaw hesitated. It was a simple command. A stupid command. But the seed of doubt had been planted. He mentally toggled the combat suite to 'Manual'.

He tried to curl his finger.

Nothing happened.

He stared at his hand. His brain was screaming MOVE, but the finger remained frozen on the trigger, a piece of dead meat inside a metal tomb. He hadn't just lost fine motor control; the connection had been severed days ago, masked by the suit's predictive algorithms.

"I... I can't..."

Then, the pain hit. Without the suit's neural dampeners active, the reality of his condition crashed into him.

He didn't fire. He screamed.

It was a strangled, wet sound. The servo in his hand locked up as a spasm of pure agony ripped through the nerve cluster. He staggered back, clutching his wrist, the cannon dipping toward the floor.

"You... you poisoned me!" Iron-Jaw snarled, panic finally bleeding into his rage. He looked at his hand, then at Victor. "What did you do?!"

"I diagnosed you," Victor said calmly. He took a sip of his cold tea, masking the tremor in his own hand. "Grade 4 Neuro-Rejection. Your body is rejecting the metal. It's not a graft anymore; it's a parasite. The pain starts at the elbow around 3:00 AM. Always 3:00 AM."

"That's normal!" Iron-Jaw shouted, but his voice cracked. He was clutching his wrist like it was burning. "The Ripperdoc said it's phantom limb syndrome! He said it takes time to sync! It's just... it's just the nerves settling!"

"He lied," Victor cut in, his voice sharp enough to draw blood. "It's not syncing. It's rotting. The pain shoots up to your neck, turning your trapezius into stone. By 4:00 AM, you're paralyzed. You can't scream, but you can feel every nerve ending dying, one by one. Pop. Pop. Pop."

Victor leaned forward, the candlelight reflecting off his glasses.

"Does that sound like 'settling' to you?"

"I can still crush you!" Iron-Jaw shouted, desperate now to regain control. He raised his good arm, a serrated combat knife dropping from his sleeve into his palm. He was breathing hard, cornered and dangerous. "Pain or no pain. You're alone. One scrawny doctor against four of us. I'll cut your throat before you can speak another word."

Victor sighed. He looked up at the darkness of the vaulted ceiling.

"Am I?"

CRASH~

A heavy impact shook the floor as an object fell from the rafters, landing with a bone-shattering thud just inches from Iron-Jaw's boot.

It wasn't a pebble. It was a fifty-pound chunk of stone masonry, dislodged by the Gargoyle hiding in the shadows.

To Iron-Jaw, it wasn't a loose rock. It was a warning shot from a sniper he couldn't see. It was the answer to his threat.

He flinched violently, nearly dropping the knife. His shoulder screamed in protest—a sharp, tearing pain that Victor had just described, and therefore, made real. But the stone... the stone was different.

To Iron-Jaw, the stone was proof. Proof that this man had eyes everywhere, even in the dark. That he wasn't alone. That something heavy and silent was watching them from the ceiling, waiting for a command.

His skepticism didn't just c***k; it shattered.

"You... you can fix it?" Iron-Jaw asked. The 'g**g Boss' was gone. The 'Patient' stood in his place, terrified and desperate.

Victor walked back to his chair and sat down. He crossed his legs again, smoothing the crease in his trousers. He needed to sit. His own legs were shaking so badly he thought he might collapse. The use of the Diagnostic Vision had drained him, leaving him hollowed out and lightheaded.

"I run a clinic for the desperate," Victor said, his voice cold, detached. "Not for the rude. You broke my door. You tracked acid mud onto my floor. And you threatened my staff."

A low, subterranean growl vibrated through the floorboards. It was deep enough to rattle the teeth in Iron-Jaw's skull. The china in the cabinet shivered.

"The dog is hungry," Victor noted idly, picking up his cold tea. "But I can tell him to wait. If..."

"If what?" Iron-Jaw dropped to one knee. The pain in his shoulder was suddenly unbearable, magnified by Victor's words. It was the placebo effect weaponized. He clutched his metal arm, his face grey.

Victor pulled a fountain pen from his pocket. He picked up a napkin from the table. The pen scratched loudly against the rough paper.

"I don't want your money," Victor said, writing quickly. "I want your loyalty. This sector is dangerous. A doctor needs... orderlies."

He held out the napkin.

"This is a prescription," Victor said. "Take two of these orders—repair my door, and guard the perimeter tonight—and call me in the morning. If you survive the night without that arm falling off."

Iron-Jaw took the napkin with a trembling hand. He looked at the dark hallway, where the growling was getting louder, sounding like grinding tectonic plates. Then he looked at Victor, the man who saw the rot inside him.

"Yes," Iron-Jaw croaked. "Yes, Doctor."

"Good." Victor gestured to the door with his teacup. "Close it on your way out. And take the mud with you."

As the thugs scrambled to leave, dragging the broken door frame back into place and wiping the floor with their own jackets, Victor allowed himself a long, shaky exhale.

He closed his eyes.

A wave of nausea rolled over him, hot and sickening. He tasted copper in the back of his throat—a nosebleed. He wiped his upper lip with his glove; the leather came away dark.

There was no victory fanfare. No experience bar filling up. Just the crushing weight of exhaustion and the knowledge that he had survived on bluff and psychology alone.

Victor looked down at his trembling hand. He picked up the teacup. It was stone cold.

"Next time," he whispered to the empty, silent room, "I'm charging a consultation fee."