Mycelium Ex Machina (Chernobyl)

[Kaelan]

Kaelan hadn’t stopped thinking about the suit. Or rather, the absence of one.

Every footstep outside the apartment felt like walking into a slow-motion firing squad. No matter how many times he checked the Geiger counter clipped to his belt, no matter how many recalibrations he ran in his head, the math didn’t change. He was unprotected and exposed. One rogue hotspot and his bone marrow would light up like a reactor core.

He followed Nazariy at a nervous distance, eyes flicking to the meter every thirty seconds. When the clicks began to speed up, he veered wide, sometimes scrambling awkwardly over broken fences or ducking beneath hanging rebar just to give himself a little more space between his skin and the air that wanted to rewrite his DNA. Nazariy didn’t seem to care. He walked like a shadow that had forgotten it once belonged to a man. They didn’t speak.

Then Nazariy stopped, and Kaelan almost ran into him. Kaelan stepped forward slowly, peering over the hunched figure’s shoulder. At first, it looked like nothing. A smudge. Soot from some long-dead fire.

But then he saw the way it moved subtly, as if breathing. The smear shimmered with a faint, oily luster, not quite color, not quite light.

His breath caught.

Nazariy pressed his palm against it, and a sense of a vibrational hum rippled through the air. It was felt more than heard, a low, pressure that tickled the bottom of Kaelan’s teeth.

He watched, riveted, as the blackness reached up into the man’s hand. It didn't just cling, it unfolded, like something intelligent, curious, maybe even aware.

Kaelan was half a scientist, half a man clinging to the rails of reason in a ship long lost at sea. But this? This wasn’t fungus. This wasn’t anything he’d seen in the literature. This was new.

And when Nazariy turned his hand toward him, and the growth recoiled like a struck animal, Kaelan’s heart did something strange. He wasn't just afraid anymore. He was thrilled.

He crouched immediately, pulling a collection swab and a sterile pouch from his satchel. “What? What even is that?” he murmured. “That’s not a mycelial response. It’s exhibiting. Shit, it’s receptive behavior.”

His gloved hand moved reverently toward the wall.

“I’ve never seen anything like—” He gently made contact.

The smear felt warm. Not like concrete holding heat, but like blood just under skin. But nothing happened. No vibration. No movement. The smear remained still and silent beneath his touch. He pressed a little harder. Still nothing.

Frustrated, he ran the swab gently across the surface, scraping a dark glisten into the clear plastic of the pouch. He sealed it immediately and labeled it with a shaking hand. Kaelan looked up, breath catching.

“Do that again,” he said, louder than intended. “With your hand. What did you do? How did it react like that?”

He stood, eyes wide. "Is it… tied to you somehow? A pheromone? Heat? Do you… know why it did that?”