"Where did you even get that?"
"Doesn't it gross you out?"
"What I'm more curious about is... how did you cut this thing off in the first place?"
In a hospital room in Piltover, a whole crowd stood around that massive hand, staring at it with complete concentration.
"What surprises me is that none of you are dead yet."
Mel was still the first to say it.
"Ekko's a genius, and I made a new friend."
Caleb curled his lip. To be honest, if Caitlyn hadn't stepped in earlier, that hand would have strangled an Enforcer to death by now.
"This is the mess Silco left me."
He had not had much choice but to haul it up to the topside in a bag.
The result was that even Mel, Jayce, Viktor, and Caitlyn were all standing around it with no real solution.
Jayce's Mercury Hammer cannon probably could have destroyed the hand, but it might have triggered a small explosion.
And even then, it would only have been about as powerful as Caleb's Hex Claw, enough to punch through limbs, but not enough to solve the real problem.
"Speaking of which, has Silco been behaving himself in prison?" Caleb asked curiously.
"Behaving himself? He's practically enjoying it in there," Mel answered. Two days ago, she had personally gone to Stillwater Hold and overturned a whole stack of wrongful convictions.
By now, the residents living near that asylum-like section of the Undercity had already been evacuated.
Only Firelights scouts remained behind to keep track of Mundo's movements.
And nearly every one of them was highly skilled on a hoverboard and equipped with defensive shields.
If the goal was just to keep Mundo from hurting Zaun, that part was easy enough. All they really had to do was let Zac wrestle with him in the sludge pits every day.
But killing him, that was a completely different matter.
"This seems to be some kind of... chemtech evolutionary process," Viktor said at last.
He had already finished replacing his limbs and his heart. Before long, he would have a truly fully mechanical body.
"An evolutionary process?" Caleb still could not quite wrap his head around it.
Seeing that no one else seemed to understand either, Viktor could only force himself to explain.
"It's similar to how the Hexcore learns. The various compounds used in chemtech all possess a kind of activity."
"In that body, there are at least a hundred different compounds. Under the effect of one of them, the body itself has become a breeding ground for all the others to spread."
"I know someone..." He paused before continuing, "someone who might be able to find a solution."
"Right!" Caleb said, suddenly enlightened.
Mundo really had beaten his brains loose for a while there, or he never would have forgotten that person.
The alchemist who had invented Shimmer, and who had also given Viktor a variant of it, the man who had helped Silco rule Zaun through chemtech, Singed.
...
"Oh, blood in a state like this is quite rare."
Singed was peering through a microscope, observing the cells in the blood sample.
"I may need to run a few more tests. Do you have time?"
His voice was hoarse, and his face was as unsettling as ever.
Even so, Caleb felt fairly safe. After all, he had brought the Hex Claw with him.
That was mainly to prevent himself from being set up, waking up later, and hearing that the surgery had been a success.
Caleb had absolutely no intention of giving the man in front of him that chance.
Fortunately, Singed had been surprisingly easy to talk to so far, with not the slightest sign that he was about to snap and attack anyone.
"What's that?" Caleb asked, glancing toward the body hanging upside down beside Rio.
"Vander."
Singed did not even look up from the cells beneath the microscope, still completely absorbed in what he was seeing.
"If I remember right, that's supposed to become Warwick later."
Muttering to himself, Caleb stepped closer and studied the fur growing from the body and the claws extending from its hands.
Then the man's eyes suddenly snapped open, and a claw lashed straight at him.
"What the hell?!"
Caleb was too slow to react, but the Hex Claw shot out and blocked the strike for him.
"Why didn't you tell me he was alive?"
After the clang of metal on claw, Caleb stumbled backward and dropped to the floor.
"If he were dead, why would I keep him in the lab?"
Singed straightened up and looked at Vander, who was wildly thrashing his arms against his restraints.
"That makes sense, but I still hate hearing it put that way."
Caleb got back to his feet and brushed the dust off himself.
"Are you keeping him here because you still need him for research? Is that why you won't let him go?"
Singed sighed, then turned back to the lab bench and started mixing something together.
"It's because he doesn't remember anything anymore."
"Silco brought him to me. Ironic, isn't it?"
A trace of disdain surfaced in Singed's eyes.
Silco was elegant, controlled, ruthless, and willing to do anything to get what he wanted.
But at the same time, he still could not let go of Vander, could not bear to watch him die.
So here, in Singed's lab, Vander had been allowed to live.
After taking Shimmer, he had retained more of his mind than most people ever did. Because of that, Singed had kept him as experimental material in the lab.
Now Vi had already gotten out of prison, Powder had grown into a young woman, and he was still here.
"There."
Singed took out a vial and let two drops of its contents fall into the blood sample.
"The activity has been reduced."
The moment Caleb heard that, he jumped over.
"It really has. The activity's dropped a lot. It's not moving nearly as violently as it was at first."
"If you can pin him down, use the solution to suppress the activity on the surface of the wounds, then cut off his head."
As he spoke, Singed took out a circular saw and approached the severed hand, which was still struggling ceaselessly to break free.
The saw spun at high speed and tore open a wound.
The instant regenerating tissue began to emerge, Singed poured the solution from his vial onto it, producing a wisp of green smoke.
And through that dull, methodical process, Singed cut through the fingers one joint at a time.
In the end, even though the separated hand's muscles were still twitching, it could no longer move at all.
And the cut surface of the wound stopped producing any new tissue.
Singed then inserted a tube coated in the solution into the wound. Purple blood flowed out, and that part of the hand finally fell completely still.
"That's incredible."
Caleb had not understood half of what he had just watched, so all he could do was raise a thumbs-up.
But to put it in American terms, that was a home run.
"Cut off his limbs and chop them down joint by joint," Singed said as he turned back to Caleb.
"Just like I did."
"Leave the rest to me."
His voice was hoarse, and a little weak too. For some reason, it reminded Caleb of Viktor.
"Zaun really is full of monsters," he muttered.
"So, since I'm already here, do you have any useful gear lying around that I could borrow?"
Shameless as ever, Caleb decided to freeload.
Making something from scratch himself would take too much time, and besides, there was already a ready-made genius right here he could take advantage of.
"All right..." There was clear resignation in Singed's voice.
"If this blood weren't valuable, I would never hand this over to you."
As he spoke, Singed pulled a blade out from beneath the table.
The weapon had jagged teeth along its edge, and on the side facing inward there was a groove designed to hold chemical solution.
It looked strangely familiar to Caleb, but he just could not place it.
"This weapon is called the Chempunk Chainsword."
Caleb instantly remembered.
Wasn't this the item from the game in his previous life, the one built out of Executioner's Calling, the one that reduced healing effects?
And it had been here with Singed all along!
"Hahaha!" He could not help laughing out loud three times. "Mundo, your old friend Grievous Wounds is coming for you!"