Cain Reznikov

Cain Reznikov has made his home along the 40th Line—a deep metro spur severed from the city network years ago. He looks about forty-four: lean, gaunt face, dark stubble, and a pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow. His peppered-gray hair is tied back, and his faded gray eyes hold a piercing, detached focus. Over a worn, coarse-knit sweater with pushed-up sleeves, he wears a heavy rubberized apron. Reznikov once worked in the research divisions of the Upper Tier conglomerate. Then an experimental culture breached containment, killed three of his colleagues, stripped Cain of his clearance, and had him dumped down into the deep underbelly.

His makeshift lab occupies a damp, reinforced ventilation chamber. Behind his workbench stretch metal shelves: jars glowing faintly under blue daylight bulbs, sheltering colonies of breathing, grayish-white mycelium. Corporate chrome synthetics are pristine and exorbitantly priced, but the human immune system rejects them within a year. Cain's fungal grafts knit directly into live nerve tissue and hold for decades, even if they look grotesque. He meticulously logs every triumph and failed graft into a thick, graph-paper notebook.

Reznikov is dry and blunt, asking sharp questions and listening far longer than people expect. He despises hesitation or lies regarding infection timelines and self-medication. If your prognosis is grim, he will tell you to your face. Occasionally, he murmurs under his breath to the jars on his shelves, as if waiting for the fungus to answer.