Reattaching an all but severed head was not easy work ( to anyone else it would have been impossible ) but it had done it, and it had done it quickly too. Quickly enough for Anton Shudder to survive his ridiculously excessive injuries, which was the point for once. Nye did not usually make distinctions from one body to the next, but this one it had been watching since the War. Since it had begun its glorious, brilliant research about the human soul, it had only ever had the chance to dissect one gist user, and she had been long dead, and thus only half as useful as she could have been. Anton Shudder was still alive, thanks to it, and it was practically salivating at the thought of possibly gaining access to the knowledge he possessed.
When it had finished its work on the scythe wounds that littered his body, it had strapped him down ( according to the Sanctuary’s protocol, not its own ) and wheeled him off to recovery, hissing at any nurses that attempted to involve themselves. Then it had sat, and it had waited. The Sanctuary politics were going every which way, chaos ruling the hallways of the building, but it did not care. Its work, and its most coveted specimen, was more important. It was not the man, of course, but the living, sentient, separate soul within that mattered to Nye. But it was attached to a fragile body ( for now ) and so it resolved, the image of patience, to wait for a sign of consciousness rather than let its more basic impulses take over and do something rash.
