Anything is possible

Herman is a Kyiv QA engineer. He finds bugs in other people's code in ten minutes, prices his life in the hryvnia-to-pound rate, and keeps his relationships engineered so that nothing ever weighs anything. Digging potatoes on his father's plot, he unearths a cold metal thing. That night it enters him — through the fabric, through the skin — and starts rebuilding his body. By morning his calluses are gone. The homemade liquor leaves no hangover. And his grandfather's old clock quietly burns out: something inside Herman is drinking the radium from its dial. So he does the only thing he knows how to do when the world breaks: he opens a notebook and starts testing himself. Baseline. Hypotheses. Experiments — first on coins and a fly on the ceiling, then on the reagents in a friend's lab, then on living people who get tired when he sits too close. Every explanation is elegant. Every one is almost right. And week by week the thing growing in him wants more — while Herman grows less afraid, and more fond of his new advantage. The worst of what's happening to him isn't in his body. Slow-burn progression. Contemporary Kyiv. One engineer, one notebook, and an appetite that can't be fed honestly.