Separated

"Dr. Varun, three more people have washed up near us." A lady who had her hair tied up in a bun calmly reported to a man.

The man was busy cutting open the stomach section of an old man as he nodded his head in response to the lady's report.

"I'll be there in a minute; prepare another bowl of water to heal the treated ones." Dr, Varun half-heartedly said as his mind was fully concentrated on the patient before him. After the patient's stomach was fully cut open, the doctor inserted his hands into the open wound and fished out a three-millimetre wide metal object. After that, he continued to fish out many other pieces that were a combination of metal, wood, stone, plastic, etc from the stomach region of the old man.

"Phew, the stomach has been treated now." The doctor sighed in relief as he wiped the sweat off his forehead and then poured some water into the open wound. As he saw the gaping wound rapidly regenerate itself, he couldn't help but smack his lips in marvel at the mysterious sight unfolding before his eyes. He couldn't get used to this sight even after watching it for dozens of times.

Dr. Varun then proceeded to inspect the muscle mass of the old man at various regions of his body, cut them open, and expertly fished out foreign materials from within.

"Are these three the ones you mentioned, Priya?" Dr. Varun inquired to the lady with her hair tied into a bun as he gazed at the three people that lay unconscious before him. Each of the three bodies had been separately placed on a makeshift bed that was made from stacking a few tree leaves atop one another.

"Yes, Doctor; Swetha's team found them." There was a worshiping gaze in her eyes as she looked at the pondering visage of Dr. Varun. When apocalypse hit them, humans displayed vicious characters that were in sharp contrast to what they had carried themselves with before, a bunch of hypocrites. Her own father abandoned her family without a second thought to save his skin while her mother embraced another man to protect herself.

Her younger brother who seemed academically smart was practically a dead weight who couldn't even make decisions for himself. It was Priya who took charge as she fought against vicious insects and secured some breathing space for her and her brother. She was an athlete and hence had good coordination between her mind and her body. Her brother on the other hand barely managed to injure a snail after fighting against the stationary foe for a long time.

It was when they were struggling to survive that they met Dr. Varun and his friends, each of whom stood head and shoulders above those self-centered humans. She was especially drawn in by the charisma of Dr. Varun who had a handsome visage, good head above his shoulders, and a body that could keep up with his decisions. All in all, he was a leader material.

In the short time they got to know each other, Priya tried everything she could think of to make him fall in love with her but unfortunately for her, Dr. Varun was a man who had an OCD about his profession. He was a strange lifeform that would die if he didn't get to cure someone every day. He had his weirdness, but it was something that made her fall for him even more.

When the people closest to her showcased their dark side in full limelight, part of her heart shattered. In comparison to that, the strangeness of Dr. Varun was admirable. Even when he treated beautiful women, he wouldn't bat an eye at their naked bodies. In this dark danger-ridden world filled with vicious predators, he was her ray of light.

Of the three people that lay before him, one was a woman that seemed to be in her twenties, a boy in his teens, and a woman in her forties.

Dr. Varun first began by inspecting the heads of the three people. When he inspected the head of the woman in her forties, his eyes dimmed as a downcast expression appeared on his face.

"She…has no hope." Dr. Varun sighed.

"But how? She looks perfectly alright to me." Priya said in disbelief. She couldn't understand why the doctor said there was no hope for that lady when he had been able to save everyone they had brought in till now.

"You must have realised it by now, freshwater has the ability to regenerate our flesh," Dr. Varun said as he gazed at the confused face of Priya and continued, "But from where do you think the components of the regenerated flesh come from?"

Dr. Varun continued when Priya's face went blank, "It's the water itself. What I came to understand after observing our bodies till now is that our bodies are no longer composed of hydrocarbons. Rather, the primary elements composing our bodies now are Hydrogen and Oxygen that have combined into complex compounds."

As he saw the expression of Priya that implied she had been absolutely lost by his explanation, Dr. Varun stopped his explanation, "Anyway, that doesn't matter. The reason why this lady here has no hope is due to the fact that a huge metallic object has lodged into her brain while the water has regenerated the surrounding tissues. If I were to perform surgery to her brain, she might die immediately as the metallic object had occupied more than one-fourth of her head."

"Her body is no longer capable of functioning. She will die if I treat her here. Moreover, even if I were to remove the metallic object by immersing her head in water and allow it to work its magic, the person that opens her eyes would only be a blank piece of slate."

"I-Is there really no other way to save her?" Priya inquired as her eyes reddened. Even after experiencing the cruelty of the apocalypse, she still hadn't completely lost her soft nature.

Dr. Varun sighed in response to her question, "There may be a method out there but I don't know about it." He wasn't naive; he would give his all to save the ones he could treat, but for the ones he could not, he wouldn't allow such failures to cloud his mind. He barely had a year of experience working as a doctor; the field of medicine was a vast ocean after all.

Dr. Varun proceeded to check the head of the teen and sighed in relief. He was hardly injured as compared to the others he had treated till now. A couple of minutes and he would be good as new.

Dr. Varun gave some instructions to Priya to set up the appropriate tools around the teen as he proceeded to inspect the woman in her twenties.

"Hmm," Dr. Varun frowned as he inspected the lady.

Her head and heart were fine for the most part but the rest of her body was a complete mess. Her bones, flesh, and organs seemed like they had been repeatedly crushed and regenerated. This was a major flaw with the regeneration provided by the water. It simply generates flesh in regions without flesh, bone in regions without bone. But the actual problem arises in cases when some foreign object gets lodged in-between the body parts.

In such cases, the flesh generated will try to compress itself and integrate the foreign part into it. This would totally collapse its biological functions. Her body had experienced such a phenomenon numerous times that it would have been a cause of a miracle if she retained any muscle memory. He would have to manually direct her body parts to heal in a functional way.

The hurdle was steep as he lacked any tools to aid him. The only tool he could actually use was a broken razor blade that he found. Other medical tools were too big and heavy for his use.

"Interesting!" The fighting spirit of Dr. Varun was ignited as he first treated the teen within the span of a few minutes and then proceeded to scale this steep hurdle.

-------------------------------------------

Atop a pile of rubble that barely peeked out of a flooded zone, a tiny figure sat with a confused look. He gazed at his surroundings and went into a daze. When they had planned for their son's rescue, they had not accounted for such an outcome.

"Hope Akash is in your safe hands Anita," Prakash muttered as he stood up and warily inspected his surroundings.

Broken debris, vehicles, utensils, tree wood, animal carcasses, etc. silently floated on the water body whose currents were practically negligible to transport them. There were small mounds of concrete that poked out of the waters and looked like floating mountains in his eyes.

As Prakash got up and flexed his muscles, he felt his body feel way different as compared to before. His body felt many times stronger, faster, sturdier, and also seemed to be filled with something to the point of bursting.

"Ugh…" It was at this time that he remembered the incident with the giant purple snake that came out of the body of Shaggy. Prakash hurriedly willed for his 'Record' to appear as a torrent of purple smoke gushed out of the pores on his body like a dam whose gates had been opened and coagulated into a screen that was as tall as him.

"What the…." Prakash felt at a loss for words as he gazed at the messy record that was filled with rows and rows of information.

<Strength: 101.57 >

<Agility: 133.01>

<Toughness: 31.80>

<Reaction: 10.26>

<Perception: 35>

<Karma: Mosquito-3 (0.00%)

Dog-2163 (11.48%)

Fish 1-300 (0.00%)

Fish 2-463 (0.00%) .... Fish 14-127 (0.00%)>

<Karmic Arts: Convert>

"Fish1, fish 2… What's with these rows of fishes?" Prakash felt confused as he couldn't remember killing any fishes. Ants, mosquitoes, and coincidentally Shaggy were the only ones whose death he as responsible for. Moreover, as he scrolled down the list, his eyes landed upon a new row of Attribute that had appeared.

"Karmic Arts, What does this even do?" Prakash tried to will it to activate or even gleam some information, but nothing happened. It was obvious from his past experiences that to activate some uncanny ability he needed to perform a set of actions, fix his mentality, and have some prior information about the ability in the first place.

"I'll leave it for later; no use in racking my brain about them for now. Have to find Anita first." Prakash set his priorities straight as he could hear faint cries of birds hovering up in the skies. He had to find some safe cover first before embarking on the quest to find his family.