Nucleonics

Dmitri Tesla was a submarine sailor before he was anything else.

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He served in the Russian Federation Navy as a nuclear engineering specialist responsible for reactor plant operations, reactor water chemistry, radiological safety, and the technical discipline required to keep a nuclear submarine alive beneath the sea. He was not a famous officer, a political figure, or a public hero. He was a professional submariner: precise, disciplined, technically gifted, and deeply proud of his work.

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His name often drew comments because of its similarity to Nikola Tesla, but Dmitri had no known relation to the famous inventor. He never leaned on the name anyway. Dmitri built his reputation the hard way — through study, watchstanding, technical competence, and calm under pressure.

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That pressure became absolute during a Russian submarine patrol in the Pacific Ocean.

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While operating deep beneath the surface, Dmitri’s submarine was attacked by the villainous Kaha Koa. The attack crippled the vessel, damaging propulsion, power distribution, emergency systems, and air-control capability. The submarine sank to the ocean floor at nearly twice its rated crush depth. By every normal rule of submarine survival, the hull should have failed.

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Somehow, it held.

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Barely.

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Inside the boat, the situation was catastrophic. Power was gone. Emergency air pressure was insufficient to surface the submarine. Communications were dead. Casualties were severe. The remaining crew were trapped in a steel coffin beneath crushing pressure, with no normal recovery option left.

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Dmitri was the senior surviving officer.

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He reviewed every standard procedure available. None were enough. Every safe option failed. Every normal system was damaged, depleted, or unreachable. Finally, he and the surviving crew turned to the abnormal options — the ones no submariner wants to say aloud unless death is already in the room.

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One option remained: attempt to restore the reactor.

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The plant had been scrammed. Bringing it back online under those conditions was reckless, dangerous, and technically close to impossible. Worse, the damage to remote systems meant someone would have to enter the reactor compartment and manually control the reactor. Given the damage, radiation risk, and instability, the assignment was effectively a suicide mission.

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Dmitri took it himself.

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As the ranking officer, he refused to order another sailor into a death he was not willing to face. He briefed the surviving crew on what to do if he restored power. He left a final message for his fiancée, Marlina Talovsky. Then he sealed himself inside the reactor compartment and went to work.

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Only after locking himself in did Dmitri discover something that should never have been aboard.

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Hidden beneath the deck plates in the reactor room were several old, unmarked canisters labeled X-65. The containers were ancient, corroded, and barely stable. Dmitri did not know what X-65 was. He only knew the canisters were failing and that whatever they contained had no business being stored in the reactor compartment of a submarine.

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There was no time to investigate.

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Using every piece of nuclear engineering knowledge he possessed, Dmitri manually began raising the control rods, trying to restart the reactor enough to restore power and steam. For a moment, the plan worked. The core began producing heat again. Systems flickered. There was a chance.

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Then the damaged manual controls failed.

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The rods shot upward too far, uncovering the core completely. The reaction surged out of control. A massive steam bubble formed and ruptured internal systems. The reactor compartment was flooded with lethal radiation. The explosion tore through the weakened X-65 canisters, releasing the mutagenic chemical agent into the already irradiated air. Electrical arcs tore across the compartment as systems overloaded.

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Dmitri understood exactly what was happening.

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Radiation. Mutagen. Electrical discharge. Reactor breach.

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Death came within seconds.

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Then death lost its grip.

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Dmitri woke inside the reactor compartment, alive but transformed. His body glowed with a yellow-green radiance. His hair was gone. His skin pulsed with impossible energy. He could feel the reactor not as a machine in front of him, but as a living storm inside his mind.

The crew watched through shielded viewports, horrified, as Dmitri stood again.

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He reached for the reactor controls — then realized he did not need to touch them.

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His thoughts, gestures, and will began influencing the nuclear reaction directly. Dmitri forced himself past fear and confusion and did what he had entered the compartment to do. He brought the reactor under control.

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Within minutes, the submarine had power again.

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Through crude signals and emergency communication, Dmitri directed the surviving crew to reengage steam systems and propulsion. The submarine shuddered back to life. Lights returned. Equipment cycled. The boat began moving.

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But the hull was failing.

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At that depth, with the pressure damage worsening, propulsion alone would not save them. They needed buoyancy. They needed air in the ballast tanks. They needed a miracle.

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Dmitri thought of boiling the seawater in the ballast tanks into steam.

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The moment the thought formed, his body changed again. He became living electrical energy, traveling through the damaged submarine’s structure and into the forward main ballast tanks. There, he reformed into his glowing radiation state and forced heat into the trapped seawater until steam displaced enough water to create buoyancy.

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He repeated the process in the aft tanks.

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The submarine tore itself free from the ocean floor and began an uncontrolled ascent.

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When the crippled boat breached the surface, it did so violently, surging upward at extreme speed and launching partially out of the water before crashing back down. The impact split welds, ruptured weakened seams, and sent water flooding into damaged compartments.

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Dmitri did not stop.

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Using his energy control, he arc-welded compromised sections of the hull, sealing enough breaches to keep the submarine afloat. Then he released a massive electromagnetic burst, knowing that any major military or GUARD monitoring network would detect the signature and triangulate the location.

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While they waited for rescue, Dmitri helped the surviving crew topside and into life rafts.

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Against all odds, approximately sixty percent of the crew survived.

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That was far more than the Kaha Koa intended.

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Then Ulupoka returned.

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A member of the Kaha Koa came back to finish the destruction of the Russian submarine and its crew. Dmitri met him in battle. He was exhausted, transformed, unstable, and still learning what he had become.

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Ulupoka died anyway.

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The villain would later be restored by Milu, the Kaha Koa’s god of the dead, but by then the submarine’s survivors had already been rescued by United States Navy and GUARD forces.

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Dmitri, however, could not simply be brought aboard a rescue ship.

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His body was still emitting dangerous radiation. Without containment, he was a threat to anyone near him. GUARD had specialized containment and metahuman-response facilities capable of keeping Dmitri alive without endangering others. They offered him help.

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Dmitri accepted the help, but not immediately the future GUARD offered. He wanted to wait for Russia. He believed his government would recover him, recognize what he had done, and help restore some part of his life.

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Months passed.

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Eventually, the Russian government informed Dmitri that it did not have the resources, political desire, or operational interest to manage his condition. Officially, Dmitri Tesla had been reported killed in action on 30 May 2015. He was awarded posthumous honors for heroism. His family and fiancée had already buried the idea of him.

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Dmitri tried to contact Marlina Talovsky.

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She had moved on. She had married another man. Worse, she rejected the transformed Dmitri as something no longer human enough for the life they had planned.

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The message was clear.

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As far as Russia was concerned, Dmitri Tesla was dead.

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As far as Marlina was concerned, the man she loved was gone.

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Dmitri had survived the ocean, radiation, mutation, reactor failure, and Kaha Koa attack. What nearly broke him was being erased by the world he had saved.

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Captain Seawolf came to see him.

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Seawolf knew submariners. He understood sacrifice, steel, pressure, and what it meant to be trapped in a machine beneath the sea with impossible choices. Over several weeks, he spoke with Dmitri not as a specimen, not as a political problem, and not as a weapon — but as a fellow submariner.

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Dmitri wanted one thing more than anything else: to work again.

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He wanted to be an engineer. He wanted to be useful. He wanted to stand in an engine room, solve problems, and matter as something other than a containment hazard.

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GUARD’s scientists and engineers began designing a solution.

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They created an experimental radiation-combat suit built around containment, dampening fields, sensor layering, radiation shielding, electrical insulation, adaptive materials, and power-channeling systems. The suit allowed Dmitri to walk among people again without poisoning the space around him. It helped him control his powers, focus his energy output, and safely shift between radiation and electrical body states.

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For the first time since the accident, Dmitri could stand near others without fear.

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He could work again.

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Within weeks, he was trained enough to function safely as both an engineer and a field operative. The suit did not make his life simple. It made his life possible.

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When Russia continued denying his existence and his former life closed its doors, Dmitri chose the people who had treated him as alive.

He joined GUARD.

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More specifically, he joined Captain Seawolf’s Seaguardians.

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The early adjustment was difficult. Dmitri carried grief, isolation, political baggage, and a great deal of cultural and operational friction. Some teammates were uneasy around his radiation profile. Others struggled with his seriousness, his heavy accent, and his tendency to retreat into engineering work instead of social interaction.

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But missions have a way of revealing truth.

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Dmitri proved himself quickly. He was disciplined, technically brilliant, and quietly brave. He did not seek attention. He did not boast. He simply solved the hard problems and placed himself between danger and the team when necessary.

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Over time, the Seaguardians became more than his new assignment.

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They became his second crew.

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Today, Dmitri Tesla serves as Nucleonics, a Seaguardian nuclear and quantum-systems specialist assigned to the GSS/GSX-1 Paragon City. He has become a student of quantum mechanics and advanced energy engineering, applying his reactor background and altered physiology to the most advanced submarine drive systems in the world. His English has improved steadily, though he still phrases things in a direct, sometimes unintentionally funny way.

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He is no longer the man Russia buried.

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He is no longer merely the survivor of a reactor disaster.

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He is Nucleonics: living containment, living power, and living proof that a man declared dead can still choose what his life means.

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