Dr. Nicolai Ivanovich Kozlov is an ill-tempered, cybernetically augmented doctor who strives towards perfection in his work despite his severe haemophilia. To most people that meet him for the first time Nicolai will appear quite intimidating thanks to both his incredible height and rough russian accent. This bad first impression is only furthered by the fact that he is initially quite distrustful of most other people and openly treats them like it.

Although he appears very rough around the edges both physically and personality-wise, Nicolai truly cares about his patients and other innocent people and even tries to overcome his phobia of blood and gore in order to treat them to the best of his ability. While struggling in a lot of day to day things, he is very loyal towards those close to him. Although he himself doesn’t believe so, a lot of people would consider him to be sort of ruggedly handsome.

Nicolai is very perfectionistic, which often results in sleepless nights when it comes to his work. He doesn’t really pay much attention to his own health and often pushes his body past its boundaries due to this, and his excessive coffee addiction doesn’t really help the issue either. He is also incredibly stubborn, and whenever he butts heads with somebody will usually not back down. He would never be the first to apologise after a fight unless forced to either. When someone or something annoys him Nicolai usually ignores it, though he will still speak his mind rather rudely if irritated enough to the point where he explodes. This often throws him into unsavoury situations which he would rather avoid.

Most people he meets will immediately think him to be cold or uncaring due to the distancing and sarcastic front he puts up, but deep inside Nicolai is actually rather soft and genuinely cares about his patients more than anything. He believes that almost all other people only care about themselves and would take advantage of others if given the chance, which is why he tries to protect himself by putting up a front and distancing himself when it comes to most of his interpersonal relationships.

After the incident which caused him to lose his limbs Nicolai developed an inherent distrust in most other people, especially doctors. He believes that the medical staff treating his sepsis didn’t know what they were doing and could have saved his arm and legs, which is why he now approaches most people with a very distrustful attitude, and especially with fellow doctors will usually assume that they don’t know what they’re doing. Nicolai absolutely despises other medical professionals treating him and fears being in a hospital again, and would rather die trying to treat himself than let anybody touch him who he doesn’t trust.

This incident also caused Nicolai to develop an addiction to morphine. While he at first only used it to decrease his physical pain, it later developed into a way to relieve both his phantom limb pain and his stress issues. He desperately tries to hide his addiction from others. His unusually low threshold for pain causes him to delve into the morphine even more than he otherwise would.

After his heart surgery Nicolai developed an obsession with cleaning and disinfecting himself. Since the surgery wasn’t conducted in a hospital he was exceptionally afraid that the wound would become infected, leading to a habit of cleaning and disinfecting himself and everything around him that developed into an intense obsession with cleanliness and fear of germs.

Aside from this, Nicolai is a relatively vain person when it comes to himself. He places immense importance on the way he looks and will sometimes even spend more than an hour in the bathroom getting ready in the morning, styling his hair to look just perfect. He would never let himself be seen in public with a stubble and always accurately trims his beard down into a style he finds aesthetically pleasing. He also tends to take a lot of selfies but rarely posts or shows them to anybody.

Nicolais ideals are often at odds with what most of the rest of society believes about augmented people like him. He hates how they are treated and despises that they, and in that though him, are often not considered to be even human. He looks down on people who believe such things.

Missing Limbs

When Nicolai was 25 years old he lost most of his left arm and legs due to a bad case of sepsis. After struggling with the loss of his limbs as well as being stuck in a wheelchair for a long time, he eventually took the initiative in building himself advanced and functional cybernetics that could fully supplement his changed body after some augmentation to his severed limbs.

Although it has been a long time since he lost his limbs he still experiences phantom pain whenever he feels stressed.

Cybernetics

Nicolai’s left arm and legs consist of a combination of titanium and biomechanical muscle tissue. Some of the artificial muscle strands can be seen through the gaps of the titanium plating on his limbs. They are bluish in colour, much like his artificial blood is.

His nervous system is connected to his robotics in a way that allows him to control each movement with a sensitivity comparable to that of normal human limbs. The inside of his hand is fitted with an array of raised sensors, which enable him to both grip things without them slipping out of his grasp, as well as feeling very delicate sensations.

Nicolais organic veins are connected to the venous system of his cybernetics through a filter that allows the nanites in his body to pass through while still keeping the organic and artificial venous systems separate. This enables the nanites to extract the oxygen from his organic blood, before entering the cybernetics through the filter and converting the oxygen into power for his robotic limbs.

After a major loss of blood Nicolai will have to replenish the lost nanites almost immediately, or run the risk of losing function in his cybernetic augmentations.

Additionally, Nicolais augmentations should never be disconnected without shutting down their nerve connection, as otherwise he will receive a shock.

Physical Health

Nicolai has a cardiac arrhythmia, which is something he has had since birth. The arrhythmia often causes him to become short of breath and experience frequent nosebleeds whenever his already high blood pressure spikes even more. Later on his heart issues become so severe due to contracting a Neuro-Virus that he has to have his organic heart replaced with a cybernetic one.

Nicolais eyesight is also quite bad, which is why he actually needs glasses. He doesn’t wear them though, as he thinks they look stupid.

Nicolai has been addicted to morphine for a long time, which he uses to relieve his stress. This also worsens his heart issues.

Other than these issues he is a relatively healthy man. He eats very healthy and has a strong dislike for foods that are very sweet or fatty. Nicolai also sticks to a very strict work-out regimen, a fact that is immediately evident when looking at his incredibly toned and muscular body.

Neuro-Virus

After infiltrating a mostly abandoned research lab Nicolai manages to infect himself with a neurological virus, which sticks to the nanites present in the blood of augmented people.

This Neuro-Virus causes insomnia, delusions and hallucinations. Initially it was intended to control the host, however it usually ends up killing them faster than it can actually take over their mind.

The Virus causes Nicolai to become extremely irritable and erratic over time, and although he notices the Virus trying to control him and tries to fight it there isn’t much he can do. The virus brings out the incredibly Sadistic facet of Nicolais personality which he usually represses.

Nicolai became a doctor in order to find a cure for his father, an older physician who was suffering from cancer. As his condition worsened he became more and more desperate, and in a fit of youthful folly at the age of 25 decided to break into the laboratory of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world - BioMed Industries. Intending to steal a prototype for a cancer treatment drug, he didn’t see any other way to save his father at this point.

Initially Nicolai thought that his break in had been successful, but the deafening alarm which began blaring shortly after let him know otherwise. While he was fleeing from the building he managed to cut his left lower arm on a rusty piece of metal jabbing out from the wall of the alleyway behind the laboratory. While Nicolai initially didn’t think much of it, it didn’t take very long for him to notice that something wasn’t right.

The doctors at the hospital told him it was nothing more than a mild cold.

They were very wrong.

At this point the sepsis had already set in, ravaging his body in ways that could never be reverted. Nicolai, who was still in the middle of his graduate medical degree, only noticed what was happening when it was already far too late.

He barely made it to the doors of the emergency room before he broke down completely. The doctors had to induce him into an artificial coma, and even though he was supposed to be out cold Nicolai still heard every word that was spoken next to his bed.

»He’s going to lose his left arm…«

»Will we be able to save his legs at least..?«

Once he awoke Nicolai thought that it had all been a cruel nightmare, but he quickly realised that it wasn’t. Three days before the end of his coma his father died at the hands of the cancer he’d so desperately tried to cure. Nicolai was absolutely crushed, and the loss of his arm and most of his legs only drove him further into a despair he’d never felt before. The nightmares, the memories of that time still plague him to this day, occupying his mind at every moment which isn’t spent throwing himself into his work or numbing his thoughts with shots of morphine. He doesn’t even notice how far he has slipped into the spiral of addiction, holding onto the steadfast belief that he can still stop any time he wants.