The Immortality Machine

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The Human Factory, the Meatworks, the Underworld; it doesn't have a proper name. But everybody knows what it does.

The Machine brings the dead back to life. Better than they were before.

Step 1: Wander
Find a terminal. They're doors into the machine's guts, up north where the body sits, and they're all guarded from both sides. The one under the hospital is the most contested, but the easiest to reach, too. Pick a good time, make a distraction, slip in and hope nothing catches you on the way in.

Sometimes the door stays shut. Never force it. The defenses can be twitchy.

Some say you can skip this step. The machine's children roam the subways sometimes, the story goes, so you can find salvation there, too. There's never been any proof, but people far from the north keep coming back, so there's got to be some other way...

Step 2: Enter
Leave the body at the door. It can be your own, if you're curious and still alive. Right inside the door is almost normal, by the standards of tinker megastructures. Reinforced concretes, weird pipes, semi-exposed wires, but nothing too crazy. It's the creatures living there that get the most attention.

The Failures swarm the underside. Incomplete clones, recycled as living Tinker tools. They're the Machine's eyes and hands, and nobody knows if they're just puppets, or if they think. And if they're the failed clones, maybe you'll see your own face looking back from a sewer drain one day? Better not to dwell on it.

The Failures cart away the dead and make sure the living aren't able to comment on what's in the depths. Either way, the what happens at the Machine's Heart is unknown.

But there's rumors.
Some say the pipes twitch and move like living things, that you can hear them growing through the underground on quiet nights.
Others that the Tinker responsible is long dead, but their body has been puppeteered, the machine growing on it's own.
Yet others, that a certain cape knows all the ins and outs, having gone through the process while conscious.
-that the Tinker's still alive, merged with the whole facility, miles of nerves-
-that the Machine burrows deeper every day, tunnels spiraling out-
-that a whole civilization of rogue clones, in the darkness-
-that fortress walls made to survive the apocalypse-
-that hellish rooms born from flesh and iron-

People say a lot of things.

(Optional) Step 2.5 - Offer
To build a machine, you need time and parts. To build a Machine, you'll need even more than that.
So, despite being as close to a charity as the city has left, the quality of your treatment depends on what you're sent in with.

Nothing at all? You'll be back on your feet. Probably. Sometimes it doesn't give you back
Something valuable? Tuning the body up is trivial enough.
A truly special treasure? Even a normal human can push superhuman with the rewards there. Ever wanted to be Brute 3?

Nobody comes back exactly the same, anyway.

Step 3: Wait
It's longer than you think.

Step 4: Walk Again
Take your first few breaths. Clear your mind.
8 hours is the normal safe limit for sanity and continuity of consciousness.

Stretch your arms and legs, feel out the familiar unfamiliarity.
You've had them all your life.

Leave the terminal with a new lease on life.
And try not to come back too soon.

(Optional) Step 4.5 - The Backup
Parahumans can't be cloned. The human part can, but the para part won't cross over.
There's a workaround, obviously.

Twelve ankhs were made back in the first days, before the Quarantine. They were traded for resources, test subjects, protection. It didn't really matter who used them, just that they weren't somebody who'd interfere.

When implanted, they keep a perfect record of the brain. A genuine, flawless copy. With an Ankh, even a parahuman power can be copied beyond death. An immortal parahuman, given the highest priority of upgrades, able to come back no matter how long they've been dead...

Really, it's no wonder the city was Quarantined.

The original gang should still have half. The other six? Who knows?

Perverse Loop

The Shard responsible is a recycler.

Sometimes, a host breaks before their time. A power interaction provides useful Data, but the hosts that caused it died in the process. Maybe a useful Path gets served with an untimely demise. A host's great, but their data well is exhausted.

Perverse Loop specializes in the salty runback, so mistakes like that don't disrupt the plan - data recovery, reconstruction of shard connections, tweaking revived hosts to optimize for different shard expressions.
A humble utility shard, albeit one that does it's job well.

This cycle, Perverse Loop's found a perfect host.

Path

Villain

Bio

Insert - Adult
Medic
Budget Costume

Skills

Mechanics
First Aid

Shard

Dead Shard (Natural Eden Trigger)

Perks

Noctis Cape
Secret Lair

Flaws

SL9
Endbringer Target
Psychic Nosebleed
Case 53 x1
Worst Day Ever x1

Powers

Genetics ST
Fortification ST
Augmentation ST
Power Refinement + Power Slot (Slight Trump factor to tinkertech, Augmentation ST transfers minds to biology too)

Path Specific

Other Gang
Mooks, Money