A blink, then I came to awareness.
There was a device in front of me… above me, above the bed, and below warm lights, long and with small blue diodes with wires hanging and snaking inside my head, or it felt as though they were.
A woman in a white lab coat, trimmed red and stripped blue, stood off to my right, and on my left another in similar garb. I knew they were women for their coats fitted well along their feminine frames, even when their faces were obscured.
Tight spaces were never a comfort of mine, yet the calmness I felt was as though I was in an MRI machine, like under thick blankets. Everything smelled sterile and metallic, the tings and clicks of the machine like clockwork, the room radiating warmth as though it were living, and it made me feel like a kid again visiting a doctor. That, or it might have been the drugs they had me on.
Is that why the pain feels numb? I noticed that my right hand and leg had been bandaged, my palm and pinky finger wrapped in some sort of gauze, the ankle wrapped tightly in linen. If there was any blood, I could not see any. What they had done to it, I could not remember.
They spoke in that sing-song tongue, calm and assured, the meaning washing over me as water in a riptide. I didn’t think much of it.
It seemed as though an hour had passed. In sporadic moments, either woman would bend down to observe me, uttering something as though asking “how are you?”, “feeling well?”, or “are you still with us?” In response, I would simply grunt or mumble incoherently.
I had been admitted to a hospital, or maybe a clinic. It looked too small to be a hospital, yet it burrowed several floors into the ground, and it stood out in an organic way with metal and concrete bending and rounding to smooth curves as though it were the currents of a river, mimicking the walls of the Grand Canyon in limegreen lines over white.
They let me walk, not before I had been given my original clothes and new footwear like beige Tevas but without velcro, one of them big enough to support my wrapped ankle. Walking on my right leg was a bitch, more so because of the dull pain that coursed from the ankle, but it was hardly a hindrance. With excessive gestures, I managed to convince the doctor or nurse (I couldn’t tell what her job was) at being wheel-chair bound, for I wasn’t about to give up the privilege of walking.
The escort back to that towering abode was a long walk, led by no less than one of the red headed officers and that armored robot… or not a robot.
She was another red head–I say red head, but their hair was more bright-velvet-red than the natural “red head”–, who adorned the red-trimmed armor. It appeared advanced, plated thoroughly around a black undersuit, the shoulders and collar bulky as though housing armaments. Cataphract Armor from Rimworld seemed like the closest comparison I could think of, the smells of metallic friction and the thuds of her steps adding to the intimidation. Had the wearer not removed the helmet, I would have still been speculating, and like her partner she had a height and a charm about her, carrying herself as though high on the sense of duty as she disregarded her own physical allure.
Before, I hadn’t noticed just how earthly sweet the compound smelled, how captivating the white stone (or was it concrete?) walls were as we approached under afternoon sunshine. It made for a welcoming, as it is imposing, sight, the main gate wider and more organically shaped than the one I had crawled over. At its center it had split, receding along the interior of the wall, and I willingly walked past the arched threshold, relieved and melancholic at having done so.
Turning back to my escort, the unarmored officer gave me a gesture, the armored one observing our surroundings. Only when the gate closed did they turn and walk away, rounding the bend of a main avenue.
The same woman of midnight hair and yellow eyes–who stood calm and expressionless–, and her entourage of Wine and Eve–who both seemed nervous and relieved–waited for me at the tower’s base. Our eyes met, hers as though anticipating something.
You can still run–
Shut the fuck up, my rational self chided, just as I looked down to my injured ankle.
Seeing the state I was in, Eve and Wine came to either side of me for support, which I had taken. We went straight to the top floor, the same room where I had escaped from.
The interior, at least the main room with the kitchen and dining areas, was no different than before, save that the air smelled of flowers and pungent chemicals as though cleaned a moment ago. It would have mattered more under a better state of mind.
My black-haired guest had gestured to me to take a seat, ordering Wine and Eve to some task with a middle-low range voice. “Nushala, Syvis, rie rayff rieau piefpieloydiersc. Maethe nnay, xiyie nyspoc rieau fryo die.”
Nushala… Syvis… So that's their names?
With nervous expressions, they eyed me then faced her, just as I took a seat, careful of where I placed my right hand. “Diriangie xiyie fsabryoayad fryo wir?” Wine… Nushala(?) asked.
Nite–I decided to call her–did not answer immediately. “… Xiysas dphes gie fayrie, gos radav ays tidvmie.”
“Liaxiy hpadi?”
“Laric.”
Both moved to the kitchen, leaving us to our thoughts.
From her case, the one she held this morning, a tablet was withdrawn, somewhat thicker than an iPad but just as aesthetically designed, its casing darker with a stand unfolding from its back; alongside another device with four cords bundled around it. In a flash the tablet came to life with a homepage, the layout both familiar and alien, the operating system having pieces of Windows and Macintosh design.
One of the cables had been plugged into the pad’s socket, and she gestured to me to lean forward. Springing up, leaning close enough that the heat of her breath brushed my cheeks, she placed the wires across my head, the ends sticking to my scalp and hair with a caustic glue. Perhaps it was invasive, and I should have shoved her away, yet petty resignation was the only thing on my mind. What’s the point of getting angry?
You’re not home, my irrational self chided, of course you should be!
Finished, Nite lowered me back to my seat, her attention returning to the pad, and with several taps and the flick of her wrist, she began studying the resulting display (that of rows of unrecognizable text, numbers, and a graph).
The wait was long, her daffodil-colored, narrowed eyes dancing as she swiped down, her head tilting to one side in thought, affording a view of her delicate neck. It was now noticed just how regal her marble-white coat was, how the front overlapped without a visible button or hook at the front, how it exposed her black mock turtleneck and the bulge of her bosom, and how it clung to hips and shoulders; for she dressed to exemplify status and success, to accentuate certain things. It was a wonder if that midnight hair felt silky, how it held the scent of something like lavender; that it remained perfectly straight, falling well below shoulders with the bangs and ends cut straight. Skin fairer than mine appeared smooth, an indication of health envied by the sickly, and it made me want to touch her–
Not the best time for those thoughts, I chided myself.
A hot drink smelling like Earl Grey had been served before me, with something of a lemony scent placed beside Nite. Eve… Syvis(?) had placed a tray, at the center of the table, of a hot kettle and various cups of dried herbs and strange flowers, of both a mundane and colorful palette, the smell of it like a mix of candy, lemons, and… tequila? Both the girls served themselves different teas.
In the next moment, Nite stood to gingerly remove the pads from me (at my discomfort), rewrapping the cords of the peripheral device, stowing it away in that suitcase. “Rieff… ru liebaysaaeur,” she said under a contented sigh.
“Is everything alright?” I asked.
Yellow eyes looked to meet mine, and I decided they weren’t colored like daffodils. Gold the irises looked but tinged toward orange, like the underside of high-sailing, evening clouds. Part of me thought I should have looked away.
Looking toward Nushala, she asked something, “Eaara cauil loyie cvurie Anngelo?”
Nushala nodded, eyeing me for a moment. “Ay bierl.”
Nite tapped away at her pad. Gingerly, I wrapped two fingers around the handle of the tea cup, lifting it to me. The smell of Earl Grey continued to waft with its steam, the orange and black liquid heating my tongue as I drank.
A sentence I hadn’t expected to hear overlapped with Nite's own, said by a new feminine voice–with a strange British-Germanic accent–, one from the pad, “How do you enjoy your tea?”
This chapter was originally meant to only have no parts. As the saying goes, plans die upon execution, or in this case, they die upon the needs of the story. - BD
Edit: This is embarrassing... I forgot that the MC had been injured in the prior chapter. That has now been addressed in near the beginning.