790. About monsters, 7
(Temee)
After the detour forced by my escape, I nearly depleted our supplies over the next travelling days.
The cold also begins to be really harsh during the night. Glasgow is suffering from it as well.
I have the time to perfect what I call my last chance pill. Now it’s a bit of sugar stained with my sister’s blood, neatly wrapped in thin plastic. It holds in the cheek, and if I bite into it...
Me I’ll have a chance not to die from it.
It hurts me to prepare such a thing.
And it horrifies me that I had the idea to poison my sword like that. I didn’t hesitate. Luckily and sadly, it worked. I knew what it would do, and despite that, I did it.
T - I’m disgusting...
Glasgow isn’t disgusted. Even though I still killed two men that could have been our father.
Why is he dead...
Nauseous, I continue to move forward, to reach the village of Xungdan before suffering from hunger piled on over guilt.
~
The region has a community of a handful villages instead of one city state. I’m not really sure whether it’s better or not for them.
However I realise quickly what advantages it has for me.
I slip in easily at night, and find supplies in the kitchen of the travellers’ hall.
I help myself without pillaging in the first village, as I plan to repeat this on the second one.
And on the third village, the last along my road, I take nearly nothing.
I walk most of the night on the road between them, and finish to wait for dawn outside, away in the heights of the plateau.
At dawn, I prepare us a good meal. It makes a lot of good to both of us.
And we’re soon on our way already.
~
I’ve just begun digesting my meal from dawn, and I already feel that something is not right.
My legs are getting weak. My lips lose their sensation.
Numbness is spreading from my fingers and along my arms.
I realise that people are looking at me with goggles from the village, and from a ridge above in the distance. Sunlight reflections betrayed them. But I’m feeling like my body is giving up on me.
I end up falling there, mind already too foggy to really begin to panic.
They poisoned me...
~
In my somnolence, lying down along the path, I hear a distant ruckus.
My eye notices a helicopter flying above me.
I feel like I’m falling, but I realise afterward I’m being put onto a gurney.
Then I notice that we’re flying away... But I’m feeling like I’m falling in hell.
~
The deafening ruckus seems to grow louder as I wake up.
I feel a helmet over my ears, protecting them from the noise of the flying helicopter.
I move a little, still groggy and confused. I’m tied up.
I see Ioms sitting beside. He’s smiling at me. He then pushes a switch that activates the radio. He speaks in a microphone and I hear him well in my helmet.
I - I’m happy to see you’re doing well Temee. Everything is going to go well, don’t worry. Ah yes, your sister is there.
He shows me a kind of chest that looks very heavy, with danger pictograms all around it like a belt of warning.
I barely manage to swallow and then to talk.
T - Where...
I - Not in Zeca. There is a hospital a little further with facilities a little more appropriate for things such as you two. That’s where we’re going. The city has been abandoned a few years ago, but its hospital is a kind of inaccessible island. It even was a prison in the past I heard. We’ll be in peace out there.
He’s smiling so kindly. I’m biting my tongue...
Ioms notices I’m trying to look outside, but the window is too high for me as I’m lying down.
He opens the door entirely. The wind rushes in.
I see the sky, and the landscape. I wish I could stand up.
I’d like to be able to escape...
I clench my jaw.
I still have one chance, inside my mouth. But I will have to play it flawlessly...
I still begin to cry.
The nightmare returns to reality.
~
Ioms lets me cry without getting involved.
The helicopter is hovering above an abandoned cityscape, and ends up landing on the summit of a fortress, brushed by winds and dusts.
He jumps out first. My teeth and tongue keep preciously my horrible last card under control in my cheek. I must not fail that one...
Or I will never leave this place...
I shut my eyes still foggy from the manifestations of my fear and sorrow.
I’m praying for all that I love and all I believe in to help me getting away from here.
I’m being unloaded. I see the landscape a little better. The city has been gone in ashes and smokes a long time ago. The rains and seasons eroded everything since.
A cart carries the heavy chest containing my sister.
Hold on Ukhtukht...
I will find you...
And by the grace of our wounds, we will make it out.
I’m imploring the droplet of blood from my sister that I keep alive with me to give me the courage, and if needs to be the strength, to get out of here.
The corridors and doors are passed one after another.
Someone asks if the nerves of my arms shouldn’t be cut, for safety. Ioms hesitates to reply and looks toward me.
We exchange a silent gaze.
I - Do it. Otherwise, she’ll try.
Instead of rolling me into my room, I’m turned around to head straight into surgery.
I - Sample the eggs while you’re there.
What eggs?
I - She’s not contaminated no. It’s the other one that must stay isolated.
Beyond the horror, I hear my chance. My unique chance...
The gurney stops. I’m being prickled in the arm.
I start crying, and I’m biting into it, shutting my eyes.
I’m begging you...
I will give you everything you could desire...
Save me Ukhtukht...
I cough.
I feel it like alcohol spreading inside of me.
I don’t know how far my immunity to the poisons really goes.
All I know is that Glasgow carries germs with a very worrying vivacity.
Save me...
What droplets I’ve coughed out vanish, but I think I felt that some shades between this and my saliva scattered immediately around. A last sensation before losing consciousness.
~
- Hm...
I reawaken in pain... But that sensation is appeasing to me.
Something empties itself in me. All my pain, even the lingering one, it melts away.
I feel really weird. Calm... A little absent minded.
My eyes reopen over the operating table. My heart remains uncannily calm, but signals are still alerting the surgeons currently operating my shoulders.
My fingers move. My hands react, still. I don’t feel anything because of the anaesthetics I think, but I see myself moving.
If her blood was able to wake me up, it’s already that, and I must embrace the given opportunity fully.
I stand abruptly while throwing hits. I lose consciousness for a few seconds, I think because I stood up too fast, but I didn’t let go of the surgeon I caught by the collar.
I’m feeling... weird... All my pains are gone, evaporated like old dreams.
I glance at the other man still in stupor.
T - Untie me or he dies.
The other man is hesitant, but he doesn’t untie me.
My hostage dies. I didn’t feel anything.
I didn’t feel anything?
All these horrors that were haunting me, slowing me down, torturing me...
Evaporated.
I feel already so liberated from innumerable burdens that it feels strange, because I’m still tied up.
They had attached me with the arms open to operate my shoulders... And I woke up in time, I think thanks to my sister.
I catch a tool and begin cutting the cables tying me. The other one has left the room.
My limbs answer.
I just don’t feel any more pain, nor remorse.
I’m going to get out of here, whatever the cost.
~
I’m beating down in pugilism through the corridors the first men thrown against me. I break them mercilessly, in cold blood.
I pick up a handgun one of them carried and didn’t get the chance to use against me.
I’m feeling... weird.
Alarms begin ringing. The lights are changing colours.
I must look for her through the hospital... Unless I have a better idea to find her?
I do.
~
On the roof of the hospital, the helicopter is noisily getting ready for departure.
I’m stepping outside and begin shooting into the cockpit, four times. The pilot is hurt. He’s not going to leave.
I open the rear door and find Ioms.
He’s not smiling anymore. Me neither.
I shoot him in the foot, which blows up in blood splatters. He screams.
I throw him onto the ground. My shoulders have stopped bleeding where they were being cut open. My heart too ceased to bleed it would seem.
Ioms speaks, in pain and tears.
His head bursts behind and aside, pierced by the new bullet I’ve just shot.
Still barefoot, I return toward the innards of the hospital, now that I know where to look for.
~
Blood continues to be splattered. I’m indifferent to it.
I realise very well that I’m not in my normal frame of mind. I feel it clearly deep inside.
But on that moment, of absence of pain and fear, absence of empathy and suffering, it’s liberating.
I come to laugh about it.
Another laugh. Another moment when my thought only manages to laugh at the ridicule I’m living.
I notice some shades in the corners of ceilings. I follow through.
I find the chest back. The laboratory has other cells, empty.
Shades slither along the walls.
I open the chest, and the shades all rush toward Glasgow to disappear behind her.
She twitches, as if she was dreaming.
Her infection progresses along her torso now.
Through the deformed tissues and necrosis, the bone of her hip is becoming visible at the bottom of her trunk.
She’s still suffering. But she’s living, and reacting.
And she saved my life again...
I take her out, and we’re leaving.
~
