Yet the annoyed voice of my attacker made me emerge from the dark depths of the despair I was in.
"Why? Isn't he just one of your subjects, being disposed of once you get bored with them?" — The one squeezing my hands asked, crushing them even more to the point that I couldn't hold it in. The scream I let out of my lungs was a real call of despair.
It finally broke. The dam. It let all of my worries and fears flood me. I just want to get out.
I straight up pulled my hands with all the energy I've gathered, struggling with the heavy body of this man pressuring me against the wall.
Not being ready for this, he let me go suddenly, causing me to fall onto the harsh floor and hitting my head.
"Asha!!!" — The gentle voice that I think I've heard once somewhere as now turned into a worried and rigid one.
Someone's long hair touched my skin, as the person kneeled down to check on my state. But all I felt now was like being dipped into a hot lava. The pain coming to me came from all of the sides, making my mind even more dull than it was before.
Just please… Someone do something with me…
"How can you say such words not knowing the situation Noctis?!? Asha, are you there? Can you hear me?" — Someone's soft hands were shaking my head.
When I slowly opened my hurting eyes, a blurry sight of a man with long, pale hair and glasses came to my vision. His light eyes were troubled and annoyed at once.
He was… The doctor?
I stared at him with a glare full of despair and sorrow.
"Well… Didn't know he's the last guy. What's more, I didn't expect for him to look like a rat that just came out of a toilet sewer." — The tall man in black that just assailed me.
He grumped, looking from above with scorn in his dark eyes and started walking in an opposite direction, but stopped when the doctor said with a harsh tone:
"Have you ever seen me experiment on a human like this?" — His usual soft voice turned into a harsh and cold one. The doctor turned his head upwards to look at the face of my oppressor.
"Well…" — I could feel the hesitation in his voice.
"I'd like to have a word with you in my office later. Be sure to come, or I will find you myself." — The pale-haired person exclaimed, as he suddenly picked up my inert body from the ground, and gave me the most dissatisfied and sorrowful look.
Then he threw the last embittered gaze at the dark-haired man, that, I think, was named Noctis.
The looked at as both with contempt, but at the same time I could feel that he was ashamed of assuming something that wasn't probably true.
Noctis turned his back and walked into the darkness, melting with it completely, leaving me alone in the arms of a doctor which I didn't know was a madman or not. But I didn't want to make my mind think about it, he seemed to be the only person who appeared to worry about my state. Faking it or not, maybe he could help me get out of the pain I'm in.
"Can you… talk?" — He asked me as we started to move in an unknown direction.
I was hanging like a corpse from his hands, which, I felt, had difficulties with holding me firmly. Well, the man wasn't really athletic, he seemed just like an old-fashioned doctor, with no strength whatsoever.
"Y…Yea…" — I felt like if I couldn't at all.
"You used all of your regained strength into wandering around this place… Ugh… And if I haven't found you in the right time, you would have been strangled alive by that delinquent. Ahh… Sometimes I don't even know what's going on in that dark mind of his…"
"I want… water…" — My throat felt like being burnt to ashes. I just wanted to get another dose of sleep, rest from the exhausting, but short adventure I just went on. I didn't want to worry about anything anymore. Just to fall asleep into the calming world, with the artificial, but pleasant smell of the doctor's coat. The feeling of it under my shaking fingers… I grabbed it tightly, not to let that soothing texture disappear.
"I need you to know that the injuries you've been through are more serious than you think. Exaggerating yourself like you just did, it's going to only slow down the already languid speed of regeneration. And you all without my assistance wouldn't be progressing at in terms of it…
… Without my treatment and medication, you would all be corpses by now…" — A melancholic voice travelled the air in the empty corridors.
This doctor surely talks a lot, just like if he didn't have anyone to talk to usually at all.
With the tone he is speaking about it… I bet a lot of things are the place they are thanks to him. The sorrow in his voice… I could say it was filled with regret and feeling that I commonly teased my heart. Lack of appreciation.
But his words about all of the treatments… They made me think.
"Did you… drug me with something??" — I asked, whispering in his ear that was close by.
His pace got slower, as I felt he was shaken by that question.
"Sadly, this is a side effect of the medicament I've developed lately. Despite my constant working on it, the downsides don't disappear. But I can't reject such a pace speeding medicine because of this effect. With all the good sides of it, there must be some side effects to bear."
"But… I feel even worse than I did… Everything inside…" — Every word made me shiver in pain, I had no more power left inside to even speak.
The doctor turned his eyes down to mine. Deep inside of them, I recognized the same emptiness I once felt.
"I've thought about these effects, and came to a conclusion that it's not bad at all. The emotions you gather up inside, they are like a volcano. Destroying everything that is inside, until finally coming up on the surface. I gave them to you to make the awakening more bearable. Physically and mentally. Seeing how you reacted in the past, I wouldn't want any of that repeating, and you running in a rampage into the jaws of the beast, which is the outside now… Calming the inner beast is one of the most difficult achievements one can get… Yet, the only one that can truly do it is the beast itself. You must answer yourself…
…Did you feel better being empty? Or being a conglomerate of contrasting emotions wanting to rip you from the inside is more… you?"
A real image of the scientist. Observing the world from many sides, splitting it into layers, with the most important factor being the truth and honesty.
"It feels awkwardly weird, the void inside. Calming but worrying at the same time. These two cancel each other out, making you feel nothing at all. But neglecting all the emotions… Isn't that what takes the humanity away from us?" — I responded to him, glaring at the dark walls we were passing by.
"It does. However at the times like this, when you have nothing you can cling onto, feeling like that… makes you calm down and collect the doubts scattered around your brain…" — His voice went down at the end. As if he was talking from his experience.
"Do you take these pills too?" — I asked out of curiosity.
"…" — The silence has fallen, just to be broken by a quiet laugh.
"Sometimes there are just things no one would carry on without them…"
This sounded just like something I would say, and made me calm for the rest of our silence walk.
He carried me into a room I haven't been in yet. Similar to the last one, all white, but decorated much more, covering the unbearable brightness with all kinds of furniture. A couple of beds were standing by the wall on the right. A wide, gray desk was lying in the center, with various papers and unknown items lying scattered around. The rest of the walls were entirely covered with tall bookshelves, filled with various books and objects one can't normally see in this metropolis. Standing in two corners, were tall computers connected by thick wiring, computing something right now, probably. Biology posters hanging in the empty spaces, a true office of the doctor.
He carefully laid down my body on the bed closest to the desk, and then poured a glass of water for me. Bringing it closer to my mouth, the doctor helped me empty it. The feeling of cold water, it felt so refreshing and rose my energy. I would ask him for one more, but I just didn't feel like it.
Lying like that, glaring at the empty ceiling, I wondered what on Earth was happening.
And just then, out of nowhere, he started unbuttoning my shirt. I shuddered, asking with a loud voice:
"Hey! What are you doing?" — Catching his hand midway my shirt, I got anxious by a mysterious man just about to have a glare at my naked body.
"I'm checking on your wounds just to check everything is okay with them. I'm a doctor, am I not?"
But I didn't let him go.
The doctor just looked at me with distress, and calmly explained.
"You don't need to worry anymore. No one here wants to harm you. I don't have any ill intentions, just to heal you and make you ready to bear your growing power."
But it wasn't it that worried me…
He seemed to understand what I had on my mind.
"And I know you're… a woman. I'm a doctor, after all."
He looked at me with his tired eyes.
"If keeping that up makes you comfortable, I'm not against it. Sometimes we need a facade of appearing stronger, even if it's just having up an appearance of a man. If it is what keeps us from getting humiliated, then it's for the better, maybe. You may have the character, but your strength is still being developed and awakening."
Character? I feel like slowly loosing that too, becoming just a mad shell of a person I once was.
"Straight up abandoning my feminine side just feels like abandoning all the women I am fighting for out there…" — I felt bad just trying to change something in me to falsely appear more powerful.
Knowing that out there are many women who fight for themselves, just being themselves, makes me feel sick for how much our gender is discriminated because our bodies are weaker, not "designed" for fighting nor carrying physical and mental weights. That's what all of them think. But I do differently. We are not weak at all, it's the rest of the society that degraded us, classifying the power by one's body strength.
"Right now, you are fighting for yourself. And you've felt on your own body how hard is it to do right now, with all of those people around. They might not hurt you intentionally, but being in here does not mean no pain at all." — He grabbed my wrists to watch the marks left on by the man crushing them.
The doctor got some ointment from the drawer in the desk, and started spreading in on them. It felt warm, almost like burning my skin, which made me groan quietly.
"Just bear it. There is nothing I can do to make the pain ease faster." — His fingers started to smear it more softly.
When he finished, he once again asked.
"Can I check your wounds right now?"
But I wondered, despite from being beaten all around by my own inattention.
"What wounds do I have anyway?
"You've been shot in your thigh. Almost bled out on the spot. Good thing Orbis helped you out with his ability. To control the liquids, more specifically water, he was able to make the flow of the blood less abundant, and with his medical skills he bandaged your wounds. Quite a good job he did there… I wonder who taught him this… Not me…" — He spoke as his long fingers slowly unbuttoned my shirt, starting from the bottom, all the way to my thighs, but not a button higher.
To my surprise, there really was a bandaged leg, slightly in blood, which I haven't felt was the main issue at all.
Rather… Orbis… He really did that?
"Huh… That's funny… Because this guy wanted to harm me so many times… And yet, he helped me- Agh!! — The doctor touched the wound in a place where I finally felt growing pain.
"Still bleeding a bit, despite being sewn by suprastiches and bioskinned… Your awakening might be the cause of it."
His worried gaze made me wonder. What is all of this awakening stuff he is talking about?
While he was checking something carefully with my leg, I've decided to ask him the one question that has been bothering my mind.
"Can you explain to me… What is really happening?"
My voice got cold, and it felt like I've had enough of keeping the truth away from me.
The growing spark of energy in my body, to nourish it, I needed answers.
And the stare of the doctor who was taking care of me, It turned into an exhausted gaze of a person who went through this hell many times. Yet, I was eager for an answer.