Project: Socialize (Chapters 198-Continued) [Hiatus]

223. Asylum

My heart still palpitated in my chest with no signs of slowing down at all as my warm blood pulsed throughout my body. I breathed heavily, gasping for air as I finally allowed my body to take in air once we were in a safe situation. Even after the man had left us, my mind could not truly relax. By the look of the man's muscular and bulky physical build, one can sense immense power in his one good arm. He is definitely capable of causing plenty of damage to us if we were to confront him head on, so it is only wise to avoid a confrontation even though we have ten people present. Besides, if that man has planned something, then it will only be stupid to try and confront him.

"Is he gone?" I heard Zaksus softly whisper to me.

"Yeah," I muttered back as I got on my knees and peeked out the window down the dark hallway that the man had disappeared in.

"This place probably won't stay safe for long," Mura observed.

"But we should still rest up a bit here," Loyd said. "We just sprinted like hell down the hallway while we're lacking on sleep."

"Yeah," Mura nodded. "Let's do that."

"Noah," Luna's voice called over to the boy. "Can you read what this says?"

I looked over at Luna and saw that she was flipping through a book of some sort. When I walked over as well and inspected the layout of the pages, I assume that it is some sort of journal of sorts as on each entry, there were a date written.

"It's some kind of journal," Noah said on first glance, confirming my suspicion.

The others soon gathered around the desk in the center of the room as Noah tried to translate for us. However, he was reading the entries first to himself in his mind, probably to first understand the meaning of them. As he flipped through the journal, our eyes were trained on his face where we observed a somewhat disturbed countenance be born.

"This journal probably belonged to the man in charge of this place seventy years ago," Noah explained. "And...according to what it says, this place is an asylum to treat the mentally crippled."

"An insane asylum?" Irina asked.

"They call it that on paper," Noah sighed, "but I wouldn't say that it is so."

"It's one of those fake establishments the Jorzan's used to conduct human experiments using Vilhemians?" Alvelyn asked.

Noah nodded in response. "Here it says," he flipped to the first page of the old and dusty journal. "The patients were all sent in through military 'medical' vehicles and that they were all mentally ill in some way or the other. Based on the quick criteria listed for what is defined as mentally ill...basically if you're not Jorzan then you are mentally ill."

He paused and then flipped to the next page.

"So after that first entry, the owner of this journal started writing about the different treatments the Jorzan's used." Noah took a deep breath before he continued. "Here's what it says.

"Pain Therapy: done on selected individuals from the first batch of patients. Our hypothesis is that by causing physical pain, the patients may have their brain activity restored to normal. The process includes whipping the body, stabbing and cutting the body, carving meat off of bones, and severing limbs (after seeing that severing limbs did not work, we tried to reconnect the limb by sewing them back, freezing them together, fusing them together using molten metal). However, it was to no avail. Therefore, we tried shoving rods up the nostrils of patients to conduct surgery on the brain without incision. Many patients died from brain trauma, but there were a few who survived. It would appear that they have lost all brain activity. Due to the food shortage, we have no choice but to use the deceased patients as well as those that are brain dead as a food source for the other inmates."