The Prize of Dysprosium

Chapter XXV: Alpha Female

In my dream, Garmen is wearing a long white dress and jumping up and down on a giant periodic table like it's a bouncy castle, screaming with joy and laughter and with her long blonde hair flying behind her. There is no trace of the bloody dead-eyed girl from my memories, or the melting banshee from my nightmares. All around her are other people who I have no idea who are – wait yes. There is one I recognize from a fainted picture. The name surfaces after a second of grabbling for it: Whetü Ngata, Hannah's daughter. She's laughing her head off, happy.

The dream shifts and there's Grace. She's sailing on her ship made of paper, still smoking a cigarette and staring out into the horizon. Then there is Mafalda in the meadow, drinking tea. I beg for the calm of that particular dream to continue because I know the storm that'll hit me the second it ends. Of course it's useless to hold onto a dream. They break too easily.

When I wake up to a steady beeping I lie for a moment and stare up into the ceiling. It's made of bricks, but the room is covered with medical tools and I'm on a bed with multiple drops in my arms and on my burned chest. It's not the dental clinic, but it's definitely in the bunker. I don't know how I'm still alive. Inside I feel dead, but my body aches and burns too much. There is a sort of gauze wrapped around half my face and my chest rattles as I breathe. I want to go back to sleep and never wake up again, but when I close my eyes I see the Pacifier and Anton's body parts raining down around me.

I was thrown backwards as flames burned my skin, and I hit my head hard against the ground which must have knocked me out for a few seconds. When I regained my vision, a more than familiar hand was lying beside me, severed and half-burned.

I open my eyes again, wondering if I'm on drugs right now – morphine or something else, I don't care – and whether I can somehow find enough of it to kill myself.

But if I have to kill myself I'll have to get to it before anybody comes to check on me. I try to sit up, but my body is a dead thing which doesn't want to listen to me. Instead I end up rolling out of the bed and down on the floor, tearing something sown together in my back. Did they run out of fancy Government medicine? Or am I just so banged up it hasn't worked?

Giving off heavy grunts and with flakes tearing from the parts of my skin that isn't covered in bandages I try to stand, fail, and begin half-crawling, half-dragging myself towards a set of drawer, tearing out drops from my arms and chest as I do. The thing which has been beeping stops beeping and becomes a long, stretched out shrill of a sound. I gruff my way through the room and tear out drawer after drawer as I hear footsteps approaching fast outside the room. I finally find a small blade, the word scalpel coming to mind, causing an elevation in me just as the door opens with a slam and lots of people yelling. Before I can even make a scratch on my neck, hands are grabbing me, tearing off skin and pressing the knife out of my hand. I scream and kick, but my body is weak and fragile, and I can't control my own muscles anymore.

The faceless uniforms get me carried back to bed and strap me down with leather handcuffs, stick the pads back onto my chest so the beeping resumes, and push the drops back into my veins. For a moment, my body reacts with a flood of ecstasy because it thinks it's some kind of drug before it turns weak from disappointment, and I hate it for it.

"...tore out his stitches," somebody is saying.

"...knock him out?"

"...addict, the doctor says no."

"...healed enough he doesn't need more suture."

And then Dr. Max is there too, grabbing my face carefully as to not tear the bandages. He looks almost as tired as I feel dead.

"Noah," he says. "Please breathe, I can't give you any morphine. Please breathe."

"Why don't you just kill me already?" I yell. "I want the drugs, give me the drugs!" God, do I want them – I want to escape this nightmare, I want to join Mafalda in the meadow. But Dr. Max shakes his head with a sad look and I feel the cool metal of his wedding band brushed against my hair. It's only now I realize I'm not fighting anymore, just lying still as my body convulses in one sob after the other. Someone is putting grease on my wounds and my skin gradually stops burning, but everything else still hurts.