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HEARING her voice in the middle of this nightmare wasn't something I had anticipated. But there she was, waking up and groggily asking someone what had happened to her while I lay there; my senses coming back to me slowly. In the first few moments of my consciousness, I wondered the same thoughts as hers.
What the actual fuck had just happened?
My ears weren't ringing as if they were stuck between a gong anymore. My body was deprived of all the haunting types of pain it had just seemed to have gone through. In fact, if it made any sense whatsoever, it felt ten times better. Did it seem...rejuvenated? Because of that pain?
My eyes had opened to a familiar setting a few minutes ago. I had been here, this was the infirmary at the far end of the campus. I had been here barely a month ago to get my last vaccine booster shot. Now, had been laid out on one of the ten beds now, there was no one in the room except Aethera, who was sitting upright in her bed which was beside mine, while one of the nurses took her blood pressure.
"Mrs Rose, can I get some water after this, please?" She asked and it was then that I realized my hearing, maybe, hadn't recovered from all that ringing.
She must have muttered those words but I could hear them clearly. She was almost two meters away from me, murmuring those words to the nurse standing right beside her, and yet it felt like she had spoken them right beside my ears. Seconds later, the nurse moved the tray and I could feel the tray hitting the ebony table, an edge scratching the wood. And suddenly, when I took a breath in, I heard everything; from the water dripping behind the building to the birds fluttering ten metres over our heads.
No, there is something wrong with me, I thought, repeatedly for the next few minutes. There had to be something wrong, I shouldn't be feeling like this, not after that kind of pain. The agony of it was simply too much for me to even expect myself to wake up, yet here I was, laying in this bed with all my senses intact, feeling better than ever before.
With that thought in my mind, I checked everything. I tried moving my hands, and my legs, I even tried to touch my ears to find out if they had burst open because sure enough, they should have. My limbs shouldn't have been alright, they should be buzzing with pain or burnt from the fire that I had felt enveloping them. But they weren't and that fact alone scared me. In those few minutes, whatever I experienced seemed new...fresh. Every muscle I moved, from the tip of my lips to the tip of my fingers felt different. It felt foreign.
Energy passed through me as if this was the first time I had felt anything physically. Every time I tried to move a limb or the smallest muscle, my breath hitched with the discovery of this newness.
"Oh, Art is awake too!" The nurse chimed out of the blue and I winced in response. Too loud.
"Aethera, Art, everything seems normal to me, at least. I am just going to go for a minute and inform Dr Mathers and he'll be with both of you shortly." Mrs Rose left the room as soon as she spoke those words, in a stride that seemed to be a little too hasty on her part.
Aethera shifted and finally got up, her feet dangling beside the bed, her back against mine, and tried to get up. As soon as she got up, she sat again and let out a breath, that I could clearly hear was shaking. There was a single drip attached to her arm and somehow I knew that this drip made her uncomfortable. She was simply twitching too much, her back was stiff for a second and then it would twitch.
I heard a muffled cry a second later and as if it was a reflex, I was up in a minute, removing my drip and walking towards her. It wasn't until I stood behind her, barely a step away that my last memory of her came back to me with a sudden flash.
I had been so fucking rude to her. Terribly, horribly rude for literally no reason. I didn't mean to talk to her that way, obviously but something had triggered me to completely and utterly botch up my entire stance around her. And that was the first time we had ever talked, the first time I had heard her talk, the first time I had seen those light cyan eyes up close rather than peaking from the side to get a look, for the first time, I had been alone in a room with her.
Yet, I had talked to her that way.
In my nervousness, I had been an absolute jerk and it was as simple as that. I was nervous, it wasn't her fault at all.
Would she want me to talk to her anymore? I questioned but when despite her desperate attempts to hide her fear, a small whimper escaped her, I couldn't control it anymore. I was by her side in a second.
"Aethera? Are you alright? Are you feeling any kind of pain?" I asked, trying to get a look at her face which was hidden by her dark hair, falling all over her face and shoulders.
"I don't like n-needles," she responded, her voice so weak that I couldn't even begin to compare it with the one I had heard in the library. One of her hands trembled over the arm where the drip was attached and her breathing shuddered with every little effort she made to touch it. She was panicking and becoming dizzy at the sight at the same time, her forehead so distressed that she looked like she would have passed out right there and then.
Suddenly, Aethera wasn't the same girl I had seen behind the glass windows or tables away at the library anymore.
"Hey, hey, it's okay," I muttered, kneeling down in front of her. I saw her tear-struck face then, barely able to meet my eyes. The fire I had seen in her eyes before when she defended herself in the library, had diminished.
"What happened to you?" I asked. Had something happened in the library? Was that the reason why only the two of us were in here, laid on the beds, punctured with the drips?
"I-i don't know. There was this pain in my chest and -"
"Ringing in your ears?" I questioned, as baffled as she was. She looked at me, for the first time since we had been in the library's reading room together. Her eyes were confused, but still in pain. "Let me remove this first. It's clearly causing you more pain than it's helping." Within a second, I removed the drip from her pale arms. She gasped for a split second but then moved away from the needle I had just thrown on the table.
Her eyes were visibly lighter, her face and stance more relaxed now within the next few seconds. She didn't look in that direction anymore, not even when I passed her a small ball of cotton to wipe a few drops of blood around the area where the needle had just been pricking her.
"How did you know? About the ringing?" She asked as her breath became more even and I took a step back from my earlier position.
"Because that's exactly what happened to me too."
"But, how could it happen to you too -"
Immediately, I heard someone walking towards the room, and I silenced her with a quick gesture. She didn't understand at first but then something shifted in her stance as well as she straightened herself. Barely a minute later, the doctor walked in with the nurse.
"I see both of you are feeling better already!" Dr Mathers was right behind us, at the far end of the room.
What was it with doctors and nurses and loud, positive tones?
"Is everything okay with our tests? How did we get here?" Aethera asked before I could. I sat beside her as Dr Mathers shuffled through the papers in his hands. Aethera shifted, maybe uncomfortable with my closeness so I shifted away before the doc would speak.
"To be honest, Ms Michaelson, we don't know. Both of your vitals seem normal. There is no increase in blood pressure, haemoglobin seems better than your last routine test with us. There is nothing out of place in either of your reports."
"That's it? There is nothing?" I questioned, not believing a word he had said. "Absolutely nothing?"
"No, absolutely nothing. Some students found both of you collapsed and unconscious in the library and they reported to us. When we brought you in and checked, there were higher than usual temperatures but that subsided within the next hour. Whatever tests we have done are normal." As soon as he said that, I knew there was something horribly wrong here.
No one could imagine that kind of pain, and certainly not two people, together at the same time. Maybe there was nothing wrong with us on the outside but I had felt that pain, I had lived through that agony, and for those few minutes that it had lasted, death had seemed to be a better option, so how were we found just with a minor fever?
At this moment, I hoped something was wrong, I needed something to actually be wrong to make sense of what I had been through.
No, there was something wrong despite whatever the doctor had just told us. Ever since I had woken up, I knew something was different. Something had shifted and it certainly wasn't the same as before. A part of me knew now that whatever the doctor had just told us, was either an excuse or he genuinely didn't know what was wrong. If it was the former reason, there was something conspiring here that he didn't let us into.
That pain, that moment that it had lasted, it had changed something. I didn't know what, but I knew I was going to find out soon. Reports may not show it, but this was one hell of a coincidence and there was no doubt in my mind that what I had felt was just nothing.
I was definitely feeling better physically but even the simple act of taking a breath seemed different now. When I had woken up, my first thought had been that my body was feeling more relaxed, but that wasn't it. Not anymore. As time passed, I knew better wasn't the word for it. Weird was. This feeling wasn't like waking up on the right side of the bed, feeling more rested than usual. It was uncomfortable, foreign. I couldn't pinpoint it, but I knew it and every moment that passed, made me more familiar with it.
Minute by minute, I was feeling myriad emotions. I was feeling ten things at once, I was noticing twenty by the second. And by a minute, if it made any sense, I had memorized thirty.
Like the single strand of hair annoying Aethera, like the tilted stance of Mrs Rose, like the sound of the water hose, the gardner was using in front of the building. How the hell these things came to my mind, was beyond my knowledge, but they were just there.
"Maybe it's because of the vaccine, that is our best guess. Everyone reacts to the vaccine differently, maybe this was yours - late and coincidently at the same time but that is the only explanation I can provide from this." My gaze met the doctor's and if I had any confusion before, it had changed to surety now; the man himself wasn't convinced, let alone me.
He was sweating, his left eye was slightly twitching and it was then that I noticed the break in his voice. Was he lying? And why did I suddenly feel that he was lying?
Aethera nodded and turned to face me. Her eyes must have met mine for barely a moment but I knew exactly what she was thinking.
She wasn't convinced too.
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"Observation is a necessary protocol, I am so sorry, dear," Mrs Rose told us after the doctor had left. "I suggest both of you get some rest, you're gonna be here all night. If you need anything, my room is right in front of this one, just ring the bell or shout, whatever," she added, leaving two bags beside Aethera's table.
"I asked your roommates to send some sleepwear, they're in here. Get yourself cleaned up later, the bathroom's in that corner. I'll bring dinner in an hour or so," she said before leaving the room.
Aethera was still sitting in the same position and I questioned myself whether talking now seemed a better idea. Soon enough, I opted against it, picked up my bag, and walked back to my bed.
Moments later, to my surprise, she spoke up, "Are you still feeling the pain?" Her voice was louder and healthier than before. As if testing me, she muttered those words and we both knew in that moment when I heard her that she didn't even speak them loud enough.
"Not anymore, not since I woke up," I replied and then turned to face her, even though her back was still against me. She had the ends of the sheets clutched in her hands, her body slightly more rigid than before. "What about you?" I asked, moving a little to the side to look at her.
"Not since I woke up too," she said, nodding her head and I could feel she was deep in thought by this point. If she felt all the things I was feeling, obviously she was thinking this through in a million ways.
"Got any theories?" I asked in a lighter tone.
"Radioactive program beneath the building," she replied, too fast, as if that is what she was exactly thinking about. I couldn't help but chuckle at her response and soon enough, she joined in too. Hers, a lot better than mine for sure; a lot better than any I had heard ever before.
"I think it's your reading interests haunting us," I added, but soon enough realized what kind of memory it brought back for us.
Without thinking, I quickly added further, "I'm sorry about what I said earlier, I didn't mean to be rude to you before, I just wasn't having the best morning and I took it out on you, I'm not usually like that."
Lies, I had a completely perfect morning, I just didn't have good enough control over my nervousness around her.
"That's alright," she replied, a minute too late. "I get it," she shrugged and then turned back to face me, "this was by far the most horrible morning I have had though."
"Definitely tops the hall of fame of shitty Monday mornings for me," I agreed, taking out a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from the bag.
"Do you mind if I use the washroom first? I just need to take a quick shower," she asked, taking her bag in her hand.
"No problem; go ahead," I said, keeping my clothes beside the bag.
There was a single washroom with a shower stall attached at the back of the room where Aethera now made her way, clutching the bag to her chest, another toiletries bag hanging from her arm. I moved to the other side of the room, near the window that stretched its view till the end of the property.
The infirmary was on the other end of the campus, with nothing but an empty field of wild roses as its backyard.
I used to come here often with Archie, standing beside the building, smoking up, watching some sunsets, and definitely not talking about the campus behind us. Funny how Archie hadn't shown up to the infirmary yet. Funny how he wasn't standing near this window, waving a middle finger at me. Knowing him, it was unusual that he wasn't here when I had woken up.
It was funny how no one had shown up here, not even my best friend or Aethera's roommate. It was almost night, the sun had set when the doctor was still talking to us. Yet, no one came? Maybe they had checked up on us when we had been unconscious, I reasoned with myself.
But just like every other thing that had seemed out of place before, this too was weird. Arch and I had grown up together. We weren't those inseparable kinds of best friends, we just thought hanging out with each other was better than hanging out with worse, spoilt brats of corrupted fathers. He was the reckless kind, but the one to always show up. Always there to smack your head and loudly wake you up. He would have, should have been here.
What am I missing? I questioned, running every scenario through my mind as I looked ahead at the field. I tried to think of my last moments first because they seemed to be the clearest. I was sure the pain had begun from the middle of my chest, just like Aethera had said it did for her. She had heard the painful ringing too, which I knew ultimately knocked both of us out.
No, that had definitely happened.
By the look of this place, there wasn't an earthquake, attack, or anything. Anything far less possible but believable.
Physical illness? Maybe. Maybe it was so bad that they didn't declare the results to us, but both of us? Same illness, together and conveniently on the same day, at the same time? No, not enough.
I tried remembering the days that led to today then. What had happened differently that would lead to this? I remembered the vaccination, which hadn't pained or caused discomfort at all. My mind then remembered the day Archie, Hanna, and I had tried to sneak out of the property, from the other end of the campus, barely a week ago.
Arch had tripped on the fence, falling back to the ground, right on me. Yes, I had come to the infirmary that day too, how could I forget? I was right beside Aethera's current bed, while Mrs Rose cleaned the wound on my hand -
The wound. I remembered, pulling back the sleeves of my t-shirt to check it.
Everything at that moment shifted, that simple glance changed everything I had been believing before.
"What the fuck?" My fingertips touched the absolutely clear skin. There was no wound, heck, there was no scarring at all, not even the one my dogs had caused years before while playing with me which should have been there, right above the active wound.
I checked my other arm, rolling my sleeves all the way while my mind screamed fifteen different things at me, one of them being that this was just a dream, hadn't woken up yet, and I am still very much in a twisted dream, or worse, dead and this is an afterlife because what I witnessed would not make sense if any of this was real.
No, this can't be happening; I screamed in my mind, when my eyes could not find the small birthmark on my forearm anymore. As if on cue, my thoughts were pierced by a glass shattering. I immediately looked up and realized the power had gone off. Even the lights near the perimeter suddenly went off.
"Goddamit!" I heard Aethera curse under her breath, again, clear and loud to my ears.
I didn't have time to think about the goddamn electricity anymore, I led myself to the washroom and immediately knocked on the door.
"Aethera, are you okay?" I asked a little urgency in my voice.
"Yeah, sorry, I broke the lid off the toothpaste holder, I guess," That's it? it sounded like a whole mirror had shattered. "I'm alright," she said and I heard her take a few steps back until she was just opposite the door.
"Do you need a flashlight?" I asked. It was pretty dark outside even though weirdly, I had found my way to the bathroom in one piece. Another revelation struck me like a thousand bricks with that thought.
I could see.
Why the fuck can I see?
I saw it all, even in the absence of any light peaking from outside and that shouldn't have been possible at all.
I had suffered from night blindness almost all my life and yet, here I was, able to navigate myself through a room in pitch darkness, avoiding objects like beds and tables. I blinked, looking back at the window. It wasn't as clear as it would be in the light, but I could make out every significant detail.
Was I seeing more than I should? Or was this how it felt to be able to look in the dark with completely normal eyes?
"Um, Art?" Aethera's voice brought me back. Her tone caught me off guard. Suddenly, it seemed higher in pitch but controlled...stressed. "Art, can you-"
"What's wrong?" I asked, my palm placed firmly on the knob, ready to open it.
"There is something wrong -" she choked by the end of the sentence, and I heard her take a step away from the door.
"What? Should I come in?" The urgency in my voice increased by the second as her responses became more delayed.
I couldn't understand what made me this urgent, I couldn't understand anything since I had woken up. I was talking to a person as if we had never had a spat during our very first talk as if we had known each other before...as if I needed to be there for her.
And this person, this person seemed to be conversing in the same tone. I had never even heard her speak and here she was, a door away from mine, calling my name.
What the hell had gone wrong with us?
"I don't know," she finally added. "Please don't freak out."
"I'm coming in," I said, opening the door in an instant.
In the darkness, she stood barely a foot away from the door, her back pressed against the wall as her eyes looked ahead.
For a bare second, I was struck by her; reminded of the other night when in this same tank top she had been sitting near her window, the moonlight dancing against her arms, her shoulder-length mahogany hair flowing across her face. But it was then that my eyes met hers.
And the world around me seized to exist.
Her eyes were nothing like the tear-struck ones before - no - they were enchanting and I didn't know whether I was scared or mesmerized to see them, I just was seeing them, with no control. They were unreal. It baffled me to be held by them, but it also made me calmer.
If it made any sense whatsoever, her eyes were glowing, the blue in them were burning embers, not just mere eyes. It seemed as if everything around us was a dull grey because of the darkness, yet there she was, her eyes screaming this electric blue that became the focal point in the space. Those twenty different things I could notice before? Nothing, no more, they faded into the darkness. All that was left for my senses to register were those eyes.
She turned to face me, both her eyes meeting mine for the first time since they had captured me and it was then that I felt her stumble and my concentration broke.
"No...no, no, what is happening?" She cried, her voice suddenly desperate. Her eyebrows were clutched in despair, and her arms flew to her hair, scrunching them in frustration. "Art, your eyes - "
"What -" Before I could finish, my gaze met the mirror where she had been looking before. To my shock, there it was. Right there, staring back at me, the same pair of eyes I had just been held by, but this time, they were mine, a bright emerald and those burning embers in them that I couldn't understand, exactly the same.
My fingers moved to my face in an attempt to check whether the person I was looking at was even me but except myself, another person stood in the same small room, both of us baffled, both of us mirroring scared, burning eyes.
"Mr Taylor, you're not understanding," I heard the voice before I could react and everything that I had stopped feeling before, came back to me, all my senses. "We can take care of him and the girl, I'll personally look after the results and monitor their health, I have alerted the Dean, he's on his way to meet me and we will discuss this with him. I can assure you the Academy is the safest place for them until we understand what has happened here," the doctor continued, in a room, right behind the mirror.
"Can you hear him too? I think he's talking to your -"
"Father," I muttered. "You've been hearing too, right?" I asked, and she nodded, almost as if in shame.
"I don't know how, I just woke up and there were all these voices and sounds and I can't even keep track of what all new sounds I have heard," She mumbled.
"Aethera, we need to figure this out before it gets out of our hands, you know this isn't normal right?" I asked and to my surprise, she nodded with the same determination.
"I don't know what's happening but whatever has happened in the last few minutes is not normal, what happened in the library was not normal, I don't care if they say it was. Either you and I have lost it or they have," She let out a sigh, almost annoyed at this point. Before I could say anything to her, I heard a faint sound in reply, only when I focused.
"I don't care about the security. That girl and my son should be on the next flight to London, Doctor," I heard him say. "He needs my care, not the one provided at that shut-off campus. I'll talk to the Dean myself." I heard him reply.
"But these results aren't normal, Mr Taylor, I don't know whether they should even travel. I don't understand how but blood types don't change within a few days. Neither do scars heal themselves in such a short period. Even the identification marks in their reports aren't present anymore and you need to believe me when I tell you this but their temperatures were off the charts before they awoke. This could be a serious reaction to the vaccine and it needs to be monitored well," Beside me, Aethera, checked her feet, searching, just like me, for her scars.
"Oh, great. What a shitshow," she muttered, throwing her head back in despair. I wanted to laugh at her expression. Our world was crumbling but this girl hadn't been scared unlike me, and she had only loathed a needle in this entire process. Other than that, she was annoyed, like a child who was fed up of playing in the park and just wanted to go home. She just wanted this to end already, as if she still believed it was a dream and she would wake up.
Something in that chaotic moment made me smile, especially at her.
"You don't need to understand, I have a good enough team to put them through better tests, to do whatever is necessary to figure out what has happened," My father was far more annoyed now, grumbling away directions to someone else on another phone.
It was then that I knew what he was up to.
My father was in the securities business, all kinds of them. Legal, digital, and physical. And he had just sent his ground team to Seattle to pick us up. I knew at that moment what was to follow and ideally, it would have been a good option but a voice inside me ticked me off. Intuition is what I would describe as my entire stance changed.
At that moment, I could foresee a future, depending on my understanding of how my father functioned, for Aethera and myself and it didn't seem pleasant anymore.
My father and his people weren't getting anywhere near us.
"Aethera, listen to me," I said, moving away from the bathroom and dragging her out with me. "I don't know what is going on, but I am pretty sure that my father's team is going to be here to take us to London for some tests and knowing him, I know what kind of people he will send us to," My father invested into a lot of firms which were testing new-age diseases and coming up with vaccines since the Covid-19 pandemic had struck. I didn't have the heart to explain it to her, the background of my father's industrious profile or why my instincts told me to run in the opposite direction.
Me, going through this, and actually being a potential case study material already was like money chiming in his mind and he would capitalize even his own son. God forbid this was something worse, I knew he would publicize it further. But these were secondary thoughts and the ones I would tell her but in reality, I wanted to get away, and I wanted to take her with me before they got hold of her.
I could see it. I could see her strapped to drips, I could sense the excitement this change would bring for my father. But not her, not me. I would still do it, if it was just me, but not her. She shouldn't have to go through it.
"I heard," She added, rolling her eyes at me. This girl was unbelievable. "But I am not going. I am not going to be a freak show for your father," She groaned, moving away from me. "I don't know what the hell is going on Art, but I am not going to a different country to be a lab rat until I have answers," she said, moving away from me.
"And that's exactly what he will make us if we don't get out of here," I don't know where that came from, but the sudden urge to rush this overwhelmed me. "Aethera, we need to get out of here before those men enter the campus. Somehow, anyhow," I said.
This feeling within me was so foreign that it shocked me as much as it confused her. I wanted to escape, for the first time, for real. Before this, it had been empty threats and restless arguments but no, no more. Whatever this thing was, I knew it was something much more than reality and with the way Aethera's expression changed, I knew she was feeling every bit of the shift as me.
We couldn't pinpoint it just yet, but we knew.
We knew we needed to leave, now.
To my surprise, it was she who added further, "I know a place where we can lay low for the next few days. How much money you got on you?" her eyes dancing in the darkness more than before.
"Enough," I snickered.
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Thanks for reading!