Day 58: Cafeteria

[gald_digger]

Anise woke up feeling lucky to be alive. She still felt a bit waterlogged, even though her skin, hair, and clothes were completely dry. During last night's adventures, she'd swallowed a lot of water, and it still felt heavy and disgusting in her stomach. Her arms and legs were tired from treading water. Lying still in her bed, she still kind of

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[sixth_attack]

Sechs' return from his slumber was akin to being lost out at sea, relentlessly tossed and turned by waves of ice-cold water until his consciousness could take it no longer...

He jolted awake with a strangled gasp, his body twitching from the cold sweat that drenched him and every inch of fabric that had been in contact with his skin. His spine might as well had been carved out from ice, and the right side of his upper body ached so much that it made Sechs wish for sedation to take him out of his pain. Sprawled out on his bed in a tangle of blankets, Sechs' lungs continued to heave in air as his eyes darted about the room. His mind was blank and devoid of thought, but his instincts had been set to panic mode. Something horrible had happened to him the night before...

Sechs gasped again when the image of his rotting arm reemerged from his sluggish memory. The tonic he had taken had defiled his body, infecting his entire right arm, all the way past his shoulder and up to the side of his neck. He was falling apart! Skin and tendons

[timedork]

The military was back in full, it seemed. When the Doctor woke up back in his room (a shame, really; he hadn't made it all the way to the medical wing to have a good look around), he was once again dressed in the crisp uniform from a few days ago. It wasn't long before a soldier to entered the room and escorted him to the cafeteria for breakfast. He helped himself to a plate of eggy bread, with a few sausages on the side, before turning back to find a seat

[sixth_attack]

The memories of his ordeal were becoming too much for Sechs to deal with. He tried to distract himself before he could feel even sicker. He dully blinked his eyes and focused on the food on his tray. Out of all the colors that stupid gruel had to be, why did it have to be pink? That color and texture reminded Sechs a tad too much of flesh or splattered brain matter

[timedork]

The look of concern remained as the Doctor listened to Sechs try to explain what was wrong. The Doctor hadn't been able to check out the 'concoction' in the medical wing in the end, but it had sounded rather suspicious from the start-and even with a lack of details about what happened, his suspicions were somewhat confirmed. "Real bad stuff" could have been any number of things, ranging from bad to the end all of time and space bad (though he expected it was probably closer to the former than it was the latter), but whatever it had been had obviously shaken Sechs.

"I'm sorry," he said solemnly, pushing his breakfast aside for the moment. He could eat later. "Are you feeling any better now?" -Wait, that probably was the wrong way to put it. "Well, I say 'better'..... -You don't still think you're going to die, do you?"

The Doctor hoped not. One thing that had been made clear lately was that the survival of the 'patients' was important-but whether that meant their actual survival was important or that the ones who survived

[sixth_attack]

"Um..." Sechs' tired brain struggled with John's rapidly changing question, unable to fully understand when his head was still dizzy and his stomach cringing non-stop. When John finished, Sechs' mouth pursed into a pained scowl, his mind teetering between telling John everything what happened and snarling at him to screw off.

He already had to explain in detail about his painful experiences to two people so far, his friend Kibitoshin and that sideburned jerk Javert. He didn't want to go through all that again. Yet when it came to describing the torturous experiment he was forced through to his friend, Sechs did feel a little better. Yet with Javert it was more like an interrogation that tore open Sechs' barely healed wounds

[timedork]

The Doctor listened quietly as Sechs started to tell him about how he felt now, and what had happened last night. He couldn't fault Sechs for being hopeful about what the experiment in the infirmary had been, but clearly it had been the furthest thing from a cure (for anything).

He frowned, brow drawn, when Sechs recounted what had happened to his arm. Dead and decaying flesh, that had... "Rotted?" he murmured in echo. That was... wrong, to say the least; from what he could see of Sech's arm on the table, it looked a bit bruised, but definitely not decayed. Not any more.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor repeated. "I'm... Well, it's only a thought, really, but your arm looks... better." If 'better' was really the right word-but compared to flesh rotting away, bruises were definitely better. "Do you think the drug from the infirmary could have made you see things? -Hallucinations, illusions, delusions..." Well, probably not delusions

[sixth_attack]

"I was hoping that was the case myself actually..." Sechs wearily replied with a sigh. The Replica knew all too well what the word illusion and all its related terms meant. His fight with the Great Whophon was a powerful introduction to his experience with hallucinations, something which got even worse ever since he woke up strapped to a chair and under that faceless doctor's mercy

[timedork]

Ah. True, having a second person who saw the same thing reduced the likelihood that it had been just an illusion, but it didn't eliminate it completely. And even if it was, that didn't make it better-it had been real enough to upset Sechs this much, so even if it hadn't happened, it might as well have.

"I wish there was something I could do to help," the Doctor said. The little bit of information Sechs passed on about the drug-the drugs-made it more difficult, however. He could try the infirmary tonight, see if there was anything still there, but he'd have to find the right one before he could even begin to do something for Sechs, or for any of the other victims of last night. There were bound to be other victims who'd either trusted the military or thought the rewards would be worth the risk.

"Your friend didn't take the drug too, did he?"

[sixth_attack]

"...Crap..." Sechs' back and shoulders slumped low to the table, his hand worriedly dug into his scalp as he pondered over John's question. The android hadn't thought of that possibility! Something could have happened to Ritsuka while Sechs had blacked out...

"I don't know... I sure as hell hope he didn't!" Sechs replied, gazing down at the table as he tried to recover any mental images of Ritsuka taking the same bait as he did. "I kinda rushed outta that infirmary when I thought that drug was a dud... So if he did take anything, I wouldn't have seen it..."

Damnit, now Sechs really needed to find that kid and ask him what happened the night before! That was, if Ritsuka was even still alive for Sechs to talk to in the first place...!