Aftermath Again

Just a few days after I extol sunlight, the weather goes and does this.

Sigh.

It's as if the sky has suddenly realised just how much water it has lying around up there and decided to do some spring cleaning Edwardian fashion. The storm drains have burst, popping up manhole covers and flooding the entire CBD. The wind's been getting in on the act too, being strong enough to cause a significant course deviation to anyone trying to walk in a straight line. The rain acts like it's trying to be hail; it might actually have been hail at some points, and I swear I've seen a few snowflakes. I'm drenched.

The great thing about university is that nobody cares when you miss lectures for a month. I did get a few sideways looks about the eyepatch, but the place always has a few eccentrics who wear these when they don't need them, so they weren't too searching. My fingers aren't putting up with holding a pen for any length of time, but take typing easier, so I'm blogging while in the middle of a lecture right now as a matter of fact. My absence may have gone relatively unnoticed, but I missed a lab and the homework's piled up, so I'll be studying double time. If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because an entire shelf of reference books has fallen on me and crushed me. Send help.

Onto more slenderly related matters, I went to check on Black to see if he was still unconcious or if I needed to get a syringe. Well, he was awake, sitting on the bed and staring at the wall. I locked the door behind me.

"Black." No reaction. "Hey, you!" Nothing. I snapped my fingers in his face. That did something. He turned and looked up at me. His eyes were... well, not dead, exactly. Unfocused. Burnt out. Like smoked glass, was the first thought that popped into my head. I swallowed. Well, it was clear this interrogation wasn't going to go anywhere near like expected. No, I don't think he was faking. It's not really the sort of thing you can.

Bing! went my curiosity, right on cue. I poked him. Nope. Harder. Noooope. I wondered if I'd inflicted permanent brain damage. I shook him by the shoulder a little. "Hey. Heeeey. Anyone home?" He turned to look at me again, then when he started to turn back to the wall I grabbed his head so he couldn't. Not a blink. "Oi. Black. Say something." He just kept staring at me patiently, until I let go. I was at a loss. He was exhibiting signs, reminiscent of the Hallowed, that he hadn't before. I think I'm shelving my 'catch and release' program right now. I need to find out exactly what the MRI did to him.

Still, he at least responds to some stimuli.I'd shaken my head and had my hand on the doorknob to leave when he said, still staring at the wall, "Where am I?"

What could I say? "My house."

"Oh."

I waited, but there was nothing more. Then I got out of there, locked the door and put on the kettle.

...

Also, I'm in the news. By which I mean I'm in a couple of paragraphs buried on the thirteenth page of one of those free papers that everyone throws away. I only found out by chance when making the fire.
You'd think someone appearing from nowhere in the middle of a hospital /or the katana, or the blood/azoth mix all over the place...) would get a bit more attention than that but I'm both glad and worried I haven't. With this and the lenient hospital security, I'm starting to suspect someone somewhere is pulling strings. The article was written anonymously, so I don't have a name to go on, but maybe I could ask around at the printing press. Student surveys, always a potent weapon.

Also also on the list of things to do, I went down to the PO Box and picked up the azoth samples and Strider's pills. I can now start getting to work on them, which is great. I love lab work. That wasn't sarcastic, by the way. There's something very zen about distilling, adding reagents, recrystallisation, chromatography, spectroscopy... It's the write ups I groan at.

What else... I've put in an order for another iPhone and seen about getting another taser. Starting to get a little out of pocket.

Final tally:

Me: Loss of an eye, numerous cuts and scratches including gash from sword strike, mild hypothermia, mild starvation, mild dehydration, gain of now defunct alternate timeline memories, slight loss of sanity, several layers of skin missing from palms.

'Black': Cracked patella, numerous scratches, severe bruising, internal and external bleeding, blood loss, other side effects...?

'Grey': Cracked skull, injury to motor cortex of brain, blood loss.

Med out.