After a few days in a hospital, I woke up strapped to a bed. At first, the lights blinded me, and I was sure I was dreaming, but then a nurse came in and dimmed the lights, saying something in Portuguese.
I told her in English that I didn't understand. She switched to speaking English, to my relief, and informed me that I had washed up on a nearby beach, barely alive.
"You have been in a coma for a few days now," she added with a considerate look, then jotted something down on a notepad.
I squinted at the dark-haired woman, trying to make sense of the news. "But why am I strapped down?"
"To keep you from falling off the bed." She pulled a stool over and sat down close to me, her shadow cast on the pale blue curtain behind her, which separated my side of the room from presumably another bed with or without a patient. "You were suffering from seizures, and we were afraid you would hurt yourself. I'll have the nurses remove the straps as soon as I check your vitals." She put the earpieces from the stethoscope around her neck into her ears and checked my pulse, breathing, and temperature with a forehead thermometer. Tired and a little dizzy, I didn't say much else. Then she left.
Thinking back on the last few days of blank space in my brain, my face scrunched involuntarily. How could I have been unconscious? I thought I was on a boat.
Slowly, a small woman's face came to me, as did her name: Nadine. The Captain's daughter. I rescued her from a sailor that attacked her while she was exploring the storage room I had been hiding in. When I saved her, the workers discovered me, and two threw me overboard. Morice and Fred, the bastards who were too afraid of me outing them or them losing their jobs that they would prefer me dead than capable of speech.
I decided I would have to get back at them somehow. But seeing as I was in Portugal and I wouldn't be able to locate a mechanic ship without knowing at least the name of the vessel, I had no choice other than to drop the thought and move forward. First thing's first, I needed to identify myself with the hospital. Then I needed to figure out a way to get myself formally ID'd here, if not transported back to South Korea or the United States. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to reverse any of the harm I did to myself by disregarding my medical degree and going on a pointless adventure to see a world that might remain dark for the rest of my life.
Glancing toward the open room door, I saw into the hallway. Some nurses pushed a young child with albinism across my line of sight. The child, maybe a boy, was in the middle of a small-scale seizure affecting his arms but not his legs or head. I guessed he had Selene-Corpus syndrome. I knew enough about it from my time studying to be a doctor to identify it relatively fast.
I wondered how I must look after being in a coma and having seizures. The professional-looking woman who visited me made no mention that I had Selene-Corpus. So, I searched my foggy memory for a while longer to figure out what could still be wrong with me. I felt hydrated and wasn't hungry, so I assumed the time I spent in the ocean wasn't the primary factor impacting my present condition.
Then a frightening, buglike man entered my mind. That thing greeted me in a strange, lucid dream. Wasn't Nadine there too, looking scared?
My body was its body. And my torso looked as if a tattooer had gone at it was red ink.
Did it still look that way? I couldn't tell. Not with my arms strapped down at my sides, covered by a pale paper gown and cold, sterile-smelling sheets.
Soon, the nurses came and unstrapped me. Two of the five tried to talk to me, but how they were instructing each other to do stuff confused me, and I wound up mumbling, "I don't ... I ... Could you say that again?"
They left me alone again.
At least I could look at myself now. Sitting up, although this simple action brought me considerable back pain, I grabbed the hospital gown by the neckline and pulled it forward.
Raw, red eyes connected by lines decorated my torso from my shoulders to my pelvis.
My eyes widened, and a rush of sharp, needlelike sensations rushed through me from head to toe.
That wasn't a dream, speaking with that freakish being that was armored in a black exoskeleton.
How could that be real?
More so, what did it mean? And how was Nadine involved?
I didn't need to get revenge on Morice and Fred. What I needed to do was find Nadine.