Mark opened his eyes, but instead of the dark sky, what he saw with his blurry vision was a typical white ceiling of any house, "where I am?" asked him in a weak voice, trying to move his body to see around him, but just as he asked that, he passed out once again.
That same scene repeated itself a few times, with Mark coming and going off from his unconscious state, but all Mark saw was a few glimpses of what was happening around him, all in blurry shades of white.
After a few times of that same thing happening, Mark opened his eyes, but this time he was not seeing blurry anymore, and his mind also felt more lucid, and recognizing the same white ceiling, he moved his body a little as if trying to sit, and saw the face of Jane, sleeping on a chair by the side of his bed.
"So you finally recovered," said the voice of Frank coming from the other side of the room, and Mark turned his head to look in the voice's direction.
"She didn't leave the entire time, you know," said Frank, tilting his head in Jane's direction.
"For how long I was off?" asked Mark, not knowing how much has been since he passed off.
"Two days... " said Frank, "I know what you want to ask.... Yes, we won the battle in the end..."
"But?" asked Mark, feeling that Frank was avoiding something.
"Well... we lost many people in the fight, and the bigshots escaped, Dr Hess included." said Frank, knowing that Mark wanted his revenge. After all, who would not want? Mark was tortured and used as a rat lab by them.
"I see..." said Mark, reclining his back against the pillows behind him while closing his eyes. Not even the gods could guess what he was thinking now, but Frank guessed he was trying to control his rage.
"Do you want me to wake her up?" asked Frank, referring to Jane that was still sleeping by the side.
"No, let her sleep... How is my situation?" asked Mark, fully knowing he was supposed to be dead by now.
"Well, I only now what Jane told me because I only came here much after the fight ended, but as far as I know the problem was your blood loss. After that was solved you started to heal very fast"
Mark noticed that something was odd with that phase and asked, "After that was solved? What do you mean?"
"I should not be the one talking about this, but Mark, it seems there is something wrong with your body. We tried giving you blood, but you started to convulse the moment the blood entered your veins.... We tried everything, and I was almost giving up when Jane found one guy from the lab that surrendered to us..." said Frank, but stopped once he noticed that Mark furrowed his brows, "...well, that guy told us he hated the way the lab did things, and once the opportunity showed itself he surrendered, but he was the one who save you in the end..."
Hearing that, Mark lips made a thin line, he hated any of them. "saved how?" asked Mark
"He gave the idea of injecting beast blood inside your veins... and well... it worked. You are alive and well now," said Frank.
'Beast blood?' asked himself Mark. He knew he was some kind of hybrid now, but to not be able to even receive human blood? He was becoming the thing he most hated in the world, and that, for Mark, was something that disgusted him.
"Was it... Wyvern blood?" asked Mark
"Yes, how do you know?" asked Frank, feeling that he knew less than he expected about what they did to Mark inside that lab.
"Thing is Frank.... They used me as ...." said Mark, but the words didn't come out of his mouth. It was hard for him to talk about that even more in front of a friend, but Mark took a deep breath and continued, "I could hear things during the experiments... and they injected wyvern blood inside me, inside my marrows, and because of my ability I somehow survived. I was not supposed to survive, I was just a experiment to them, they didn't expect that outcome...."
Mark's breath became quick and fast-paced as if he was hyperventilating, and seeing that, Frank said, "You don't need to force yourself brother, we can talk about that later..."
"No!" shouted Mark aloud, and with that, Jane that was by his side woke up.
Frank was about to say something but once he saw that Jane woke up, he felt that was better to let Jane handle Mark's feeling, after all, they were closer to each other and Mark would feell more confortable with that.
"Mark?" asked Jane waking up, still a bit dizzy.
"Frank! Is.. Is not about me, you need to hear this now! The Army wants to make a vaccine..." said Mark.
Jane, that was about to come and hug Mark, saw that he was acting stern and serious, and decided to waited. She had no idea what they were talking about, but just the vaccine word made her stop and pay attention to it too.
Frank too furrowed his brows hearing that word and paid full attention to Mark's next words.
"It's a vaccine... to make everyone unable of gaining abilities when consuming mutated animal parts... that was the entire lab goal from the start... they want... they want to rule who can have abilities."
"I will go warn the others. This must be shared with everyone immediately." said Frank, already storming out of the room.
"If the army can control who will have abilities, it will be the end of all. They will be in power forever..." said Jane, but quickly shook her head and changed the subject, "How is your arm?"
Mark gave a long sigh, letting the previous subject to rest in the back of his mind for now and looked at Jane with more gentle eyes. "I think it's good," he said, while slowly moving his shoulder.
Jane gave a bright smile when hearing that, and Mark felt that was all worth in the end.
Life was simple in the apocalypse, but only for the ones who enjoyed simple things.