"Strawberry lemonade, please." Cynthia made her order at the counter.
We were back at the café where we usually grabbed our drinks. Me and Kyra had our usuals, a latte and a matcha latte, while Cynthia was getting her hands on a highly anticipated new flavor of lemonade. Although Garren wasn't with us, I still got him the drink he usually got.
A plastic cup of water with his name written on it.
"Wait 'till he finds out we were only up there for 2 hours," Cynthia said.
"I still can't believe it." I recalled the way it felt like an hour that I stood staring at the circle, drowning in its gaze. Yet, that amount of time, in reality, was more akin to a single minute. "That receptionist's Fractal was no more than mental manipulation."
"Most definitely." Kyra sighed. "The way her Fractal messed with our minds was so effective even Garren was brought to the brink of insanity."
"I hope he's okay now."
"He just needs a little bit of rest."
After we were done, we made our way back to the A.X.A. Testing Facility where Garren's dorm was. We'd heard from a scientist in the building that after they'd ran some tests on him to check if he was okay, he was left to his room to rest in slumber. We were outside his dorm to visit him.
"Garren?" I knocked on his door. There was no reply.
"He must still be asleep," Cynthia said. But I couldn't help but feel concerned enough to go inside and check on him. All I could think of were the expressions he wrote in his notebook. The pain he conveyed through his words pierced my heart. When I entered, I saw that he was in bed, with a blanket over his head.
"Are you awake?" I asked. He didn't reply, but I could hear him breathing heavily. I placed the cup of water with his name on his bed-side table. "We made it out of the loop. We escaped thanks to Kyra's Fractal."
"Go away," Garren said. I was surprised to confirm he was awake.
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I'm still a little itchy. I don't want to flare-up in front of you guys again…"
I sat by the edge of his bed. "You don't need to worry about that, Garren. No one's judging you for going through all of that. We're here for you, you know."
"No." He sighed with frustration. "It's not that. You don't understand. The itch has become more prominent lately. My temper has been getting shorter. I could possibly hurt you guys, and I don't want to."
I quickly got up from his bed, deciding to respect his distance. "I understand."
"You know, we really wish we could help you," Kyra said. "We hope you know it hurts to watch you suffer from a distance."
"I know. But you can't help me." Garren stayed beneath his bed covers. His voice was muffled through the blanket. "It's my own personal issue. What's been causing my flare-ups lately has nothing to do with you three."
"Then what is it?" Cynthia asked. "Even if it doesn't have to do with us, we'd like to know. What's been causing your flare-ups lately? It isn't random?"
"It usually is. But lately, the same thing has kept on happening. These memories of mine keep coming up, and they put me on edge. My skin reacts to it. I become so itchy."
I remembered reading a certain line in his notebook back at the apartment. It mentioned bad memories that continued to return. And followed by that line were the words 'Mom' and 'Dad.'
"Do those memories have to do with your parents?" I asked.
Garren went quiet. I could tell I'd struck a personal string, and now wished I hadn't. We heard him beginning to scratch at his skin.
"Was that a guess…?" He asked.
"Yes…" I lied.
The scratching got faster. "Well, you're right. It is about my parents. These horrible, horrible memories are about my parents. I couldn't handle being in the halls of that building, stuck for so many hours. It only reminded me of what my parents did."
"What did your parents do?" I was slightly afraid to ask.
"Isolation. They isolated me. They banished me away because they were embarrassed about my skin condition. They weren't proud to have me around considering how I looked with eczema like this. So, they locked me in the longest hall of the basement to our house. One, long, corridor, with doors stretched from one side to the other. Just like the hall in that apartment…"
"Oh my god…" Cynthia covered her mouth in shock. "How could they do that to you…? How long were you kept down there…?"
"Nearly my whole life. But it wasn't like a prison. It wasn't like I wasn't allowed to go upstairs and go outside. They allowed me to do that, as long as they weren't around. But still, I chose not to. I stayed in the hall, alone."
"Why…?"
"Because I was afraid of how others would look at me with my skin. I didn't want to be looked at the way my parents looked at me." Garren's scratching suddenly got louder. "Every time they came down to the basement to bring me food, they always gave me the same look. Not one of sympathy, empathy, concern or even pity. It was always this look of… disgust. Like they couldn't believe I was even their son."
I slowly backed away as I heard the emotion in Garren's voice increase.
He was beginning to sob. "I don't know what I did to deserve all of that. I don't know why my own parents couldn't even support me. I ended up deciding to run away from home. I ran as far away as I could and tried to find purpose for someone like me. Every, single, place I applied to work for turned me down because of how my skin looked. The military was the only place that didn't care about appearances."
"So that's how you ended up here."
"Yes. But even while being occupied by the responsibilities of being in the military, the memories are never overshadowed. They're always there. I'm always constantly reminded of the shame my parents felt in having a son like me. I was their disappointment."
"You aren't a disappointment," Kyra told him. "Don't let them control how you perceive yourself."
"How? How can I not?" His tone was raising. "They're my parents. They made me. They raised me. They shaped me into who I am today. No matter how hard I try, I'm constantly reminded that I'm a failure to them. The memories, they keep telling me that."
"But those memories are of the past. You need to leave it there. You need to let go now that you're out of their lives." I tried to reason with him.
"The memories may be from the past, but they come up in the present. They keep coming up. For some reason, just in the last few days, the memories of my parents have been coming up more and more frequently. And it causes my flare-ups. It causes itch. So much itch. It makes me so itchy when I think about them. When I remember what my parents said, when I remember how my parents looked at me, it makes me so goddamn itchy. And I can't stop itching. I don't stop itching. It never stops. It never, ever stops."
I realized his ranting had started to become akin to the words he wrote in his notebook. I could tell an episode was about to begin.
"I just… I just can't. I can't handle it. I can't deal with it. I don't want this to keep happening. Every time I'm reminded of who I am to my parents, my skin becomes its itchiest. It becomes so itchy. And then I have this god forsaken Fractal. Out of any Fractal I could have been born with, I was given the absolute worst pair to eczema. It's like god wanted me dead the moment I was born. It's like I'm not meant to be alive, and sometimes I don't want to be alive. What the hell is there for me to contribute to life when I'm as horrid as this?"
"Garren, stop." I tried to put a halt to him, worried that this would transition into another uncontrollable flare-up. But he kept going.
"Stop what? The itch? How can I stop if the memories won't stop coming? It's the memories, the fucking memories. If only I could just have my mind wiped clean with amnesia maybe I'd be at peace with myself. Maybe the eczema would become tolerable. But instead, every, single, fucking day, I remember what I am to my parents. I remember that they never accepted me for who I am because of my skin, so then I itch, and I scratch at my skin. I scratch at it like I'm cursing it, trying to injure it for causing me all this misfortune in life. I scratch at it like I could eventually kill it and then the itch would stop. But it never does. No matter how much I scratch, no matter how much skin I shed, no matter how much blood stains my finger nails, it always stays. It never leaves! The itch never ends! It holds me by the neck!"
An uncontrollable flare-up ensued. Garren began screeching with pain as he violently scratched at himself. It was like he was having a seizure. His blanket flew off the bed as he shook, revealing his cut-lathered body, and bloodstained bedsheets. I noticed he wasn't wearing his scratch-proof clothing.
"Where's your jumpsuit?!" I asked, extremely worried. But he was past a state of replying to questions. He had already lost himself in the itch by now. Kyra and Cynthia watched, realizing just as much as I did how alarming this situation was. There was nothing between his fatal nails and his sensitive skin. He was cutting his skin open by scratching to ease his itch.
"This is bad! We have to stop him!" I tried to move towards him, but I hesitated. He was flailing his arms everywhere, scratching at nearly everything around him. Then, he began to scream coherent words that shocked me in place.
"HELP! HELP!"
He was desperate, unlike I've ever heard before.
"THIS ISN'T ME! I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF!"
"Garren!?"
"THE MEMORIES KEEP REPLAYING IN MY HEAD! THEY WON'T STOP! IT'S REPEATING OVER AND OVER AGAIN! IT WON'T STOP!"
He was frantically scratching all over the place. His wounds were being reopened, and blood was beginning to spill. This was the most severe flare-up we'd ever witnessed from him. But the only thing I could think about was how scared he sounded with the words he said, like he'd truly lost control of himself this time.
With the concern for his burdens heavy on my mind, I leaned forward, ready to jump in to attempt stopping his itch. But Cynthia stopped me right before I could, tapping my arm. "We're all doing this." She tapped Kyra's arm too, and we both felt our skin solidify with Cynthia's Fractal. Nodding at one another, we all rushed-in to Garren's side and tried to take hold of his arms. We needed to restrain him from scratching.
"STAY AWAY!" He screamed, noticing us approaching. His hands, clenched like claws, were waving around the place. He was scratching at himself and his bed. "I CAN'T CONTROL IT! THE ITCH IS TOO EXTREME! THE MEMORIES CONTINUE TO PLAY!"
He kept mentioning the memories. He kept telling us that they were repeating. The way he told it to us sounded unnatural. I couldn't tell what was going on in his head.
"We're coming to help you, Garren!" I took grab of his right arm. In reaction, his left hand immediately threw towards me and scratched at my face. But rather than his nails digging into my flesh and serrating it open, it bounced off due to Cynthia's Fractal. I realized what needed to be done.
"Cynthia! You need to imbue your Fractal into his skin, so that he won't cut himself open anymore!"
She nodded in understanding. As she rushed over to the other side, attempting to get a touch on him, Garren's body began jerking into even wilder motion. The sudden movement shook himself free of my grasp, avoiding any contact from Cynthia. Garren then stood atop his bed, continuing to scratch at his arms, his legs, his neck, and his chest, while looking at the rest of us with fear.
"Help me," he said, as memories of his distressing childhood flooded through the gates of his mind. As each memory of the past came into view of his thoughts, they played in a cycle that repeated itself like a never-ending queue. His mind was stuck on replay of the past, and of his parents. His body had been forcefully set to scratch for eternity.
"THEY AREN'T ENDING! THE MEMORIES WON'T STOP!!!" He only continued to scratch at himself. As his nails dug deep into his skin, he pulled from underneath, removing entire chunks of flesh from his body. To Garren, this seemed like the only way to end the itch, which was to remove not only the skin that itched, but the entire part of that body from which that itch originated. As we watched in horror while flaps of fat and flesh fell from Garren's body, we were even more appalled to see that some of his bones were now exposed. Garren had been quite literally digging into his body with his nails, all to ease an itch.
"Cynthia! You need to stop him!" I screamed. In pursuit, Cynthia jumped right at him. Garren's body reacted on its own, waving his claws in Cynthia's direction as if a means of defending his frantic state. But as expected, the attacks bounced off of Cynthia's Fractal. To this, she planted her hands on Garren's body, immediately imbuing his skin with her Fractal.
"Got him!" She was suddenly smacked by one of Garren's arms and was thrown across the room.
"Cynthia!" Kyra ran over to check on her. As she did, I continued to watch Garren. His itch was still there, and the urge to scratch clearly was as well, but his skin wasn't opening up to his nails anymore. We'd done it. We'd solidified his skin so he couldn't injure himself with his nails.
I jumped towards him and tried pinning him to the bed, but the way he spasmed made it difficult. Kyra noticed and came to help me, pinning the other half of his body. Finally, we'd gotten a proper grip on Garren, who continued to jerk around beneath our grasps, but we had him under control.
"The memories…" He whimpered, his face buried into the bed. "It won't end…"
I tried comforting him. "It'll end soon, Garren. Don't worry. It's going to be okay."
I looked over to Kyra to encourage her to say something as well, but I was surprised to find only disbelief written on her face. She looked at Garren from behind with widened eyes.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Kyra's face took on an expression of horror and disbelief. With one hand still holding Garren's arm against the bed, the other reached for his neck, towards a scratch-opened wound where his nape was. She pointed at something I hadn't noticed at first. Deep inside the gash in Garren's nape was what looked like a small piece of metal. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a microchip.
"What's that doing in his neck?" I squinted my eyes, observing it properly. Then, familiarity hit me. I realized it looked exactly like the microchip we'd stolen from New Zina—the prized technology that General Michael was so keen on retrieving.
"Is that…?"
"It's the Controllant."
"Controllant?"
Kyra's breath became shallow. "The technology General Michael had us retrieve from New Zina…"
"I know that," I told her. "But what does it do? Why is it in Garren's neck?"
Kyra looked at me with an alarming amount of concern on her face, as if she wasn't sure if she should tell me what she was about to say.
"What? What is it?" I now pestered, anxious from her expression. I remembered that information about the technology was classified, exclusive only to people with ranks Upper Four or higher. Knowing Kyra to be Second, it meant she knew what it was. But she remained quiet.
"What is it? Tell me!"
"It's classified. You aren't supposed to know—"
"I know that! But Garren's my comrade, and my friend! I deserve to know what the item inside his neck is!"
Kyra hesitated at first, but then she gave in. Her face scrunched with regret at what she was about to reveal to me.
"The Controllant is used to control bio-organisms…"
"What do you mean…?"
Kyra looked at me in the eyes.
"The Controllant can control humans."