Standing here, thoughts racing and my legs shaking. I start walking in the direction I just came from; metal pipe in hand, while walking, I ask myself. "How do I defeat him? He has the upper hand with me losing my vision."
After asking such a question to myself, I throttle myself at the sound of his voice. "I can assist you the best I can, I can give you my vision and as much strength as I can. This might be enough to beat him on top of your quick healing."
I slouch down till my knees hit the floor and chuckle. "Okay, thank you for the help, I completely forgot you were there for a minute."
He doesn't find it to emusing, "I could kill you if I wanted to right now, don't forget again."
I don't think I was ever so quick to try and de-escalate a situation before in my life."Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sir, calm down, I wasn't saying anything about your abilities. Don't be hostile, please?" At this point, I think I was about to get struck by a beam of light or something. "If I may ask, in case I don't make it, you know. What is your name?"
I don't think I have ever heard such a loud laugh come from this guy, once he was done, all he said was, "Balastine already told you, Wade. I am The Creator."
I sat there for a second figuring out if this guy was lying or not. *The Creator? Talking to me? That doesn't make sense, could he have told me what The Orical wanted to tell? Who is-* My body moved on its own and like a light switch, I was able to see again. While noticing the fact that I can see again, a chunk of metal flies right next to my face. My expression is how I would imagine an animal would be after barely getting passed by a speeding car. "What the fuck was that." I say muttering under my breath.
"You clearly not paying attention, now get to work."
Balastine was behind me groaning in pain, it took a while but I found the Nightmare in front of me. Hanging from the celine. The Creator was not joking about letting me have his eyes, I could see everything as if the night ceased to ever exist. I nervously walked towards the Nightmare, now closer to the computers and the table behind the table the first aid was on. This one was fast as hell. When I was about fifteen feet from it, I felt a power course through my veins. When I got between five to ten feet from the Nightmare, it leaped towards me and it didn't touch me, but it ended up cutting my cheek.
The Nightmare skid across the floor till it was ruffelly 3 meters from me. I'm British, living in America, okay, bit me. On the way causing sparks to be made and to the left was Balastine looking in our direction and yelling. "Wade, are you ok?!"
I yell back to her, "Yes, to your right is a doorway and if you go straight from there is the door, get out of here. I will deal with this."
"OKAY?... How do you know that? And I am not leaving without you."
I don't think I can deal with her pride right now. "Leave so at least one of us can live." After my words, she grunted and started to slide away from us onto a ledge and limp, liquid dripping.
As soon as she left my sight, I threw the metal rod in my hand at the door, the force from it hitting the door was so strong that the door flung shut with a loud bang, and the pipe shattered into several pieces. I'm surprised it didn't break the door. I turned back to the Nightmare who was now throwing a right hook at me, I threw my arms up to block as much as I could, protecting my ribs as much as possible; I went flying to the door that I had once been curious about, after I hit the corner, shutting the door, I fell to the floor in pain. As I looked at my arms, they were red with blood, badly bruised, and a big cut from wrist to elbow on both arms. They were most likely fractured. I was lucky that a few years back I took martial arts classes, I only made it a few months before getting kicked out by harming a student though. As I struggle to get back up back up to fight, in agony and painting, the Nightmare starts running at me, pushing tables out of the way, now I know for a fact this fucker has night vision. I run towards the Nightmare with my hands up and ready to fight properly. I have too, for Balastine, and for me.
Now only a few feet from me, the Nightmare throws a punch at me and I duck under it and uppercut my father and he stumbles back. "Sorry Dad," I say to him as I reset for another punch.
As I reel my left arm back for another punch, the Nightmare swings its foot up to kick me back but I change course and punch down at the leg. As I strike down; with the sheer force of my bare fist, I break its leg and my arm from the impact, the bone in my forearm gets ripped out of my arm and I scream in pain while falling to the floor once again. As I have one knee on the floor with the Nightmare slowly collapsing, it brings its arm up and tries to attack me again. When it hits me in the side, I go sliding along the floor, next to that blasted door and my right arm is bleeding profusely and is probably also broken from blocking it.
The Nightmare starts to crawl towards me, I try to straighten out and put my bone into my left arm in hopes it will start healing, then I hear The Creator again. "I am impressed you did this much in your state. You can rest now, help is here."
As the voice fades I hear the front door fly open and footsteps ascending towards me. I use the power I have left to move towards the door and 2 big people in the same attire as Balastine walk through the door with lights. As one of them sees me bleeding on the floor, she talks into his walkie talkie "We found the boy. Mhm." she faces me and asks. "Wade Becker?" And I nod my head in agreement, he turns back "Yep, it's him. Sending him home now." She stands up, throws a tablet of sorts on my chest and walks towards the other person who is 5 or so feet away from the Nightmare. As my eyes close and my vision goes to black, I realize just how tired I was.
* * *
As I woke from my slumber, I was blinded by white light all around me. As I sat up, face in my moist palms, and waited for my pupils to dilate, I heard a feminine voice. When I looked up still blinded, I saw a doctor in front of me, but she wasn't your traditional doctor with the blue and white clothes. He was wearing all black with a mask that covered his whole face, all I could see of her was long blond hair and she was looking at something. I shifted my body some more with my waist and arms, and was greeted instantly with sharp pain and regretted it. Grunted in pain and the doctor looked at me.
She started to mess with a device on her wrist. "Y𝙹⚍ ᔑ∷ᒷ ᔑ∴ᔑꖌᒷ! lᒷℸ ̣ ᒲᒷ -- just adjust this so you can hear me." She looks up from her wrist and smiles. "Hey there, try not to move too much please, you are still healing." She said in a worried tone.
I replied with "WHERE AM I?! What happened?!" and moving my whole body and trying to ignore the pain my body was in, and at some points succeeding and others becoming screams of agony.
"You are in a hospital, not your world's hospital, but a hospital." She turned back to what she was looking at and continued. "That Nightmare messed you up though, don't worry we captured it and put it in a cell for research purposes. You will heal perfectly fine, But can you work with an amputated arm?"
As I look at my left arm that looks to be what he was talking about, the arm looks healed, it only hurts like hell and I look back and say."My arm had a bone shooting out of my forearm, what do you mean amputated arm?"
"I think you should look again." She said in a confused tone.
When I looked back at my arm, my bone was still there, but it wasn't bone… it was a broken metal rod with wires spewing out. My heart beat faster, my face felt hot, I got sweaty and I screamed at the top of my lungs. The doctor leaps and covers my mouth with her hand, and I swear I felt suction cups.
When I calmed down, she put her hand down and asked me. "Are you ok?"
I stared at her dead where her eyes would be and yelled. "Of course I'm not ok, I have a metal rod piercing out of my shoulder. And before you ask, this is NOT normal for my race."
As she absorbed the information I just said, she replied with. "Then you are not human." and proceeded to show me an X-ray scan of metal where all my bones are and wires connecting to a square in the middle of my chest.
"W-What happened to me? How did I not know about this sooner?" I say in complete and utter shock.
"I thought it was normal, we get a lot of humanoid robots in here. And it seems our technology is maybe more advanced than your world?" She argues trying to defend herself
"Whatever, can you try and get Balastine in here?"
"Who?"
"The girl who called back up and maybe sent me here, I can't remember anything."
"Is she a part of the WokrZ?"
"Yes, why? Aren't all of you guys a part of it?"
"We are, but I can assure you that no one goes by that name here. Not in the last 25 years have I been here at least."
Now frustrated I say in a louder tone. "What do you mean no one goes by that name, she saved my life twice and was the only reason I am alive right now!"
"Sir, calm down please, we are in a hospital and nobody wants to yell."
"If you can't bring me Balastine, then get out of my face-"
As soon as I finished that line, two people walked through the door to my right, one male, and one female, looking at me and the male asked. "Wade Becker?"
I replied with an annoyed "Yeah."
"We need you to come with us please." The female said quickly after.
As I walked through the hall handcuffed, I passed a few other rooms with patients of all sorts; from Gargoyles to vampires. Once we got to the front desk, the two people turned to the person there and asked for my file, once they were handed a blue folder. They flipped through it and after a few seconds closed it and we kept walking. Once we went outside my jaw almost touched the floor; skyscrapers that could touch the heavens and cars that could match that height. I can't explain how beautiful it was, think of a futuristic world with a slight cyberpunk aesthetic under an amazing cotton candy pink sky and baby blue clouds. While I stood there, the female pulled the cuffs and my arm felt like it was ripping more than it was. They walked me to a dark gray car with a red light underneath where the tires would be and pushed me between the two of them and we were on our way.
One the ride to our destination, all I saw for miles was cars on roads that were floating, humanoids flying through the air with creatures from fantasy worlds walking on sidewalks that made no; giant buildings shooting into the sky. Once I exited the vehicle, all I could see was a huge concrete building that looked like it could kiss the clouds. Once I entered the building, I was escorted to a room and my cuffs were taken off of me. "Stay here, we'll be back in a few minutes. We will answer any questions you have when we return." said the man and as soon as I was about to speak they closed the door.
The room was gray white and the table I was sitting at seemed to be concreted to the floor. The chair was a dark metal that I have never seen before. There was a window to the back of the room and I could see the beautiful skyline; buildings shooting out of the tops of the clouds, the blue sky with the nice cotton candy pink clouds, think enough that it looks like you are walking on it. After a little while of staring at the view. In the reflection, someone opened and closed the door. She was tall, brown hair and brown eyes, and tentacles with eyes all over them, when she walked; the floor sounded squishy. When she sat down, she handed me over to sit down.
As soon as I sat down she started talking, "Hello Wade Johnathan Becker, I am Salthesta, head of security. You are here for the inappropriate use of your abilities, you will need to fight your way through the court here on Janus, are there any questions you would want me to answer before we go on?"
"I want to know where Balastine is." I said in a direct and stern voice.
"I don't know who this 'Balastine' is. But we need to have you learn the laws of this planet-"
I slam the table, wince and yell at her "How does anyone not know who Balastine is? Short, Black hair, about elbow length, her eyes like the galaxy, she had dark gray clothing and a golden sigil on her chest. Black pants with the same sigil on the knees, and a black cape that covers most of her body."
I sat back in your chair and tried to calm down and Salthesta just sat there processing the information I had just given her. After what felt like 5 minutes, she looked up at me and said, "Wait here, I might know who you're talking about."
When she left the room, I was alone for a long time; a lot of boredom happened and a lot of physical examination. My wounds have turned to scars, my arm still with the metal rod is still out of my skin. And, I can move it? The flesh around it had healed around it, I felt little to no pain now but I felt like I would kill someone with a maybe 6 inch rod coming out of my fore-arm.
I reached to grab it and when I did, I heard them, "How did you get in this predicament now? First a few broken bones, now one of your bones is sticking out of your arm. This won't do." Just then the metal rod came out of my arm with my hand still connected to it.
A mixture of blood and oil splattered around the room and the rod flew across the room to the corner, I grabbed my arm and screamed in agony. My vision started to turn red and I felt woozy.
When I woke up next, I was sprawled out on the floor in a pool of oil and blood, when I looked at my arm, I had a wrap around it. Not like medical bandages, but a shirt. When I tried to move my arm, there was no pain as I moved to sit up. I saw someone sitting in the same chair that Salthesta was sitting in.
"Ah, you're alive, thought I was too late, get up, sit down, and put a shirt on please." the voice said, it sounded female and familiar. Then I looked down and saw the shirt wrapped around my arm. IT WAS MY SHIRT.
When I finally started to stand, I felt shaky and exhausted, it took a few minutes to get up, once I was up; the feeling of blood and oil dripping down my torso wasn't pleasant at all. When I lifted my head up I saw Balastine sitting there, smiling at me. On the table now was a shirt that seemed too small to fit me. I told her it wouldn't fit and she told me to put it on, when I put the shirt on, it was huge and began to shrink to a perfect size.
"Marial (M-ar-E-el), a sturdy shrinking or growing material, perfect for clothes." She was talking to me like it was only earlier today we last spoke. "It's nice to see you didn't die fighting the Nightmare. Although, I am sorry about your father, we have been looking for him since his death-" She waved quotation marks in the air.
"Then why did I find him dead in his workshop?!" I said much louder than I needed to. "Why did I have to see my father turn into something from a, a-"
"A Nightmare? Yeah, that's why we call them that, they take forms of people's worst fears or give them a new fear much worse. We looked at Delema Robotics first thing when he went missing, but he wasn't there and no trace of him being there, I can assure you that much."
I look down from the information then a question popped up in my head *How did they know-*
"Your father worked for us for 13 years in research and development. When we heard that he didn't show up to work for a week, we went to check on him and after searching. One of our scouts spotted his burial and we put it there."
"Did my mother know?" She shook her head. "Do you know what is happening to me?"
"At first I thought you were just special like your father was but now I have 3 guesses." She seemed to hesitate for a while. "The first is that you were like your father, as in not being able to be affected much by the Nightmares, Christopher must have done something stupid to get infected like that. Second, you are being protected by something, either being The Creator herself or something just as powerful. And number three." She leaned forward and stared into my soul. "You are a Nightmare that's not aware of it yet."