As more time passed, and Jayden began to near the end of his required time in training, he'd nearly convinced himself that he was special, that he could simply use ARI nearly non-stop without ill effects. There were a few spectacular meltdowns in training that he knew should have terrified him, but instead only made him feel more and more as though he were living a charmed life. Stocky Agent Zoeller collapsed on a Saturday only a few weeks into her training, struggling to breathe as though she'd forgotten how. The medic kept her going with CPR until the paramedics showed up, and Belasco assured them the next week that she was fine, but had dropped out of the program, too unnerved to continue. A man named Barrett – in probably his early fifties, he was the oldest agent Jayden had seen yet in the ARI program – appeared sullenly one session, sulking in a corner by himself.
"He does counterterrorism," Miller murmured over lunch. Jayden was beginning to realize that Miller was a relentless gossip, but guiltily drank in the information anyway. "Apparently he's hot shit at dealing with bombs but can't program the ARI worth a damn, so he's incredibly slow. Word is he's back here because he sneezed blood on his partner last week."
Whether or not that particular item was true, Barrett didn't make it through to the end of the day before he vomited first his lunch, then a torrent of dark red blood into a trash can while the rest of the class looked on with horror. He vanished into medical oblivion, as well.
"Special Agent Barrett is on leave," was all Belasco would say about him the following week. Jayden licked his lips nervously and buried himself deeper into ARI so he wouldn't think about it.
He was very bold about his use one Saturday morning before heading off to a session; after realizing he was out of milk, he actually just wandered through breakfast and getting dressed while putting together a virtual shopping list. It was beginning to feel as though he was daring himself to figure out what his limit was. He was just sane enough to not try to wear it during the drive to training.
It was a pretty standard week, though the class population had once again shifted. Most notably, Croyden was back this week, grumbling about some new medical diagnosis problem, and Fisher was gone, another changing of the guard. Jayden had been planning to do some more work with pictures of victims' body positioning, but instead grabbed one of Fisher's clattering boxes of bones and photographs to work with for the morning. Ghoulish as it was, there was something hypnotic about dealing with those old jawbones and seeing how the teeth in them matched up to the teethmarks they left behind.
He worked contentedly in his seat, fumbling at the bones and then seeing what he could do about finding DNA traces on them, until Belasco tapped him, and Jayden was well-conditioned now to automatically jerk the shades off when he felt that familiar hand on his shoulder. He obediently put them down and started blinking in the direction of his cubicle to get it into focus.
He kept blinking.
He had no vision past vague colors. It was like his eyes had been greased over. The whole world was a blur.
"Gonna scan you," he heard. Croyden's voice; apparently she was on another one of her rounds. "Norman? Hey, are you all right?"
"Can't see," he blurted, fumbling outwards with his hands. "Help."
The world seemed to burst into a total mess of panic around him, full of violent, undifferentiated motion. Unable to make out objects, Jayden started to pant as his vision refused to return, and individual voices around him blended into a whirr of loud noise. A hand he could feel but not see suddenly curled around his ribcage, and became a new source of terror; he jerked violently away from it, and things instantly went from simply terrifying to unbearable. Invisible hands were touching him all over now, and he thrashed wildly, screaming at them to stop it stop it stop it.
Everything got louder and louder and louder, everything started to hurt. He couldn't move. He howled, could hear his own voice doing it, couldn't stop. His chest ached.
When he started to wake up, he couldn't remember having fallen asleep. Jayden finally managed to get his heavy eyelids opened, coughed a little. He was looking at a ceiling.
"Ah, there you are," he heard. He swiveled his eyes towards the voice. Belasco, seated, was closing a file folder that had been lying across his lap.
"What the hell." Jayden's face felt numb. "What the hell happened?"
"You're in the hospital, Norman. You're probably all right now, looks like there isn't permanent damage. Looks like you did too much, today. Apparently, you told Joanna you couldn't see, but you wouldn't respond to anyone after that when we asked you questions. Then you started to fall out of your chair, and when we tried to help you lie down, you reacted pretty violently."
"Oh. I couldn't see you." Jayden couldn't figure out a better way to explain it, was vaguely aware that he sounded stupid.
"I was hoping we could wait and let you calm down a little on your own, but the decision of the medical personnel was to sedate you. They were concerned, and it was the fastest way to get you to the hospital."
"Fuck those guys."
". . . okay, I'm going to assume you'll be more reasonable when you wake up more. You've been here for a while. Training is over for the day, that's why I'm here. How do you feel?"
"Sleepy."
"I bet. I'm guessing you can see okay now?"
"Yeah." Jayden was having a little trouble keeping his eyes open, but things were in focus. "Much better. Can I go home now?"
"Not yet." Belasco stood. "I'll go find your doctor. We've got to run you through the scans again while you're awake."
"Fuck you."
". . . and I'm guessing that maybe you should stay in bed a little longer."
Eventually, Jayden passed the second round of medical exams, was cleared for release by a doctor who suggested that he stay overnight, just in case. Jayden was having none of it, refused, finished struggling clumsily back into most of his clothes and shoved his tie in his pocket, walked out of his room to see a familiar shock of red hair in the hallway. Unbelievably, Belasco had stayed to wait for him, and Jayden apologized profusely for their earlier exchange.
"No problem," the other man grinned at him. "You had your first extremely negative reaction to the ARI today, and that screws everyone up. Jackson bit me once during an overload, swear to god. And you were sedated. Are still sedated. Come on, I'll give you a ride so you don't have to take a cab."
"Do you do this for everyone?" Jayden stumbled along gratefully in his instructor's wake as they made their way through the parking lot.
"Not usually, no. I mean, I like to at least check in after a bad session, but usually people have someone listed on their medical forms that we can call to help them get home and recover. Oh, hell." Jayden looked up to realize that the other man was staring at him in horror. "I shouldn't have said it that way. Jesus, I'm sorry, Norman, that was incredibly rude."
"Eh." Jayden hadn't even caught the unintentional dig at his lack of close contacts until Belasco pointed it out. "It's okay."
"This whole thing is a little bit my fault," Belasco said ruefully as he backed up out of his parking spot. "There's things you can do when you feel the effects start to creep up on you, or even when they hit you, to sort of brace yourself, make it more manageable. Looks like you probably can't feel the bad stuff until it actually arrives; that fits the pattern of how you've been reacting to the ARI. I should have brought it up before you actually needed it, but, frankly, it's incredibly boring to talk about, and I was hoping you might not need it at all. I'll try to spend a little time having you practice coping mechanisms next week. A lot of what I do is just breathing exercises, kind of like doing meditation. Ask other people what they do, too. Now, what's your address?"
Jayden fell asleep again in the car. His skinny instructor escorted him all the way up to his apartment door. They paused there as Jayden fumbled with his keys, dropped them once, swore.
Belasco cautiously picked them up for him, handed them over. "I'm a little nervous leaving you on your own, Norman. You're still sort of doped up, and I'm guessing you've been using more than you should. Because if you haven't, that's a pretty quick jump in intolerance that you showed today."
"I'll be all right." Door finally open, Jayden rubbed at his head. "Just want to get back in my own bed."
"All right. But take it easy. Take Monday off work. And no ARI, not until training next week. Got to give your brain a break now." Jayden winced. "Do you need help getting food or anything? I know you haven't eaten since lunch, now."
"Nah, I've got leftovers. Thanks, Eric. I really will be okay. And I promise I won't put it back on. Not at all. Sorry." He wanted to apologize more, admit he'd been acting irresponsibly, managed to stop himself before he really talked his way into a hole. "I'll be good," he finished lamely, and, at the moment, he even meant it.
"I know you will. Because if I think you're really screwing up, I get to hold on to your ARI when you're not in training. And if you do it again, I may have to ask you to leave the program. Good night, Norman."
Jayden, sulky, embarrassed, didn't quite manage to eat anything before he felt sleep dragging at him again; he barely got his shoes back off before he slumped back into bed. But he made sure the ARI glasses and glove were in their place on his nightstand before he dropped off; they were the last things he saw as his eyes closed.
He felt miserably hungover the next morning, though he couldn't determine if that was because of the experience with ARI, or whatever they'd knocked him out with, or a combination of both. Either way, he found that the feeling made him wince slightly, whenever he caught sight of the gear, the same way that getting sick on rum in college had made him unable to look at a bottle of it without gagging for a few days. It was disquieting, but it did help him keep his hands off it. Jayden had been intending to ignore Belasco and go to work Monday, but found, instead, that he actually needed the extra sleep.
He made it back in on Tuesday, fuzzy-headed, still a little the worse for wear. Miller actually scared the hell out of him by so suddenly appearing, leaning on his desk, that it was as though the man had popped into existence there.
"Everyone thinks you're dead," Miller began without preamble, while Jayden was still recoiling in surprise. "Special Agent Belasco said you weren't, but we thought he was lying because he couldn't think of a good way to tell us your brain had imploded. Scared the hell out of everyone to see you bite it that hard. You feeling better?"
Jayden was still blinking. ". . . good to see you, too? It was a rough couple of days, but it's okay now."
"Coming back this Saturday? To training? You allowed?"
"I got told to come back, actually. To learn how to handle it better if . . . I mean, Jesus, I sure hope it doesn't ever happen again, but I guess I need to know."
"Good, good. I'll see you there," Miller continued brusquely, glancing across Jayden's office at a colleague looking up curiously from the next desk. "I gotta run, gotta hell of a week right now." He smiled briefly as he turned to stride out again. Jayden stared after him, unsure if Miller seemed to be unusually keyed up, or if Jayden himself was still being a little slow.
