Author's Notes - FYI, in case if you missed it, Chapter VIII was posted on Christmas Eve.

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Chapter IX – For Your Own Good

It wasn't long after my brain could process things again and my eyes fluttered open when everything struck me like a bolt of lightning.

My head was just pounding with 'what happened,' 'where was I' and 'why am I not dead' and it wasn't going to quiet down any time soon. No one was in this room and it was way too quiet for my liking. I didn't want to move my arms because of the possibility that I could have had a million wires secretly hooked into the back of my head and touching them would make me aware of their existence.

Ok…so maybe I was overdoing it with the sci-fi stuff, but still…I just couldn't accept that this place, this place I'd called a house for 3 years had something more going on beneath the surface when I'd just believed it to be just like a dreary, but normal, place to work because it'd seen so many unpreventable deaths and more to come. To borrow a cliché from thousands of bad young adult fiction books in love with the tag line…after what I'd seen, this, well…it changed everything.

I knew that donor cards existed for people who had their driver's license and wanted to be organ donors but as far as I knew, there was nothing to that same effect for people who transitioned into zombies. I mean, I didn't remember there being any kind of checkbox to check when I signed all the paperwork to stay here so…maybe it's changed since then?

The increasingly-hard-to-ignore nausea I was having told me that I was being delusional to even consider believing that. These people were being taken and kept there when they should have been euthanized.

But still…why was Ellone Loire there, then? I mean, she wasn't in great shape by any means, but the eyes that looked back at me were still dark, nowhere close to the ruby-red doctors needed to see before they could declare people 'officially un-savable.'

Ugh. This definitely wasn't helping my nausea any. At this point, maybe projectile vomiting stomach bile will incapacitate whoever drugged and put me here, affording me enough time to escape.

But…the only thing about that is…well, now that I thought about it, I think I knew where I was. The layout looked pretty similar to the private room Selphie was in all those years ago, plus it kinda didn't hurt my chances that there was literally nothing strapping and/or cuffing me to the bed I was lying in either. So theoretically, I could leave but a question still remained.

…Should I?

I swung my legs over the edge and before I knew it, I was tickling the surface of the floor with my toes. Then the nausea conveniently chose that moment to stop doing fake outs as my head suddenly started to spin; the bile finally made its appearance on tiles beneath my feet.

Awesome. Not.

"Rinoa…I get you out of trouble and this is how you repay me? Tsk."

The familiarity of the voice eased my nerves. Hopefully, I wasn't going to die after all – my would-be interrogation subject ended up finding me instead. Double awesome. Maybe if my throat stopped feeling like I was swallowing lit matches, I could maybe start practicing my bad cop routine on Nurse Bear; I already had the good cop part down pat and I'd always heard it wasn't a bad thing to switch it up once in a while.

"Saved me from the evil scientists, huh?" I tried to josh. Tried being the operative word, seeing as I probably didn't have the energy to sound convincing enough.

"Evil? Not exactly." After throwing a few dampened cloths over the tiny puddle of puke, wiping it away and casually tossing it in the dirty linens bin, she sat down and looked my way – her brown eyes harbouring enough guilt to betray her usually-chipper tone and self. "Unethical? Definitely."

"So…you knew they were…that they were doing this?" I choked out. The quintessential bad cop, I was not. Badly blubbering cop was more like it.

Nurse Bear's newly downward-turned lips just added onto the guilt written on her face. She knew. There was no question about it.

"…Only recently." she admitted. "…We can't stop them from doing this. The researchers, I mean."

"Yes you can Nurse Bear." I said. "You can report them to the local authorities with enough evidence…can't you?"

"Rinoa…I wish I could, but…they've bought our silence the moment we found out about them. These people are smart – they know how to keep those who know under their thumbs and cover their tracks pretty damn well." she ruefully began to explain. "They've made it crystal clear to us that if we tried looking for other jobs, we'd be blackballed from ever getting an interview with employers. That, and if we ever went public with this information that it can and will be discredited. Both situations have occurred so I have no doubt in their abilities at hushing up the truth. The only consolation is this is that we've managed to dissuade them from taking the newly-zombified with families in waiting."

I felt the pull at my lips' corners. "…Was that why Ellone was taken? They didn't realize Squall was her family?"

"Honestly…she never stood a chance from the moment she was carted in here." she lamented. "The peculiar particulars from her file piqued the interest of the head researcher, Dr. Odine, from the get go. The fact that it looked like she had no family made him more brazen than usual and insisted that she be taken for his testing without bothering to wait to see if her post-transition outcome was zombification. I tried convincing him that she did have family but it fell on deaf ears because Squall wasn't a blood relative. He just…he had to have her."

I fought back another wave of violent nausea…just barely. "So she was never meant to go home…ever? But…what about what you'd told him?"

"I know what I said Rinoa. And I realize it wasn't right to mislead him like that." she admitted. "But the truth is that what he'll go through with a CET transition will be very very difficult to say the least. While there isn't any empirical evidence for this, I know that it would be downright impossible without hope."

"I understand that, I really do but…" I let out a sigh. "I'd promised him that I'd try to find out what had happened to her. Telling him the truth when he can't do anything about it just it seems cruel and yet…the alternative doesn't seem any better either. Even if he makes it out of transition without a scratch, he's not just going to leave and forget about her without a fight."

"Then you try and fail, Rinoa." Her voice suddenly went stern and her eyes misted over ever so slightly. "And I mean that. Do not get involved in this mess. You were lucky enough that I clued into where you were and was able to stop the security guard in charge of that wing from informing the researchers of your trespassing after he sedated you. You would have been permanently stuck here if I hadn't intervened. If Odine had been in there, nothing I said would have mattered."

I stared at her for a good second. Amid the fear slowly seeping in from the imagined scenarios in my head, something else dawned on me. "If you didn't know where I was until later, then who left the door unlocked and where were you? I went in there because I'd thought that it was the staff lounge and you'd gone in."

"I don't know who would have left it open. Everyone who has access to that wing is given two codes, one leaves the door movable twice as long than the other. My guess would be that whoever had come through last used their code with longer grace period and you just happened to walk in at the right time. And I won't pretend to be proud here, I was composing myself in a nearby room's bathroom." she confessed. "I'd gone back to Squall's room afterwards only to not find you there with him. I asked where you'd gone and he told me that you were looking for where I'd went. To be honest, if it hadn't been for his off-hand comment that my 'suspicious' behaviour was the likely reason you went, I probably wouldn't have thought to look there after checking the nearby rooms. Yes, I realize that the connection is tenuous at best, but you know me and my random word associations."

A single chuckle escaped in spite of myself. "No, suspicious is the right word here. I can totally see how your mind would jump to that place." I said before my tone sobered some during the silent patch which followed. "So…what did you tell the guard to let me go? I'm assuming that I owe you my firstborn or at least a big vat of coffee."

Strangely enough, she didn't smile. "Don't you worry about that Rinoa. It's been taken care of. You don't have to be concerned about anyone keeping you here." she quietly told me. "And no, you don't have to give me either. I've already got my hands full with Asher and the coffee IV I've got myself hooked up to is working just fine. Besides, didn't I tell you that I didn't want any of that getting lucky business happening under my roof?"

I actually groaned aloud at this. "You're ebil. So ebil Allison."

She quirked an eyebrow. "…Ebil?"

"Yes, ebil." I affirmed. "Evil and bad smushed together – hence creating ebil."

Her eyebrows quirked even further, if that was possible. "Meany, I got, but ebil? I'd think that evad or bail would have made more sense…well, not that last one since it's an actual word but…you get what I mean. Besides, I'm pretty sure you get ebil just by missing the v on your keyboard by going one key over so that doesn't count as a word smush."

"See? This is why you're ebil!" I theatrically sighed. "You uncovered my secret! You're so ebil, just admit it!"

"Alright, alright, I am ebil. I admit it. And in my ebilness, I need to ask you to promise me not tell Squall anything about what happened or go snooping more into this matter, alright?"

All traces of mirth were wiped away from my expression again. "You really mean this, don't you?"

"I do." she said in completely serious tone. "It's bad enough that we have no control over the outcomes of people's transitions and that the owners purposely short-staff us on this floor to impede us from making any real connections with the people we care for to accommodate Dr. Odine's paranoia - I would rather not have something happen to you or Squall when it could have been avoided altogether with a simple warning."

Her words plucked at my heartstrings and played them like harp. The song was melancholic, to say the least. Even though she'd said something that even I'd thought of, it was still sad to hear my thoughts confirmed and then explained some.

After giving it some thought, I realized that while they were probably perfectly aware that nothing they could do would change people's outcomes when they accepted jobs here, maybe they thought that they could at least make the transition a little more bearable – kinda like what doctors and nurses did for people with end stage terminal diseases at palliative care centers. And without the proper amount of staff to carry tasks out, even accomplishing that much was asking for the impossible, short of splitting yourself in two or more – I could only imagine how frustrating and unsatisfying that must have been day in and day out.

It must had to have taken its toll to be rendered as helpless and hapless as a random bystander to everything around you because of bureaucratic meddling caused by a man who didn't seem to be all there, judging by Nurse Bear's description. So with that in mind, I carefully picked out the words I was going to say next, hoping to choose the right ones to maximize the effect.

"I promise I'll stay out of this Allison." I told her. "It's the least I can do after you've keep me sane these past few years."

"Thank you Rinoa. That means a lot to me to hear that."

A genuine smile graced the nurse's lips. My not-so ebil plan had worked.

-—-

Walking back to the right side of the north end corridor alone, a strange calm encircled me once I'd parted ways with Nurse Bear who understandably had to resume doing her actual work around the floor instead of babysitting me. It was like nearing the edge of the abyss and losing your footing for a brief scary split-second where you weren't sure if you were going to fall in before being saved by a helping hand. Sure, you didn't actually fall in, but the moment of uncertainty was still etched in your memory in a permanent way – leaving behind scars and knowledge that would not and could not instantly fade.

I'd been thisclose to something horrible because of its definite permanence which eliminated all the unknowns I was waiting to happen. I wondered what it would have been like to lose my hope, much like Squall might have had Nurse Bear told him the truth about Ellone instead of kindly omitting certain parts of it. It was a scary thought to say the least because even though I couldn't really say I had some for myself, it tended to creep in and make itself known in the most unlikely of places, surprising even myself.

After I rounded the bend, I stopped for a moment, contemplating something. Instead of walking into my own room down the hall, right before the Nurse's station, I walked past 1R altogether, then by the Nurse's station, then went all the way to 6L. Poking my head in there, I saw his figure resting in the bed, glazed over eyes fixed on the snoring teenager opposite him for what I'm sure owed to no other reason than sheer boredom. The room's light had dimmed considerably and that made me wonder about the time.

Glancing upward, the digital red lights of the clock on the opposite wall to the entrance told me it was past 5 pm, which surprised me. I was gone and out for that long? My stomach should have been growling at me by now.

"…Was starting to wonder if you'd pulled a disappearing act too."

My attention was yanked back down to the boy in the bed once more and my face reddened just a fraction. It could have been a new round of sedatives doing the talking for him but…it was so strange to have someone actually wonder where you were like that.

"Ah, sorry." I mumbled as I slowly walked towards him, my right hand deciding to tuck an errant lock of hair that was…clearly not long enough to loop around my ear. "Time…kinda escaped me. Nurse Bear was really hard to find. And I mean really hard."

"Doubt it."

Lowering my arm, I looked at him funny. It was bordering on equal parts of shock and disbelief, actually. "What do you mean, 'doubt it?'"

"…You're a terrible liar." he frankly told me. "Nobody looks for someone for 4 hours. For a place this big, they'd give up after a half-hour, a full hour at best. Something happened."

Ok…so despite the slight glazed look in his eyes, maybe they hadn't given him more sedatives after all. I mean, nobody could be that perceptive with a cloudy mind. Still, I wasn't going to reward him with an answer just like that. I'd meant what I said to Nurse Bear.

"Ok, so maybe I did find her faster than 4 hours ago." I admitted, deliberately looking away from him as the words flowed from my mouth, my right hand clasping the left awkwardly for effect. Then I re-established eye contact once more, angling for a sheepish look. "I just…couldn't face you after getting the answer why she left so suddenly right away because…well, I knew you wouldn't like it and I'm sorry for getting your hopes up for some grand explanation for the weirdness. The truth is that, even though she thinks it's extremely weird that you weren't allowed to say goodbye, she really doesn't know what's exactly going on with Ellone either because her paperwork was brought up late too and she wasn't the one in charge of her assessment - she just didn't want you losing hope because she knows better than anyone that it's important to have some when you're going through a transition. She left the room four hours ago because she felt guilty about possibly misleading you."

"So…does this mean Ellone's dead?"

I shook my head, secretly relieved that my acting skills didn't suck as much as he thought they did. "No. It just means we're back to where we started. That is…assuming that all the hope you had for her isn't already sucked out of you, of course."

"It isn't." he said with a conviction which betrayed the tiredness in his voice. "…And it won't be until I've seen her for myself."

It took all the energy I had not to tear up in front of him. And then some.