Chapter 28
It had been a long several days since the English-speakers hurt his throat. Sam and Tucker had visited each day and kept asking him questions he was unable to answer. The woman and man busied themselves with that old book that didn't have a single picture in it. The red-haired girl still seemed particularly interested in him but rarely spoke to him. She was the strangest English-speaker of the trio and as a result of her distancing, he couldn't see her as much of a threat. She was probably the most trustworthy of the three. Never pushed him to do anything he didn't want to. Never tried to touch him or move him. He never felt very pressured around her. It was a lot like with Sam when they first met. So maybe she was a good English-speaker and that was why Sam and Tucker had brought him here.
Unlike Sam, however, she always seemed cautious around him, like she was expecting him to attack her at any given moment. He couldn't recall a single time he had ever threatened her, but regardless of that, she still seemed scared of what he might do. It was hurtful, in a way. While Sam and Tucker were gone, she was the one he wanted to be with. She didn't feel the same about him.
Maybe it was the rings, or his eye color.
He took a deep breath as the two English-speakers he didn't want to be with led him downstairs. He hated downstairs. It was where all the stuff that made his skin crawl was located. All the sharp things. The pointy things. The things that the English-speakers at the facility would use on him.
And this time there was the same weird bed that they had put him on to hurt his throat, already equipped with the same bag and tube that would knock him unconscious if they stuck him with the needle that would be attached to it later.
He tried to think of any positives lately that had occurred in the Giant Word Building. The only one he could think of was the room they stuck him in every night. Sam had somehow convinced them to put a piece of the soft ground over the hard ground, in a corner on the other side of the door. He didn't get out of having a pillow and blanket forced on him but he was certain Sam wouldn't have made them do that anyway. The compromise was that she realized how thick the blanket they were using was, and she made them replace it with a much thinner one. He tolerated it but only because he didn't overheat. It was still painfully obvious that they disapproved of him not sleeping in the bed.
Then again, Sam didn't approve either. Beds must've been very important to them but he couldn't understand why. What was so bad about the ground? He had never slept on a bed once before and he was just fine.
"Daniel, kuŝiĝu tie," the woman said, pointing towards the bed.
On one hand, he was relieved that he could finally understand an English-speaker. On the other hand, them knowing Esperanto without him having told them was unnerving. He also didn't know why they weren't speaking it before. The red-haired girl didn't seem to know Esperanto, which ironically helped put him at ease, as he would connect her more with Sam or Tucker.
He obeyed but didn't actually want to. Getting up on this bed only to be hurt again wasn't an idea that thrilled him, but if they were planning to force ectoplasm into his body anyway, he would've much rather been unconscious for it. The residual pain would've been duller—probably—and he wouldn't have had to worry about suffocating on slime.
Plus, since Sam and Tucker weren't here, and since the red-haired girl refused to stop these two from doing anything, he was more or less on his own and they could and would do whatever they wanted with nobody around to stop them or change their twisted minds. Unless Sam or Tucker was around, he didn't have the audacity to defy them.
He positioned himself on the bed, trying to convince himself that this was better simply because he would be unconscious. And that if he died here then at least he wouldn't have died painfully.
The woman hummed curiously and tried to hold his wrist, but he wouldn't allow that. He pulled his hand back slowly, always maintaining a short distance from hers. She either wanted to inspect his rings or pull them, or perhaps chain them to something so he couldn't escape. Either way, he didn't want her touching—or even looking—at them.
She seemed to sense his anxiety about the rings and decided to let him keep his hand tight against his leg. Maybe he would pay for his disobedience later but for now…well, he would just do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't involve his rings or ectoplasm. The bathroom used to be a huge no for him but Tucker apparently convinced the man to give him showers instead of dunking him in ectoplasm mixtures. If he was really lucky, Tucker and Sam had managed to put these English speakers' original plans for the continuation of Project Level Up on hold.
He tried to focus on on his happy place while the woman stuck his arm with a needle that would put him to sleep shortly. He didn't have to wait for the relief of black nothingness to be replaced with a pleasant but fuzzy dream.
He was back in the vast expanse of herbaro that he loved to be in. Blue sky, white clouds, gentle air brushing his skin. It wasn't the clearest image and the only solid sound was the cheeping of the little flying animals above his head.
Sam was beside him under a large tree. Tucker was there too, but he was picking at some herbaro off more in the distance. He wasn't sure what was so fascinating about the strand he chose to pick at, but at least it made him happy.
This time the red-haired girl appeared. She was much closer to him now than ever before and when she spoke, her voice—all their voices—was muffled, but he recognized the praising tone and delighted in that, even if he wasn't able to understand what she was actually praising him for. He chose to believe it was because he had rebelled against the English-speaking man and woman by refusing food, refusing the bed, and refusing the ectoplasm. Whatever she was saying, Sam seemed to agree with it. He didn't say anything back, preferring to sit in silence and listen to the soothing noises around him.
The tranquility didn't last much longer though. There was a sudden piercing, borderline burning sensation directly in the center of his palm. It almost felt like hot metal was drilling into it, pulling and ripping the skin in ways he'd never felt before. When he looked, there was no ring, as usual…but a sickening mixture of red and green liquids began to trickle out. He recognized the red as his own blood, but the green had to be ectoplasm—there was no other explanation. Was this the culprit? Where was it coming from? Sam and Tucker hadn't done this and the red-haired girl rarely approached him so she didn't do it. The other two English-speakers were nowhere in sight so it couldn't have been them.
Was he producing this green goo now? Was this another side effect of Project Level Up?
He winced and hissed sharply as the searing pain moved to his other hand as well, putting him in an official state of inescapable agony. As with the first hand, the other began to leak the gross dual coloring too.
Although the sound was incredibly muffled to the point of being incomprehensible, he heard all three of them saying something about his hair, his hair, the color of his hair.
His hair was messy and always naturally hung over his forehead, so all he had to do was focus on the very tip—the white tip. And it was emitting a soft glow that he hadn't dealt with before. Another memento from Project Level Up, perhaps?
He refocused his vision forward, expecting the green field of herbaro to greet him, but the view was blocked by a wispy tail-like thing waving above the ground. His eyes roamed upward and stopped on the figure's face. Glowing, white hair, intense green eyes, and a horrible, vengeful scowl plastered on. He felt the hatred of this thing—the thing with the same physical qualities he had when he suddenly changed to protect Sam—and it was the same hatred he had sensed in the creature that he and only he saw back at Sam's room. It looked like a terrifying, bloodthirsty version of himself.
He woke up with a gasp but barely cracked an eye open. He immediately felt something different with himself. It wasn't his throat so at least they hadn't touched that again. But he'd never had such a dream before, in which he was the monster. That one monster in Sam's room…the thing that had materialized out of nowhere…it could've really hurt her, or even killed her, if he hadn't been around. But what if Project Level Up was making him into the same creature, and he ended up attacking Sam or Tucker? Was that possible? Perhaps it was ludicrous to think so but the only clear and very vivid part of that dream had been the entity floating before him.
He tried to breathe deeply and evenly to calm down. He didn't have any desire to hurt anyone, especially not Sam or Tucker. Maybe he the dream was just one of those scary dreams. Hopefully it wasn't something he needed to be concerned about, and if it kept bothering him, the best solution would be to find some way to tell Sam or Tucker and they would help him.
As he slowly relaxed, he noticed a dull, pulsating ache in his hands and feet. It felt like it should've been a far more severe pain, maybe even as bad as the kind in his dream, but it was almost as if the edge had been taken off just enough to make the pain bearable. Maybe he'd been too distracted to notice it before, but the best conclusion he could think of was ring replacement. Generally the rings weren't replaced until several years had passed. Project Level Up probably changed that.
There was something rustling at his side and the next thing he knew, his eyelids were being pried open and a light shining directly in his eyes.
"Is he stable?" a hushed voice asked.
"Pupils are dilated and he's still hypotensive," another voice answered.
"This is the second dose of epinephrine," the other voice said as he felt another needle jab him. "We don't even know if it's compatible with ectoplasm."
"We need to try, Jack, if we can't raise his BP we lose him."
"I don't understand why he crashed in the first place. It wasn't a big operation, we didn't mess with anything we weren't supposed to, no major blood vessels were involved…"
"I'm not sure why that happened, I just know it did, and I'm not about to let it happen again."
He had a tiny surge of energy and tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but even in spite of any newfound energy, his body was so slow to respond to what he was commanding it to do.
A hand placed itself on his chest and gently pushed him back down.
"Don't move around yet, Daniel," one of the voices said.
His vision was hardly clear but he managed to distinguish three figures looming over him. One was huge so he immediately knew one of them was the man. The other two were smaller but it was difficult to tell who they were.
He briefly wondered if the reason his vision was so bad right now was because this time they had done something to his eyes, even though the pain was in his hands and feet. But the idea passed almost as quickly as it was conceived. There had been moments in the past where he'd woken up and his vision was blurry. He usually just rubbed his eyes and if that didn't work, waited it out. Everything would clear up in a bit. He would be able to see who these people were and what they had done to him this time.
Most likely yanked at his rings. It would certainly explain the soreness.
He wasn't exactly sure what he did, but the people stopped hovering after a moment or two and his vision finally began to clear. He already knew the man was there but part of him was kind of hoping Sam and Tucker would be there too. It made much more sense that the other two were the woman and the red-haired girl.
The ache never went away, even as he sat up—this time much more easily—and stared at the woman, whose eyes were locked onto him. He couldn't tell what she was feeling or thinking.
He swung his legs over the side of the weird bed and instantly noticed something else, something besides the pain. His feet felt slightly lighter. It wasn't by much but they did.
He leaned over to see what was wrong, as well as check for any possible bleeding that they would need to take care of which of course, meant he would have to let them near his rings. But when he saw his feet, in place of the rings he had grown so accustomed to seeing, there were two big bandages wrapped around. No rings anywhere.
It was so unbelievable that his first assumption was they'd turned the rings invisible somehow—he hadn't the slightest idea how but English-speakers could do just about anything they wanted, things completely beyond his imagination.
He went to reach for the bandage around his foot so he could feel the new rings for himself, but the moment he lifted his arm, he realized his hands felt lighter too—slightly lighter…like the same amount of weight that had been lifted from his feet had now been lifted from his hands. He jerked his head to his right hand and found another bandage wrapped around it, but a more complex kind of wrapping that allowed freedom for useless fingers while covering the palm and back. When he looked at his left hand, the same bandage and wrap job presented itself.
All three English-speakers were waiting quietly, breath bated, while he inspected the bandages. He moved one of his wrists over the top of his other hand, again just so he could confirm the invisible ring hypothesis. Instead, his wrist passed over air. He turned the hand over and tried again, this time as extra assurance. His wrist didn't feel anything which meant that the rings truly were gone.
They were…gone gone. Not just unseen but not there kind of gone. Out of his body kind of gone. Which meant he could be Daniel now, not just the boy with the rings, not just the clumsy, quiet—
His entire train of thought derailed and he swallowed hard. If the pain in his hands and feet were because the English-speakers took the rings out…then maybe the reason his throat hurt the last time they did something to him…was…because…
His wrist gently touched his throat and he stared ahead. He could be completely off the mark about this one. English-speakers could do a lot of crazy, amazing things but he didn't have any rings in his throat for them to remove. And he didn't want to try again only to fail right in front of them. But…on the incredibly slim chance that he didn't fail…would they be happy about that?
He decided to muster any courage he could to overcome a kind of anxiety and pressure he'd never felt before. He parted his lips.
And hummed.
It wasn't a pretty noise by any stretch of the word. It was less of an actual hum and more of a croaking sound—cracked and weak but it was a noise he had made with his voice. Not whistling. Not falling. Not coughing.
"Mia voĉo..." he absently said.
A/N
Whaaaat, his voice AND rings?! You have no idea how excited I was for this chapter to come into existence, and I'm suuuper excited about the next one! (Sorry about the energy and excitement, I'm just happy to be updating this again and some chapters that I've been patiently waiting for are finally arriving!)
Sorry about the wait. As I said last chapter, things are still pretty crazy here. I highly doubt I'll be able to update every week, so I'm giving myself two weeks to juggle everything going on right now AND this fic. I'll keep updates on either Friday or Saturday.