Chapter 3: I Hate Hospitals
'Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.'
Julie groggily opened her eyes. A pristine white ceiling sparkled above her as the sounds of muffled footsteps and talking drifted to her ears, punctuated by the occasional beeping which had woken her up. She turned her head and looked around the room. She was in a hospital bed, dressed in a hospital gown and hooked up to a heart monitor and everything.
"You're awake!" A familiar voice cried happily from somewhere to her right. She looked over to see the jogger sitting in a chair not too far away. He had changed clothes, and his hair was dry now, but there was no mistaking him. He now wore a pair of blue jeans and a black hoodie with a picture of a red stylized fish on the front. She tried to sit up, and instantly regretted it as blinding pain shot down her shoulder and burned in her side. She lay back with a cry, her hands flying reflexively to the tender area. Holy sh-t that hurt. The jogger's eyes widened as he flew to her side.
"Careful! You were really badly hurt back there. What happened, anyway?"
"You wouldn't…believe me…if I told you…" she panted through her gritted teeth. The jogger smiled a little.
"After what I've seen in the past few days, I'm willing to believe anything. But hey, let me go get the doctor. I'll be right back- so don't go anywhere, ok?" Julie made a face. Like she could go anywhere, in this condition…
"Hey, wait!" she called out suddenly. He stopped at the door and looked back.
"I…I don't even know your name…" she grinned sheepishly.
He smiled in return. "Jack. Jack Ward."
"Julianne Kelsey."
He nodded to her, and exited.
Jack noticed a bit of a commotion in the front entrance as he made his way to the reception desk. There was a mob of people standing in a huddle around a T.V. He was trying to see what they were all looking at when the cool voice of the receptionist startled him.
"Do you need something, sir?"
"Huh? Oh, uh…is Dr. Rivers around?"
"I'll page him. Is there something you need to talk to him about?"
"Tell him the woman from the vortex incident woke up- and her name is Julianne."
She nodded. As she resumed shuffling around through the junk on her desk, Jack returned his attention to the mob at the front. He could just begin to make out the voice of a news reporter as he drew closer.
"…all of these reported sightings have occurred in the last half hour or so, and all around the downtown area. Copter Four is on its way now to the scene of the last reported sighting, and we should have a visual coming in soon."
His brow furrowed as he scooted in closer, trying to glimpse a view of the television screen.
"To recap, several witnesses have phoned the station claiming to have seen what appears to be 'walking skeletons'. The creatures seemed to be armed with some sort of medieval weaponry, and have reportedly attacked anyone who has gotten in their way. We advise our viewers not to attempt to engage the creatures, and to run if you see one. They were last reported heading westbound on Main, just past the Talbot intersection."
Jack's mouth fell open slightly. That was only three blocks from here…and they were heading right towards the hospital!
"Copter four has just made it on to the scene. We go live now to Jenny Carson…"
"…I can hardly believe what I'm seeing here, Ted. There are indeed walking skeletons trudging down Main street, and as you can see here they seemed to be armored and carrying swords and shields. They aren't going into any buildings, and we advise you to stay inside…"
One of the people in front of him turned their head to talk to someone they were standing next to, and Jack was able to finally see the T.V. screen. He gasped at what he saw. Walking skeletons indeed, there was no mistaking that armor, those shields, those wickedly curved blades…it seemed impossible, but somehow, someway, there were no less than six stalfos marching down Main street. Slowly he backed away from the group, his mind racing. Did the sudden appearance of the stalfos have anything to do with the mysterious screams they'd heard earlier, quoting lines from the very same game? Were these happenings all connected to Julianne, and her strange injuries? He turned to go back down the hall to her room. He wanted to know what had happened to her in that void. He stopped dead when he heard the scream.
"Oh my God there they are!"
He turned around. There, right outside the glass doors, stood the group of stalfo...but they weren't just passing by. The one out in front turned and looked right into the hospital, to the gasps and yelps of everyone inside. It looked down at something it was holding in its hand, and seemed to nod as it looked back up. Then, to Jack's horror, the stalfos began approaching the building. Panic broke out all around him as nurses, patients, and everyone who had gathered to watch the T.V. began running away from the doors, screaming bloody murder.
"I thought the News guy said they weren't going into any buildings!"
"Oh God they're coming right at us!"
"They're gonna break through the glass!"
These were but some of the shouts Jack managed to make out as he fought his way through the chaos. The last thing he heard as he raced through the doorway with the others was the sound of glass shattering as the Stalfos broke through the door.
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"So as you can see Ms. Kelsey, we've set your dislocated shoulder and treated your burn wound. We also managed to extract these from the skin of your side and lower back…you don't happen to know what they are, do you?"
Julie furrowed her brow as the doctor brought forth a tray littered with shiny, colored pieces of metal. She picked one up and examined it carefully. One edge was carefully rounded, and there seemed to be part of some sort of raised design on the broken edge. She scratched her head thoughtfully.
"You know, it honestly doesn't ring a bell."
"So Ms. Kelsey, we're very curious about how exactly you received these wounds."
Julie eyed him nervously. She'd been afraid of that. "Well…" she began, fishing around for the proper way to explain it. She needn't have bothered.
Both Julie and the doctor looked up in puzzlement as the unmistakable sound of screaming drifted in from the hallway outside. Julie carefully sat up. Her side and shoulder still ached terribly, but it had gotten better.
About that moment, Jack burst into the room. He was white as a sheet and out of breath, and as he stood there panting all he managed to gasp out was "Run. Now."
The doctor protested severely when Jack tried to get Julie out of the bed. Tired of his interference, Jack grasped him by the shoulder and forced him to look out into the hallway. He had the most appropriate timing for a stalfos to be strolling down the corridor a couple meters away, and it looked over and grinned wickedly as it met his eyes. The doctor shot back into the room, slammed the door shut and collapsed against it, sweat trickling down around his wide eyes. Jack continued helping Julie stand. She was out of bed and walking by now, but she stopped as they passed the tray with the metal pieces on it.
"Wait. I have a feeling that these are important." She said as she scooped them into her hospital gown. Jack bit his lip, then grabbed a pillow and ripped the pillowcase off.
"I think this will work better." He smiled, handing it to her. She nodded gratefully and dumped the shards into the pillowcase. Julie seemed to be getting around okay on her own, though she was gritting her teeth and clutching her side occasionally, so Jack left her side and grabbed the doctor by the arm.
"Come on" he said brusquely as he yanked the petrified man away from the door.
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"We all felt it... our magic shattering somewhere in the void. Now we have to figure out what happened." Impa's cool voice echoed through the chamber of sages, reverberating off the invisible walls. Link looked around at them all, his brow furrowed. They hadn't yet explained to him what was going on, but he gathered that something had gone awry with the sealing process, and Ganondorf had gotten free.
"I'm afraid I have some very bad news." Zelda announced, her eyes distant. All turned to her.
"I was feeling in the void for clues, and I found…" She paused, swallowing nervously. "I found a hole."
Link didn't know what she meant, but the sages all visibly stiffened at her words. Link decided it was important enough to ask about.
"What do you mean, a hole?"
Zelda sighed heavily. "To understand this Link, you must have a grasp of the way of the universe…of how the dimensions lie in the fabric of space and time."
"…dimensions?"
"Other worlds. Alternate realities. There are thousands of them, drifting like bubbles in the void of existence. In order to travel from one dimension to another, you must open a gate- a puncture in the outer skin of both the dimension you are in and your destination dimension. It requires a burst of high intensity magic, which must be guided carefully around all the other dimensions which lie between you and your destination. The greatest risk of opening a portal between two dimensions is always this- that the magic will accidentally graze the skin of another dimension, and open a hole into the void. This is why this sort of magic is usually done slowly and carefully…but we were rushed during the final battle. And as we opened a path to the evil realm we punctured another dimension- and a close neighbor, at that. The dimension we punctured is so close to us, it would not surprise me if it has echoes of our world in it…but I digress. Since we opened a hole in this other dimension, it is safe to assume that while our magic dragged the evil king through the void, something wandered out of that dimension and got in the way. There are no traces of any living beings in the void at this time, so whatever wandered out of the grazed dimension has found its way back in…and Ganondorf followed it."
Link's eyes widened as this last piece of information sank in.
"You mean Ganondorf is probably loose in some alternate dimension?"
The sages nodded.
"…well we have to go after him then, don't we?" It was not a question.
Zelda swallowed. "Link…we're sorry to have to ask this of you, after all we have just put you through-"
Link raised a hand, silencing her.
"It is my destiny to put an end to Ganondorf's darkness. I will not stop until that destiny is fulfilled. I will follow Ganondorf to the ends of the earth, to the very edge of the universe if I have to, but I will not give up until he is safely sealed in the evil realm."
Zelda gazed into his eyes as he finished his speech, her eyes watering. Link tried to smile comfortingly.
"Now, how am I going to get there?"
"We will guide you. But be warned, Link, as Zelda said, this dimension is close enough for echoes of our dimension to reach it. You may not understand what this means, so I will explain it to you. Basically, the denizens of this dimension might know of us. We could exist as a fiction in their world, like a legend or impossible story. There might also be echoes of them in our world. Do not be surprised if they somehow seem familiar to you, or you to them." Impa smiled, "In short, be prepared to be recognized."
Link nodded.
"Now, since there is already an open gate in both our world and theirs, we will simply send a path for you to follow there. Get ready, young hero. Your primary task will be to find Ganondorf, but do not confront him until you have collected the shards of our magic, the broken pieces of the medallions. Most of them should be in the void, but a few may have been carried into the other dimension. Do you understand?"
Link nodded. He knew what he had to do.
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Back in the hospital, on the other hand, Julie, Jack, and Dr. Rivers had absolutely no idea what to do. The good doctor peered carefully around the corner, watching the stalfos meander down corridors and break into various rooms. "What are these things? What do they want?" He whispered.
"They're called Stalfos- and believe it or not, they're actually enemies from a video game. How they could actually exist and why they're here, I have no idea." Jack muttered in reply.
Julie, meanwhile, was still examining the multicolored shards. Something about them were familiar to her. There were seven in all; a yellow, three green, two red, and one blue. The pieces were rather large, and the more she looked at them, the more it seemed that the shards of the same color could fit together. Jack's voice interrupted her musings.
"We need to get out of here."
"Well, I'm open to any suggestions" replied the doctor.
"We're on the first floor, aren't we? Why don't we just go through a window?"
The doctor bit his lip as he glanced back out at the stalfos.
"Alright. The closest window that I remember is in that room across the way there. But we'll have to cross the hallway without those things seeing us."
"I'll go first." Jack offered. He steadied himself, crouching like some champion sprinter about to run the 100 meter. The doctor kept an eye on the stalfos patrolling the halls. First he waited until they were out of hearing distance, and then once all of them were facing the opposite direction, he softly commanded for Jack to go.
Jack went. He zipped across the hall so fast he skidded slightly when he came to the other end. He grasped the door handle and turned it. He closed his eyes, every fiber of being hoping, praying that the hinges would not creak…and swung the door open. It didn't make a sound. Jack slipped into the room and released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Then he gestured to the others. The doctor was far more cautious in his approach. He waited, watching the stalfos carefully, and when they turned away again he quietly tiptoed across the hall and slipped into the room with Jack. Now it was Julie's turn. She gathered up the pillowcase full of metal shards, wrapping it tightly around itself and knotting it so that the pieces wouldn't knock together and make noise. Then she prepared herself, crouching much as Jack had done, narrowing her eyes as she focused on her goal. She was trembling. She breathed in deeply, willing her pounding heart to be still. She could do this. She had to do this. The doctor, who was still watching the stalfos, was gesturing for her to go. She had just gathered enough courage to make a break for it when suddenly the doctor's eyes widened and he frantically signaled for her to stop. She heard the sound of heavy, determined footsteps heading in her direction, accompanied by the lull of grunting voices. Julie peeked around the corner for a better look, and swallowed nervously. Two stalfos were plodding steadily down the hall, and they showed no sign of turning soon. One was slightly taller than your average stalfos, and its armor was more richly decorated. That must be the leader… Julie thought. Quietly she began to back down the hallway. She didn't want to take the chance of being seen, but where could she hide? She groped along the wall behind her, eyeing the intersection warily, expecting them to appear any moment. Jack and the doctor had disappeared, and Julie wondered if they were merely hiding or had gone out through the window without her. Her heart tightened painfully at the thought of being left behind all alone in this stalfos-infested hospital. Her searching hand connected with a doorknob, and she squeezed her eyes closed as she grasped the knob and turned. Please don't creak, please don't creak, please don't creak…
'Creeeeeeak'
Dammit! Julie cursed silently at the sound the door made when it opened.
"What was that!" she heard a stalfos snarl.
Panicking, Julie bolted into the room and slammed the door. She could hear the clacking of their booted feet on the tile floor as she collapsed against the door. Her eyes darted around the room. The door did not have a lock, but she spotted a chair in the near left corner which she could use to prop against it. Her hand had hardly closed around the plastic backing of the seat when the door burst open behind her, a stalfos charging through with an angry grunt.
Julie's adrenaline had been pumping ever since she had first heard the screams in the hallway when the stalfos first attacked, and now the old 'fight or flight' instinct was finally kicking in. And since there was no where to run…
'Crack!'
The chair connected squarely with the back of the monster's skull, sending it stumbling to the floor with a roar of surprise. The jolt of the blow knocked the chair from her hands, and Julie stumbled over it in her haste to escape. Fight was done- it was time for flight.
Julie had just clamored into the hallway and was turning to race to the room with the window when a cold skeletal hand closed around her wrist.
The stalfos leader brutally twisted her arm behind her back, making Julie fall to her knees with a strangled cry. That was her bad arm!
"Where are the medallions!" The creature hissed in her ear. Medallions…?
"Well!" It barked impatiently.
"I…don't know…what you're…talking…about…" she managed to gasp through her gritted teeth, her eyes squeezed shut from the stabbing pain in her injured shoulder.
The stalfos released her arm and roughly turned her around, gripping her by the front of her dress and shoving something in her face.
"Pieces like this! Have you seen any other metal pieces like this!" it demanded. Julie pushed the remnants of pain and fear from her mind, and tried to focus on the object in his hand. It was a metal shard, with a rounded edge on one side and part of a raised design around the broken edge. Julies eyes widened. It looked just like the things they had extracted from her! Unfortunately, the stalfos noticed her reaction.
"A-ha! You have seen them! Where are they!"
Julie subconsciously gripped the pillowcase tighter. Dread gripped her heart as the monster's glowing red eyes fell upon it. Thinking quickly, Julie turned and threw the pillowcase behind her with all her might screaming "Jack! Catch!"
She had had a dim hope that Jack and the doctor had stayed in the room and not gone out the window, and that at her cry Jack would come running and grab the pillowcase before the stalfos got to it, but she certainly never expected to actually see Jack a mere five feet from her. He had to drop the chair he was holding to catch the pillowcase.
"Julie!" He cried, exasperated. Julie blinked. What on earth had he been planning to do? Ambush the stalfos from the front?
"Get him!" Her captor roared, "He has the medallions!"
Three more stalfos appeared from the adjoining corridor at their leader's call. Aw crap…
The first assailant dove at Jack, bellowing a hideous war cry. Jack sidestepped him and managed to awkwardly duck and roll under the swinging blade of the second, but the third caught him square in the jaw with the hilt of its sword. Jack cried out in pain as he flew to the floor. The stalfos stood menacingly over him, its sword raised to strike.
"Hi-yah!" With this cry of effort, Dr. Rivers slammed the chair Jack had dropped into the stalfos' ribs, sending it reeling off to the side. Jack smiled and nodded in thanks as the doctor helped him up. The two turned back to back and prepared to face off against the three skeletal beasts.
A/N: Mweeheehee! Fear my cliffhangers! And more and more action will be coming along in later chapters, so stay tuned. Review, please! (don't make me get out the puppy dog eyes!)