10.5
[5:22 PM. Olivine City Hospital, Lorelei's Room. Olivine City. The same day.]
The nurse attendant checked the various instruments hooked up to the old woman. The monitor gently beeped as the woman's chest rose and fell with each labored breath.
The nurse held her breath and placed a get-well card on the desk. A middle aged woman had delivered it to the center earlier today. The nurse would never admit it, but the sight of the bald and burned body of the woman terrified her. She looked away and left the room, turning the light off behind her.
Lorelei felt the woman leave. The pain in her skin itched like a swarm of insects crawling over her body. She struggled to adjust but could not move. Consigned to her bed, she simply allowed her mind to wander.
Her mind drifted to her daughter. She tried to picture her but the memory seemed fuzzy. She tried picturing her home on Four Island—fuzzy. Everything in her mind seemed distorted, static.
She was not alone.
The presence was faint at first, then slowly metastasized. She felt the cold other-worldly sensation of not being alone in her own mind. She tried to ignore the intruder, but as she thought, her mind turned to a terrible storm of static. She tried to scream. She tried to escape.
"You have something I need, Lorelei."
Lorelei remained silent in her mind.
"Death is such a messy thing—much simpler to just…wipe the slate clean."
Lorelei tried to picture her daughter, her birth, her earliest memory—a walk in the park, a birthday, her first battle. They all began to melt in her mind. The faces erased themselves.
The presence in her mind laughed, and if that nurse had lingered in her room, she would have heard a small laugh escape from the comatose woman.