Chapter 2: Waking Up

Dizzy. Disoriented. Drowsy. There were lots of words I could use to describe how I felt when I woke up.

The most obvious ones, however, would be confused and terrified. It didn't register to me at first that I wasn't sprawled on the pavement fresh out of a thriller-esque chase scene but instead laying in a hospital room until I'd jerk up and nearly ripped what seemed to be an IV out of my arm. Then the scent hit me and my vision cleared and I groaned because while I might be safe from insect men, a whole new danger awaited me…

Doctors.

Ones I had to explain myself to while hopped up on drugs with absolutely no idea what was considered normal in this odd parallel universe.

Skewed priorities perhaps—I was alive, after all, and they were likely my 'saviors'—but I'd seen more than enough psychiatrists to last me a lifetime the last time I'd crossed over and I certainly wasn't looking forward to any of the procedures that awaited me. Not to even mention the bill I'd likely be stuck with once I'd left this place considering my insurance was no doubt void. And then there was the possible deportation and identity issues.

I was pretty set on sneaking out after I'd stolen some crutches and found my clothes, until I glanced down at my leg and realized something… odd… to say the least. In the place of a cast or splint or anything else a broken leg would require to heal were simple bandages. Thick ones, sure, but the kind you'd wear after you sprained an ankle playing volleyball. I'd jumped out of a third story window. The pain of it had even been enough to make me pass out. Sheltered child or not, a sprained ankle would not knock me out cold.

Sure enough, though, when I gave an experimental twist I only felt a slight twinge of pain. Not at all like the numb ache pain dulled by drugs gave.

Oh yeah, I definitely wasn't staying around to find out how much was on my bill. Besides, insect men and super healing hospitals? It was time to figure out what the hell kind of world I had ended up in.

A lot of things are easier said than done, but slipping out of the hospital wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd been expecting, even with my slight limp. It wasn't quite the same, but I chalked my success off to all the time I'd spent maneuvering around persistent social workers and quack shrinks back in the day.

Getting the IV out had been a bit of a pain and a mess, but I'd tucked the object away so that it wouldn't be found for a while. A nurse might come after me if they saw that I wasn't in my bed, but it wasn't as though I was in intensive care or anything. They'd probably assume I was on a walk and I doubted they'd go blind panic searching for me to scold. There were definitely more important things going on in a hospital than the unconscious girl with a sprained ankle. Assuming anything I knew about hospitals applied here, at least.

I still couldn't find my clothes but considering the location and the state I had arrived in I figured them gone and reserved to mourned the loss of one of my favorite jackets later. Instead I worked my way to one of the changing rooms and pulled on a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt around my size. Shoes where a bit of a harder find sense I had mammoth feet and couldn't wear heels, but luckily one of the nameless nurses/doctors I was thieving from had some spare flats I commandeered.

Getting my phone and wallet back, however, was a trial. I knew that whoever had found me had to have lifted my stuff to identify me and possibly call my emergency contacts (and god knows how it looked to them when all the numbers were wrong or the service on my phone didn't work). But I didn't have the first clue where my doctor(s) would've kept any of my items. Obviously it had to be discrete if they were holding it to prevent theft, but the idea of a hospital having some safe full of everyone's shit seemed a tad bit ridiculous. Maybe the doctors themselves held onto the items in a drawer at their desk, but I didn't know what my doctor looked like, let alone where their desk was.

I snooped around reception, supply closets, and had more than one close encounter in labs packed with complicated equipment worth more than I'd ever make, but no matter where I went I couldn't spot anything that screamed 'patient possessions.' Just drawer after drawer of miscellaneous items that I likely wasn't supposed to be rifling through and a few locked cabinets.

I was almost ready to give up the search, but eventually I found my way to a desk where most of what had been in my pockets was sealed away in labeled baggies. Bit of an odd security measure, but I didn't question it. I was just glade I didn't have to go full-criminal and attempt picking locks and safe cracking.

After I'd gotten the majority of my stuff, it was home free. I joined a group of lovely elderly women that had been visiting one of their friends to keep the more prying eyes off me, and once in the parking lot asked the gals for directions to the newest gas station. Luckily enough, gas stations existed in this universe even if I had been anxious about asking, and there was one just under a mile away. A bit of a pain to walk on my ankle, but less certainly less tortuous than I'd imagined. Plus, it gave me a chance to look at the scenery and play spot the differences.

I'd only moved to this town around three years ago, and being the shut-in I was now-a-days I hadn't exactly seen much of it, but oddly enough nothing really stood out on my stroll. Even the hospital as I had explored it hadn't been particularly exciting or different to other hospitals I'd visited in the past. Certainly not familiar as I hadn't visited my old-new neighborhood's hospital yet, and I'd never gone through locker rooms and labs before so I couldn't spot the differences if I'd tried, but nothing looked all too complicated or futuristic. Just white walls after white walls, those odd reflective floors, and the same sterile smell that clung to everything in all hospitals. I couldn't understand how they'd had such impressive medicine.

The roads as I walked them, too, just became more and more familiar the closer I got to the gas station. I spotted an empty lot where a thrift shop I visited once stood, a new restaurant in construction, and a few extra road signs but the differences ended there. Hell, even the gas station itself was part of a familiar old chain. BP certainly wasn't the first thing that I'd have imagined would survive the dystopian society I'd been picturing when I'd first talked to Jacob and been horrified by how disfigured he was.

And thinking about it, none of the people looked off, either. Admitably I had yet to have any real in depth encounters in this alternate reality, but even while exploring the hospital—a place where sick and hurt people go—I hadn't run into anyone else with scales or features nearly as odd as Jacob's. Was it dumb luck? Or maybe Jacob was part of a very small minority? He'd locked himself away for the safety of others and got upset when I mentioned hospitals, too, so there had to be something there. Surely, at least, there'd be an article on it in the newspaper if Jacob was part of a group or minority.

But sure enough, once I'd gotten a hold of a copy of The Daily Mail from a stack in the corner of a yet again surprisingly normal and familiar gas station, I spotted nothing. Not on the front page, the back one, or the politics, sports, and comics sections. Even the obituaries gave nothing away.

And the poor cashier was looking at me like I was some kind of psychopath with how I'd tossed the pages all over the place.

Good thing I'd long sense lost any sense of self-consciousness.

"Hey!" I called out, watching as the guy suddenly found the wall and counter infinitely more interesting than me while no doubt wishing his shift ended soon. "Have you seen or heard about anything odd recently? Like a virus?"

"Uhhh..." He drawled, eyebrows scrunching in thought. Or maybe just discomfort. I wasn't great with facial expressions. "Not really, no?"

My own furry forehead caterpillars shot up at that. "You're sure? Maybe 'virus' is the wrong word… I met this odd guy, you see. Kinda looked like he was turning into a green bug."

"I haven't seen anyone in any costumes or special effects makeup recently, sorry."

"That's not what I meant…" I grumbled, but even someone as thick as me could tell by the startled and confused look on the cashier's face that he was telling the truth.

Well, there goes making a good, sane, first impression in this universe.

"Right. Thanks for you help." I huffed, making my way back out the store.

"Wait, your newspaper—"

I ignored him, letting the door jingle behind me as it shut and cut him off.

It didn't really take me long to figure out what to do next. It felt pretty obvious, to me at least, that Jacob would have the answers or at least lead to them. I had to return to my old apartment.

Maybe it would have been easier to find a library so that I could research all the details of this universe in a safe environment, but something in my gut told me I wouldn't find any of the answers I actually wanted there. Plus, despite how I'd nearly died today/yesterday/who knows when and how my future was looking anything but bleak, for the first time in a while I was oddly excited.

This whole past year I'd been running on fumes while trying to write my new book. I'd had an apartment, a job, a whole life finally free of all those years locked up in a room with my childhood therapist stuck on repeat telling me I was crazy, and yet I'd never really felt more miserable. I had thought maybe it was the lack of any close friends or the loss of my family finally hitting me now that no one was around to guide my feelings or fight against on the matter. I was even considering getting a cat or joining a yoga class to cheer myself up before the crack had appeared in my wall and consumed my every thought. Yet here I was, stuck in the similar situation as the one that had torn me from my family in the first place, and getting some sort of sick pleasure from it. I'd even been slightly disappointed earlier, when I'd first started to investigate and realized Jacob was more of an aberration than the norm.

Despite my preferred genre of literature, I'd never thought I was that adventurous or wild of a person— I barely even went outside since that one camping trip that had ruined my life— but I guess I was wrong.

It had been obvious, I suppose. Even my jerkass therapist had constantly pointed out how reckless and curious a person I was when he felt like ranting about my flaws and making me see reality. But still, I hated whenever that bastard was right. Made every word he's spouted about psychosis and delusions start to take root under my skin. And then I questioned myself. What if he was right all along? What if, somewhere, I'm locked up in some crazy person's home and just don't know it? Is Emma even really my name? Did my parents, my little brother, ever really exist?

Especially now. My life had gotten stagnant and boring with little to challenge or interest me while the deadlines for a book I didn't have ideas for grew closer, and life offers me the perfect exit and a mystery to solve? I could practically hear the Freudian deconstruction on my therapist's lips now.

But I shook it all off, all those fears. Ripped and tore at the saplings that formed before they could bloom. Because, ultimately, who could I trust if not myself? I couldn't betray everything I'd known after all this time.

Besides, Jacob himself had seemed like a sweet boy before he had turned on me. The way he'd locked himself up in that house, the pain in his voice when he'd come after me… I at least wanted to try and see if there was anything I could do to help him.

Returning to a copy of what was once my old apartment was creepy to say the least. It was brighter out now, mid-afternoon most likely, and the building itself wasn't that different from the one in my universe aside from a faded bloodstain and leftover glass shards(curtesy of moi) on the concrete outside and all the boarded windows to of Jacob's room.

The floorboards creaked, the carpet was stained, and the paint was chipping. All just like I remembered, depressingly enough. Only difference was how empty everything was, but with how Jacob was holed up earlier, I had already figured the apartment abandoned.

I didn't really have much of a plan by the way. Not in the slightest. I was an improvisation kind of gal, and beyond a mop I'd stolen from a hall-way closet and a general enthusiasm to discover the truth and help a mutant, I was going in blind and hoping for the best.

I figured it was forgivable, though. After all, I didn't have much to go on already, and even if I ignored the issue of my identity and told the police what I'd seen they'd just call me insane yet again or shoot Jacob dead.

I didn't want that, so here I was. Climbing up the dusty stairs to the room of a man who'd just tried to kill me hours ago and hoping for the best.

My hopes were dashed, however, when across the hall my eyes caught sight of a broken door, busted through and off its hinges on the floor. Jacob no-where in sight.

Perhaps he could have boarded himself up in another room in the apartment, but I doubted it. Wooden planks wouldn't be enough to keep him caged in with that strength.

I sighed to myself, unsure where to go now. Jacob could be anywhere—if he was still alive, that is. Police weren't the only ones with trigger fingers, after all, and with all that earlier talk about cravings it was only a matter of time till he attacked someone.

So much for being a hero, I suppose.

I shook my head, walking out of Jacob's room and back out into the hall over the broken bits of his door. I probably wouldn't have even have noticed it, if the faint and oddly familiar buzzing noise I heard from behind didn't make me turn around.

The door to the room besides Jacob's, what in my previous universe had been my apartment, was open.

Furrowing my brows, I inched towards the door. There could have been a lot of things in there, I suppose. A homeless man, some kids mucking about—Jacob's previous occupancy here didn't truly make it off limits even if he would have preferred it that way. Yet still, I felt an odd foreboding creep up my back as that odd buzzing got louder and louder… almost the same as the eerie sensation I felt every time the crack came for me.

All of a sudden, not at all respecting the suspense and tension I was feeling in the slightest, the door flew open and a bright green light lit up directly in front of my face, blinding me for a moment as I closed my eyes with a yelp as I stupidly dropped the mop in my hands and it clattered to the floor.

"Oh! Sorry about that." A man's voice startled me out of my daze as I blinked out the spots in my vision and looked up at him only to see…

Matt Smith?

He flicked the small device that he'd blinded me with in his hand—which looked—well, it couldn't be—

What.

"Or not sorry. Did you know you are giving off some very odd readings—"

He went off into some ramble. Something about Chronololopop whatever the fuck particles and something about time and dimensions and- oh my god.

My therapist was right.

I was crazy.

A/N: If you couldn't tell by now, sanity is a sensitive issue for Emma.

On a happier note, though, thanks to everyone who's reviewed/followed/favorited so far! I added a cover since last chapter which I hope you like. It's taken from a still of the canon DW cracks in the show which are much much smaller than the gaping maws Emma's walked through lol.

Sneak peak: Next chapter chapter is creatively titled "The Doctor."