I took the helmet from my head and sat up in my bed. It took a few seconds for my eyes to focus properly showing me that I was indeed in the same hospital room that I had originally been in. No one else was in the room, other than Andrew and Amy, who still had their nerve gears on their heads. However I got the feeling that the room was being monitored in some way or another.
This was the first time I had willingly logged out of virtual reality and for some reason being back in the real world almost felt wrong. The weakness in my limbs, the dull colours of the room and that I was very obviously hungry and thirsty.
I placed the helmet onto the desk to my side and swung my legs off from the bed. I then, making sure I wasn't caught up in any wires, jumped off from the bed and landed onto the hard flooring with a thud which buckled my knees, causing me to fall to the ground. The impact with the floor sent an unfamiliar pain through my body.
The pain didn't last too long and my legs seemed to gain enough strength for me to stand on my own. I laughed a little, "Those stupid rehabilitation sessions might actually be of use." Since coming out of SAO all of the players were forced into both physical and social rehabilitation. Both were painful and both were tedious, but they did have their purpose.
I looked over to the two others and wondered when they would also log out, if they could bring themselves to do it. I then looked towards the door and through the window. Nothing of interest and nothing seemed out of place, yet the light green painted walls of the hallway left a lot to be desired. I moved towards it, wobbling slightly with each step before falling onto the metal handle.
The handle initially went down, but was then met with a block of resistance. I put all of my weight, however little that may be now, onto the handle and even tried jumping up to push the handle down. Yet the handle wouldn't move any further, only giving me a slight click when it reached its limit. The door had been locked with us inside.
I kept trying the handle, each attempt becoming faster and more frantic as I began to panic at what this may mean. However not long after I started attacking the door handle a person passed in front of the window and the door gave out a loud click. Directly after this click the handle gave up all its resistance and swung open, with me falling through into the hallway.
Before I hit the opposite wall of the floor I was gently grabbed by my arms and pulled up. I looked at the person who had unlocked the door, a woman with long black hair, green eyes and with pale skin. She was shorter than me, however not by much. She wore a long white coat, similar to a lab coat which had an identification badge on it which read "Visitor".
I looked back from her badge to her and asked, "Who are you?" I was worried that she may have been someone related with the media who had managed to get hold of a key and was snooping around for a story.
She looked at me confused for a second, looked down at her badge and sighed a little. "We've been here for over a year now and we still considered visitors. Stupid I know but budget cuts suck." This piece of information at the very least put my worries aside; if she had been here for a year then she was unlikely part of the media.
"Well, my name is Eleanor Chance. I deal with the people side of this incident. I work a lot with Daniel, the man you met earlier, the eccentric one who really needs to get away from a computer more often. He's head of the computer side of things and I'm in charge of the people and the more social side of things." She spoke with a mixed accent, she mostly spoke with a distinct, almost stereotypical British accent, but there was a definite hint of something more oriental.
"More recently, as things have calmed down with you all coming out of the game, I've been working to find out why some people are stuck in the game." She seemed like she wanted to continue, but she moved back slightly as if she caught herself in the middle of doing something. "If you want I can stop, give you some time or just figure out what you want to know or do?"
She had given me an option of what I wanted to do, something that was distinctly unusual about the events that had so far happened in this hospital. So I said the first thing that had come to my mind, "Where's Steven? And why was the door locked?"
Eleanor gave another sigh and looked somewhat irritated by what I had asked. She signed down the hallway and started walking. I assumed she was taking me to Steven's room, as I still didn't know the layout of this section of the hospital.
Eleanor looked back, checked that I was able to keep up with her, and began talking, "Since people got out of SAO we've been having more and more issues with media teams trying to get into the hospital and cause issues. Now something you should probably know first. It isn't common or public knowledge that people are still stuck in the nerve gears, as far as people are concerned they're in medically induced comas."
"Wait, so how many people actually know what is going on and you still haven't explained why we were locked into that room" While I was speaking Eleanor kept looking ahead and didn't seem to acknowledge what I had said.
"Well the count stands at about 40, maybe 50 people actually know what's going. But that's only the numbers for England, there's people stuck in the VR around the world, with the majority of them being in Japan from what we can gather. Everyone is being rather secretive about this." This last statement was said with irritation.
"The door was locked simply because we've been having issues with media crews and reporters trying to find stories. Out in America a reporter tried to yank a Nerve Gear off of a kid's head. Considering that happened about a week before the force logout, the poor kid might've got out of the game as well." She stopped at an intersection and stopped speaking for a few seconds. When she looked back around to check I was still there it was very visible that she was upset about the information she had just relayed.
She turned down to a corridor to the left and continued speaking, "The media have been sitting outside for near on a month now. So a lot of doors get locked on a regular basis, windows and blinds kept shut, that sort of thing for security reasons. Bastards only want a story and don't care for the people they have to hurt to get it."
She may still be simply another official in a suit, but she had given me no reason to dislike her. She also seemed to have a similar opinion regarding reporters and the media in general. But I didn't like the idea of the secrecy behind all of this as I in turn would also be forced into keeping quiet about all of this.
"His room is down this corridor on the right, here's the key. You may as well keep that key with you; you have more reason to have it than I do. I'll come back some time later." She turned, placed a key into my hand, smiled at me and walked off.
I looked down at the key and saw that it had a plastic key tag attached that read "Room 5, Floor 3" I looked down the corridor that Eleanor had indicated and saw that it looked like any other in the building. Green painted walls, a number of wooden doors with large metal handles and static, sterile smelling air.
I looked back behind me, but I had no idea how to get back to my room from here, so the only option was to go to where I had intended to go, Yet I was worried about what I'd see in the room, even though it was less than a day since I was last there, this would be the first time that I'd be alone with him since SAO.
I walked up to the door, trying not to look through the window and put my weight down onto the cold handle. As expected the handle refused my weight, the door was locked. So I found the keyhole, turned the key, letting it give off a loud click. I pressed the door handle down, but was scared to push the door forward for some reason.
After a few seconds of frantic thinking I forced myself to push through the door and into the room. I had been in the room before so in reality it wasn't anything new, but something was digging in my mind that all of a sudden made me viciously hate the room. The fact that I was here instead of finding a way to save him, in reality meant that he was spending more time alone in whatever world he was. This thought disgusted me, but I couldn't get rid of it.
I looked over at the bed, trying to ignore the many flashing and bleeping machines that were connected to the person lying there. He looked exactly the same as before, a Nerve Gear covering his face, long brownish hair spilling out from under the helmet, extremely pale skin and almost no muscle or fat to speak of. If it wasn't for the slow beep of the heart rate sensor I'd have thought that he was long dead. Yet even in this state he was still living and fighting on, somehow.
A chair had been either left by his bed, or had been placed there knowing that someone would be visiting. Either way, I walked up to it and sat down, letting my aching body relax a little bit.
I went to hold onto his hand, but stopped when I saw a tube of some sort attached to his arm. Seeing where the tube entered through his skin nearly caused me to be sick. In SAO Steven was physically strong and I presumed he was similarly strong before he had entered VR, all that was left was this shell of a person that remained in a hospital bed relying on machines to keep him alive.
Instead of holding his hand, for fear of interfering with the machinery and tubing, I laid my head down onto his chest and placed my arms up around my head. Only now was I able to notice his breathing, shallow and slow. Not wanting to see any more I closed my eyes and listened to the slow rhythm of Steven's breathing.