Something has gone wrong. Something is wrong. Something will go wrong.
Fox. One more time.
"Hit me, Alex."
A single card dropped down on the bed, faced up to reveal a 4 of spades. Matched with the deck it was placed with, the cards read as a 2 of clubs, 8 of hearts, and a 7 of spades. Perfect 21.
"Nahhhhh, ain't no freaking way," a calico tabby cat groaned. "Girl gets lucky with the reaper then she gets lucky with cards, first thing we're doing once you get out is throwing you into a casino!"
"Well, you know what they say, Alex," Alessia beamed from her spot on the bed. "Lucky in cards, unlucky in love..." she muttered, leaning her head on the shoulder of the other tabby cat next to her.
"Oh that's just cruel," Franco scoffed, setting his index finger down while leaning his head back. "Hit me one more time, I'm testing my luck too."
Another card landed in his deck, a king of spades. With another king and a 4 of diamonds, Franco sighed in defeat.
"Oof, bust. Also how the hell do you remember that saying but couldn't remember our names?!" the calico asked.
"I told you, I dunno. Veyana said my amnesia didn't make sense either. It's like I remember some sort of life, but it ain't mine. Just somebody that was cooler than me, I guess," Alessia explained, leaning away from Franco. "Play your cards, Alex."
"Ain't none of this makes sense, Alice, and you know it," Alex replied, flipping her played-down card. "Oof, the lesbians. And I know I ain't playing an ace next card, I shuffled those a bit further into the deck."
Franco laughed. "Hah! Cheater."
"Only when I play for money!" Alex winked.
"Speaking of money, any idea what my bill is gonna be like when I get out?" Alessia asked, quickly handing over her winning deck back to Alex.
"Bill? Alessia, this is Corneria, your taxes pay your bills," Franco replied, also giving back his deck.
Alessia looked at Alex in confusion, and then quickly scanned her room. In the week since she woke up, she had been transferred to a higher level in the hospital building for recovering long-term patients, but it had the works. A good TV, a comfy mechanical cot, and her (supposed) friends had a lot of time to visit her. All that already paid for on taxes?
"I know Fortuna makes their folk pay hospital bills, they hate their taxes out there," Alex mentioned, shuffling the deck once more between her hands. The cards seem to fall in place at their usual intervals.
Wait, no, two cards went down but immediately went to the top. She's hiding an ace of spades in the 7th place.
"Maybe it's another memory, accidentally shifting something she saw on TV with herself in it? Veyana said that might be why she remembers some of the weirder things," Alex went on. "You, er, Old Alessia used to watch a ton of reality TV."
"Reality TV? But I absolutely hate it now!" Alessia replied. "First show they put on for me, Real Housewives of Aquas or something. Buncha rich snots in their beach mansions being all negative towards each other. How did I even like that?"
"Don't ask me, I ain't even complaining that you don't watch that stuff anymore," Franco chimed in, grabbing two cups of water from a table nearby the cot. "But yeah, whatever you thought, don't worry about your bills, least not on our planet."
"Pfft, thank the stars I'm Cornerian then," Alessia muttered, leaning over to grab the second cup from Franco's hand. She quickly sipped from the sterile-smelling paper cup before setting it aside and stating the obvious. "You've got the ace of spades in the seventh place."
Both Alex and Franco stared at Alessia, bewildered at her random statement. They looked at each other, before Franco spoke up, "Did she get it again?"
Alex sighed, and with a knowing look, she took 6 cards off the top of the deck face down, before pulling the 7th card out and flipping it to reveal an ace of spades.
"Nevermind about the casino, they'll know you're on some shit and kick you out before they lose any money to you. It's how I'd get mad enough anyways," Alex said, furrowing her brow. "Freaked me out the first time you did it, but now it's just getting annoying."
"Well, either you're easy to read or your cards are. Which one you'd bet on?" Alessia asked, a smug grin partially appearing on her muzzle.
Alex looked incredulous at Alessia for a moment, taken aback by the comment before she grinned devilishly back at the she-wolf. "Well alright, think you can beat me at my game? Guess the cards."
In just one second, Alessia could distinctly hear the card deck shuffled 7 whole times, if not more. Something told her she was about to regret challenging her friend, the self-styled "Queen of Cards" when she first pulled them out of her shoulder bag for her to play.
Franco picked his drink back up and shuffled from his position on the cot, getting comfortable enough to see the battle unfold.
Alex began an unprompted staring contest with Alessia as she pulled out one card facing down. "Guess."
"Three of clubs," Alessia answered, keeping up with the staring contest.
Alex flipped the card. Franco muttered, "Three of clubs. Got it right, what the-!"
"Frank, shut it," Alex commanded, furrowing her brows to a more steely eye glare at the silver she-wolf. "Guess," she asked once more, pulling another face-down card.
"Five of diamonds."
Alex flipped the card. A five of diamonds. She pulled out the third face-down card. "Guess."
"Queen of Spades," Alessia immediately guessed.
Alex flipped the card. A king of hearts.
"What?" "What?" Alex and Alessia both yelled. They startled poor Franco, who was getting interested in the mental games.
"Whoa, watch the volume! Alex, what's wrong?" Franco asked.
"I... I thought I had my queen up too. You guess it with no hesitation too, how did you..."
Alex's eyes lit up, before pulling another card out of the pile. "Guess it!"
"Uh, five of hearts?" Alessia hesitantly guessed, more out of confusion in Alex's action than anything else. The tabby cat flipped the card over to reveal a queen of hearts.
Alex grabbed another card. "Guess it again."
"A nine of clubs?" Alessia asked rather than guessing. Alex flipped the card; it was a nine of spades.
The tabby cat visibly breathed in, before pulling the third card. "Guess the card."
"PINKELEPHANTSPINKELEPHANTSPINKELEPHANTSPINKELEPHANTSPINKELEPHANTSPINKELEPHANTS"
"... Pink elephants? What?" Alessia finally said with confusion. "Why are you yelling pink elephants?"
Alex gasped, quickly standing up from her seat and reflexively hopping right to the wall on the far side of the room, holding her arms up in a defensive position. Both Franco and Alessia looked bewildered at Alex's erratic movements.
Alex took a few uneven deep breaths, before putting a hand to her chest to try and calm herself. She looked at Alessia with an unnerving glare. "It's not that you can guess my cards. You're not reading clues, you're reading minds."
Fox. I think I failed.
"Wha—what?!" Alessia yelled. She put her arms up in a defensive posture, feeling doubt and confusion welling up in her. "Hold on, let's think this through for a moment, everyone calm down!"
"What the hell do you mean by that Alex!?" Franco yelled as well. He pointed a shaky finger at the calico, and Alessia felt anger and indignation rising from him. "Are you just saying crap so you can get out of playing with Alessia?!"
"What?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"C'mon, I know you," Franco began to explain. "You always had to have that leg up on us because you don't have much else, you always ask us to play cards whenever we're free. Now that Alessia can call you out on your card tricks, you're trying to play dumb!"
Both of the girls stared at Franco, confused and downright offended on Alex's part for his accusations.
"Franco, you're the stupidest motherfucker I've ever met. Look, you can fucking test it yourself like I did."
Alex put her arms down and walked back to the cot, pulling out the cards that were taken out before. "Once I had the idea, I had to test it by saying in my head different cards than the one in my hand. Last one I thought pink elephants out of nowhere, and she said she thought I was yelling it," she explained, harshly throwing down her cards on the cot to emphasize her point.
Franco furrowed his brow. "Alright, fine. Voices in our heads. She can still read people, doesn't mean she can read every thought in our minds, that wouldn't make sense. I got loads of thoughts running through my mind right now, and I bet you do too, but she's not reacting to any of them!"
Alessia turned around to Franco. "Wait, hold on, you're forgetting something here: me! I don't know if I'm reading your minds or not!"
"Yeah? Then how do you explain how you had Alex's cards right the first three times?" Franco asked.
"I... I don't know!" Alessia replied, shrugging her shoulders. "I just, I have to guess, I think of the best answer the card should be, and before answering I believed myself that it was the card. But then it felt like my head started believing in weird, contradicting things, like a paradox or something. That's when I swear I heard Alex start yelling pink elephants and I got confused."
Alessia kept her shoulders and arms shrugged as she tried to explain. Alex was having none of it, while Franco seemed torn between doubt and actual belief.
"Whatever, I gotta head back home. You can work with her if you want Frank, believe me or not. I ain't dealing with any of this," Alex said, quickly picking up her cards to shuffle them back into her shoulder bag.
She swung her bag around and stood up at the same time Franco pointed a finger at her. "Fine, wanna be that way? Want to just leave Alessia in her time of need because you're scared she can somehow read you more than most people, then, just— then just get going! Some friend you are."
"Stars, I shouldn't have slept with you while she was dead, it would have made this so much easier."
Alessia felt her heart break apart.
"I'm not trying to abandon you, I'm just... Look, clearly, there's something else going on with her! She can see cards she can't see, she remembers different memories of basically whole different lives instead of her own; I'm here as a friend, but whatever this is, I ain't qualified, you ain't qualified, and at this point I don't think Veyana is qualified either considering all the cryptic writing she does without telling us literally anything—WHOA!"
Alex stepped back seeing Franco suddenly get shoved and pinned to the wall by Alessia.
"Whoa, hey, what the hell!" Franco yelled out, his arms stretched out against the wall to instinctively brace him. They readied themselves but stopped when he saw it was Alessia who pressed him.
"You..." Alessia seethed, growling with her canines poking out and scaring both cats in the room. "I was just starting to like you, and then—!"
Alessia's eyes began to well up in tears, as her initial anger started to give away to sadness. She let her arms off Franco and shakily reached to her right hand, where a small emerald-encrusted ring had been placed on her ring finger. With a bit of forced effort, she took off the engagement ring and shoved it into Franco's hand. "Go. Both of you. Just go."
"Alessia, what the hell are you talking abou—" Franco began to say, before his mouth hung open and a look of absolute fear crossed his face. "Oh my stars you heard that thought," he muttered, before holding his arms up defensively. "Look, before you say anything—!"
"Go!" Alessia yelled, not even bothering to look Franco in the eyes anymore. More tears began to spring up, and Alessia could feel the weight of her broken heart now almost forcing her down to her knees.
"Alice, what's your problem? Frank, what did you... Oh my stars," Alex uttered, suddenly realizing why Alessia gave back her ring to Franco and why he was suddenly defensive. "Alessia, wait, we can explain. Franco was fucked up and saying some really dark crap and I wanted to make sure he wasn't gonna do something stupid—"
"GET OUT!" Alessia yelled a third time, pointing to the door. The room stood briefly silent as Alex and Franco looked and quickly nodded at each other, before wordlessly walking toward the exit of the room. The air felt palpable as Franco left the room first before Alex, stopping at the open door frame, looked back at Alessia.
"They told us you weren't coming back, Alessia. We had nothing else but ourselves."
"I SAID GET OUT!" Alessia yelled, holding up her arm one more time as the door suddenly closed with a harsh force.
With her two friends gone, the air felt less palpable and more depressing. Her heart finally gave out, and Alessia sank to her knees, cupping her hands around her muzzle and eyes as she cried.
She lied. She knew she could read minds, though not purposefully. She could gather cards, but that was the extent of her control. Beyond that, throughout the week, she could catch glimpses of thoughts and sentences from patients and doctors alike. At first, she thought everyone was so talkative until an older patient was thinking lewd thoughts about her while she was at the cafe, but he wasn't moving his lips or even making eye contact.
It scared her. Whatever Old Alessia was, she was a completely different she-wolf now. Whatever the doctors did to bring her back from being braindead gave her mental faculties beyond the common mind.
When Alex arrived and started to play cards with her, Alessia realized that her guessing cards seemed to help. She was able to completely read a thought instead of hearing the weird babble of voices in someone's mind whenever she previously tried to read someone. She wanted to calm down the situation by letting them lead on with testing her, seeing her limit, and start thinking of how to help her, and she could explain some of her earlier questions that would lead her to the answer she already secretly knew.
She could still read errant thoughts, however. And Franco's rambling thoughts crashed that whole plan down. He'd been so helpful as well, coming every single day to say hello and be there to help her calm down whenever Veyana did her questions and tests.
Veyana became more cold and distant since her initial impression. She now didn't seem to want to relate or help Alessia at all, asking more probing questions about her own life that she couldn't remember, just bits and pieces of a life that seemed more suited to being a story on a TV than little ol common working class her. But with Franco there to help, she had gaps filled in about her old life, even though it all felt alien to her.
Alien... The tears had dried up, and Alessia's labored breathing had winded down to little more than mucus-filled short breaths. With a thought, she finally picked herself up and stood off the ground, walking towards the bathroom in her hospital room.
She closed her eyes for a moment, before turning on the light and looking at the mirror.
A wolf stared back at her, silver-grey furred with bright blue eyes, a messy long white-grey mane fumbling around its neck and a bit over its eyes. Its eyes were bloodshot from the crying, and drying fur tear trails came down its muzzle. On its right ear stood two short ring ear piercings, and on its neck was a black neck collar, given to the wolf by their supposed friend.
The first time she saw herself in the mirror, Alessia almost screamed. Whatever she was looking at in the mirror, she knew. Within her blood, within her bones, within her DNA, Alessia knew on instinct that this was not her.
So what in Krazoa am I?
"Alessia Williams? This is doctor Veyana. May I come in?"
The she-wolf turned her head towards the exit of the bathroom, hearing the doctor's voice from behind the hospital room's door. With one last sigh and a look at her face, Alessia turned on the faucet real quick and cupped her hands into the water, quickly splashing her face to clean it and clear it up.
Turning off the faucet, she stepped out of the bathroom, and called out, "Yeah, come in."
Veyana opened the door and let herself in, oddly closing the door only halfway as she entered. "Miss Williams, I need you to come with me."
OH CRAP, THEY KNOW.
"I'm sorry?" Alessia asked, trying to play dumb.
"I need you to come with me to the hospital director's office," Veyana explained. "I'm sorry for the short notice but I need you to come quickly, NOW."
Whoa, hold on. First the cold shoulder, now the commanding? "Wait a sec, what's going on? What are you doing to me?"
"We're releasing you."
"Phoenix isn't going to like this."
Alessia held her tongue on what she just heard, and tried to react to the news that she was told physically. "Ah, oh! Oh, uh, okay? This is great, but I thought I needed the rest of the month for therapy—"
"Alessia, please!" Veyana almost yelled, opening the door fully while looking almost pleading in the husky's expression. "I can't tell you why but I need you to come with me now!"
Alessia took a quick cold breath, analyzing her new situation. Something has Veyana spooked, and it isn't her. Whoever this Phoenix is, it seems they've come into the picture and they don't seem to mean good. The she-wolf could say no, but something else told her she needed to see whatever Veyana is trying to do.
Maybe the cold shoulder was because of Phoenix getting to Veyana, and nothing personal to Alessia. If the husky doctor did care, Veyana was trying to show it now, while still hiding it.
"Okay. I guess... Let's go then," Alessia murmured, stepping towards Veyana. "Anything I need to grab already or am I coming back after the meeting?"
"We'll come back together. Please, follow me," Veyana said, motioning towards the door outside.
Alessia took another deep breath, and with some new confidence in her step, followed Veyana out of her room.
"For now, miss Alessia, just call me Director."
The large top-floor director's office followed the idea of the rest of the hospital: utilitarian before aesthetic. Clean marble flooring and walls held little else except a large glass case of various awards and even military medals. The director seemed to be a veteran before he went into hospice, Alessia thought.
The aesthetic part of the room was the desk, situated at the far side of the entrance to the office. Dark mahogany held a gold inlay within each edge of the desk that seemed more garish and out of place for a hospital director's desk than for a desk of some nobleman or a wealthy merchant. The director himself looked out of place at the desk, another silvery-white wolf like her but seemingly much older and slightly grizzled, reverting to the utilitarian with his scrubs and name tag. Nothing else singled out little else about his place in the hierarchy of nurses and doctors besides the small name tag pinned to his left breast pocket.
It wasn't even a name tag. It just said "Director". Call that a red flag of a tag , Alessia mused.
The she-wolf came into the room asking for a sir, and the director responded in kind. Veyana promised to explain everything, but none of the she-wolf's questions were acknowledged, much less answered on the insufferably quiet elevator ride upstairs through a whole fifty floors, the doctor again giving her the cold shoulder. Though she did catch an errant thought from Veyana that stayed in her mind while she began walking inside the room and up to the director's desk.
"We need her gone before their goons catch her and get one of ours hurt in the process."
Whatever the Director would say, it would be different from what he was thinking. She just needed to get a good read on him.
"You asked to see me, Director?" she asked, sitting at the lone seat across from the desk. Seems he had seldom visitors.
"Yes, I did," the Director confirmed. "Tell me, do you know why you are here?"
"The stars formed me here."
"What?"
Alessia didn't even think of her answer, instead just randomly saying the first thing that came to mind. While she mentally startled herself for her strange answer, she couldn't help but notice the small murmurs and whispers she could feel in the Director's head suddenly coalesce to form that thought.
She couldn't read minds, just thoughts. She just needed to get the Director to think.
"An… apt answer, but not the real one. I'm asking if you know why I called you into my office, instead of just being told you're being given a full clean bill and are ready to leave."
Alessia took a moment to compose herself, now trying to think out her answers. "So I am leaving? Before I'm supposed to be finished with my memory therapy?"
"Dammit Veyana, I told you to not tell her yet."
The Director adjusted his glasses on his muzzle. "Yes, I am both afraid and happy that you are. Happy that you may now return home to your family. Afraid because I'm sure you realize the strangeness as well as I do."
Alessia nodded her head slowly, following along with the Director's words. "Doctor Veyana kinda confirmed it with me, but she didn't tell me much more. But, we both know I literally still can't remember anything of my old life?!" she asked.
Not just asked. Pleaded. She felt fine, but also she was about to be thrown back into the world, the universe that was uncaring to anyone who didn't know how to step left foot right foot.
"And that's why I had you come up here first instead of sending you on your way. Because the situation has changed and it's changed into something much worse."
Alessia felt her heart sink.
The Director continued, "I've read over your file and your daily medical reports. Including the reports from your therapist. You do remember some sort of life, but something that seems to be nothing of yours. That's the crux of two problems that have since popped up."
Alessia now physically gulped. Her supposed memories that she was trying to retrieve were now a sore spot for her. Daring pilots. Brave space raids. Some sort of group or team that she trusted that didn't seem to include her frien—former friends Franco and Alex.
She had it messed up from seemingly various fiction stories or TV shows. The therapist said maybe it was a defense mechanism, thinking she still had trauma from her accident that wanted her to be stronger than what she used to be. An accident that she hasn't even been told the details about.
"Firstly, I know you're being hunted."
Alessia's heart stopped.
"And I'm also aware your real memories are the reason why."
"It's better for her sake that she knows now."
"Wha-?" Alessia ecked out, too stunned for words at the sudden revelation.
"Listen to me, and listen closely, because I am not going to repeat this to anyone else. I have all electronics turned off just so no one can hear," the Director began to explain, leaning in close to a still-stunned Alessia. "You are in grave danger, Alessia."
Oh great, starting with the good news, Alessia errantly thought.
With a stern expression, the director continued, "When you first came in, we believed you were a victim of tragedy and fate, but once you woke up, we learned differently. There's a company called the Phoenix Corporation, and apparently, they were hoping you were dead.
Once you woke up, they began snooping around my hospital, asking any doctor about your status as you healed. They know you're an amnesiac, but once I figured out they may have had a bigger role in all this, I had to act fast.
As far as official records go, you're a blank slate. There aren't any memories in your head and it looks like they will never come back. Nothing but instincts both old and ingrained are left. None of your supposed memories are recorded or have been purged from the record. If anyone asks, nothing else happened in therapy except you being told what your memories should be as a first test, and you failed on remembering anything."
The Director stood up from his desk, taking a deep breath for himself before he locked eyes with an increasingly-confused Alessia. "I don't know if your friends ever brought it up, but apparently you made enemies of the corporation enough that they had sent someone to kill you. The way they wanted to end you was with a vehicle accident, but by some miracle you were still breathing, just brain-dead. But now that you're back alive, it won't be long before whoever hunted you down will make sure of their mark, whether or not the point of why you need to be silenced is moot now. When you leave, you need to start running. Make amends for what offended your friends today, and run. Call your family and tell them you can't remember anything, and run. See if your friends have someone outside the Lylat, make quick plans to take a warp gate there, and run. At least until you can get your real memories back, and see that what you did know that they wanted to silence either comes to fruition or you can figure out how to report it to authorities enough, that's when you can come back. Some people don't forgive, but most will always forget. Do you understand me?"
No.
No?
NO!?
What the actual hell?! So this whole situation is because someone decided to be lazy in their job of killing her? Her whole life was practically gone, sure, but now she's gotta live a life of an almost outlaw just to get away from someone because she could potentially know some dark secrets?
Since when was she a protagonist of some shitty hunter/prey story?
"I… I don't…" Alessia hesitated to speak, her head full of thoughts and questions about her situation.
"She's not strong enough for this, I knew it. She's going to be dead within a week. Dammit, Lucius…"
Who the hell is Lucius?
Alessia tried to ignore the Director's thought, but something came from it. Anger. Indignation. A sense of unfairness. It bubbled up from an unknown spring within Alessia, and she didn't know how to control it. Her body began to react to the strange sensations, and her stomach began to churn.
"I'm sorry, I-" Alessia finally began to speak, feeling a more natural sensation of being sick to her core. "I need a minute, just, where's your bathroom?"
"There is a nearby staff bathroom just left when you exit, near the elevators. Take care of all the time you need, and come back. I want to discuss some plans with you, some way we can fix this situation quickly," the Director said. The wolf motioned her to the door, and Alessia quickly stood up and conspicuously walked quickly to exit, trying not to upset her body even more as her subconscious realized what it wanted to do.
Recent memory should have suggested that Alessia was made of sterner stuff than just an upset stomach from food, but her body instinctively told her "no, something is in your stomach that you want out". Walking out of the Director's room, she ignored the evening lit empty sterile hallways as she scanned for the aforementioned bathrooms. Finding the signs of a door to her salvation, she all but rushed in and brute forced her way through the bathroom door and the toilet stall door, eager to let out what was causing her problems.
Hunched over the bowl of the single toilet (odd, but perhaps no one usually came up to the Director's floor), her entire stomach contents were vomited out. For an agonizing one minute, Alessia could do little but let her body take its course in emptying whatever toxins got in her.
After a minute, once the echoes of retches died down, Alessia fell to her knees and the ground next to the toilet, ignoring the smells even as the automatic flush began its work. Her mind, in a fog, began to come back in wisps of questions about herself and what she just did.
Was it nerves? She had to have something in her memories that made her instinctively eject everything she had eaten. Was it something she did randomly eat or drink? Tracing her steps, she remembered that she had drank some water from a water jug in her room, along with her friends.
Her ex-friends, at this point.
Where did everything just go so wrong? The "accident", which apparently wasn't an accident of hers but more someone accidentally failing to kill her for whatever dumb reason? The supposed reason she was attacked? When she had said yes to Franco, not knowing one of her other friends was pining for him behind her back?
"C'mon, I know you. You always had to have that leg up on us because you don't have much else—"
Did Franco know Alex had a thing for him? Did they both have a thing for each other? Was it just a one-time thing after the she-wolf bit the dust? Franco certainly felt angry that Alex began accusing Alessia of mind-reading.
He felt angry. Angry. He felt angry, and Alessia felt his anger.
The she-wolf finally stood up in the dark stall, her mind working overtime. The next time Alessia felt anger, it was the Director getting mad at a Lucius. He was so… demented, at this Lucius, but nothing in his face belied any sort of emotion, just the calmness expected from a hospital director. But seeing how Alessia was pulled into such tragedy and hopelessness pushed that anger to a boiling point within him, and Alessia felt that anger.
She felt that anger. And it wasn't hers.
She doesn't just read minds. She's an empath. She can feel people's thoughts and emotions, which in turn can reflect on Alessia. The greater the emotion, the stronger the feedback. Anger seems to make her body feel engorged on toxins that her mind tells her on instinct to throw up or do whatever it takes to get the toxins out.
Hardly the greatest way to figure this out, considering she just threw up hospital food and water.
Subconsciously, her body began to exit the stall, walking towards a sink in the sterile white-tiled bathroom, her mind still reeling from the discovery. Whatever brought her back from being brain-dead somehow activated new parts of her brain. Was she genetically predisposed to this… power? Did anyone in her old family have these powers, or was it not related to genes and just something new about brains that the entire scientific community has yet to realize? Did anyone else in Lylat have these powers?
Yeah, me.
Like the flick of a switch, Alessia's mind suddenly focused on what her eyes were seeing; Her heart began to beat faster, she felt her breathing go ragged and her throat felt parched from all the dry air she was trying to breathe in fast.
There was a mirror at the sink. To be expected, most bathroom sinks have mirrors, but something about this mirror had to be fake, or wrong, or distorted, or fantastical.
Staring at the she-wolf from the mirror, an azure-blue vixen in a purple flight suit stared back. She had a tiara on top of her head, her hair cut short in the front but flowing in the back with a few braided bangs on the side. A strange collar wrapped around the base of her neck as part of her flight suit.
Krystal stared at herself in the mirror.
"Miss Williams!? I came back as soon as the Director told me to come pick you up, and then I heard horrible noises from here! Are you okay?!"
Doctor Veyana could not know, as her work was meant to just fix her memories, not figure out whose memories it was. She should not know, as it would jeopardize everything she had worked for, everything that Alessia has recovered for. She would not know, at least until Alessia could think of a way or reason why she wasn't seeing a wolf in the mirror anymore.
Alessia had meant to quickly block Veyana as soon as she heard frantic knocking on the door. Her legs locked in place, however; the shock from seeing someone else in the mirror other than herself had short-circuited her instincts.
Instead, she raised her arm out as the second half of closing the door, in an effort to stop it from being opened. Yet it proved fruitless as Veyana effortlessly opened it wide and stepped in, eager to help the ailing Alessia.
The door swung inward. She meant to push it outward, and push hard to keep it propped closed.
Time felt like it slowed to a crawl, as Alessia's mind told her what was happening. The force of her push intending for the door still went from her hand, somehow, and whatever was in front of the doorway was the one that would be pushed.
"I SAID GET OUT!" Alessia yelled, holding up her arm one more time as the door suddenly closed with a harsh force.
Her friends didn't close the door. She did, from all the way back from her bed. She willed that door closed, and so it closed harshly.
She also willed the bathroom door to close with a push from her. But the door was open, and Veyana was in front of her will .
The red husky was lifted off her feet, her body being the first to move backward before any of her limbs. The force of the will sent her back into the hallway, torso first, the doctor at first not even understanding what happened in that split second of time. The will kept its push, with Alessia unable to fully understand what was happening except gasping at the sudden intrusion into her bathroom, and her reaction stopped. Subsequently, the will stopped as well, just as it pushed Veyana through a window opposite the doorway of the bathroom in the hall.
Alone in the bathroom, Alessia could feel even from a distance Doctor Veyana's heart-stopping fear for her life as she began falling from the top floor of the fifty-story hospital.