Chapter 51: The guards

"Get lunch."

Vlad looked at Ziad one more time, but the nurse truly wasn't joking: he would eat in the communal area, point. There wasn't even an "or eat nothing" option – which he would have picked if Ziad had let him, so that was probably why.

Apparently staying close to three months in his room without ever going to the library, barely talking or doing anything other than staring into nothing warranted getting dragged out of said room and being forced to interact with people.

Never mind that he still looked like a mummy, covered in bandages because his skin kept breaking into sores and gashes and the blood and flesh underneath red and pink and glowing like something out of a nuclear waste movie, especially if it was out in the open.

The fevers and vomiting had abated, which was something.

but it wasn't the first time

and if it had gone and come back before

then it could come back again

The only problem was that Vlad could audition for the role of the Invisible Man – without even using his powers – and not stick out like a sore thumb, but for the rest of his life? Ziad and the other nurses changed his bandages five times a day and it hurt and stang like glue on a wound that won't dry up no matter how long you wait. He couldn't live like that forever, he couldn't...

But like with everything else, Vlad didn't get to choose.

would you rather die or be dead?

oh wait

Eating was difficult, too. The bandages kept rubbing against his lips, he couldn't open his mouth all the way – and sometimes, a mix of ectoplasm, pus and blood dripped from beneath the bandages into his mouth, burning whatever he was trying to eat and sizzling on his tongue.

Ziad didn't seem to care.

or maybe he did maybe there just wasn't a solution maybe he thought this attempt was for the best maybe Ziad didn't know what else to do maybe he just didn't want to let Vlad disappear into himself

even though it might be the only way even though there was nothing else left to do

"Go, Vlad."

Then again, would it be better if he stayed in his room?

Not worse, that much was certain, but no matter what Vlad did everything would be horrible. Alone, unable to tell anyone the truth, bedroom or communal area, what did it really change, in the end? People would either stare or ignore him, but in all cases they had no reason to care about him or go out of their way to talk to him.

They had their own injuries and illnesses, and most of them would be gone from the clinic in a couple of weeks. Maybe they'd heard about the freak patient from Room 12, but as it was, why would they care?

it didn't matter that Vlad felt like a fraud for sitting amongst victims of ghost attacks

they didn't and couldn't know that and what he felt didn't matter

Vlad sat with his lunch at an empty table – and did his best not to look up from his plate.

It wasn't so different from his room, really.

no walls here nothing to keep him separate nothing to hide and ignore the fact that he was dead and they weren't

He knew this wasn't what Ziad wished for, but he still had no idea how to deal with this.

His meal tasted bland acidic a drop fallen into the rice perhaps nauseating and the underside of his tongue stung with a cut he knew not to be there.

How much of that was apprehension seemed impossible to identify.

Halfway through his plate, the seat across the table moved, a plate was put down: someone had just sat there. Vlad didn't look up, but he knew the six other seats at the table were empty. Whoever this was had specifically chosen to sit in front of him. He couldn't understand why.

unless

but they didn't know

however he was the most obvious sore thumb out there fully bandaged with white-grey hair and nothing but a caricature of a patient to his name

"It got worse, then?"

Vlad froze – his hand numb on his fork, no idea of what to do with these words, tongue stinging behind his teeth, eyes stuck on his plate.

"Right, N°12?"

It was a woman choppy hair bandaged shoulder the one who knew too much talking, and...

It wasn't the first time they'd seen each other in the communal area. She was injured last time – and Vlad, Vlad had thought she knew too much, even if she'd known next to nothing. An agent of the organization, most likely, someone who'd seen enough and knew enough to notice and perhaps draw the kind of conclusions that would only make Vlad's life harder.

Not that his life was much to look at, but.

Her conclusions didn't even have to be right, they just had to exist, and Vlad...

Vlad didn't even know how far any of this could go, if Bianco's organization realized what he was.

monster a corpse strung by stubbornness and ectoplasm

Would the director be disappointed? Hurt? Angry? Terrified? Sorry?

Would it even change anything?

Vlad finally looked up, and yes: it was her.

"How... The bandages, how could you tell?"

The woman looked at him deadpan and raised her fork to point at his head:

"You're young and your hair is almost white, plus you are just as skinny as last time. Also, I haven't seen anyone fully bandaged here in a week, and I eat in the communal area for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are no other patient you could be."

"...I see."

The agent, he realized, was here again – Vlad wasn't sure how much time had passed since their first encounter, but he'd wager on four months or so, maybe five, and it was obvious she hadn't been there the whole time. Her hair had grown a bit, her bandaged shoulder looked alright now, there was no reason for her to be in the clinic sti...

Oh.

As the woman glanced at a patient taking a seat at the other end of the table, Vlad got a glimpse of a large rash peaking out of her collar. She'd probably gotten grazed by an ectoplasmic attack while on the job: this was a different injury, then.

Someone else whose life kept being hurt by ghosts, then.

And maybe she'd agreed to the risks, being an agent for Bianco's organization, but at the same time, it wasn't like no one ever got injured or manipulated by ghosts who only cared about their own interests, the whole clinic was proof of that. Someone still had to do that job.

Saying she should have seen it coming – and maybe she had but she'd still decided to do this because it was more important than her safety – was a stretch you only made if you refused to acknowledge all the other victims.

and Vlad who had had the gall to want to know more

certainly he deserved everything that was happening to him too the deaths the pain the sickness the lack of anything to look forward to the abandonment the abnormality the agony

after all

he shouldn't have gone and tried to look

Vlad looked back at his plate and swallowed harshly.

"You... You're right, I'm not doing good. I don't think I'll ever do good now."