It was all a haze for a while after that, noise and activity whirling around me like some cruel theater performance. My mind was still reeling after the voice, the shoddy imitation of a voice, echoic and visceral and I had no idea what that was. Had I picked up a passenger or caught the attention of some wandering thing when I looked into the Everything? I was terrified, because now not only was I potentially ‘contaminated’ by some unnatural force, one that gave me magic, by the way? But I might also have even more reason to be tossed into a cell and studied.

I groaned painfully, upset and scared and so very confused, and I was very close to just shutting my eyes and going back to sleep for a while longer. Unfortunately, rest was not for me, not yet anyway, and slowly my head was pulled from the vice I would’ve sworn it was stuck in, the noise settling to merely screaming now, and I had no more excuse to continue ignoring the doctor, sitting beside my bed as though nothing happened.

He noticed me noticing him, too, and he barely gave me the time to blink after our eyes met before launching into another speech.

“Well, that was certainly eventful, wouldn’t you say? It seems even while conscious your energies continue to defy you, although certainly not to the same extent.” I bit back my retort of ‘because I’d never had powers before now’, not yet too incapacitated to think that would work in my favor.

“It would seem you’re in more urgent need of some psionics than I’d already thought. I’ve put in a request for somebody to treat you, and it seems SMC is more eager to support you than I’d thought, they’re footing the bill for a rank five to be here as soon as possible.”

That was another shock for me, a rank five psion, a rank five anything would rarely ever do anything ‘as soon as possible’ without significant pressure. The Coalition is certainly big enough to command someone like that, but even then, not lightly. And it’d make sense not to, anyone at rank five should be spending every second they can preparing to advance, to take that last step and cast off their mortality in favor for a life never-ending. At least, that’s what everyone says, that the first five stages are still, in some way, human, that each advancement makes you better in some way, becoming more powerful and longer living, steadily extending your prime as you prepare to use whatever energies you’ve subscribed to in order to finally create a newer, better you at rank six.

Of course, even that ranking system is pretty loose, there’re no real ‘standards’ that demarcate one from the next before six, nor, I’m sure, six, seven, and eight, just a bunch of loose estimations. We’ve all been fed the whole ‘five and six are like heaven and earth,’ or ‘that one single advancement cannot even be compared to what they were before,’ and it was true that rank six was another breed entirely, but for an empty like me, they’re all equally untouchable after two.

Or at least, they were?

“Sylvain, what’s happened?” Oh, I had been unaware that the good doctor was speaking. Looking back into his eyes and blinking slowly, I hoped he took the hint to repeat whatever it was he’d said.

“As I was saying, they’ve dispatched one of the rank five psions in their employ to come and gauge whatever it is you’re suffering from and with any luck, fix you.” Well, I no longer needed to hunt down a psion to wipe away the worst Monday anyone has ever had, small victories and all that.

“Until then, I’m afraid you’ll be stuck. You’ll be allowed to walk around the room, but I’m sure you understand our apprehension at allowing you to roam the rest of the compound before you can control your gifts again. Any time you need help, I or one of my assistants should be able to respond at any time, and a nurse should be back soon with a meal that you can hopefully keep down. Do you have any questions?”

I had a hard time not scowling at the perceived taunt, only managing to hold back ‘thanks’ to the lance of pain that shot through my head when I tried. He seemed to take the hint anyway, standing up and leaving the room with strides just a little too long and hurried for my tastes, and yet again, I was left wondering about what I had done to make an obviously trained staff so obviously nervous.

I looked down at myself, no longer cuffed to the bed but almost certainly locked in the room, and noticed that I didn’t have an I.V drip in my arm, or anywhere else for that matter, which would explain why I was so very parched. I didn’t even see any bruises where one might’ve been stuck, I had plenty of other bruises, sure, but none that looked like they came from a needle and not a hand, boot, rope, or something equally out of place for a hospital patient.

Still, I was satisfied at my inspection, I was sore and grumpy and groggy, and more than likely losing my mind or being hijacked by some primal entity that should not be in this slice of reality, but I was alive, at least, and I might possibly even better than alive, too, in time.

It took me all of five minutes to realize that I had nobody at all to talk to now, not only in this building but very possibly anywhere. I wouldn’t say that any of my colleagues were my friends, but schooling, training, working my way up with a few of them had been about the only meaningful connections I’d built since I was in secondary school, and I somehow doubted that anyone from back then would be eager to see me. That sudden realization was a surprise. No spikes of pain, no sickness, no uncontrollable screaming, but I was still very much surprised, and not in a good way. Somehow, I felt just a bit emptier than I had when I was actually an empty.

Then, because apparently I wasn’t even allowed to wallow in silence and misery for five minutes, my “friend” came back

“Elementum curabitur vitae nunc sed”

And even better, it was now speaking Latin at me. Latin, a language I was just about obligated to learn thanks to my family, a dead language revitalized thanks to the arrival of the arcane because early Mages thought magic just couldn’t be proper without Latin spells, and a language very quickly buried again once the first wave of practical mages took the stage. Now all you’d hear Latin used for is pompous ceremonies and rituals that the Johanssons just so happened to specialize in.

So, thanks to that, I was able to quickly decipher that my passenger was taunting me. Even in my heavily impaired state of mind, I knew that it was gibberish, utter nonsense that very incoherently spoke of ‘the element of future care right now’, and even then, I was only vaguely sure that it wasn’t talking about the ‘element of chat.’

I was almost too angry to even care that I was already retching again, my body lurching forward as I dry heaved, too empty to even cough up anything, anymore. I was doubled over like that for a few moments longer, shivering in pain as I made certain my stomach wasn’t about to lurch out instead, before I plopped back in bed, staring at the ceiling with as much intensity as I could muster, hoping that I got the sentiment across to whatever it was in my head that was streaming dummy text, very targeted dummy text but dumb all the same, directly into me. I probably didn’t, but I could try.

From there, though, things started settling down some. I spent most of the next couple days either in too much pain to think about anything too interesting, or too drugged up to think about anything interesting. I had a couple more accidents as Strenns called them, like finding out why there weren’t any needles in me when someone trying to give me a shot wound up smearing lipstick all over my arm, but the second syringe went in with no issues and no surprise transmutations and she got to take the lipstick home after someone made sure it wasn’t cursed or something.

So, besides a few random party tricks like that, nothing really noteworthy happened. After two or so days passed, I was finally feeling alive again. I was still bedridden, still gambling any time I tried to have a meal, and still trying very hard not to think about my time in the Everything, but alive. And even better, I hadn’t been accosted by any detached voices in my head after the second time. With budding hope that I may yet be able to return to normalcy or even better, I focused on recovering, unperturbed by the lack of visiting colleagues and hardly surprised by my own family’s absence.

And then, on the third day, still confined to my room and mostly to my bed therein, Strenns came by and told me everything I wanted to hear.

“Sylvain, I just wanted to let you know that the psion I told you about is here, we’re getting everything sorted now but she should be here for you soon.”