Mitch's hand had taken a ride to Hell and decided to stay there, and it was trying to drag the rest of him down as well.

He hadn't been able to come up with any answers as to what had gone wrong with that experiment. Somehow it had created what looked like the mist that rose at the time of the Tollings and almost disintegrated his ass. Thinking about how bright that deadly glow had been when he opened his eyes gave him the shivers every time he thought about it. After pondering it for a while and making no ground, he had gone to sleep with the towel still blocking the gap under the door.

When he woke, his whole right hand was bruised and pained. Bruised is too mild a term, but he doesn't who what else fits. Where it's not black, the damn thing is purple. The whole limb throbs painfully with every heartbeat and moving it even slightly is a sharp agony.

He gets up gingerly cradling his entire forearm things from shifting as much as possible. He thinks it must be broken.

Cautiously he approaches the door and opens it the tiniest crack. Peeking through the gap, he sees some of the mist is still coating the floor and shuts the door immediately. He hurriedly replaces the towel and backs away as far as he can from the door. From his perspective, he is in the back right corner of the room while the door is at the front left,

He tries to calm his breathing and heart rate as much as he can after that start. Think! You won't survive if you don't think! That mist spells certain doom. The mist was present, but it was thin... could he make it to the door if he rushed? It was pretty low to the floor. Maybe he could jump? He needed to get out of here. His hand needs a hospital, and he needs more information.

Suddenly he notices a wisp of iridescent grey mist rounding the corner of the bed and heading towards him. It must have gotten into the room when he cracked the door. It is moving slowly but seems to be heading towards him in an indirect but ominous way. Without thinking, his mind in survival mode, he jumps up and kicks off of the wall on to the bed where he bounces to the other side and lands in the opposite corner where he waits nervously.

After a couple of moments, the small wisp of mist starts billowing from beneath the bed heading in his direction. Once again, acting on instinct, he hops up and pushes off the wall behind him and bounces off the bed into the front right corner of the room.

Once again the mist rounds the corner of the bed and begins heading in his direction. Shit. It's going to keep chasing him. He has to get out. There are no options left, he has to get out of the apartment. He races towards the door and throws it open. He leaps up and grasps the lip of the doorway bracing his feet against the door side of the frame and curling up into the upper right corner of the door, making himself as small and high as possible.

The front door of the apartment is about ten feet from him diagonally across the living room and vestibule. The remaining mist covers the entire distance between himself and the door. Motherfucker! But he can't stay here: releasing his hold on the door frame with his left hand and kicking off with his legs he crosses the gap to the front door and lands about one foot in front of it. Grasping the doorknob with his left hand, he twists and opens the door as quickly as he can. He opens the door just enough to get out and spins through the gap, shutting the door behind him. Then he sprints down the hall to the stairs. Skipping two to three steps at a time and using the corner posts of the railing to spin around the corners at speed. Racing to the bottom of the staircase he rushes out of the apartment building.

A nearby couple walking their dog looks at him strangely as he bursts out of the complex, but he ignores them. The eyes of both men and dog follow him as he strides away briskly.

After getting away from the mist, he prioritizes the condition of his hand and goes straight to a hospital emergency room.

***

He had sat in the waiting room for two hours. Their primary orthopedist had been Tolled and not replaced as of yet, and he had to wait for the backup to be able to see him.

The took an x-ray, an MRI, did a manual check... all of them turned up nothing. They had no explanation for why his hand looked like he had squashed it in a screw press.

Eventually, after six more hours, they discharged him with an athletic wrap to control the swelling and a bottle of prescription strength acetaminophen.

So the much vaunted western medicine was useless.

He headed back to the acupressure clinic to see if they could do anything. 3 hours later he left without any improvement. With how his hand was hurting he hadn't even been able to drum up the requisite enthusiasm for any of the "additional services."

What should he do now? He had no idea if the mist in his apartment would fade or persist, so he did not want to go back to the apartment yet. In the end, he bought a room in a cheap motel in a less than stellar part of town and waited until the next morning.

***

He left the seedy motel with the spit-and-tissue walls the following day. He still had no real aim or direction and began wandering around the area.

Somehow he found himself at the mouth of a small alley at the back of which was a tiny, run-down building with a handpainted sign that merely said "Acupuncture" with a smaller placard in the window that read "OPEN." Well, why the fuck not? He walked up to the building.

Fuck, he hated needles. In any other situation, he would prefer to get pegged by Queen Elizabeth than deal with needles but his hand was becoming unbearable, and he needed to do something.

As soon as he entered a small, stooped, middle-aged man with Chinese features stepped out of a small office. "You need treatment," he said with a strong accent and no hint of doubt.

"Yes," said Mitch.

" Come. I will help you," says the man.

"I'm Mitch," he says but receives no reply.

Mitch follows the man to a back room where there is an ancient looking, but well-maintained, table sitting in the middle of the space. "Up, shirt off." the older man says simply. Mitch complies, taking off his shirt and laying on his back on the table.

"You have received acupuncture before?"

"No," says Mitch. "Acupressure, but never acupuncture."

"Hmph!" The man makes a contemptuous sound. "Acupressure is the bastard child of acupuncture and cowardice. Less effective."

"Why do you say that?"

"Acupuncture reaches the meridians directly. Affects the energy directly. The effect is powerful. Acupressure cannot do this. It is weaker."

Mitch thinks about this for a moment, but cannot think of a way to refute it. Time will tell he supposes.

***

Five-hundred and forty-seven needles. Mitch had counted each time one went in. He almost stopped this whole thing a couple of times, but each time he was about to he felt something stirring. A coolness gradually spread out from his core throughout his body. When it reached his hand, the chill became almost frigid, but it replaced the pain so he would not complain for the moment.

"Is this normal?" he asks the man.

"No. Your energy is chaotic. Your meridians are damaged. Much later and I would not have been able to fix it."

Christ on a crackhead! How close had he come to accidentally suiciding? He was now firmly convinced that there was not only a correlation but a direct link between what was happening now and the old ways.

"How did you do this to yourself?" The man asks.

"I was experimenting with these new energies," Mitch says without going into detail.

The man grunts. "Experiments are dangerous."

Well, Mitch knows that now...

"Last," says the old man, jamming a needle into Mitch's forehead.

The coldness which had seemed to be moving within him both sluggishly and agitatedly suddenly seemed to be smooth and quick.

"You will need another treatment." says the man. "Your hand will improve, but to truly fix the damage I will need to have at least one more session. One week from today."

"Ok," Mitch says with needles wobbling all over his upper body.

"Five more minutes and then I will remove the needles."

***

The old man had refused payment saying only "Next time." Mitch headed back to his apartment. He needed to get rid of that mist immediately if it was not gone already.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The old man stared at the door after the young man had left.

That child had been strange. His pathways had been stretched almost to the point of breakage. If it had been shortly after one of the Tollings, he would have thought the boy was someone he had barely survived the density increase. This long after the Tolling though the damage should have been repaired already; although the passages would have healed crooked and been filled with obstructions without treatment.

Surprisingly, it seemed the boy had already begun cultivating: and whatever method he was using was both crude and dangerous. If a single meridian burst, he would die.

Curious. Very curious. Even with exceptional meditation skill, the boy should not have been able to gather enough energy to damage himself this way. True, his talent was low, but the amount of energy a person could collect related to his ability. That was the purpose of restoring things in stages. So that as many people as possible could adjust to the pressure the returning energy exerted upon them and survive the next tier.

If everything had been restored at once every human on this planet would have died. This stepped method allowed at least half to survive.

After so long this imprisonment was almost over. The time to return home was nearing, but his duties had not yet been completed. And this boy had just become part of his duties.