“He has just been laying there for a while”.

An itch of understanding. Utterly meaningless. An importance in regard to me. I think. More noise continued. Occasionally resonating with a flickering hint of memory. But nothing with substance. Those words would stick with me for whatever reason.

“He looks pretty fucked up. Which in itself is strange”.

The cool comfort of the ground lay beneath me. It is the only pleasant sensation. My entire body aches. There is itchy soreness, throbbing, sections that feel like fire, and radiating parts shooting through the rest of my body. The coolness brings a tiny bit of release to all of that.

“How much time has passed since the last one”.

The sensations are familiar, but that is the limit of what I can remember. Shadows dance in my head, a hint of memory with no context. Trying to grasp hold of one of them leaves an empty feeling. Even that sensation is familiar. Something I should know.

“People still show up this way”.

All I really want to do right now is lay here. The floor brings me a hint of comfort. Maybe if I just stay put things would slowly come back to me. There is no justification for that other than the pain. Not that there is much choice in the matter. Movement doesn't seem to be something within the realm of possibilities. But why would I want to anyway. Every breath brings pain.

Noises from all around me. They are coming from figures similar to me. Keeping a distance away from me. A small group is directing noise in my general direction. Much more than the other groups. I get the feeling those barely care about me. If I could figure out what those noise meant then maybe. Maybe there could be some positive change in my condition.

“How would you know the passage of time here”! A general uneasiness and frustration falls upon that group. In the end though it's just more and more noise. Little in the way of context or any way for me to figure out what all that meant.

“Maybe he is dead”.

“The dead do not come this way. At least I’ve never seen it”. More murmuring from the group. Many of them are nodding their heads. They start to move slowly in my direction. I get this sudden memory of looking at words on a page. Knowing I wrote them, and that they are written correctly, but my mind does not recognize the words. That is what this noise is like.

Suddenly, one of the men rushes at me. I feel his leg move towards my body. More pain, and my body jerks. Huh, my body can move. The excitement from movement allows me to ignore the pain for a moment. Instinctively I am able to prop myself up onto my hands and knees.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“ Now we know he isn't dead”.

“Look at him. He could die from a strong breeze for all we know”.

Another person walks up to me this time. I try to move away, falling on my face. Giving another attempt at moving I end up on my back. The pain is coming back in a flood and my breathing is becoming more labored.

“Are you ok?” The noise the lady is making is strangely comforting. I really hope she doesn't kick me too. “Don't worry it will be ok”. I try moving again and it is much harder than I think it should be.

“Can someone help me sit him up so I can take a look at him?”

The kind lady is touching me now. I flinch at first, but it feels soothing so I just go with it. Another person goes to my side and, working together, I am propped up on my butt. “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” Why do they keep making these noises? She raises her hand to my head and moves her fingers in such a way to make a popping noise. It makes my head jerk away.

“Well, he's not deaf but he doesn't seem to understand us,” she says. “He might not speak English genius,” someone mutters. The lady starts touching my head. It feels good. I just sit back and enjoy it.

Her fingers move towards my face and she opens one of my eyes. Which makes me immediately try to close them. That was unpleasant. The opposite direction I want things to go. “Please hold on. You might not have used your eyes in a while. It isn't that bright in here. You will get used to it”.

She tries to open my eyes again but before her fingers reach my face I open them slowly. The whiteness of the light is blinding, but it fades and there is a dimness in the room. I can see all the people around me take shape identical to the shapes in my head.

They are all dressed in the same dark clothes with symbols on their shirts. I felt that they were all similar before. But now there is more detail. They have these things on their bodies. Each person seems to have them in a different place. They look hard and as though they shouldn't be there. Looking down I realize I have them all over me as well. Just a lot more than everyone else. I move my head around to see more of the room. As my head moves people leave my sight but I know they are there. I can feel them. Sight is just giving me details like color that I couldn't feel before.

Not that there is much to see or feel. Just more people, a ceiling, walls, some openings in the walls, and more people. They are really crowded in here.

“There you go, now isn't that better” she continues this silly jibberish. She reaches under my arms and tries to pull me up. “Come, I want to take you to the med level”. My body responds to the pull and I rise up. She lets go and I fall back down. Pain again. “Can someone please help me with him?”

Another person grabs hold of me this time and they make me rise again. Unlike the last time, they continue to hold me. The lady wraps my arm over her shoulder and her partner does the same.

They work together to try and move me. I watch their legs and try my best to copy what they are doing. It isn't working out too well. Which leads me to slip from their grip and fall on my face again.

Eventually the two take me to one of the openings in the wall and one of them presses something on the wall. I feel like we are moving again. They continue to hold me even though their bodies are not moving at all.

Continuing my efforts in moving my legs seems to just cause more problems. All three of us are moving around. I hardly notice all the openings we are passing. Mainly because the two people who are holding me up are having a hard time keeping me up.

We stop moving upwards and they start pulling me along again. This time I am able to help them out a little bit. This room isn’t much different than the first one. It is much quieter and people are laying down all over the place.

After a little bit we stop moving. “Hey doc, we got a new arrival that needs looking at,” my lady friend says. They set me down in such a way I don't easily fall over.

“I will be with you in a moment,” a man says. He is kneeling over a person with an arm that is bent wrong.

The arm is interesting. I know it isn't right because it is different from everyone else's around me. Something on the inside of the arm is wrong. It is in pieces. A person grabs at the arm and rubs it. Then suddenly the grip turns tight. The two pieces are pulled further apart. Moving the hard parts slowly into the correct place.

Screams rang out throughout all of this, but the person didn't move away, and no one was too bothered by it. He rubs on it some more. The parts in the arm seem to be in the right position now but it still isn't right.

Then he moves over to me and starts to look me over.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asks. With his hands he starts touching me all over. Most of it sends more shards of pain throughout my body. The other person didn't move so I try my best to stay still.

That other person's arm wasn't wrong anymore. It is better and the fingers are moving. That person was in pain like me just a moment ago. Why am I still hurting when he is now all better? I jerk towards him trying to get a better look at his arm.

The man standing over me grabs my arms, trying to keep me from moving. “What is he doing?” I struggle to move to the man with the wrong arm. I have to know why it isn't wrong anymore. I manage to reach the arm and grab it.

“Get him off me” he screams. The arm isn't wrong at all anymore. It was just like everyone else's. The man tries to pull the arm away, but I won't let go. I figure if I reverse what the other guy did, I will be able to see how the arm got better. So, I grab tightly and pull. Then I hear a very loud noise. “Stop! What are you doing? You are hurting him!” the lady says. Three people are trying to pull me away, but I have to know more. I just have to.

I didn't, no wouldn’t let go. The arm wasn't getting better. Oh right, because the other guy moved it back into the right position. I pull the arm back into the right position. I look on in amazement. The parts are merging and reforming, fixing themselves. This is all happening really quickly. In a few short moments there is no sign that the arm was ever wrong.

I loosen my grip and everyone pulls me back, hard.

“He is really strong. I think we may need to isolate him for a little while. Where did he come from?”

“He was just released on the first level”.

“Well they either really liked or really hated this guy”.

Looking at my arm now. Seeing and feeling how my arm was wrong. Closing my eyes to focus on how the other guy's arm became right again, I put forth some effort. I could feel the parts of my arm that were wrong start to shudder. I feel something flowing through me and the area around me has a slight chill. Slowly at first but faster and faster the pain fades away from my arm. When I open my eyes again to look there is nothing wrong any more. Aside from the foreign things on my arm it is the same as everyone else.

“Ummm doc”.

With the success of my arm, I figure I'd try and apply this to the rest of my body. Closing my eyes again to focus, this time the chill grows stronger, much stronger. “What the hell is he doing now”. The effort I felt before starts to flow through me. My entire body starts to shake, and I hear popping sounds. When I no longer feel any pain or discomfort, I stop applying effort. Opening my eyes, everyone around me is staring at me like they were downstairs. But there is no noise for a while.

The man probes at me some more. Squeezing and poking me all over my body. “Aside from an abnormal amount of restraints there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him any more”. “If he could heal like that why didn't he do it before”

“You should take him off this level. We don't have room for healthy people”. The man gets up and walks away.

“I don't really want this guy around me. All three of us couldn't get him off that injured dude”.

“We can't just leave him here”. “Do you feel safe with him around”.

“No but we should at least try to find somewhere to take him”.

My two caretakers just keep going on and on and on. Frankly I am getting tired of it so I get up and try to get away. Which doesn't work out all too well. Ok I fell again. I can figure out how to to stop the pain but I can't seem to move correctly.. I look around and see how pretty much everyone who is on their feet are moving… and not falling. Maybe it just takes a whole lot of practice.

So I use my arms and legs instead. With a little more success. Not as fast as when I was being assisted but at least I can work on getting away from the noise. I don't make it far when my companion grabs hold of me and pulls me up.

“I guess he wants to get out of here too”.

“Lets go level to level until we find some place for him”.

“That is going to take a long time”.

“Like you have anything at all better to do right now”

They just won't stop making noises. It is really starting to frustrate me. We head back to where we came from.

“Do you think he will try and dance again?”.

The lady presses a symbol on the wall again and we start moving downward. I prepare myself for another ride, but we just end up going down one doorway. The lady lets go of me and walks away. A few minutes later she walks back and presses the button again.

A wave of exhaustion hits me. I slump down onto the floor. It doesn't matter much. We just keep going down, one companion would get out, and then come back. Over and over again. At one point we start going up again.

After a few openings in the upward direction I hear a loud noise someone makes. “Holy shit Dimitri is that you”?