The trip to the doctors was easier than the first, with Donovan to help walk me to the car and a cane I was still getting used to while I learned to walk without bending my knee, or at least trying anyway.

Donovan was slowly becoming my favorite person, even before the incident I'd always liked him but the last week had almost cemented that into him quickly becoming one of my best friends. After a day or so to recover, he and his wife had come over to help me clean up and his wife had even been kind enough to pick up some food for me when it became apparent I wasn't able to do so myself. The man had been by my side to help me more than my own 'friends' had been even, showing either how good a man he was or how shitty the people in my own life were. Probably both. Even more so when it quickly became apparent my own girlfriend was visiting less and less herself. The first day she had been around for the day, spending the night, before leaving. After that I'd barely spoken to her, even through text.

Like she wasn't already acting like I didn't exist before.

Pulling myself out of my excessively whiny pity party I stopped at a checkpoint into the inner city. Most people wouldn't realize how much effort it actually took to get to the better parts of the city, checkpoints, camera's, patrol posts and active scanning equipment. Security was always one of the main draws of the inner city. No gangs, no random shootings, minimum Altered rampages - with quick reactions to them as they happen. Driving into the more maintained parts of the city was always nice as well, no smell of garbage or gunpowder if a gang fight had happened recently, no destroyed buildings from Altereds going haywire when on some substance or outright having a street brawl that always ends up fucking over innocent bystanders in the process. In the good parts of the city if you so much as looked like you were going to go off with your powers you’d get shut down by Beaters and other Altereds that lived nearby before you could even utter the phrase “Bring it on!”

After getting a green light from the checkpoint captain and moving further in I took a look around, where there would be liquor stores, there were pharmacies and day cares, where there would normally be charred or melted concrete there were advertising screens and charity posters, where there would always be graffiti there were only large paintings that the city had green lit. Clean air, safe streets and good food.

God I missed the inner city.

Finally spotting the hospital that I was supposed to go to I looked around for the parking space, only to be met with “Employees Only” signs and full parking lots.

I’m going to have to walk a block again just to get in damnit.

Having grown somewhat used to it by now I drove a block further down the road where a pharmacy was, before parking in their public lot behind the building. Thankfully the owners somewhat knew me through my mother so they never really had a problem with it over the last few years even with me driving a car that looks more like an old IED than a vehicle fit for this area of the city.

The owners of the pharmacy were an older woman named Dinah and her son Robert. While Dinah was always nice, Robert didn’t always respond well to me visiting, mostly because I once beat his ass after he tried to steal my food back in high school. We’d mostly put things behind us, I think, but I didn’t make a point of interacting with him if I didn’t have to.

Going to have to call Dinah again soon, she’s always getting angry at me for not calling her instead of the other way around.

Getting out of the car was easier than the first time I tried it, now that my arms were more than lumps of battered meat and could actually lift my own weight a few times over again. Walking away and locking it without turning around I began my trip to the hospital I wasn’t looking forward to in the slightest.

I hope no one talked, I don’t need this right now.

Thankfully the near week of practice with my newfound disability had lent me the skill to make the trip with very little pain, only a few times did my foot hit the pavement in a way that bent my knee enough to bring the pain back, but I was hopeful that the trip brought down a false positive and I could get this worthless magic out of me today. Most would probably look at not having to work for a week as a blessing, even with the leg. The average work day for those in the lower end of the poverty line was around ten hours, if not fourteen which was the federal limit in almost every province and county across the country. While many were advocating for the maximum to be lowered to twelve as the country hadn’t been in a national emergency in decades the government was always slow to act. The law would most likely be passed, but not for a few more years now while the bean counters and bureaucrats argue over the pros and cons once a month when they deign to do their jobs.

However for Mark that was never the case, while legal work was good and all, and he respected those who chose the difficult way out of the slums, he simply didn’t have the time. With the amount of cash needed for the foreign surgery that his country refused to pay for and a deadline of three more years, when Ambrosia would completely destroy the brain of anyone still under its effects, he had to work fast. And he was working fast, with just two years of working the pits he’d paid off all the debts he had, nearly saving up the down payment that the company with the procedure needed to actually start the treatments.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

And unfortunately normal jobs simply didn’t pay enough for what he was ‘educated’ for, even with his improved body capable of working harder and faster than most people by almost double, no ones willing to pay double for something they can get three idiots to do for a quarter of the price. So after a quick introduction by a friend after a night of heavy drinking and nearly crying that he wouldn’t be able to save his mother, he started fighting.

In a single fight that took maybe an hour he made a week's worth of wages, with sometimes having several fights in a single night, he was gaining a large sum of cash quickly. Hell he sometimes made more if he was paid to take a fall or some other scheme was offered, ‘lose the first round, get the crowd riled up then put him in the ground the next two, easy’. Of course those jobs usually have both fighters in the know, so no one using implants and no risk of accidentally braining someone into a deep sleep to the point they can’t wake back up in time to finish the match.

Fucking Larrell

Practically a prayer at this point, he said it either in his mind or under his breath every time his knee caused him to fall over, or drop something and break it. He’d gone through three plates before starting to use Tupperware he hadn’t touched since his mother had gotten infected.

Being reminded of my mother so close to the hospital made me slow down slightly, I hadn't visited her in weeks while rushing through fights. Coming to the city was a long drive, coupled with the pain of seeing her in her state made the prospect of visiting less and less appealing.

While the hospital was rather large, and one of the best in the city, it wasn't all powerful. No hospital was when it came to healing, even with magic. Ambrosia was never meant to be a weapon used in the way it had originally planned to be used against invaders if they ever returned. The thought process was that if they attacked again, far more prepared and in greater numbers they'd simply launch as much of the Ambrosia as they could at the invaders, hopefully causing them to retreat and infect their home with it so severely that the sickness would wipe them out, or at least discourage another invasion. This wasn't the case of its first usage though, when a rival nation had 'lost it' to terrorists during a transport. These terrorists then snuck vials into the country, and smashed them in population centers.

No cure was ever truly developed by the governments in charge of its creation, even the small amount of resources they'd used in case of a mistaken outbreak such as the one that happened to develop a cure had proved fruitless. While the governments were partly at fault for never designing countermeasures, the less than official statement was that they never saw a reason to waste money on something they didn't even think would work on humans, since it was designed with the invaders physiology in mind.

What they didn't realize was that magic didn't care about what race or species you are, only the magic inside you.

Ambrosia infected millions, with a vast majority dying within the week they were infected.

Countermeasures for the disease were barely even considered before other countries infected began mass extermination, a cure wasn't even thought of before his own country began doing the same. Few hospitals would actually create Quarantine Wards to keep infected people in. His own mother had practically forced the hospital she worked at to create the first ward to keep Ambrosia patients in. All it took was a small amount of anger and media attention to cause mass riots over the danger the victims caused. People began euthanizing their own family members in an attempt to save the rest of their families. Fathers killing daughters, mothers killing sons across the country.

And while his mother had sacrificed herself to protect the infected, sealing herself off with her patients to keep treating them while the rest of the world attempted to kill both she was infected. At the start we didn't know that masks, suits, disinfectants were useless, because the governments of the world refused to tell us that they had made the virus with mostly magic, not science. Organs melting, your own stomach acid bubbling like a bath soap as you attempted to breathe through your own burning lungs. The suit she wore didn't save her, and the lack of magical knowledge had almost killed her. It was only a few days later when the governments had released a method for stalling the infection, not curing it that the world gained a small amount of hope for having their loved ones returned to them.

Magic induced comas.

With the body completely silent, magic doing all the processes for keeping them alive, breathing, eating, and sleeping. Most of the families simply allowed their families to be carted off only to be euthanized later on while the few like myself who hoped for a miracle and were either willing to hope or simply too stupid to give up kept them alive in Quarantine Wards, This also slowed the real reason the victims tended to die within a few days other than the melting organs and acid draining through their mouth and nose, the brain. The more active the brain was while infected the faster the infection acted. It was later revealed the reason for this was because of how the invaders bodies worked. With most of the enemies being simple drones piloted by the flesh around them and hooked to a magic core in their brains that gave out commands, commanded by the generals or whoever was behind the assault. With such a mind the only time the core was really active was by moving or receiving orders, which they hoped would cause the invaders to recall their forces once they realized something was wrong with their drones.

Drone gets sick, goes home for maintenance or study, spreads the infection wholesale into their world and kills everyone it touches.

Maybe in some sick way the outbreak was karma for plotting the death of another world.

At this point I was almost to the hospital, right outside the front door in fact, and just had to sign in at the front gate using my information. Considering the fact he wasn’t immediately met with a bag over the head and a short fight before he went good night forever everything was going seemingly well.

After signing in with my full name, nearly putting Monarch as my middle name instead of Kevin like I was supposed to, the doors opened and I was able to go inside.

At least automatic doors are commonplace nowadays, opening them manually sucks with this cane.

Moving in, as unlucky as he always was, was doctor David Hobbs. The cunt himself.