Troy woke up feeling weaker than usual. His skin pulsed in just the wrong way, his heart beating along with it. There was a dull, continuous thudding in the back of his head. His arms and legs felt prickly as if the blood in them had been stopped for a few minutes too many. His stomach somehow felt both hungry and full, as if it was a void that couldn't take anymore before it would burst.

‘I see that you are awake,’ Adam sent out. He always did that. Every morning, the AI would know precisely the moment where Troy was awake enough to acknowledge the message. The young man hadn't yet fully understood just how this process worked. Did the little guy measure his brainwaves? Troy remembered reading about doctor’s using that to tell if a patient was truly asleep or not during surgery.

What was it called again? Troy couldn't really remember anything but its effects. It was the real reason the brainwaves began to be monitored so much. Whenever sedatives were added to the body, to knock the person out, the generally desired result was to cause a temporary coma. One which the body would be unable to recover from without many hours of waiting.

And that part was looked at as easy. Given the designated coma, the body would be unable to sustain consciousness for long. The doctors of old had it down to the second of when people would lose the ability to remember. It was a work of art, really. It showed just how much humanity had been able to progress since they had hardly been able to keep mortality rates during birth down to fifty per cent only a century before that.

But… there were still moments of blunder. Each human is unique, after all, and a constant dose did not work with everybody. Some were resistant and some just had too much mass to their name. The reasoning didn't really matter. It was only the side-effect that had the potential of scaring anybody.

What would happen if the body stopped moving, but the mind worked just fine? Unable to move muscle, but easily able to do math equations with a thought. A scary scenario in the common time but so much more dreadful when paired with surgery.

The sedative meant to stop the pain only stopped the pain from being visible. With the mind tripped in a body of unmoving flesh, how were the early doctors aware their patients were widely awake? How would they have been able to tell anything was wrong, as they open them up with a knife, sorting through their innards with high precision. Gutted, made to suffer in silence.

Made to silently scream, constantly in a scene of immense agony. Troy could hardly stop himself from shivering at the idea. It had happened to too many. They had been subject to torture few could even think of, made to suffer in absolute pain for hours on end. Surgeries could take too much time.

That was why more precautions were made. While very long in duration, surgeries did not last forever. At some point, the patient would wake up and tell their tale. Law-suits would be filed, cases would be brought to the public, and hangings would commence, only a few made by the government. Torture was not something the mind had been made to bear, after all.

…

Why exactly was Troy thinking about this? What reason had he for the story of knife-slicing in the human body, excused as if it was healthy for anybody around? Well… he couldn't really feel his feet. The legs were working fine in getting his attention, every moment there way akin to him getting a thousand needles pressed into his skin. The feet? Not a single thing from them. No movement. No nothing.

“You have seen it for what it is then,” Troy informed the AI, finally coming back to answer him. It might only have been ten seconds, but the thought stream felt so much longer in his head. Troy felt unfocused as if his mind couldn't really bear the weight of being awake. His throat felt constricted, his chest tired from moving in waves, and his stomach… that had already been mentioned.

Without moving anything but his head, Troy looked down at his feet. They were still there, contrary to the void of sensation coming from them. Could he wriggle them? Nope. Certainly did not look like it. Honestly, there was a higher chance of Charlie having filled his socks with rice than anything else.

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Would he have to sit up? It was either that or never being too sure about the existence of his lower digits, so the answer was obvious enough. If only his arms had felt the same way, the two limbs were protesting as best as they could. Each placement of his palms felt like hellfire, being both cold and hot at the same time. A glance towards them showed that they had become a tad shade of grey more. That couldn't have been positive. They had turned redder during the night, showcasing the process as likely not having finished yet. Would Troy turn into a tomato by the end of the day, perhaps?

Putting that thought away for a moment, he reached down towards his left foot. It required a bit of stretching, of which his back was screaming in dislike towards, but Troy just ignored that part of himself. The pain wasn't too important. A warning, yes, but not something he needed to be bothered about too much.

His big toe was definitely there. Even though the sock, he could feel the nail on it, sticking out as much as it had the day before. But… the feedback did not come from both sides. His finger told a different story than the one being felt in the foot. As in, there was nothing from it.

That did not have a single chance of being good. Troy was beginning to realise that fact very much, as he began to pull off his sock. Red skin entered his vision the moment he began, and it just became redder the longer he came down. How had his foot survived? Had it survived?

“That does not look optimal,” Dr Hale noted from her sofa, her voice causing Troy to jump a bit. There hadn't been any expectation to hear anything from her, in the next few hours. It wasn't that late yet, after all.

… Was it? The window was dirty, making it hard to see the colouring outside. Usually, the young man would wake up in the early hours, but the prior events did have a chance of having caused a minor distortion in his sleep schedule.

“I hadn't guessed,” Troy answered, looking more intricately at the woman. Her skin was a bit pale. Paler than her usual looks. Not the greatest sign, when mixed in with the few drops of blood on her pillow. It wasn't very-

Instincts took over, Troy trying to bolt over to Dr Hale’s side. Unfortunately, his lower body was not aware that these instincts were meant to be used in any capacity, causing the upper body to fall a bit short on the needed movement. While not able to see it fully, due to his face having a close encounter with the wooden floor, Troy could have sworn the woman’s upper lip had twitched slightly.

“You are meant to be resting, Maxwell. Please follow that very simple instruction, lest you will cause the death of all your loved ones,” Dr Hale said plainly. There was mild indecision of whether or not it was meant as a joke. It was so hard to tell sometimes. “Charlie would be the first.”

“I could say the same to you, though. No dying on my watch,” Troy said, beginning his crawl over to the woman. While his legs might not have been obeying him, there were no such complications with his arms. They could move just fine, even if they were a bit hard to control. The wider the movement the higher the accuracy, yes, but there was a clear need for them to be as small as possible. In other words, it was not the greatest outcome in the world.

Since the larger of the trio was gone, it was his duty to watch over her. When had Charlie even left the house? An hour ago perhaps? Troy would have expected the man to have notified him of it. Maybe he did and he just couldn't remember it? It was of no real importance. Troy just did his best to grab some of the leftover water, mixing it with some cleaning materials, and wiping away at Dr Hale’s pillow. The woman had been so kind as to let him take it. That was good. No need to make a fuss about it.

That was a good thing about her. She was strong, capable, and overall a great person. Troy knew that from the time spent with her, and the things that Charlie had told him. Yet… in times with weakness, Dr Hale did not reject that part of herself. She did not reject the notion that she needed help from others. She accepted it all without comment, for she could understand her needs better than anybody else.

There was still some independence left in her, as she stared daggers at him the moment Troy tried to wipe away some of the leftover blood that had run out her nose. It sat on top of her upper lip in a large enough area that it was impossible to not see. However, the cleaning of that area was apparently for Dr Hale herself to do, as she took away the cloth from him and did it herself. That was fine with him, really. Whatever she desired was his desire as well. If it meant she would breathe for another second, there was no shame in anything.

“If I was about to choke on my own blood, I can assure you that you would have been notified. Charlie left me the taser,” Dr Hale said, making Troy look to the side of the sofa. There was indeed a small thing. The original taser had been lost a while ago, the insides burned up. Charlie, however, had in all his wisdom created one from scraps found around the dirt they had walked on. It wasn't powerful enough to incapacitate, but it would be a serious annoyance to anybody hit. It would have certainly woken him up, even if it had been done from a distance.

Right. That was the fun part of the device. While not being powerful, it served differently, able to hit from a distance of nearly five meters. Sure, there had not exactly been any real scenario where that statement had been tested, but Troy was sure it would come at some point. He just needed to wait a bit.

“Guess that it was a good thing I woke up when I did,” Troy supposed. Dr Hale finished wiping off the dried blood, so he took back the cloth. It would be thrown out when Charlie got back. No chance of causing any infections through multiple uses, after all.

“Yes. I was wondering if you would sleep through the entire day,” Dr Hale said. The entire day… huh.

Troy had perhaps gotten a few more hours of downtime than he had intended.