Jack awoke the next morning to the sound of a doctor and nurse coming into the room. He pretended to still be asleep so that he could listen in to their conversation. They were talking about some kind of upcoming test that the director was excited for. Apparently, it was something that would open a new avenue of research. One that had been overlooked before due to the researchers’ implicit biases or something.

As they got closer to Jack to do the standard tests, Jack stirred, acting as if he was just waking. “G’morning. How am I looking today? I’m feeling much better than I was just a couple days ago.”

The doctor tried to hide it but there was a clear note of irritation in their voice as they responded. “Looks like you are doing pretty well, according to your chart at least. It seems like any residual bleeding that you had has fully cleared up by this point. I would say that it will be about a week before you see much of the bruising start to fade, well that and also the muscle strain. Give me a minute to do your morning check and I’ll let you know if there are any changes.”

Turning his head and smiling politely Jack acted as if he didn’t notice the frustration “So I’m good to get all these bandages off of me then? It’ll be nice to have them off.”

“We’ll cut them off you after I’m done.” With that short reply the doctor began to go through the same check that they had every day three times a day for the last while.

As the doctor was busy doing that Jack turned toward the nurse and asked them. “Hey do you know what time I’ll be doing that mana passage testing today? I remember someone mentioning that it was coming up yesterday.”

The nurse answered shrugging. “I’m afraid it is no longer going to be today. Something else has come up and it’s not too certain when exactly the room will be available again. Could be tomorrow or two weeks from now.”

They fell silent for a minute and the doctor finished up. As soon as he was done, he gestured at the nurse to start removing the bandages. The bandages came off for the final time and Jack noticed the deep purple green that covered almost all of his skin. No wonder walking and moving hurt so much. What with his body being that bruised, inside and out no less.

Soon all the bandages had been removed and the two headed out the door. Jack sitting alone in the room started to feel anxious. He had thought he had had a basic understanding of what order things were likely to go. Especially as he had been informed that he would be tested again today. Either a new person was brought in and was going through the same procedures that he had or… Jack shuddered a moment as the worst possible options presented themselves.

“They wouldn’t, would they? No certainly not. Definitely not.” Jack tried to convince himself that his worries were just his over active imagination. That there was no way that with him having told the director of just how painful the experience was to him, someone already more then a little used to the pain, that they would put someone else through what he did to himself. Right? But no matter how Jack tried he simply couldn’t banish the possibility from his mind.

It seemed that even though he would have loved the one or two more days of rest that he had estimated. He needed to speed up his plans for information gathering. First step, to see if his idea for restoring mana was feasible.

Jack knew that once he started, he would probably be stuck meditating for hours so if he didn’t want be seen doing such an insane thing, he needed to wait until after the next staff visit when they would be dropping off some food. Feeling restless with all the negative thoughts swirling in his head he stood to pace the room as best as he could while waiting. He didn’t even bother attempting to hide his being able to now. He had given up that choice when had eaten the food left on the table last night.

Jack stumbled around the room for a good twenty minutes, stopping every few steps to rest. After about the twenty-three-minute mark the door opened and an employee walked in carrying a tray of food. The two of them smiled and greeted each other as the staff member set down the food and left. Jack knew at this point he had somewhere between three to four hours before the midday checkup. So, he stumbled his way to the table to quickly scarf down the food. As soon as he finished, he grabbed a book and headed back to the bed to test his theory.

Sitting in the bed Jack started getting things set up. First, he pulled the lamp to be right next to the edge of the bed and turned it on. Afterward he opened the book the book on his lap and spent a couple minutes turning the pages as if reading. A short while later, the book still sitting in his lap Jack rested his hand on the lamp turning it off and closing his eyes as if he had fallen asleep from his earlier exertion.

What he was doing instead, was running through his mantra to get himself centered before his attempt to absorb mana from the artifact. Taking a deep breath Jack tried to still his nervousness. What was one more deadly risk? He had already nearly died so many times this week alone that he was quickly approaching the same amount of near-death experiences as in all his life prior. He shuddered and laughed under his breath at the morbid thought. After another couple of breaths Jack was ready. It didn’t matter that it was potentially deadly, Jack refused to let this place be the end of his story. He would get out of here and he would still accomplish his lifelong goal.

“Absorb, purify, utilize” Jack chanted in his head and got to work. If he was going to absorb mana then he needed to use some of his reserves to make room. Casting his mind about for a minute Jack decided his best choice was to kill two mutants with one cast and do some information gathering. He wanted to do abilities or spells that would be easily overlooked or missed. With that idea he decided that hearing would be the best route.

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Jack channeled the mana within him into his passages carefully controlling it to the same levels as always, he split his concentration. Moving the mana in his internal passages up to his ears the background sounds that we normally just ignore became loud. With the mana going into his external passages Jack cast outward in an auditory scrying spell filled with the idea of letting him hear everything going on around him.

The two methods combined and Jack was completely overwhelmed from the auditory stimuli. He had never practiced dealing with sound to this extent before. His head pounding as every little drip, scratch, footstep and word slammed deafeningly into his ears all at the same moment. Jack’s concentration shattered and the mana patterns for both the spell and enhancement immediately broke. Opening his eyes, a wave of nausea swept over him. Gulping heavily Jack barely managed to keep himself from vomiting. Uncaring of the pain he forced himself out of the bed and attempted to run to the small bathroom while keeping his stomach down. He had just managed to reach the toilet when his body gave up and everything came pouring out.

Jack sat there on his knees, lungs heaving as he tried to get himself under control. Only staying upright because of his arms wrapped around the toilet bowl. After a few minutes he wiped his mouth and stood up, legs shaking. A few steps over to the sink and, holding tightly to the rim, he rinsed his mouth and hands. It looked like that perhaps had not been his brightest idea. He was lucky that he hadn’t yet started trying to absorb mana before he was overwhelmed like he was. If he had been… Jack shook his head to clear it. Rinsing his mouth once more and flushing the toilet Jack went back into the main room.

He made his way back over to the bed and took slow deep breaths. That had hit him a lot harder than he had thought it would based on having used both methods independently in the past. Though with everything that had been going on the last while it could have been for any number of reasons. For now, Jack put it out of his mind. Even though he didn’t manage to get any usable information out of what he just did. It did have the other effect he wanted to accomplish; he had used up a good bit of the mana he had reserved.

Settling back into the bed Jack positioned himself again. This time he did not turn on or off the light but instead he placed his elbow touching the base of the lamp. Closing his eyes Jack began again with his mantra. As he attempted to pull mana in, he once more felt that lack of any in the atmosphere. This time however he ignored his ingrained response to disregard living or processed sources of mana and started to draw on the power flowing within the lamp.

He had only grasped the slightest bit of it as it slammed into him like a golems fist. That strand was far more concentrated than anything would normally be pulled in from the world and he struggled to start even attempting to purify it. Over and over again Jack could feel it smash inside of his mind. To him it was like a great glowing yellow snake that struggled to escape the construct that was his inner self.

Jack had never delt with power like this before and so he tried the first thing that came to mind and attempted to purify it to be his mana as he always had before. This time however, with just how dense the mana was, it did nothing to help. Instead, it almost felt like it made the mana fiercer and harder to control than it already was.

Jack shuddered and strained as the snake broke through his self-conceptualization. He couldn’t allow it to go out into his body as it currently was. He had nearly died from doing that with the loose mana of the world. With this he was sure to have his body explode or spontaneously ignite from the inside out! Jack began to struggle desperately trying dozens of things to keep the rampaging mana from escaping into his body proper.

He tried placing layers of mana in front of it only for it to smash right through. He attempted fashioning spears out of his mana and stabbing them into the snake only for them to bounce off without even a scratch. What was worse was that for each thing Jack attempted, it made it harder and more painful to think. Jack did not give up however and kept on trying. He knew that to stop would all but guarantee his death or permanent crippling, if he was fortunate.

After a while he was able to contain it having discovered that he could make it turn using a curved plane of mana. While this kept the mana from going into his passages it in no way changed its nature or reduced its power. He had slowed his death by spontaneous combustion but slowed is not stopped. Even as the majority of the extremely dense absorbed mana was kept in check, small wisps of it would make their way out into his passages unpurified. Slowing heating his body up more and more.

Jacks wavering attention snapped into focus as he realized all of his failed attempts had one thing in common. He been trying to forcefully convert the dense mana into his own. The only thing that was successful was gently guiding it to his own ends. Instead of trying to force it to become part of his mana perhaps he needed to keep it entrapped like it currently was and purify only the small pieces making their way to his passages while maintaining the purity of his concept. This would hopefully cause it to slowly purify itself as over time as bits of it would be replaced with bits of Jacks mana.

The hardest thing about this idea was the fact that Jack would need to maintain complete concentration for however long that dense mana remained. If he slacked off in the least it would have terrible consequences.

Hours passed with Jack sitting there concentrating. His headache getting worse and worse but still stubbornly hanging on. Finally, after what had felt like an eternity the last bit of the mana he had taken in changed over to the same soft luminescent white as his own. Luckily, he had had enough foresight to only take in a miniscule amount of mana from the lamp so he finished before it was time for the midday checkup. As he sat rubbing his forehead, he felt glad that the doctor’s visits didn’t include checking his mana or mana passages as he was certain that they were quite strained at the moment.

Sighing Jack had a feeling of deep relief well up. His idea had worked, and better yet he hadn’t injured himself testing it out. At least not more than a little rest couldn’t fix. However, with how slow the conversion had been, he would need a lot of practice for it to be useful. Hopefully he would also be able to work out the kinks in his hearing augmentations at the same time.

He had no idea what caused them to be so problematic. It may have been that using the two methods together had a multiplicative effect rather than the additive effect that he had anticipated. Or perhaps it was simply his frantic state of mind, as even now that he knew he could restore his mana in this artificial vacuum, he still felt stressed and haunted about what other tests the director could have chosen to run. Was it just his imagination gone wild?

Standing up Jack began to repeat the same actions that he had that morning. Pacing around the room to try to recover some of his mobility. Not letting himself rest properly as he was driven on by dark thoughts only made worse by the near constant solitude.