Jack was exhausted, emotionally and physically. He had been working non stop to improve his skills with absorption and enhancing his hearing. Every time he took a break from working on those, he couldn’t help but to frantically pace around the room. Only the lights being turned on and off, along with food being brought to his room indicated the passage of time. The doctors had stopped coming and checking on him some time ago by this point. Though how long ago that was, Jack couldn’t even begin to answer.
He walked around his dimly lit room. Currently only the bedside lamp providing light. His legs were able to support him these days with only the slightest bit of tenderness remaining. The bruising that had covered the entirety of his body now only a faint yellow tinge rather than the dark purple and green it had been in the past. Step after step he paced around the edge of the room, his mind shifting into and out of focus.
He needed to… he needed… Ah! He was supposed to do something! But what was that something? Try as he might Jack just could not remember what it was he needed to do. Oh well. He was sure that if it was important, it would come back to him. His pacing continued and Jack absently started counting each step in his head. One hundred. Two hundred. Jack was at two hundred eighty-seven when he tripped over the leg of the chair and fell into a heap on the floor, smacking his head on the tables edge on the way down.
Groaning Jack flipped himself over and pushed himself back onto his haunches. Bracing himself on the table he rubbed his head where it had bounced off. What the heck had he been doing? His hand slowed and stopped as he came to the realization that he had trying to deal with the stress he was feeling in the same way he had in the past. By simply working harder and harder while ignoring many of his needs until he finished his goal.
That strategy had worked out fairly well for him in the past with it allowing him to pull off some frankly ludicrous training plans to prepare for some of his jobs as a teenager. However, that same dedication and inattention to his needs could and did cause problems. Jack had let himself fall back into the habit and completely lost track of time and everything else around him other than his self-imposed goals.
The entire point of his trying to figure out how to safely and easily absorb mana from artifacts along with improving his sensory enhancements was to determine just what was happening here. For all Jack knew they could have completely finished whatever they had put off his test for by this point. While he certainly could and would find some use for his new skills in the future his practice may have very well caused him to fail at the very reason that he had attempted to learn them in the first place. He berated himself for living down to his name rather than working to prove it wrong and swore he would do better.
Slowly standing Jack took a couple breaths to steady himself. He was in control, and he would stay in the present. While the fall was painful, he was glad that it had happened. It caused him to snap out of that self-hypnotic state. Considering he had no idea how long it had been, he needed to use the hearing that he practiced so much and figure out what was going on.
One would think that as he practiced, he would have picked up some information as he got better and better at dealing with the deluge of sound and parsing useful information from it. Normally that would have indeed been the case, but the fugue state that Jack had been in meant that he had almost been an unthinking golem or construct simply practicing without any real care or attention on what exactly he was listening in on.
Letting go of the table Jack began to turn around and almost immediately caught his right foot on his left ankle. Hands wheeling, he caught the back of the chair and just barely managed to keep himself upright. Perhaps instead of doing what he was planning and immediately going to attempt to listen in on what was happening in the facility, it would be better to sit and rest for a moment.
Jack lowered himself into the chair and tried to think of when exactly he had last slept. He wasn’t sure. He had gone back and forth between physical and magical exercises for… some time. As he pondered, he stared out over the room with unfocused eyes. After a moment Jack scowled and asked the formorian in the corner to please quiet down. Their unending muttering was making it very difficult for him to think. “Uh… excuse me. Could you please quite down a bit. I’m trying to think over here.”
The formorian did not respond. In fact, they seemed to ignore Jack completely as if he was nothing, just a waste of space and air. Jack spoke again, this time raising his voice so that there could be no mistake about if he was just not heard or if they were ignoring him on purpose. “I said. Can you please stop that. I really need to concentrate right now and your incessant noise is keeping me from doing so!”
A beat went by and the formorian remained in the corner, the only change being that their muttering got even louder. Jack felt his arms tremble as his hands clenched tight enough that his fingernails started to cut into his palms. How dare they. Truly. This absolute fucker came in here, into his room, and chooses to ignore him? Jack took a deep shuddering breath. Control. He was back in control. He may have lost it before to a training fugue but he was damned if he would lose it here and now to some rude interloper.
A few more deep breaths later and Jack’s hands unclenched. He kept control of himself. Frowning a bit Jack stood and walked to the corner where the formorian sat. He closed his eyes and took deep breath before reaching out to grab one of the formorians legs. His hand hit nothing. Opening his eyes in surprise Jack saw that there was nothing at all in the corner now and the room was completely silent. Struggling a bit to make sense of what just happened he shook his head. It didn’t really matter. Finally, it was quiet again and he could think. Turning around Jack sat down in the corner and looked out into the room.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Great just great. He’d come over here to deal with that blasted annoyance of a formorian and now there were two small imps dancing on the table. Closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall he let out a small sigh. He’d… deal… with those guys… in a min…
Jack woke to the door smacking him in the side. The room was brightly lit and he was laying in the corner behind the door. He sat up to be greeted by a nurse and one of the security officers making their way into the room. “Ugh! Wha- what’s going on?”
The door stopped as Jack voiced his reaction to the impact. Then nurse turned at looked where they had heard the voice coming from and blinked in surprise. “Good morning. What are you doing sleeping in the corner? I thought this was your meditation time.”
Using the wall to sit up Jack shrugged awkwardly. There really wasn’t any good kind of response to that. He thought to himself. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t really know what I have been doing for the past however many days it’s been? Or perhaps I smacked my head last night while exercising and had meant to just sit down for a moment and rest. Actually… that second one wasn’t a bad option at all.”
Opening his mouth to actually say it out loud to the two people he was interrupted by the security guard. “It doesn’t really matter that much, does it? We are here to be taking him over for testing. Plus, all the people kept here act strange all the damn time. So up you get. Doc’s waiting.”
“Look I’ll be honest, yeah, I can have unusual behavior at times. But my being stuck in this tiny room for who knows how long, without being able to leave and only seeing people for couple minutes a day three times a day certainly hasn’t helped it any. How would you like to be stuck in a box like this?” Jack mumbled out grumpily as he shoved himself up the wall into a standing position.
“I don’t know how long it has been since I have been brought here. After a while the days have run together so much that I’ve lost almost all sense of time. I’m literally trapped in a cage. It’s a nicer cage then what they have in prison, but considering I’ve been kept without company or being able to leave this… this what… ten by ten room, for so long I would have preferred prison even with its lack of these nice accoutrements.” Continuing, he gestured over at the numerous books and other distractions that had been in the room even before he had been brought here.
While his complaints certainly were true, they were not really the source of Jack’s idiosyncratic behavior. Not that he would tell them that. As saying that his strange behavior was part of him obsessively training himself in order to escape the facility seemed like a poor choice. Especially when talking to employees of said facility.
That’s not to say that Jack didn’t understand why he was stuck here or their caution. But understanding something logically and accepting it emotionally are two very different things. Not to mention that with the changes that Jack had mentally undergone from his reaffirmation of self his emotional control seemed to almost be shot. It was almost like the fact that he had bound parts of his mind in the past in order to control his rampaging concepts had some other unintended consequences that he was just starting to scratch the surface of.
“Well hopefully after this testing you should be allowed out of your room some and into the commons!” The nurse replied cheerfully a slightly strained smile on their lips. Obviously trying to force some level of gaiety into their voice as they imagined being in Jack’s position.
The guard at this point was tapping their foot impatiently “Would you two hurry the fuck up? I don’t have all day. I got shit I need to be doing.”
Jack stretched covering his mouth as the nurse looked at the guard in askance. “What are you talking about Taylor? I’ve seen the shift schedule. You are supposed to be working all day today.”
“What do you think my day is all freedom and sunshine, huh? Yeah, I’m on today and I got a lot of shit I need to be doing. What’s it to you anyways huh Gordan? You now in charge of Security? Last I remember you just the newest embarrassment added to our oh so illustrious ranks.” The guard who Jack now knew was named Taylor ripped into the nurse.
Gordan, the nurse, sighed exasperatedly, “I don’t think I said anything about me being in charge of security as you are well aware. Just because you are feeling bitter about how long you’ve been here doesn’t mean you need to take it out on me.”
Jack carefully stood absolutely still to not interrupt the twos argument. People often exposed things that they otherwise wouldn’t when tempers flared like this. Already he had learned that working here was some likely some kind of punishment or something considering that both of them talked about being assigned here as an embarrassment or something to be bitter about. Considering the obvious care and extremely expensive setup of the facility it seemed strange to Jack that working here would be a negative. He did his best to stay quiet and unobtrusive but the next thing he knew a massive yawn snuck up on him. Try as he might he just could not keep it from happening.
Both Gordan and Taylor turned at the sound, their cheeks lightly dusted with blushes at being seen acting that way. Clearing his throat Gordan spoke “Well, we have work to do. If you could come with us, we’ll be taking you over to the doctor for your tests.”
“What are you being all polite for? It’s not like he has any choice. Common out the door with you.” Taylor instructed gruffly.
Gordan sighed a bit as he moved out of the doorway to let Jack into the hall. “It never hurts to be polite. In fact, it can cause a good bit of hurt if you aren’t polite is what I’ve found.”
Taylor snickered at that. “What, is that how you ended up here? Rude to the wrong person or something?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I was. I lost my patience with someone important when they wouldn’t stop acting the fool. They… did not take my words well. Didn’t help much that apparently, they got embarrassed in public a few days prior. Something about a girl they liked or something. I don’t really know all the details on it but it certainly didn’t help me any when I mouthed off.” Gordan nodded sadly. “I was all set to be in a great apprenticeship as well working in one of the labs, but now… Here I am.”
Gordan winced slightly, “Ouch sucks to be you. I mean I’ll be out of here soon my time’ll be up and I’ll be considered a “rehabilitated member of society”. Well, they say that but I’ll have a lifelong contract with the company and will end up in their operations wing. Not many future options there. But still, it’s a shit ton better then prison.”
Both of them drifted off in thought falling quite as they continued to walk Jack through the complex. Jack tried his best to commit the route they were following to memory. They seemed to take a more circuitous path this time as they were taking longer to walk around then when he had last been taken to the room that allowed for mana testing. This time the did not pass the common area either. One thing that did catch his attention however was hearing a number of muffled animal noises as they passed through one section of the tunnels.
Finally, after a few more minutes they arrived at the door to a familiar room. It was time to be tested again.