Hunter started to have strange memories of his time in the hospital room, memories that felt real, but could have been. He figured that what he was experiencing were the symptoms of a severe head injury. He almost jumped out of his skin when the walls started to melt away, revealing a vast, black empty space, a blackness that gave into grey and white shifting forms, forms that filled in with color— no single shape ever reaching complete definition before it shifted again, almost finding solidity, identity, before it was gone, and replaced by something else— but not quite.

Always changing. Changing, changing, changing.

If he’d had been there for a minute, a day, or a year, he couldn’t tell. The variations in this space appeared endless.

Except for one figure, one lone figure standing in the distance, facing Hunter. Hunter found that his body appeared completely healed. He tried walking, and then running towards the figure. For a while, it worked. The figure got closer, and closer, the space between them changing, filling in with new details. A walkway, a road, a forest path, a mountain, a river, they were standing on an ocean, they were standing on a rock in the void of space, they were in a field of grass.

Every step was a new world. The closer he got to the figure, the more he realized that there was something behind him. A vast, dark shape. An opening mouth, full of razor sharp teeth. It dwarfed the man.

He was familiar to Hunter, but Hunter couldn’t quite place where he knew him from. The man smiled at Hunter.

“Humble beginnings. He was right, it’s a shapeless shape, but a shape nevertheless,” he chuckled and smiled, turning towards the vast maw which saught to devour him and walked into it without hesitation.

Hunter awoke once more to the hospital room, but he must have still been delirious, since he could hear the man’s voice echo through the room, still eerily familiar.

“Be not afraid.”

There was a knock at the door, and it opened. It was Aera.

“Am I still dreaming?” he asked, not really looking forward to the prospect of seeing Aera grow a few more eyes, and claws. Although it would probably wouldn’t change the way he felt about her.

As far as he was concerned, her claws were sharper than any nightmare his mind could conjure. He could see something in her eye— a flame like the one her father was so proud of, yet hers was less passion and more like pure, focused fury.

“Tell me what you know.”

“Great to see you too, sister,” he said, laughing at the word. How ridiculous did that sound? The look on her face was priceless.

She must not have liked that word. It must have short-circuited her hardware. He savored the small moment of victory.

She was speechless. It took her a second to reboot, but when she did, she repeated the command.

“Tell me what you know, Hunter.”

“What?” he said, feeling like the room was starting to spin. Maybe the walls would start melting again. It was kind of creepy when they did that, but it was also kind of cool.

“Who attacked you? What do you remember? Faces, voices, names, what were they wearing? Did they say anything to you? Was it Pippen?”

“Fuuuuuuuck Pippen. I don’t like that guy, scary dude, like a predator” Hunter said, feeling incredibly tired all of a sudden, “I think I'm gonna take a nap.”

“Just give me something Hunter,” she said. It almost sounded like she was pleading.

“I’m too weak. They said so. I’m no Oberon. ‘Too weak for an Oberon,’ they said. They’re right. But they don’t know. I’ll show them. I’ll show you, Aera. You don’t know, none of you do. I’ll show you,” he said forcing out each word, but each syllable seemed to be harder to speak than the last. By the end, he was pushing out the barest of whispers.

Then he was too tired to say anything else. Maybe he was on drugs. They do that at hospitals, right? He’d never done drugs before. But that would be irresponsible of them. His head hurt.

Then he was dreaming again.

Over the next month, Hunter made a full recovery. They’d transferred Hunter to an advanced recovery room— which Oberon had directly supplied with proprietary, bleeding edge constructs constructs devoted to sustaining a something called a ‘healing field’— a name that was incredibly vague. How the field actually worked, no one knew. He asked how they even made a construct out of something they didn’t understand, and they’d said something about discovering a complete network diagram somewhere.

Hunter was incredibly unsatisfied with that answer. One does not just stumble upon a complete network diagram. He took some solace in the fact that it appeared that it was the Oberon corporation which had stumbled upon it, which meant that in a way, Hunter would have a way to access it in the future.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Trey had visited Hunter a few times, asking him if he wanted to leave the academy. Hunters first reflex was to say yes. But he’d asked Trey what it would mean for him.

“Goodwill keeps my company glued together in tough times, Hunter. If you had a degree of Excellence, it would be easy to convince my captain’s to let you on board their ship— otherwise I would have to force you upon them. Whether you are a benefit to them or not, that would start to pose a problem. I let our Captain’s run their ships as they wish, so long as they follow our established protocols. I only interfere in emergencies— goodwill, see? Trust. Integrity. I could still get you a spot in an outworld training program, but I'd be taking that spot away from someone else who might deserve it just as much as you do. If that’s what you want, I’ll sign the papers.”

He’d seen that Trey had meant it, too.

So Hunter refused. He had to imagine what it would have been like to be that young man or woman who was about to take the the next step towards their own dreams, only to be told that the Council Seat had used his authority to cancel that dream for the sake of an heir.

Hunter wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror if he’d accepted. Besides, that wasn’t the only reason why he wanted to stay at Barnum.

He had one avenue to explore before he would decide to quit.

The rest of the time in that room was spent either studying for his classes, or studying the sensations he got from the strange construct.

And he had no idea what he was feeling, it was the strangest thing. He’d loved to have gotten underneath the bed to see the construct with his own eyes. What he could see was the dozens of batteries they had been using at any given time to keep the construct operational. And these weren’t consumer brand batteries, there were industrial grade. At the rate they were changing them, Hunter assumed the constructs being used to sustain this strange effect must measure in at an AR requirement of at least 150.

They told him that he was a prime candidate for the treatment. Not only could his family afford it, but Hunters unique constitution meant that the field didn’t have much to heal.

What was healing him? What does ‘heal’ even mean in this context? How does the field know that he is in a state to be healed? It doesn’t make any sense. It was about as nonsensical and vague as this texts he read about vital force as a corollary of affinity for, and exposure to, etherium.

But then again, what about etherium did make sense? Sure, Hunter could feel that it had depths that no one else seemed to be aware of, but that didn’t mean he knew what etherium was. As far as he knew, a healing field was just scratching away at the dust that lined the very edge of the surface of possibilities that etherium was capable of.

He made a note to himself to research these types of constructs when he had the time. He hadn’t even heard of it before he woke up in it. He didn’t even really feel like there was a field, not physically. Apart from sensing the strange etheric charge pulsing around him, he could have sworn he was on a normal bed in a normal room, filled with strange devices that he could almost pretend he didn’t recognize.

While he recovered, Aera had come to ask him more questions. He barely remembered her previous visit— and he only remembered it because of the strange hallucination he’d had just before she arrived. He’d puzzled over its meaning, and thought he understood what it meant to convey.

The shifting world— that had been his life over the last couple of months, hadn’t it? And the figure that stood in the middle of it all. He was pretty sure it was him. If he remembered the face correctly, it almost looked like his father, but it wasn’t. Because it almost looked like himself. It was like an idealized version of himself— without the frailty. Without the weakness.

And he could make an educated guess as to what that hideous mouth had symbolized, and what it meant to walk into it without hesitation.

It was a decision he knew he’d have to make. Because he knew that he wasn’t going to quit.

He was scared. He felt like he was surrounded by sharks, and they were circling, having smelled blood in the water. But he’d been scared before, and all it had done was focus him.

The same way it was focusing him now.

It made the choice easier to make— the same way it had been before. A consideration of ethics seemed to come secondary to survival.

He could quit. It was a genuine option, but one that he knew he wasn’t going to take. He’d suffered through the Comics, the competition, and Aera’s bullshit. He’d finally found a way to a future he’d been dreaming of for years, and he’d be damned if he just gave it all up. There was only one way forward. And even if it ended up swallowing him whole, he knew that he’d already made the choice.

Law enforcement had come, and asked him questions, and he’d told them something similar to what he’d told Aera-- only this time with much more lucidity. He mentioned Pippen Visgold, but couldn’t give them anything else. They’d been back a couple of times, but Hunter really couldn’t remember much more.

The smell of certain colognes, flashes of tattoos, maybe a scar or two. He remembered the mask that one of them had worn. That was all.

They stopped coming.

Trey had hired someone to help Hunter catch up on his school work. He would get tired at first after about an hour, but he was healing fast. By the end of the first week of catching up, he could focus for 6 hours at a stretch. Luckily, he could gloss over the Artisan coursework. It was all stuff he was mostly familiar with— the few exceptions had captured most of his interest. His knowledge of glyphs and network syntax was robust, but there was always something new to consider. New angles on old concepts, small iterations to age-old solutions, some which Hunter had already discovered himself.

The few times Hunter was genuinely surprised to learn something new were the highlights of his time in the hospital.

The day he was finally released, he was escorted to his apartment. Along the way, he remembered to buy a coffee press and a few pounds of a medium roast from a grocery store near the hospital.

He made himself a fresh pot, and set it on the living room table. He walked into his bedroom, and then towards the closet. He pulled out a few boxes, revealing the briefcase he was searching for. He placed it on the table beside the coffee press, and typed in the passcode. The briefcase clicked open.

It was all exactly as he’d left it.

For Hunter, he saw, printed on the face of the topmost journal.

Pippen, and he was sure it had to be Pippen who was behind the attack, could not be allowed to hurt him again. Hunter would not just earn a degree of Excellence, he would prove to the world that he was no rabbit to be hunted and skinned for their amusement.

With shaking hands, he opened the journal once more, and read. This time, he wouldn’t stop until he knew everything his father had discovered. If the practice turned out to confirm his fears, and he had to pay an unethical toll in order to advance, he would turn it all over to Trey. Oberon Enterprises could decide what to do with it.

But if not, then Hunter would devote himself to the method. He would get stronger.

He would show them all what he was capable of.