Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 205. Tracker
"The center... He saw his future self talking about it in a vision." I contemplated loudly while watching the doctors fumbling on Kenny, always speaking for a moment and then nodding at each other.
"What was his future self like?" Mrs. Howard asked, and I could hardly answer that.
"I don’t know." Only that these visions contained me offering my ass to him, with him apparently accepting it—which I couldn’t really mention to her.
"You will naturally go with him should he go to there, am I right?" She turned to me and raised her eyebrows in silent challenge, an expression that made her look just like her grandson.
I smiled.
"Where else would I be?"
"Good. If you lose him again, I won’t be as lenient as I have been until now." Kenny’s grandma looked back at the patient on the bed.
"Mhm. I don’t expect anything else." I also turned back, and we saw one of the doctors coming, his big smile foretelling good news.
"We have excellent brain activity; he is strong and healthy, just very exhausted, and he dreams a lot, processing experiences."
Although both of us expected it, we both leaned back in our chairs and finally relaxed.
"Take that thing out of him, then let him rest." Kenny’s grandma commanded, and only then did it hit me again: the chips we got implanted.
No wonder Ethan said the authorities would soon come for Kenny.
"You also still have yours?" She asked me, and I nodded.
I wanted to take it out as soon as we arrived in the hole that the South District had become, but then Kenny and I were separated—the Deer Monsters, survivors, my sister, my parents, the hellhole with more survivors—only to lose him again in another world, only to lose him once more instantly after that.
I am constantly finding and losing him again; what torture it was just to make sure I had him by my side.
"Yes—if it survived two crossings through two worlds."
Ethan came with coffee for the three of us and put it on the little table, overhearing what I said and piecing together what we were talking about.
"I have looked into the whole procedure, and it is fishy, especially regarding Kenny, a minor. However, his father signed and gave his consent, so we cannot do anything about it for now. Additionally, they used military equipment for the trackers on you; they should still function."
Mrs. Howard didn’t say anything, just pressed her lips together, and I saw one or two veins protruding on her forehead. She seemed unhappy about her son’s actions.
I was too.
The doctor who had informed us stood still by and smiled at me politely. I stood up after taking a few sips of the coffee.
"Please follow me." He motioned for me to come to go outside.
"No. The bathroom should be enough." I pointed at the room I had just exited with Kenny. If it weren’t for the bite marks on me and the risk of Mrs. Howard discovering them, I would have let him remove the tracker right here so as not to lose sight of this slippery master of mine.
He took a little leather bundle with him and walked with me into the bathroom. I pulled my sweater over my head, giving him access to the spot between my shoulder blades.
"I don’t need a local anesthesia."
The doctor put the injection he had just taken out away and instead grabbed the disinfectant spray.
"I have a medicine question..." I said, thinking that this would be a good opportunity to ask.
"Yes, please ask, young man." He first felt for the spot, then cut into my skin.
"If someone heals especially well but then has superficial scars that don’t heal at all, what does that mean?"
"More than one thing. The spot where this shallow scar appeared is in an area that doesn’t regenerate easily, where the skin is especially thin, for example. The patient might not have taken care of it or could have done things to aggravate the wounds, like constantly reopening them, or it could be related to a psychological reason."
"A psychological reason?" I asked.
"Yes, besides other factors like an overall depressed state that doesn’t help the healing process, it is also interesting to observe what the patient wishes for, similar to the placebo effect. If someone doesn’t like their job and gets injured, giving them the opportunity for a sick leave, and they are happy about it and hope it lasts, then it could cause the injury to heal slower. Conversely, in the same situation, if the patient is increasingly worried about getting better too soon, the injury could heal especially well, even sooner than at other times. The psyche always influences the body more strongly than one might think."
"I understand. Thank you." Could this be a bonus from us leveling up?
If Kenny wishes for his tattoos to last, his body obeys his wish; if I don’t want to lose any evidence of intimacy with him, my body leaves me with the scars as well? 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
Yet, Kenny’s body was riddled with stab wounds and scars. Or was it that he just didn’t actively hope or wish for them to go away?
Indeed, this would be a very interesting side effect of upgrading our bodies. I looked up in the mirror, noticing that I hadn’t shaved since the Deer-Monster world; yet, I looked as if I had done so just an hour ago.
If we could change the course our bodies took, could the unconscious counterparts, aka monsters, do so as well?
"No problem. If you have any future questions, here is my card." The doctor placed something on the bathroom counter before discarding his gloves and reaching into his white robe to pull out a card and placing it next to the bloody tracker.
"We are finished; just a few stitches left." After he got himself new gloves, he finished in less than a minute, and we left the bathroom with a rinsed tracker and myself clothed again.
Ethan had occupied my seat, and I ignored his act of standing up to Kenny’s side anyway to watch them remove the tracker as well.
The woman with the many hands covering the woman on his back didn’t faze the doctors, but this motif had for me something complex, something otherworldly.
How could a child have come up with that?
After they stitched him and even put a big plaster on the small wound, they turned his body around so he could lie on his back. After I made sure that he was really alright, I sat back down in the place that had been made free for me.
"Why the center?" I asked Ethan, who was also drinking his coffee, leaning on the windowsill behind him and next to our seats.
After swallowing, he explained,
"The authorities wouldn’t want to loosen their grip on him after they heard of his powers. Now that he was proven ’innocent’, they would want to find another way to have him under their watch."
"He is innocent, so how would they do that?" I asked.
"Not exactly." Ethan took another sip of his coffee.
"They will probably bring him to court for attempted manslaughter and assault with excessive violence regarding the prison mates he had injured during his prison stay; additionally, the removal of his ankle monitor during this mission, escape from lawful custody, etc."
I chuckled, a bit of shadowy energy wrapping around my hand by itself before I suppressed it.
Ethan continued,
"The center would be a better choice than a prison or a laboratory. The Four Hundred inside know him and are thankful to him. Additionally, they can use their phones inside, and because the facility and concept are new, the public eye watches everything closely."
