Virals Pack: Reborn

Chapter 107: A Harsh Reminder

Pain.

I awoke to pain.

For an overwhelming moment I feared unconsciousness would take me again...and then I stayed. 

Slowly, with my eyes still closed, I started to take stock of my surroundings. I can smell the clean, harsh scent of disinfectant. A faint beeping and whirring of some mysterious machinery whispers in the background. I can hear my raspy breath, feel it muffled against whatever is covering my face from nose to chin. For some reason my left hand feels much warmer than my right, a fact that confuses me enough to start pondering my situation.

I put these pieces of acquired knowledge together, and slowly, hazily, a conclusion is formed: hospital. With a cold shock of clarity all of these sensations hit me a second time with aching familiarity. I am in a hospital, I am back in a hospital. 

My breath catches for a moment as the haunting memories slowly start to seep in. I hear a slight shifting to my left, but am quickly distracted by my thoughts. It is as if a key in my mind unlocked some barrier, and suddenly all of the memories from the last time I was in the hospital and how I came to be in this hospital came flooding in. With a strangled gasp my eyes fly open, my body, remembering the danger that brought me here, tries desperately to sit up and flee.

PAIN

I am quickly stopped by the ripping pain across my body, and weakly flop back onto the hospital bed. My brain belatedly registers an exclamation of surprise to my side, and I turn to meet the wide-eyed gaze of Tory as she leaps out of a chair seated directly to the left of the bed. As she grips the bedrails with both hands and quickly scans my body for any signs of further damage, I realize my left hand is suddenly much colder. 

Before I can put two and two together she blurts out:

"Holy shit, you're awake!" 

I open my mouth, a reflexively witty remark already picked out...and then I stop. Silence fills my throat, stifles any noise that was about to happen. I close my mouth. Give a pained smile.

"You really scared us there you know." Tory continues, returning to her chair. "What on earth were you thinking?? You don't even have flare powers, you shouldn't have put yourself in that kind of danger! And yet somehow, somehow you were right there with us and you...you saved me." 

Her attempt at a clearly concerned scolding trails off and she simply looks at me in a bewildered fashion. I offered no words, no explanation, I simply met her gaze and willed her to understand. She shakes her head as if clearing her thoughts and quickly shifts gear to a more informational conversation.

"Don't worry, the rest of us are all ok especially thanks to you, they're just worried out of their minds at the moment is all. Your aunts are here, they stepped out not too long ago to grab some food and I'll gladly go get them soon...but there's one thing I want to mention first while we're alone."

She pauses for a moment, as if deliberating how to phrase her next words.

"I don't know how much you remember from what happened last night...you lost a lot of blood, a scary amount even before the paramedics managed to reach us. You weren't going to make it back to the hospital without an emergency transfusion, we were out of options, so I stepped in. Normally I wouldn't have hesitated, but as you know my friends and I aren't exactly normal..."

She trails off again and I simply wait and watch, silently urging her to continue, to confirm what assumptions began to fill my head.

"We learned a while ago, back when we had our original golden flares, that it was possible to transfer our mutated DNA through blood. Our pack did not do it, so maybe it was just a Trinity strain effect...but I figured you should at least know. There is a greater than 0% chance that you might become a viral as well."

I solemnly nod as I digest this information. A large part of me was frightened by this new development, especially considering I was currently in a hospital and if anything went awry it would be seen by others and put on record. My current existence was a gargantuan threat to the safety of the pack.

But fear wasn't the only thing I felt. Some hollow, desperate part of me was filled with the need for closeness, the hunger for that unbreakable bond I witnessed last night. This part of me practically howled with excitement at the prospect of truly becoming one with the pack.