Such is our fate

Chapter 2 Meeting the cast

Getting used to the outside world again was slightly harder than I initially imagined. I sat a little bit just outside my, let's say humble, prison cell trying to have my eyes get used to the light.

"Damn this Sun man!" my inner voice says. "It's way brighter than the one on my home planet"

After a few minutes I finally get my vision back to normal parameters, so I start shuffling along, next to the walls of the building. The fact that my hand is missing is really bothering me, as I catch myself multiple times trying to prop myself up using the wall on my left side, only to feel the empty stump hitting the wall slightly harder, and sending me into a world of pain. It's so weird, because I really feel like my hand is still there, I look at it again and imagine how I'm moving my fingers and I feel like I'm moving them, even though I'm looking at a bandaged end of an elbow and nothing else. I guess this is the phantom limb feeling that I've heard about. To think that I went through an entire war and I've never got to experience that. But I do now, and it's really annoying. I slowly stumble along until I find another slightly bigger building right next to the one I've just left. I decide to open the door and go in. I entered into what clearly seemed to be a hospital. The beds were made out of metal and were slightly bend and not fully flat, and each of them had a place for an IV bag, and a vitals monitor right next to it. The floors were also sparkly clean and the room was currently lit up by the outside light of the sun through the large windows that were on the same side of the door. In the other side of the room there was a small table full of all sorts of chemicals and small medical utensils. There was a woman working at the table who suddenly stopped as she probably heard me enter.

"Oh it's you!" she says with a slight surprise. "Cross told me that you finally woke up. How are you feeling?"

"I've had better days... days were I didn't feel pain from all corners of my body" I reply back shortly.

"I know you've been badly hurt and you have lost a lot of blood. You've been in a coma for at least 3 days so it might take a little while until you get back on your feet properly..."

"Well I am walking now, aren't I?" I say with a small smirk.

"Yes of course, but I meant until you can operate within optimal parameters, if I can express myself that way." She stops and starts getting closer towards me. She is smaller than me both in size and height but by the tone of her voice and the look on her face I feel like she is probably older than me. Early 30s or older.

"Anyways, my name is Jude and I am what passes around as a doctor here." She says once she got closer.

"So you are not a real doctor...?" I say trying to hold back a mean grin.

"Well I'm not in the sense that I'm not officially certified. I don't have a license or theoretical studies or anything you might expect from an actual doctor. But I do have a lot of field experience. I have had many patience and I've been trained to work directly on them, so you don't have to worry about it. I did patch you up well, didn't I?" She says with a small smile on her face.

"Yeah... I guess you are right" I reply a little bit bored. I raise up my left arm again and look at the bandages.

"Oh yeah. That must have hurt a lot. I told Cross that we could go and install a new bionic arm to replace it, but he said that we should wait. That we should see if you can 'prove yourself' as he keeps saying, and you won't just run away with a bunch of our supplies at first chance. Plus there are people who don't like this sort of implants, so I agreed that it was better to wait and ask you personally."

"Huh, really? There are people who refuse to not only have a replacement to their useless stump, but even have something better? I'd have never imagined" I say with a little bit of surprise in my voice. "Either way, you can tell Cross that I am all up for it. You can hook me up as soon as possible."