Descent Into Madness

Chapter 3: Fret and Worry

Something was poking me. I frowned slightly. Phineas normally just throws a pillow... Phineas!

My eyes snapped open, and I jolted. Somehow, that action led to me falling and landing on my arse.

"Oops, sorry, Ferb."

Blinking, I looked up. Phineas was biting his lip. His red hair sticking out at angles even wilder than normal. His right arm was cradled close to his chest by his other one. His complexion was still pale. Even his colour seemed slightly off, but that could be excused by the red tint from the emergency lights. They were the only thing I'd managed to get working before falling asleep.

Getting up, I threw myself at him and wrapped my arms around his neck, being careful of his arm.

"I must have really worried you." His voice was muffled from being pressed against my chest, but still understandable.

I pulled back, hands moving to his shoulders. "How's your arm?"

His left shoulder moved under my hand as he gave a half shrug. "Doesn't hurt," he said, eyes trailing over it.

An alarming thought popped into my head. "But you can feel it, right? Can you move it? You haven't lost-"

"Ferb! Whoa!" His uninjured arm was up, hand signalling me to stop.

My mouth snapped shut as I blinked.

He had a grin on his face as he shook his head. "I get slightly hurt, you go all chatty."

"Slightly? That-"

Eyes rolling, he signaled again. "I can move it. I didn't even realize it was hurt until I did and felt the pain shoot through it. But not moving it, it doesn't hurt. Just kind of stings."

"I should check to make sure it's not becoming infected." I slid my hands over to his arm to untie the makeshift bandage. I could feel his muscles tense as I started untying it.

As I began unwrapping it, I saw his jaw clench. After pulling the vest away, my eyes widened as the wounds become visible.

While the holes themselves had stopped bleeding and had scabbed over, surrounding them were black lines working their way up his arm.

"That's weird." Phineas ran a finger over one of the lines. "That means infection, right?"

I blinked. Red lines meant infection, black lines... I had no idea.

"It seems like it should be painful," he muttered. "But it really isn't."

Looking back up to his face, the paleness of his skin jumped out at me. In a smooth movement, I shot a hand from his arm to his forehead, causing him to flinch back before realizing what I was doing.

Under my palm, his skin was cool, and I dropped my hand away.

"Fever?"

I shook my head and grabbed the torch from where I had set it, turning it on and shining it in his eyes.

"Whoa! Bro! What the heck?" He jerked his hand up to block the light, but I grabbed it and pulled his hand back down.

"I need to check for a concussion." That I knew how to do. Sort of. Well, I'd seen it done in movies, so that counts, right?

He rolled his eyes but complied as I made sure his eyes were dilating properly.

"Headache?" I turned off the torch.

"Before you came up with the flashlight?"

Ignoring the sarcasm.

"Confusion?"

"Only about what attacked me." Phineas blinked. "What attacked me, anyway?"

I shrugged. I hadn't taken the time to observe the details of it.

"I'm assuming the remote broke?"

I nodded.

"What do we know?" He raised a hand to his chin before answering his own question. "This is some sort of lab. Judging by the thing that attacked us, possibly they were doing experiments on something that got out and the whole thing turned bad. Which would explain the mess we found when we first got here. Do we know anything else?"

"There's more than one of them. I was attempting to reactivate the cameras when I fell asleep." The backup power for this place appeared to be fully functional, it just needed to be reconnected and rebooted.

"Need any help?"

I shook my head. If he wasn't injured, sure, but right now, no. I held up the vest and raised an eyebrow at him.

Phineas' brow furrowed. "Aren't you supposed to let this kind of stuff air out?"

No clue. Shrugging, I threw the vest over the back of a chair.

He turned away and started walking around, looking at some of the things scattered around the room. I blinked before grabbing my screwdriver and picking up where I had left off.

I was in the middle of reconnecting a microprocessor when I felt a pressure on my head and something fell into my line of sight. Raising a hand, I pulled the thing off and blinked at the baseball cap that met my eyes. I looked over at Phineas, who was looking at something else. His eyes flitted over to me, a smile tugging on his lips, and I looked back to the cap. It was a simple red and white stripe patterned one. I use to have one very similar, and briefly I wondered what happened to it before placing the cap back on my head, twisting it around so the visor was in the back.

I glanced back over at him, watching as he turned something I couldn't see over in his left hand. A pang of dread over those black lines struck me as I returned to task at hand.