The Custodes

Chapter 6 - Date Night

Nexus awoke with a start, gasping for breath as his eyes darted around rapidly, taking in his surroundings while he tried to figure out exactly where he was. The first thing he realised was that he was in a bed, in a very plain looking apartment room, as well as the fact he was wearing a strange, pale blue coloured hospital gown.

The bed he was in was just big enough for one person and had simple purple sheets that he had been laid on top of, but he didn't recognise a single part of the room. The bed was up against the wall, with a window directly beside it which looked out onto a few other buildings and a street down below it, one that Nexus recognised as being near the centre of the city.

Nothing about the rest of the room struck Nexus as particularly interesting, since there was only a closet, a set of drawers, a desk with a mirror in front of it, and a shelf along the top of the wall. He sat up in the bed and rubbed his eyes with his fists, trying to get rid of the slight aching in his head. His thoughts were fuzzy as he tried to remember what had happened to him, and the rest of his body felt extremely stiff and tired.

The last thing he remembered was being on a rooftop, after his encounter with...Zuro. His eyes snapped wide open and his head shot up as memories came flooding back into him like all the water in a dam rushing out simultaneously. Zuro had beaten him half to death, he vividly remembered numerous of his bones being broken as well as feeling indescribable pain. But now, he seemed to be perfectly fine.

He looked down at his right arm, thinking back to how Zuro had snapped it so effortlessly and the awkward angle it had bent at, whereas now there was only a very faint mark where his elbow had been bent inwards. He stood up from the bed and lifted up his gown to look at his leg, finding nothing more than a dark purple bruise on the side of his knee. He wanted to check his ribcage too, but the strange gown he was wearing was making it increasingly difficult to do so, leading to him irritatedly pulling it over his head and throwing it to the ground, leaving him standing in nothing more than his underwear.

He moved over to the mirror in the room and examined himself, finding a few more injuries over his body but nothing too serious, the most noticeable being a dark nasty looking bruise on his jaw right where it had been broken. He'd been trying to figure out what had happened to him, and how he had ended up where he was, before he suddenly realised he hadn't remained on the roof that night. His final thoughts were of being in someone's living room, and hearing a scream and the sound of something smashing.

Quinn. The name entered his mind as clear as day, and immediately he knew where he was. In the early stages of their friendship, Nexus had ended up walking to her apartment with her one day. He hadn't meant to, but their conversation had been a fairly interesting one and before he knew it he was stood right outside her door exchanging goodbyes.

For reasons still unknown to him he'd never quite managed to forget where she lived, which turned out to actually be a good thing. She was the first thing his thoughts drifted to whilst bleeding out on that rooftop, and in a last ditch effort to save his life he'd teleported to her apartment in hopes that she'd be able to help him.

And by the look of things, that's exactly what she'd done.

He had to find her, and find out exactly what had happened and how long he'd been out, but as he turned to move towards the door of the room it slowly swung open and Quinn herself hurried inside. She already had her mouth open to say something as her eyes locked on Nexus, but before any words came out, a small squeal of surprise escaped her as she took in his near-nakedness.

For a fleeting second a look of embarrassment made its way onto her face, but she quickly composed herself and inhaled, a relieved expression replacing her embarrassed one "You're awake." She said, closing the door behind her and stepping into the room as she blatantly checked out all of his badly wounded areas.