The Shrink Program

Chapter 115

I couldn't remember fainting.

I couldn't remember being cut either.

But when the sharp, wet pain in my side dragged me into consciousness, I realised that both must have happened.

Begrudgingly, I opened my eyes, finding myself lying on the floor.

The fact that I wasn't dead brought me to the quick conclusion that I must have been set down on purpose, rather than having fallen.

As soon as I get up, I'm going to kill the guy who thought abandoning a wounded maiden on the cold hard floor was kosher...

There were dull echoes of sound, vibrating as if I were submerged underwater. People were talking, but my ringing ears couldn't make sense of it.

All the strange sounds going on, yet one was missing. The Alarm.

The power must have gone out. I noted, staring at the dead fluorescent lights above, which had once lit the dark lobby.

Even so, the room wasn't completely dark.

A glaring white light shone into the room, sending sharp shadows across the walls like knives. It came from the direction of the street, like a searchlight peering in.

Not only that, little particles of what looked like glitter floated in the air.

How pretty. Too bad that the rest of the room looked like a bomb had hit it.

Tentatively, numbly, I turned my head, surprised to feel tiny fragments of glass crunching in my hair.

Looking across the room, I saw that the wall of windows had shattered in completely, covering the floor in broken glass.

And people.

My vision was blurry, unable to focus on the giant figures spread across the room. Some were kneeling, while some seem to lay motionless.

Through sheer will power, I forced my eyes to work, and as my sight sharpened, sound came rushing it.

"We have to take it out, Havoc." I recognised Peri's voice, speaking quietly from somewhere in the room. "Our tech doesn't know your body well enough to be able to recognise the foreign object. It's just reacting to your brain signals. If we don't act soon, it will heal around the glass."

"I know. Just... Hurry..."

"On three...One, two...three."

Havoc gave a strangled sound of pain, snarling a scientific-sounding word that I suspected was a swear in smart people language.

I tried to sit up, only to feel something holding me down at the waist.

Frowning slightly in confusion, I turned to see Nigel kneeling beside me.

When did he turn up?

... Then again, he's probably been there all along.

Dully, I realised that Nigel was pressing a ball of white fabric into my side, probably the torn sleeve of a lab coat or something, and as I finally met his gaze, I saw that he was silently crying.

How embarrassing. Minions shouldn't cry.

"Don't worry." He told me, his voice obviously fighting to sound reassuring, but holding a trace of the tears in his eyes. "Peri said that they are fixing it. He and Winkle are fixing everyone with nanotechnology, so it will be better in just a moment. So please..."

Of course, the idiot would overreact, seeing all the blood that now stained the compress he held to my side.

He still freaks out when I just get a blood lip after all...