Those eyes again. Another failure, the dismay under the disdain directed at him, made his pain numb. Was there a need for those looks all the time?
This memory flashed and vanished with light relief as he came back to himself. That, though, only lasted a moment. "AARRGHH!" He screamed.
The agony blanked his thoughts, and the darkness augmented his anxiety. After who knows how much time, the pain lessened, and he could hear a pair of unintelligible voices.
"What is happening?!" He managed to speak through a wispy voice, sounding wrong to his own ears, but the thought of it was buried under the pain.
Still unable to understand them, he kept mumbling as he started losing consciousness, and memories floated into his mind. The office, his family, his life… but some other memories were there as well. A young boy with military clothes, training with him, more accurately: beating him. Many more came until he lost all his senses.
***
"What a strange dream…" Dante came to be; he tried to open his eyes, but wasn't able. He reached out but was restrained. What the hell is going on? He started thinking that it was not a dream. What happened? Still in darkness and restrained, he tried to make sense of the situation.
The pain had decreased considerably, but his breath was still ragged and his throat was dry.
More steps approached. "…nonsense?…at… be in pain… hear us…The climate was very summery, the smell of disinfectant stung his nose, but the flowing wind kept the air cool and dissipated the smell. Heavy machinery sounds came from everywhere, probably from an open window.
"Is someone there?! Why am I tied up?!" His voice sounded wrong, more high-pitched, broken, and very weak.
Steps approached him, and someone started talking. "… awake…, how… feeling?…, Boris…here!" What he assumed was a man's voice was strange, familiar yet unfamiliar; it was different from the language he knew, but he could understand some of it. Though it had a different rhythm "What? Which language is that?" Dante thought to himself.? Try…" he was somehow making more sense of the words as they spoke, "How is that possible?" he thought.
"Like this?" he tried, sounding a little uncertain of the words.
"… good, very good! Progress!" The man sounded glad. "Can… understand?" He continued.
"It's difficult, but I understand a little." he tried to answer. Somehow, he didn't know exactly how well it sounded, but he tried as much as he could.
"It's bad, but… work with…" his voice still sounded happy. "Simple words now, shall we?"
"What happened? Where am I?" Dante asked.
"You're in a hospital," the man said. "I'm Dr. Boris. Your condition was critical, but you're stable for now."
"But what happened to me?" The words were clicking better, despite the strange feeling of unfamiliarity, he was adapting at an uncanny speed.
"You got injured during your training again, but this time the damage was quite severe. What's the last thing you remember? Can you understand everything we're saying now, or do you still have any difficulty?"
Dante was baffled. "Training? I don't do any kind of training. Did they mistake me for one of those fighting junkies? Or someone beat me and said it was training?" Then he remembered his 'dream', "that wasn't a dream? How? I've never practiced anything in my life, and why would someone fight with me?? What memory is that?"
He stayed silent for a couple of seconds and finally said, "My memory is really fuzzy right now. I don't quite remember what happened. Could you please fill me in?
What's going on with my eyes? Why am I restrained?" his anxiety was palpable, but he tried to display a calm demeanor, lest they keep him tied up.
"Take a breath, Mr. Gustav. Everything is okay. This was for your own safety. We'll release you after some more tests." the doctor said, trying to calm him down.
"Gustav? What?" He was shocked, but stayed quiet to let the man finish.
"You have been in a coma for 5 days. Earlier in the day, you woke up hysterical and spouting nonsense, so we had to keep you from hurting yourself.
During training, you supposedly faltered and took a big hit, broke many bones, and were bleeding through your eyes. After treatment, we covered them to prevent any problems." the man concluded.
"What is going on? My name is not Gustav. How did they mistake me for another person? Maybe they just wrote the wrong name?" he flinched suddenly. "My wallet!! I must have lost it! No, wait. How would they give me a name then?
How am I understanding this language??? It's clearly different, but I don't know which one it is. What about this childish voice?! What the hell with this training? Why do I remember fights I never had? What's this?? Fight club or something?" he thought — then immediately froze.
The doctor interrupted him. "Mr. Gustav? Are you feeling well?"
"Sorry, I just need some time to make sense of things. Can I be released, please? And take this bandage off my eyes, I'm freaking out by the darkness." he said.
"Not yet, we need to do a full check-up first, but we can take the blinds." He said as he started to remove the bandages from his head.
Blinking into the light, Dante made out the nurse pulling away. Everything was a little blurry, but he quickly adapted, and the older man was revealed in front of his bed, tall, about fifty, with a full head of black hair and brown eyes. Wearing regular doctor's clothes, studying him over a clipboard.
They did some cognitive tests, assessed his level of pain, and mobility. Testing movements hurt a lot due to the pulling of the bandages. Dante had a growing concern that increased with every test, and felt more memories clicking into place, but too few to make a conclusion, so he decided not to voice his suspicions.
They released him from his bonds and bade him farewell to let him rest and get back to sleep. Outside, the moon was already going up.
He'd asked about his family and was told they were notified and would check on him, but none had come yet.
After they left, getting up to go to the bathroom, confirming his suspicions by looking in the mirror. A boy stared back, not older than 14, very short and skinny.
Black hair, black eyes, skin so pale it looked translucent.
He blinked once. The reflection didn't.
Staring for a few minutes, hearing his rapid breathing in the silence.
Dropping to the floor, feeling dejected. The pain of movement brought him back to reality, so he went to the window and looked outside.
There were a lot of buildings, and many people walking everywhere. He smelled a blend of hot machinery oil, the damp, mineral smell of stone buildings sweating the day's heat, a faint, sweet-rot scent of garbage from a nearby alley, and the occasional clean breeze from the fields. It was very strange to see those fields in the distance, surrounded by other buildings, like an enclosed garden.
But he barely noticed these things, his gaze was glued to the wall, incredibly tall in the distance, higher than any building by double their height, and he could not see the ends of it.
"Just where the hell am I? Whose body is this? And how did I get here?" Those questions lingered in his head as he grew tired and laid down on the bed. Someone brought him food, it was horrible, as expected of any hospital. It was strange and unfamiliar, but he was famished, and there's no better spice than hunger, so he ate with gusto.
Organizing his thoughts, he came to a few conclusions:
The most obvious one was that he was in the body of a kid. Well, actually, according to his bracelet, 'Gustav Krieg' was seventeen, the most malnourished and underdeveloped seventeen-year-old you'll ever see. He ruled out some causes, like reincarnation and possession, because first, in reincarnation, he should have attained self-awareness as a baby, not a beat-up teenager on the verge of death, and second, how would he go about possessing someone? But he couldn't come up with an answer to how that came to happen, just that it happened.
He didn't know what language people were talking, but there were many of them in the world, this could be just a secluded location with a very local dialect. It did have a semblance with his language, but it was noticeably different. So he couldn't quite put his finger on its origins
Nothing about the place screamed "this is another world" but small details add up quickly, and he was attentive to more details, like the lack of advanced technology, strange equipment, machinery, and architecture.
"It's possible, but unlikely… but I suppose nothing is off limits by this point…" he kept contemplating until sleep took him, hoping this would be a dream and he could go back to his family, job, and life…
It was a restless sleep…
***
Awakening in exasperation. The room was still dark and empty. "fuuuck!! I'm still here, it's not a dream, fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What do I do? Why am I here??"
He didn't know how much time had passed, but apparently the sedatives had worn off, he was disturbed and in pain. "Calm down!! Breathe! Don't freak out!"
He sat cross-legged, trying to clear his mind and forget everything. It took a while, but inadvertently, once he calmed down, memories began to flow.
At the start, it was challenging to tell which were his and which were Gustav's, but eventually the distinctions became clearer.
A strange calmness flooded over him, eventually losing track of time.
***
He was pulled from his meditative state, feeling as though something vital had been taken, like his body was underwater, but was suddenly extracted.
The pain started again, stronger than before, and a sudden weakness washed over him.
His beating heart deafened the equipment's beeping sounds as he heard a voice. "This one, right?" the person said while tapping the door.
Dante stiffened. The voice was familiar, too familiar… The memories of the torment he'd been through at those hands flashed and were influencing his behavior, even though they were not really personal experience, they felt like it.
"So you denied us the pleasure of your death, worm." he said mockingly, walking into the room.
His steps were unhurried, measured, the sounds growing in cadence as he approached. Making Dante shiver.
Opening his eyes, wincing from the discomfort, a tall young man came into view, with black hair and eyes, wearing a reinforced linen plain attire, cut for easy movement, and held by a drawstring.
"Great, just what I needed, a bully and a scrawny body." Unable to talk or even move, only stare… the trauma was really deep.
"Not going to greet me, worm? I thought I fixed that last time." Darian, the name now remembered, said menacingly.
"You're not dead yet, are you?" he continued while approaching the bed.
Bending over, putting his face really close, speaking again, "Oi! Are you listening?"
As Gustav recoiled a little and made a scared face, Darian's smile widened. "Still alive, good, good. Let's check those injuries, shall we?" Squeezing his arm.
A blinding shock took out his breath, and a silent scream caught in his throat.
The grip released just to move into a different spot, then another, a quick succession of torments that ended with another light slap to his face, but still felt just as painful as the preceding jabs.
"Maybe next time you'll learn to respect your betters." Darian said with a smile on his face.
At this moment, the nurse entered the room, addressing the young man. "Oh, good morning, Mr. Dariam, how's he doing?"
"Apparently, the meds went off, and he's in great pain. I'll leave you guys to it." he turned to look at Dante one last time, still smiling. Just as he was about to leave, an ear-piercing alarm sounded. "Oh? It looks like I might have some fun today!!" Then darted out of the room.
Dante was just getting a hold of himself when Dariam was leaving, but that smile—it made memories flare. He flinched away in fear, secretly hoping his brother would die this time.
"Wait… Brother?"
The word echoed in his mind. Cold panic surging, the trauma felt distant, but simultaneously close.
He then chuckled loudly. "Ha! Quantum trauma, how sweet." his dark humor broke him out of his mind. "What's going on??" he said to himself.
The nurse thought he was talking to him and moved away from the window, speaking, which startled Dante. "It's another raid, but don't worry, it'll end soon." He left hurriedly as the alarm kept screaming.
"Raid? Wait!! Raid of what??" Another wave of fear seeped through him, together with a stench that almost made him puke, steeling himself to go look out the window.
People ran through the streets, soldiers sprinting to the wall. Cannons firing some sort of intangible ammunition, targeting enormous birds in the sky, and surprisingly, they did damage, as some could be seen falling from the sky. "Maybe they fire sound waves? At monsters? What is this?"
That scenario sealed the deal. "I'm so fucked…" He was in another world, with monsters… and a matchstick physique.