The Core: The Dark Enemy

1. Locked in a prison with no key

The soft sounds of rainwater dripping through the storm grates and the occasional bird chirping in the trees surrounded a night shift nurse as she took her morning break.
Where most mornings would have found Debbie staring off into space, just trying to find the energy to continue to smile, today the dawn found tears in her eyes.
Tears of joy.
Last night something extraordinary happened. A long-term coma patient, a twelve-year-old girl named Jenna, had recovered enough to wake up and look around.
Debbie had been her caregiver from the first day that Jenna was admitted, more than a year ago, and had witnessed the pain that the family had suffered through.
Last night was a miracle, a glimpse at hope.
"It is almost as though the suffering simply changed hands though," Debbie murmured as she looked over her shoulder at the two windows on the fifth floor. The window on the right held a brand new patient who lay in a comatose state, just like Jenna had been. Her window was the window on the left, the one filled with light and cheer as her parents celebrated their daughter's recovery.
A slight recovery, yet something to celebrate.
The new patient, a young man named Kevin, had reportedly drowned while on vacation in Mexico. Lack of oxygen had damaged his brain and, from what Debbie had heard, he had laid in a foreign hospital for a couple of months until he had been identified and flown home.
It was a tragic story.
Debbie hadn't been on shift when his parents and family had arrived and was thankful for that small mercy. She had a heart for taking care of patients but couldn't deal with watching family and friends suffer without hope.
"I still can't believe that they will be taking her home today," Debbie said softly as she wiped the tears from her eyes. It wasn't that she would miss her patient, it was just how sudden it all seemed. The grandfather had poured so much money into the hospital that he practically owned it and could call whatever shots he wanted.
"Hmm... I still need to write up a report on Kevin's EEG machine though. I know the young man's brain is damaged but the readings on the machine just seem to be... off. As though they lack the fluctuations that a normal brain would read." She muttered to herself as suddenly her phone beeped.
"Hmm... never mind, looks like reports will have to wait, duty calls," she said as she got up from the wooden bench to head back along the path to the hospital.
Inside Kevin's room, his EEG machine slightly adjusted its previously looped readouts, copying a patient's readings in Frankfurt, Germany who suffered from a similar reported accident so that it would fool Debbie into thinking that it had begun to work as it should.

---

It had rained last night, a constant drizzle against the windowpane of my hospital room. There hadn't been any thunder or anything memorable like that, just constant repetitive plinking against the glass to keep me company.
I could hear everything around me and even feel slight movements if someone bumped my bed or came in to clean my body. A nurse named Debbie had been in charge of that for the last couple of times that I was aware, but it seemed that Meditati had gone into the computer system of the hospital and had hired Tutor as my personal nurse to replace Debbie.
I guess they didn't want Debbie to realize that my body was essentially fake, just a shell made out of cr and animated by Nurse's control of the swarm.
I had tried everything imaginable to try to talk to those around me. Invicta said that Nurse had reported that I had spoken once, during the time that I was being rescued from the next dimension.

"Take me home, please. Just take me home."

I had muttered that in my delirious state after I had been knocked out during the Void's attack on the relic barrier. Whatever struck me had done something to my ability to communicate.
As a result, Nurse couldn't sense me, my AI couldn't connect to me, and I had lost all of my senses except for hearing and detecting movement.
So basically, my ears were the only thing that worked.
What a way to return home.
Oh! How did I get home? Nurse followed my last order like a champ. She melted any speed limits that might have been posted out in space in order to follow the last command that I had given her.
So, here I was, back home locked inside a prison with no key.
Invicta, my sweet little companion, was faithful to tell me her every thought and to keep me from going crazy inside my prison. She would whisper into my ear whenever the coast was clear and would tell me anything that I might need to know about my friends and family.
Ess was being taken care of and was on her way to the Milkyway galaxy. Nurse figured that I would want my pet close for when I got better, and she wanted to follow every whim that her copy of my memories might have contained.
Oh, and I also had a clone that was frozen in a permanent loop courtesy of Silver's duplicity in modifying the coding in my Alpha cube.
Great guy, I really had to deal with him once I figured out how to get out of whatever this was.
I just... had nothing besides my hearing and thoughts to work with.
What the heck was I supposed to do?