The Prize of Dysprosium

Chapter XIV: Point Zero

When I wake I feel so hazed and sedated the first thing that comes to mind is that I'm in Heaven. Then I become aware of the pounding in my body, the sharp pain slicing through my head every time I breathe too deeply, and I begin to ponder whether this is actually Hell. All I can do is lie still and wonder if this is how it feels to be dying. But I'm being melodramatic.

After lying in torment for what feels like an eternity, I finally get my hangover under enough control I'm able to open my eyes and look around. I'm lying in the bottom half of a bunkbed on a hard madras. Somebody has put a blanket over me and my head is lying on a pillow which is damp from my breathing. The room is dark and made of old black bricks with the only light coming from a slightly fuzzy bathroom. There's another bunkbed on the other side of the room, but it's empty and unslept in with no blankets or pillows, only sheets.

I finally get enough energy back into my muscles to slowly sit up. On the floor beside me is a tall glass of water and two pills on a plate beside a metal bucket. As soon as I move I become thankful for the bucket.

When I'm done throwing up I swallow the pills and gulp down all of the water, ignoring my stomach as it protests. Somebody has put me in a thin t-shirt which is coated with sweat gone cold and shorts. But now I'm freezing, shivering so hard I can hear my own teeth clattering.

I lie down again and pull up the covers as I wait for the pills to take effect. When they do, I manage to sit up and put my bare feet on the floor. I still feel hypothermic, but it won't get better by lying down again. Instead I cautiously stand up, dragging the blanket around me to try and at least fool myself into believing I'll get warm.

My body feels all tingly and heavy as I shuffle across the floor, having to lean on the bunkbed and the wall as I make my way to the only door in the room save for the bathroom. It opens to reveal a hallway with the same kind of dark dirty bricks as in the bunkbed room. I can hear echoes of multiple different conversations reverberating, drowning out each other. I imagine they originate from the different doors lining the hallway, like the hallways in the Cave. The difference is, the Cave hallway is silent whenever the doors are closed. Here, there are sounds everywhere and they're pounding against the inside of my skull with hammers and rackets.

I make it down the hallway, not really sure what I'm looking for. An exit maybe? A kitchen? A big bag of Gunnar's mix would be nice, but that doesn't seem to be in my immediate cards. Still it's all I can think about.

I turn right when the hallway does and then there are more voices. Voices I recognize.

"...Need more pressure on the Government."

"Miss Bronze, there are already uprisings in most of the major cities," a voice says. There must be a meeting of some kind. "Anything more and we won't be able to control it."

"Control is exactly what we don't want Laur, that's the whole point of a revolution," Alle says. "The public is already craving answers, they're angrier than ever and hungry for blood, and we need to use that. The more horrible we paint the Potentate the greater the force against him. And with the new wave of Pacifiers, we need all the resistance we can get."

"We're actually working on ways to get the Pacifiers deactivated from distances," another, more melodious voice says. "The one we got our hands on in the square has been a tremendous help in understanding their mechanics. If only they didn't fry their own circuits the second they were caught. It would be much easier if we could understand how exactly their computer chips are wired."

"So, what you're saying is you have nothing?" Alle asks.

"Other than ideas?" the voice answers. "Then no, we have nothing."