Tuesday was ordinary.
Larius appreciated ordinary.
Ordinary meant books found their shelves.
Flowers received water instead of apologies.
Marcus found new ways to tell him his stance was wrong.
Fabian found new ways to insult him with a notebook.
Ordinary was comfortable.
Ordinary was predictable.
Ordinary had quietly become precious.
The morning began like most mornings.
Coffee.
Stretching.
A glance at the lily by the window.
The plant had grown another few leaves.
Still no flower.
The stem stood straighter now, the green darker than it had been only weeks ago.
Larius crouched beside the pot.
"You've committed to this whole growing thing."
The lily remained diplomatically silent.
He watered it carefully.
Not too much.
Not too little.
Exactly as Sofia had shown him.
A month ago he would have checked the soil three more times.
Today he stood up after one inspection.
"...Progress."
He wasn't sure whether he meant himself or the plant.
Maybe both.
1
The library passed quietly.
Richard handed him a stack of returned books.
Someone misplaced a history volume in philosophy.
A child loudly insisted dinosaurs belonged in the fantasy section.
His mother apologized.
Richard quietly admitted the child had an interesting argument.
Larius found himself smiling.
He hadn't smiled this easily a month ago.
That realization arrived unexpectedly.
Not because life had become easier.
Because it had become familiar.
His body knew the walk between shelves now.
His hands found books automatically.
He no longer counted every aisle.
Tiny things.
Invisible things.
The sort of things people only noticed after they had already changed.
2
The security shift started at six.
Carl greeted him with his usual nod.
"Evening."
"Evening."
The startup office remained quiet.
Glass walls reflected the orange glow of sunset.
Employees drifted out one by one.
Most offered tired smiles.
Some barely noticed security existed.
Which was normal.
Security worked best when people forgot you were there.
Carl leaned back in his chair.
"Slow day."
"I'll take slow."
"So will I."
Silence settled comfortably between them.
Larius had begun appreciating comfortable silences.
Not every conversation needed filling.
The lobby lights reflected across polished tile.
Outside, traffic rolled steadily through Los Angeles.
People hurried home.
Restaurants filled.
Streetlights flickered on one after another.
Ordinary.
It was almost eight when the doors opened again.
Three people entered.
Nothing looked unusual.
At first.
Business casual clothing.
Backpacks.
Baseball cap.
Hoodie.
One carried a messenger bag.
Another looked down at a phone.
The third kept both hands inside jacket pockets.
Larius barely looked up.
"Good evening."
No answer.
That happened sometimes.
People were tired.
Carl looked over briefly.
Then back toward paperwork.
Everything remained ordinary.
For approximately four more seconds.
3
The first thing that changed was the sound.
Not shouting.
The sound of metal striking tile.
Sharp.
Heavy.
A handgun.
The man in the hoodie had pulled it free so quickly that Larius didn't fully register the movement until it already existed.
The lobby stopped breathing.
The employee nearest the elevators froze.
The receptionist stared.
Carl stood very slowly.
Both hands visible.
The man with the gun spoke calmly.
"No heroes."
His voice remained almost conversational.
"Phones."
Silence.
"Now."
The second man locked the entrance doors.
The third began collecting bags.
Wallets.
Laptops.
Anything valuable.
Larius's heartbeat accelerated so violently it became difficult to hear anything else.
No.
Not difficult.
Everything else simply became quieter.
Carl slowly placed both hands on the security desk.
"We don't want trouble."
"Good."
The gun remained pointed generally toward everyone.
Not specifically.
Just...
available.
Larius swallowed.
His mouth had become unexpectedly dry.
The room felt smaller.
He had imagined armed robberies before.
Mostly through television.
Movies.
News reports.
Reality removed every dramatic soundtrack.
Only breathing remained.
4
"Wallet."
The word landed directly in front of him.
Larius looked up.
The third robber stood less than two meters away.
Young.
Maybe twenty-five.
Nervous eyes.
Sweat already visible despite the cool evening.
The gunman remained farther back.
Watching everyone.
Larius slowly reached into his pocket.
Every movement felt painfully loud.
Wallet.
Phone.
Placed carefully on the counter.
The robber swept both into the messenger bag.
"Good."
Another employee began crying quietly.
Nobody moved.
Nobody argued.
Carl caught Larius's eye.
Just for a second.
The older guard gave the smallest possible shake of his head.
Don't.
Larius understood immediately.
Do nothing.
Stay alive.
The instruction felt obvious.
He intended to follow it.
5
The mistake wasn't his.
A young software engineer near the elevators panicked.
Not dramatically.
Instinctively.
He reached toward his pocket.
Too quickly.
Probably for his phone.
Maybe for nothing at all.
The gunman reacted instantly.
"HEY!"
The weapon snapped toward him.
The engineer froze.
Hands halfway raised.
Face completely white.
"I wasn't—"
"DOWN!"
The shout echoed through the lobby.
The engineer stumbled backward.
Lost balance.
Fell awkwardly against a chair.
The chair crashed onto the floor.
The noise exploded through the room.
Everything became chaos.
One employee screamed.
Someone tried running.
The second robber grabbed them roughly.
Carl raised his voice.
"Everybody stay still!"
Good advice.
Nobody seemed capable of hearing it.
Larius's breathing became uneven.
Fast.
Shallow.
His vision narrowed.
The gunman looked...
wrong.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
More frightened than angry.
His grip tightened around the weapon.
Too tightly.
His breathing had changed.
Fast.
His eyes kept flicking toward the doors.
Then the windows.
Then back.
He looked...
Larius blinked.
The thought disappeared before finishing.
His head pulsed once.
Hard.
Pain.
Brief.
Sharp.
Gone.
He frowned.
Not now.
Not another headache.
The gunman shouted again.
"EVERYBODY DOWN!"
Larius dropped to one knee with everyone else.
The polished floor felt cold beneath his hand.
The headache returned.
Stronger.
Not across his entire head.
Deep behind his eyes.
Like pressure building somewhere it shouldn't.
He squeezed his eyes shut for half a second.
When he opened them again...
something felt different.
The room hadn't changed.
The people hadn't moved.
The gun still pointed across the lobby.
Yet...
His attention kept drifting toward tiny details.
The gunman's left foot.
Slightly behind the right.
His finger.
Too much pressure on the trigger.
His breathing.
Uneven.
The second robber repeatedly glanced toward the entrance.
Every six or seven seconds.
The third robber licked dry lips before speaking.
Every time.
Larius frowned.
Why...
Why was he noticing that?
Another pulse of pain struck behind his eyes.
Harder this time.
He inhaled sharply.
The world tilted for the briefest moment.
Then steadied.
Nobody else seemed to notice.
The gunman suddenly turned.
Toward the front windows.
Blue and red lights flashed faintly in the distance.
Not here.
Still blocks away.
Sirens.
Far enough that they might not even be coming for this building.
Close enough to change everything.
The gunman's shoulders tensed.
And somewhere deep inside Larius's mind...
something impossible stirred.
It felt less like a thought.
More like...
a door beginning to unlock.
The pressure behind his eyes exploded.
Then everything went frighteningly quiet.
Silence.
Not real silence.
The lobby hadn't become quiet.
Someone was still crying.
The fluorescent lights still hummed overhead.
The robbers were still shouting.
But it all sounded...
farther away.
As if thick glass had been lowered between Larius and the rest of the world.
His breathing slowed.
Not because he wanted it to.
Because his body simply...
did.
Another pulse of pain burst behind his eyes.
Hard enough to make his vision blur.
His right hand instinctively reached toward his temple.
It stopped halfway.
The gunman.
His attention snapped back without permission.
The world suddenly looked...
fragmented.
Not visually.
Mentally.
The man wasn't one person anymore.
He was dozens of tiny observations.
Weight resting more heavily on the right foot.
Left shoulder slightly lower.
Jaw tightening every few seconds.
Sweat running down his temple.
Finger flexing against the trigger.
Eyes repeatedly checking the entrance.
Breathing accelerating.
Larius stared.
"...what..."
The word barely escaped his mouth.
His heartbeat hammered against his ribs.
No.
It wasn't just observation.
His mind kept trying to finish...
something.
If he hears another loud noise...
Nothing.
The thought disappeared.
Another one arrived immediately.
If somebody stands suddenly...
Gone.
His head throbbed violently.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Pain.
Not normal pain.
The kind that made his stomach tighten.
When he opened his eyes again...
the fragments returned.
The gunman shifted his weight.
Without thinking...
Larius knew.
Not certainty.
Not knowledge.
A feeling.
He wants to leave.
The realization felt strange.
Then another.
The second robber.
Standing near the entrance.
Kept looking outside.
Not because he was guarding.
Because he was waiting.
Waiting for...
Nothing.
The thought collapsed.
His vision swam.
The pressure behind his eyes intensified.
Something warm reached his upper lip.
He blinked.
A drop of blood landed on the polished floor.
Nosebleed.
"..."
The sight barely registered.
His head hurt too much.
1
The impossible continued.
Every movement around him seemed...
slower.
Not physically slower.
Simply easier to separate.
The crying receptionist inhaled sharply before every sob.
Carl subtly kept his body between the nearest employee and the gunman's line of sight.
The software engineer who had panicked earlier couldn't stop looking toward the emergency exit.
Tiny things.
Hundreds of tiny things.
Too many.
Far too many.
Larius wanted them to stop.
Instead they multiplied.
The gunman's left hand trembled.
His breathing shortened.
His pupils widened.
His shoulders rose.
A thought forced itself into existence.
Probability of accidental discharge increasing.
Larius froze.
"...what?"
He hadn't thought that.
Not consciously.
The sentence had simply...
appeared.
His stomach turned.
Another burst of pain.
His ears rang.
The room tilted sideways.
For one terrifying second he thought he was about to faint.
Instead...
everything sharpened.
2
The front doors rattled.
Somebody outside.
Police?
Maybe.
The gunman flinched.
Not much.
Enough.
The movement echoed strangely inside Larius's mind.
Not visually.
As...
possibilities.
The gunman's shoulders tightened.
One possibility.
He fires toward the doors.
Gone.
Another.
He grabs someone.
Gone.
Another.
He runs.
Gone.
They weren't visions.
They weren't predictions.
They felt more like...
doors opening and closing faster than he could understand.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
His head screamed.
Blood dripped onto his shirt.
Carl noticed.
His eyes widened.
Larius couldn't speak.
He wasn't sure he remembered how.
3
Then everything happened at once.
A loud bang echoed outside.
Not a gunshot.
A vehicle door slamming.
The gunman jerked violently.
His weapon swung.
Toward the nearest employee.
Toward...
the receptionist.
Larius's chest tightened.
His mind erupted.
The fragments accelerated.
Left foot planted.
Trigger finger tightening.
Eyes moving.
Breath held.
Weight shifting.
Every tiny movement crashed together.
One overwhelming conclusion emerged.
If nobody interrupts him...
Nothing.
Pain swallowed the rest.
Larius couldn't think.
Couldn't breathe.
Couldn't understand.
Yet his body moved.
Not toward the gun.
Toward the receptionist.
He shoved her sideways.
Hard.
The movement wasn't elegant.
It wasn't planned.
It was desperation.
A gunshot exploded through the lobby.
The sound shattered everything.
Glass burst somewhere behind them.
The bullet struck a computer monitor.
Plastic fragments sprayed across the desk.
The receptionist screamed.
Larius hit the floor beside her.
His shoulder slammed into tile.
Pain exploded through bruises that hadn't finished healing.
The world spun.
4
Shouting.
More shouting.
The front doors burst open.
"LAPD! DROP THE WEAPON!"
The command echoed through the lobby.
The robbers panicked.
One bolted toward the rear hallway.
Another dropped to his knees immediately.
The gunman hesitated.
One second.
Half a second.
Larius watched.
Again...
those fragments.
Shoulders.
Eyes.
Hands.
Feet.
The impossible awareness returned one final time.
He isn't surrendering.
The thought landed with terrifying certainty.
Then...
it vanished.
The gunman raised the pistol.
Several shots echoed almost together.
Larius instinctively covered his head.
Silence followed.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Then voices.
Police.
Orders.
Paramedics.
People crying.
Someone asking if anyone was hurt.
The world returned all at once.
Violently.
5
The pressure disappeared.
Instantly.
Leaving something much worse.
The headache became agony.
Not throbbing.
Crushing.
Like somebody had forced burning metal through the center of his skull.
Larius gasped.
His stomach lurched.
He barely turned his head before vomiting onto the polished floor.
His entire body shook uncontrollably.
Hands.
Arms.
Legs.
He couldn't stop them.
His vision blurred.
Dark spots filled the edges.
Voices became distant again.
"...sir?"
Somebody grabbed his shoulder.
"...stay with me."
He tried answering.
Nothing came out.
His tongue felt heavy.
Words refused to exist.
Another warm sensation ran from his nose.
More blood.
Much more.
Drops landed one after another.
His hearing faded.
The fluorescent lights overhead stretched strangely.
The ceiling seemed impossibly far away.
Then...
for the briefest instant...
he saw the lobby exactly as it had been before the robbery began.
Empty.
Peaceful.
Ordinary.
The image disappeared immediately.
Replaced by flashing emergency lights.
People running.
A paramedic kneeling beside him.
Someone shouting for a stretcher.
Carl's worried face.
Larius tried to focus.
Couldn't.
The darkness gathered patiently around the edges of his vision.
And somewhere deep inside his mind...
the impossible door that had opened only moments ago...
quietly closed again.
Leaving behind one unbearable certainty.
Whatever had just happened...
hadn't been a hallucination.
The first thing Larius noticed was the light.
White.
Too white.
He hated it immediately.
The second thing he noticed was the sound.
A repetitive electronic beep.
Steady.
Patient.
Unreasonably confident.
The third thing was pain.
That took longer.
Not because it was weak.
Because his brain seemed to discover each part separately.
Head.
Pain.
Shoulder.
Pain.
Ribs.
Pain.
Throat.
Dry.
Mouth.
Disgusting.
Larius opened his eyes.
Then immediately closed them.
The light stabbed through his skull.
"No."
The word barely existed.
More air than sound.
Somewhere nearby, a chair moved.
"Mr. Wilarrow?"
He didn't answer.
Mostly because he was currently reconsidering the value of consciousness.
"Mr. Wilarrow, can you hear me?"
Unfortunately.
Larius slowly opened one eye.
A woman stood beside the bed.
Blue scrubs.
Dark hair tied back.
Hospital badge.
Hospital.
The realization took several seconds.
His eyes closed again.
"...great."
The nurse smiled slightly.
"That's usually a good sign."
"What?"
"Complaining."
Larius considered explaining that complaining was one of his strongest surviving skills.
His throat disagreed.
Instead, he swallowed.
Bad decision.
His throat felt scraped raw.
"Water?"
The nurse adjusted something near the bed.
"Small sips."
A plastic cup appeared.
Larius reached for it.
His hand shook.
He stopped.
The tremor wasn't subtle.
His fingers moved in tiny, irregular movements.
Larius stared.
The nurse noticed.
"That's been improving."
"...improving?"
His voice cracked.
The nurse helped steady the cup.
"You were shaking much more when you arrived."
Larius looked at her.
"When..."
He stopped.
The sentence wouldn't form correctly.
When what?
When did I arrive?
How long?
What happened?
The questions collided.
The headache reacted.
A deep pressure pushed behind his eyes.
Larius inhaled sharply.
"Easy."
The nurse lowered the cup.
He closed his eyes.
Breathing.
In.
Out.
Too fast.
Again.
In.
Hold.
Out.
The exercise felt clumsy.
His body kept trying to panic faster than he could breathe.
But after several attempts, the pressure stopped climbing.
It didn't disappear.
It simply remained.
Contained.
Larius opened his eyes.
The nurse was watching him.
"Breathing exercise?"
He nodded.
"Good."
That single word irritated him.
He didn't know why.
Maybe because nothing about this felt good.
8
Memory returned badly.
Not gradually.
Badly.
Gun.
Tile.
Blood.
The receptionist.
A shoulder moving.
A foot.
A finger.
Gunshot.
Larius jerked.
The monitor beside him changed rhythm.
"Mr. Wilarrow."
The nurse's voice sharpened.
He stared at the ceiling.
"I..."
His chest tightened.
The gunman's left foot.
Why did he remember the foot?
Not the man's face.
Not clearly.
The foot.
Left foot slightly behind.
Weight toward the right.
Larius squeezed his eyes shut.
The memory changed.
Trigger finger.
Too much pressure.
Breathing.
Fast.
Eyes.
Door.
Window.
Door.
Six seconds.
No.
Seven.
Six or seven seconds.
Larius opened his eyes.
His heart was beating too quickly.
"Stop."
The nurse frowned.
"Stop what?"
He hadn't been speaking to her.
Larius turned his face away.
"Nothing."
The lie sounded weak.
The nurse checked the monitor.
Then his pupils.
Then asked several questions.
"Do you know your name?"
"Larius Wilarrow."
"Do you know where you are?"
"Hospital."
"Do you know what city?"
He almost laughed.
"Los Angeles."
"What day is it?"
Silence.
Larius stared.
The nurse waited.
Tuesday.
Was it still Tuesday?
He searched.
Library.
Security.
Gun.
Then nothing.
"...Wednesday?"
"Thursday."
The answer landed strangely.
Larius turned his head.
"What?"
"You've been asleep for a little over a day."
Silence.
The room became much quieter.
Or maybe he simply stopped hearing it properly.
"A day?"
"Most of it."
Larius stared at the blanket.
Missing time.
Again.
The thought was immediate.
And ugly.
The bench.
One step.
The next step not connecting.
An unfamiliar city.
Now another gap.
Not the same.
He knew that.
Logically.
He had collapsed.
He had been taken to a hospital.
There were medical reasons.
Normal reasons.
Normal.
The word had become suspicious.
9
The doctor arrived twenty minutes later.
Larius disliked him immediately.
Not personally.
The man seemed perfectly pleasant.
Larius disliked the conversation.
"Your scans are clear."
Larius stared.
"Okay."
"No obvious structural injury."
"Okay."
"No intracranial bleeding."
"Good."
The doctor nodded.
"Very good."
Larius waited.
The doctor looked through the chart.
"You had severe headache, vomiting, tremors, epistaxis..."
"Nosebleed."
"Yes."
"I know what epistaxis means."
The doctor looked at him.
Larius sighed.
"Sorry."
"You're fine."
No.
That phrase was dangerous.
Larius immediately frowned.
The doctor corrected himself.
"Your irritation is understandable."
Better.
"What caused it?"
The doctor paused.
There.
Larius noticed it.
Not anything impossible.
Just hesitation.
The kind people had before giving an answer they weren't completely satisfied with.
Incomplete information.
Again.
"We can't say definitively."
Of course.
The doctor continued.
"Acute stress response is possible. Severe sympathetic activation. Exhaustion. Dehydration may have contributed."
Larius listened.
Every explanation sounded reasonable.
That was the problem.
Reasonable explanations were comfortable.
The gunman's foot returned to his memory.
Right foot bearing more weight.
Larius's stomach tightened.
"Can stress..."
He stopped.
The doctor waited.
Larius changed the question.
"Can stress make you notice things?"
"Notice things?"
"Details."
"What kind of details?"
Too many.
Larius looked toward the window.
"Nothing."
The doctor didn't look convinced.
Larius didn't care.
Because saying it aloud would make it real.
I watched a man's shoulders and knew where his gun would move.
No.
That sounded insane.
I saw possibilities.
Worse.
My brain told me he would shoot.
Absolutely not.
Larius had studied enough psychology to understand how that conversation could change.
Hallucinations.
Delusions.
Trauma response.
Dissociation.
All reasonable.
All possible.
And maybe correct.
That possibility scared him most.
10
Carl visited in the afternoon.
He brought coffee.
Hospital coffee.
Which barely qualified.
Larius drank it anyway.
Carl sat in the chair beside the bed.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Comfortable silence.
Almost.
Then Carl sighed.
"You scared the hell out of me."
Larius looked at him.
"...sorry."
"Don't apologize."
Carl leaned back.
"You pushed Maya."
The receptionist.
Larius finally remembered her name.
Maya.
"Is she okay?"
"Bruised hip."
Larius exhaled.
"She's fine."
Good.
The word felt enormous.
Carl watched him.
Then asked:
"How did you know?"
Everything inside Larius stopped.
Not physically.
The monitor continued beeping.
His lungs continued breathing.
But something inside him froze.
"What?"
Carl frowned.
"The shooter."
Larius looked at the coffee.
"You moved before he fired."
Silence.
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
Carl noticed.
Larius noticed Carl noticing.
The observation happened automatically.
And for one terrible second...
Larius felt cold.
Carl's eyebrows had lowered slightly.
Head angled.
Eyes fixed.
Confusion.
Suspicion?
No.
Concern.
Larius blinked.
The observations vanished.
His headache pulsed.
He immediately looked away.
"I saw the gun move."
Carl remained silent.
Larius gripped the coffee cup.
"That's all."
Another silence.
Then Carl nodded.
"Okay."
He didn't believe him.
Larius knew that.
Or thought he knew that.
And suddenly he wasn't sure which possibility was worse.
11
Maya sent a message.
Carl showed him.
Tell him thank you. And tell him I am still angry he shoved me that hard.
Larius stared.
Then laughed.
Bad decision.
His ribs objected.
"Ow."
Carl smiled.
"That's what you get."
The normal conversation helped.
For approximately four minutes.
Then Carl said:
"Police want another statement."
The headache returned.
Not pain.
Not yet.
Fear.
Larius looked toward him.
"Why?"
"Standard follow-up."
Standard.
Normal.
Reasonable.
All the suspicious words.
Carl stood.
"They'll probably come tomorrow."
Larius nodded.
The coffee suddenly tasted worse.
12
He slept badly.
Every time his eyes closed, fragments returned.
Not the gunshot.
That would have made sense.
Instead:
A shoulder.
A jaw tightening.
A heel lifting.
A pupil widening.
Breath held.
Finger pressure.
Tiny pieces.
Meaningless pieces.
Except they weren't meaningless.
That was the problem.
At 2:13 in the morning, Larius woke with his heart racing.
The hospital room was dark.
Only the monitor lights remained.
He stared at the ceiling.
Then slowly sat upright.
His head protested.
He ignored it.
The bedside table held his notebook.
Carl had brought it from the security office with his other belongings.
Larius reached for it.
His fingers still trembled slightly.
He opened to a blank page.
The pen hovered.
Then he wrote:
Gunman
Below it:
Left foot behind.
Weight right.
Trigger pressure increased.
Breathing fast.
Looked at entrance every few seconds.
Shoulders raised before loud sound.
Larius stopped.
He stared.
He hadn't consciously memorized any of that.
Yet the details arrived easily.
Too easily.
He turned the page.
Second man
Entrance.
Repeated checking.
Approximately six to seven seconds.
Body angled toward door.
Wanted to leave?
Waiting?
Another page.
Third man
Dry mouth.
Licked lips before speaking.
Hands unsteady.
Avoided looking at gunman after shouting.
Larius dropped the pen.
It struck the blanket.
Silence.
His breathing accelerated.
"No."
He looked at the pages.
"No, no."
This wasn't memory.
Except it was.
Maybe trauma.
Hypervigilance.
Adrenaline.
There were explanations.
Reasonable explanations.
He grabbed the pen again.
At the bottom of the page, he wrote:
Why did I move?
Nothing.
He stared.
His hand tightened.
Then another question.
What did I think would happen?
The memory returned.
Not words.
A pressure.
Possibilities.
Doors.
Opening.
Closing.
Then one path.
One tiny path.
The receptionist moving.
The bullet missing.
Larius's hand began shaking harder.
He forced himself to breathe.
In.
Out.
Again.
His eyes remained fixed on the page.
Something else surfaced.
A number.
Larius frowned.
The number felt wrong.
Not remembered.
Not calculated.
Just...
there.
He slowly lowered the pen.
His headache began building.
A warning pulse.
Once.
Twice.
He should stop.
He knew that.
Instead he wrote the number.
2%
The moment the pen left the paper...
pain detonated behind his eyes.
Larius gasped.
The notebook fell.
The monitor alarm changed.
His hands locked around the bedsheets.
The hospital room blurred.
And suddenly...
he wasn't looking at the ceiling anymore.
He was looking at Carl.
Not the Carl sleeping at home.
Carl in the lobby.
Hands on the desk.
Shoulders positioned slightly forward.
Protecting the employee behind him.
Then Maya.
Breath.
Eyes.
Fear.
Then the gunman.
Foot.
Finger.
Jaw.
Gun.
Everything.
All at once.
Too much.
Far too much.
Larius tried to scream.
No sound came.
The door opened.
A nurse rushed inside.
Then another.
Voices surrounded him.
Hands pressed him back against the bed.
The notebook remained on the floor.
Open.
The final page visible beneath the hospital light.
One question.
One number.
Why did I move?
2%
And somewhere beneath the agony, beneath the fear, beneath every reasonable explanation Larius desperately wanted to believe...
something inside his mind answered.
Not with words.
With certainty.
Because every other path was worse.