14 A Glimpse of Hidden Memories

By the time Gort reached the bathhouse, Kai was nowhere to be seen. He observed the place for a minute or two, and left after some time. As soon as he left, Kai surfaced from underwater.

"Good thing I don't need to breathe!"

Kai felt that the hot water felt so nice that he could stay here forever. He was already as clean as he could be, and this was now his time to relax. Although he didn't actually feel the need to sleep, soon, he found himself drifting to some sort of a dreamscape.

Kai saw himself leaving work the day he was brought here, he worked at a company that dealt with security and such. He knew it was somewhat shady, but Kai only had a desk job, anyway.

"Hey Kai, we are celebrating!" a man with short brown hair and brown eyes yelled from the other side of the office. He had an average height and average looks. His name was Joe.

Everyone seemed to have left, except Kai. He was still entering some data into his computer. He would work hard when he needed to, so he could be lazy later, this was his philosophy.

"I'll catch up with you!" Kai yelled back without raising his head from his computer. He was focused.

The current Kai, the skeleton, watched himself from above, as if a spectre. "I can't believe being able to make it to my favourite shows was the highlight of my week," he ridiculed himself. "I truly knew nothing, like that one guy from that one TV show."

"Hmm, that's odd," Kai's human version talked to himself. He had found correspondence with particularly sensitive information. The current Kai didn't remember this e-mail, so he also leaned forward to read.

"To Abraxiel,

We have secured the portal as requested. There are multiple candidates to choose from in-house, which include; Leonard, Dwight, Lana and Kai. We believe them to be appropriate for a variety of reasons…"

"What the actual fuck?!"

"What the actual fuck?!"

Kai yelled at the same time as his past self. Moments after, Kai saw someone appearing behind his past self. Past Kai turned his head and could only utter a single word before he was brutally hit in the head, enough to kill a normal person: "Dipshit-"

"This motherfucker," Kai said as he saw his past self dragged out with drops of blood making a trail. It didn't seem Dipshit Lenny was bothered about being found out, at all. Kai found himself following his past self without any effort, it seems he went wherever his past self went.

Soon after, they were at Lenny's apartment. It was amazing Lenny could carry his past self without any trouble, considering the fact that Lenny was never one to, well, work out. However, he looked amazingly fit at this very moment albeit his gut, carrying his past self with ease.

"You shouldn't have seen that e-mail," Lenny muttered under his breath as he dropped Kai on a wooden table with restraints for hands and feet on the top and bottom of it. Before Past Kai could wake up, his restraints were already tightened.

Lenny opened a drawer in the metal desk behind him and pulled out a leather-bound item. He slowly unfurled it across the table next to Past Kai. They seemed to be a set of torture instruments.

Kai realised that he didn't remember any of these. Did these things really happen? However, he stopped himself before he started questioning what was real and what was a fiction of his mind's making. And he definitely didn't remember waking up at this moment.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" Past Kai moaned on the table; his head was throbbing in pain. In mere moments, he realised he couldn't move his hands nor his feet.

"It is always you who stands out, always!" Lenny murmured to himself. At this point, he held a sharp knife and with one move, he ripped open Kai's shirt. "You were always a mindless drone, well, let me make that a reality for you!"

Lenny started carving a series of runes on Kai, and throughout this process, he screamed without a stop. Kai was in unbelievable pain, yet there was no one to help him. When Lenny was done, Kai no longer moved, and there were 16 complex runes drawn on his body. The blood flowed like a river, seemingly leaving an empty husk behind.

Seeing his past self so brutally tortured until death, Kai was furious. Even though he knew this was only memories of his, he lunged at Lenny. Before he could touch him, Kai heard a voice that felt more real than these, that brought him back immediately.

"Hey Kai! Are you sleeping?!" Alexandra said with her soothing voice. Hearing this voice had actually calmed him down a notch.

"What? No!" Kai interjected. "It was more like a memory, I suppose."

"Interesting," Alexandra mused, "My father wants to see you now."

Kai, almost instinctively, checked the time he had left.

*30:14:59*

"Have I actually been sleeping?" Kai had trouble believing his eyes.

It was almost nine hours since he last checked the time. Furthermore, even if he could sleep, how could he, when he only had 30 hours left to live? Who would sleep so soundly in these circumstances?

"You were just, lying there, in the water. It's hard to tell with you, since-" Alexandra muttered a few words but was quickly interjected by Kai.

"Since what? That I'm a skeleton! That I don't have skin? Or a face?" Kai mocked Alexandra, who broke into a burst of laughter right after. Alexandra never seemed to be sick of Kai's antics. To her, Kai was one-in-a-million, and not just because he was the type of creation that spat in the face of God.

"All right, let's go!" Alexandra commanded with a smirk. "Father says you are ready."

"Yes, let's go," Kai said in a cheery tone.

However, he still remembered his "dream" and what had happened to himself. Even though the dream was cut short due to Alexandra's interruption, he had already learnt a great deal. The scrap of guilt he felt for killing Lenny also disappeared, along with his vision. He had to try and try to have more of these visions, to see if it was possible to remember more.