Chapter 13

He had another dream but this time the light figure was nowhere to be seen. A darkness came bubbling up from the ground, a darkness that 96 knew rather well as he had felt with it twice before, it took the form of a large cat and it stared at him with cold piercing eyes "who or what are you?" its voice was rather scratchy and unpleasant, 96 was also rather insulted by the shadows question, he knew it was immature but seriously. "you really aren't one to talk you know" The shadow blinked twice and had a shocked look on its face "you can hear me?" 95 shook his head in disgust "are you telling me that you just ask me a question assuming that I couldn't even hear you?" he didn't know if it came from spending most of his lives in this place with the voice but he really had lower patients for things like this, he also had to take into account that he was not even two yet and it was quite normal for children his age and older to be impatient, he was still alittle disappointed in his lack of tolerance. The shadow considered him for a moment and then sat down, turning its head to the side "look, I really dont have the energy to deal with you right now, but if you stay quiet here and dont bother me then you can stay, but if you dont like the offer than I can arrange for you to leave" he then pulled a needle out of his hand and stabbed himself threw the heart waking himself instantly.

He felt satifide that the idea of killing himself in the dream had worked and he was in good spirits until he looked down at the ground around him, or to be more specific the lack of ground around him, he was sitting in a hole about six feet down and three feet wide, he sighed and looked down at his hand he knew he needed more practice but this was rather annoying. He was considering how to fix the problem when the inspector who had been working most of the night finaly came in, and fell into the hole almost crushing 96, when the inspector pulled himself out of the hole he looked down into it but was unable to make out the base 96 shook his head it was their own fault for not having proper lighting, the inspector freaked out and called for someone to bring a light. After a minute or so someone came in with a light and shown it down the hole, 96 squinted at the sudden brightness, he found that he didn't like bright lights all that much, though to be honest he really didn't like many things all that much but him not liking bright lights was kind of on the researchers. The inspector seemed quite angry about having fallen in the hole and having to pull the child out of said hole, given that 96 was the last child on the hall the inspector was likely toward the end of his rope, since they were holding the inspection during the night. Once they had pulled him out of the hole they got to work filling it back up, while they were doing so the inspector put him in the 97th room to wait and then forgot about him, which was in the end for the best.

Soon after they left the voice emerged from his hand, "you need to get a grip on that hand of yours, I woke up and I was surrounded by dirt and stones" it shook its fir getting some dirt out, 96 walked around the room inspecting it, the fire was still going so he put one of the stones into his hand, "so it's a magic stone" he was happy that he had the name for it now he ate the rest of the stones putting out the fire, he looked over but the voice seemed to be alittle annoyed still about being absorbed into his hand so he desided to spend the rest of the day practicing control over his hand. He unfortunately got alittle absorbed while focusing and zoned out, he could hear nothing and feel nothing, all he knew was the current of energy flowing threw his body. He felt like he was separated from his body, it was a rather odd feeling but he was almost intrigued by it, he felt his heart beating and the blood pumping threw his veins. He felt as though no time had past and yet it was like an eternity had transpired, he suddenly felt like he needed to stop what he was doing and return to the place that he had been. Slowly he returned to his senses, the first thing he knew was a sharp pain in his arm, he looked down at his arm which was bleeding, next to the wound the voice was watching him intently, "are you back know?" it seemed worried, what did he mean by back? 96 had just been there for a couple of seconds, he then looked around and realised why the voice was so worried the entire room had turned black it was like he was in a different world "where are we?" he noticed several piles of random objects and realised that they were objects that he had put into his hand "we're in the space that your hand created, and you've been spaced out for two days." 96 blinked, two days? that seemed impossible, "I finally was able to bring you back by biting your arm, it seemed to wake you up, if that hadn't worked i would have had to seriously considered..." it cut off the rest of the sentence but 96 instinctively knew what he ment, he would have considered killing him to bring him back. The next thing he needed to so he knew was to find a way out of the space that they were in and hope that nothing too significant had happened that might actually force him to kill himself again, it wasn't that he minded dying, or even repeating the same things over and over, on the contrary he was rather interested in the presses, but it bothered the voice quite a bit so he had desided to avoided doing that unless he needed to.