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Chapter 16: Catch the Reference
"My name's Alice, and today we're leaving Emmet to sleep off his two all-nighters. We're gonna have breakfast in the kitchen. Then you can go to your daily physio with the one and only Doctor Lisa Johnstone!"
The blonde woman held Jasper up as if he were nothing, not even shaking sweating as he was propped up on her shoulder. He could feel the muscle his legs and found himself sweating.
She carried him from the medical wing into the heart of the facility. Jasper had only known the route from his bed to Emmet's office, quite literally down the corridor. Jasper was carried through one long corridor, tilting his head, side to side to spy down the long halls and through the windows of the doors he could see.
The facility had grey halls, but the halls and ceilings were at least white. The corridor ceilings had lights to illuminate wherever the sun's rays missed, flooding in from the windows at each turn. Jasper saw workroom tables with laptops behind them. They were
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Rehab consisted of practising walking and simple exercises and stretched under Doctor Johnstone's watchful eyes, with her strict hands correcting any imperfections with his posture as he moved through his motions. When he was finished for the day, Jasper didn't know what he was supposed to be doing now. Doctor Johnstone was writing up her reports and would be completing whatever research or work she would be doing.Alice would be doing whatever work she was doing and Emmet was asleep on his bed.He could search for his time machine and microchip, but he had no idea where it was, and it was highly likely that he was being watched at all time. He wasn't being trusted yet, and as a stranger who showed up one day who was massively injured.And now three people possibly knew that he didn't know what a mini trident was.Jasper had two viable options: could either make his way back to the common room or his own recovery room where Emmet was. If he went back to t
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 18: Sitting Alone
Jasper had been in the common room for an hour and desperately needed paper and a pen. He thought about breaking into Emmet's office, but the lock conundrum arose again. He had no idea what he was supposed to. There was nothing to do but think and panic.There was nothing to do but look through the giant glass window towards the sea, sitting on a stool, keeping his back stiff. He couldn't sit on the beanbags as it would be bad for his back and Doctor Johnstone would correct him silently, doing her job and without comment, like a blank interface existing to mask the efficient, cold, unjudging code running on the machinery behind the back panel.She was so much like Sýnnefa, only she actually spoke, and didn't hide her face behind technology. She was still following programming. Everybody followed programming. It was natural.But what programming did he follow? A man who had followed Gryaz blindly then put sunglasses on to combat the harsh, grey glares of S
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 19: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, Who is Bravest of them all?
The sand was dry and dusty, too slippery to grip by itself with his shrivelled, wet hands alone, but the grains had become more solid, and rough enough on his bruised, freezing skin to help him grip onto a large, gnarling, tree root. All he could miserably do was hold on, too weak to do more than keep his head above water and breathe. His arms burned and his stomach wailed. He wanted to cry but found that no tears were coming. He tried to make a sound, but nothing but a pathetic cracking noise emerged from his throat.Was it worth pulling himself to shore? Was it worth doing any of this? If he just let go, he would reunite everybody from Gryaz after he made the journey back in the afterlife, when his soul was severed from his useless, beaten body, strong, and ready to trek back to the gorge.And if he just let go, he wouldn't be in this river anymore, freezing cold and burning at the same time, the sensations mixing, overlapping and swirling in his chest, making him si
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 20: The Girl Called Nobody
Doctor Johnstone found Jasper and Emmet curled around each other, that morning. She looked down at them and stared, before quietly leaving.Emmet slowly opened his eyes at the clicking of the doors. He felt warm and surrounded by infinite softness. A warm breath tickled the hairs at the back of neck periodically, every now and then.He craned his head up and saw a tanned hand, loosely wrapped around his own pale one and held to a warm chest.It was Jasper.He was instantly awake, face flushing hot as the memories of the previous night flooded back to him. Doctor Johnstone had evicted him from Jasper's room to let him sleep in his own bed. He had woken up, when lightening flashed outside, and had immediately fled back to Jasper's room, coerced him into bed, and held his hand all night.He gulped and went to gently extract himself and get breakfast, planning explanations in his mind to excuse away his actions and pretend that it hadn't happened. A ha
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 21: The Beginning of the End
With all his work finally caught up on, Emmet was free to follow his regular schedule. Jasper, after his morning physiotherapy session joined him after lunch for his lab shift.Emmet wore his white lab coat, white goggles, white mask, and white gloves, all non-disposable to be washed and reused. Jasper didn't wear any of it, just simply perching on his seat in the corner of the room, back straight against the wall. His eyes were narrowed and honed in on the movements of Emmet's hands.The screen behind him lit up with the slides that Emmet placed under the electron microscope. The prepared samples from the day prior showed the buckminsterfullerenes with the antigens placed inside them. The poison had been picked, and the final review of the separate mechanisms and construction of each moving part was due by next week. After, the assembly and the assembly review, testing would formally begin.Emmet was not informed who, but he suspected any prisoners of war and p
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 22: Mistakes
Jasper knew that he was beyond repenting. His contributions to the Sýnnefa Empire were made under the treat of death, but it was undeniable that he had played his part well, acting meek, pathetic, twitchy, scared and antisocial. He had given Sýnnefa technology that they could use to quash many other countries, killing millions, if they so choose, repeating the destruction of his community thousands of times on any scale as they so pleased.He remembered.He remembered where the name Sýnnefa came from. In Emmet's arms, enveloped by that soothing golden light, he felt Emmet shiver, as if he was cold, dark, and lonely. Jasper finally remembered then and there where the name Sýnnefa came from, and he had no choice but to hold on tighter to Emmet.Sýnnefa, a tiny, nondescript island off the coast of a no-name country going to some war in some place and being destroyed as a warning. The people of the island, reportedly innocent civil
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 23: A Type
It was an otherwise innocuous room where the time machine was kept. It was a small, quiet storage room not too far away from the lab that Emmet and Jasper were previously in. The light inside hadn't been working for months, but Emmet hadn't cared enough to change it. The light from the corridor was more than enough, no matter what Doctor Johnstone liked to say to him. He could always reply that the roof wasn't leaking and that there were no rats. He sometimes wondered what her reaction to Minnie's garage would be, with all its tiny, metal pieces strewn out on the floor, with the only organisational system present was her scratching lines into the floor, creating separate zones for separate projects, with random rocks from outside.Aunt Minnie would either be bouncing off the walls with the opportunity he had been given or would have her hands clamped around Jasper's shoulders to make sure that he wouldn't run away before she had finished interrogating him. He remembered back
The Boy who Circled Time Chapter 24: Checking Communications
When their little lesson was done, Emmet delivered Jasper back to the common room for supper, citing the need to finish his work to go back to his office.There had been no sent messages from the facility apart from his own. He wouldn't be able to check the security cameras without citing a very good reason. He was trying to keep Jasper's existence a secret, and it wouldn't do for him to draw any unnecessary attention.There was no way for him to smooth over his relations with Lisa, especially when she had Alice. He could certainly rely on her for more than a few things, but he wouldn't truly know when she would stop doing supporting him.She had to know his reasoning for taking this position, and sparing her. He wouldn't expect Alice to understand the situation and circumstances, but Lisa had to understand. She had been with him for so long, heard all his secrets and insecurities. She had to understand why he couldn't say no, especially when the offer came from
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