District 42-Chapter 158: Injured

"W-what are you implying, Rurik? Are you just joking around with life and this kind of stuff? Because if you are, it’s better for you to...", The Princess stopped to talk when Rurik gave her that dejected, melancholic, but serious look.

Casper, on the contrary, didn’t panic or something. He just kept quiet, thinking. His hands were interlaced with each other, and he was looking down, sat on the mattress of the bed.

"A bad news, huh? That’s fair. And I even know what it is, to be honest..." Casper was sure about what Rurik would say to him. It was even obvious at that point.

The soldier moved slightly his achy ankle, looking at it with a regretful face for some seconds.

"It’s my ankle, isn’t it?"

The Princess and Rurik stopped to look at each other and fixed their eyes at Casper.

"Yes, it is. So, you already knew? How depressive... I think I wanna cry again..." Rurik was holding his tears, sniffing with his nose.

Vick was the only one that didn’t know what was going on there. She understood that Casper’s ankle was messed, but those two still knew some details that she didn’t.

However, the Princess remained silent, just observing. She knew that it wouldn’t be good if she talked too much there and got in their way.

"For how long do you maintained this injury, Casper?" The Aesir questioned.

"For the entire period that I passed inside Halden. I got this injury a bit before I invaded the Third Lab."

Rurik inspected Casper’s ankle once more, crouching in front of him and, without even asking for this.

The man started to rotate it, retract, relax, pull... He was doing all sorts of movements until he heard a cracking sound.

"Well, I could study a bit your case, and this is very sad to say, but your ankle will never be the same as before. It is all messed, and in a way that clearly shows how much you pushed it. I bet you fought and ran a lot of times using all your physical strength, or am I wrong?"

Casper nodded slowly.

"Man... Life seems to be harsh for you... That’s so tough. That’s why I hate this sh..."

"Be serious!" He shouted, getting impatient with the guy.

Rurik looked at him with a confused expression, lasting some minutes before he could answer.

"But I am talking seriously. Life really sucks, you know?",

"The diagnosis, Rurik! Diagnosis!" Even the Princess entered in the conversation to get him real.

"Oh, well... You just messed with your bone structure and joints. You will never be able to do such physical effort again unless you want it to worse and you cannot even walk anymore. And it’s not just messed, it’s infected as well, so we will need to treat this wound as fast as we can so you won’t need to lose your foot." Rurik was too straightforward, and Casper’s heart throbbed painfully in his chest.

After all those years inside the military, he never got seriously injured, not like that time.

The healer’s room got quiet for a good while, just the noise of some devices helped to fill the background, Casper was staring into space, thinking what he could do.

"It’s not like I need to fight all the time, I can keep up just with tactical planning. Besides, I don’t pretend to involve myself in more fights in the future. I don’t even know what path I will take now, to be honest. A messed ankle isn’t so bad when you think like this." He was worried at first but got soothed by his thoughts.

It was hard to live with an injury that tended just to get worse, but there was nothing he could do to help it. Casper needed to work with what he had in his hands, and if he couldn’t do it, he would surely lose everything little by little. He shouldn’t wait until he sank to the end of that well to think positive and do something. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Yes, it’s not a broken ankle that will stop me now. If I let these things get me down, then I won’t be able to find my own way here. It’s not time to get stuck."

Vick, facing the serious and silent behavior of Casper, was going to say something, but the soldier cut her before she could open her mouth.

"That’s fine. There is a treatment I can do to better it?"

"Yes," Rurik answered, assertively. He seemed pretty confident about it, although his melancholic eyes didn’t let Casper see through him very well.

"Well, as I said, that’s fine. No matter for how long I need to pass for this treatment, I will do it."

The two of them glanced at each other. Casper’s resilience was something to be admired. It was hard for someone to change their minds so quickly like that. It was something that needed guts.

"There is something more that I need to say to you, unfortunately... Oh, man, this situation nearly makes me want to cry again, but... ok, well, it’s hard to think about what kind of situation you passed for inside that prison, but it affected a part of your brain. It’s probably caused because of a strong drug, or when they did some procedure that harmed a part of it. I can’t say exactly how it will get in your way, or if it really will at some point, but I can assure you that this kind of injury is generally debilitating..."

Casper got pensive about what could have caused it. He had a guess, though.

"I think that it wasn’t just one thing that could do this to me. Maybe... it was a couple things that let me like this..."

Vick leaned her body forward, she was interested in what Casper was going to say. Also, through that conversation, she was getting good pieces of information that could serve afterward to make Casper confess everything that passed inside that prison since she will not be completely blind about the facts.

"Well, I needed to pass for a long procedure every single day at some point. They were making my mask, and for this, they needed to interact with my brain..."

Both the Princess and the Aesir knew what was that about. They were well acquainted with the procedure needed to put a mask in someone, and, different from Casper, they knew how dangerous it was to make this procedure in an adult.

"To make a mask for an adult, it’s needed to gather all their memories, desires, passions, experiences, and knowledge until that point. The older someone is, the more difficult it is... Are you saying that they made you pass through that exhaustive procedure every single day?"

Casper nodded for Vick, looking to Rurik just to confirm that what she said was true. The man didn’t disagree with her, although he seemed to have one thing or another to say about that.

"Besides it, since you said about drugs, there was a time when they gave something really strong... What was it called? I am sure that Amelia said its name..."

The Aesir gave a look to the paper in his hands again, reading all the reports he made and seeing the previous results, and taking the x-ray he did on Casper’s head. He analyzed all that data and started to put everything together, and then he could come up with a guess about what was going on. Rurik was starting to worry about Casper’s health, even with his pessimist and sad behavior, he was praying and rooting for Casper to outrightly deny what he was about to ask.

The red-haired doctor raised from where he was sitting, walking briefly through the room. His head was a bit heavy, and it wasn’t because of the kicks that Vick gave on him.

"Casper... could it be that they gave to you some drug called ’odin’?"

The soldier snapped his fingers, and his eyes shone.

"Yeah! That’s it! I am pretty sure that it was the name of the drug. It was pretty strong, and I could see 2 friends of mine that used it in front of me!"

The blood drained from Vick’s face once she heard what Casper had to say about that question. She also raised from the chair she was sitting in and walked next to Rurik, making a lot of hasty questions for him.

For a moment, the soldier kept there confused. He understood very well that it was a bad thing that they used odin on him, but he was wanting to know what kinds of effects does that drug would make on his body.

The Aesir made the Princess calm herself, raising one hand, letting her behind, and crouching in front of Casper again.

"It seems that we will not be worrying too much with your ankle for now, but your mind surely needs to be fixed. For this, I will need to do a procedure on you, White warrior. Because of it, I need you to trust me just a little bit."