Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 357. Meanwhile

I woke up because of some annoying knocking on the door and found myself lying on top of Henry’s body with his arms around me.

I chuckled and fought myself free to walk dazedly to the loud door and open it.

A minute of the door not opening later, I noticed that it was locked, so I unlocked it.

"Ethan?" I drawled out upon getting a look at the person knocking relentlessly.

"You wanted me to wake you up; Henry’s blood results are out." Behind him was the old doctor from before with a few infusion bags in his arms; on the side was a metallic infusion holder.

"Ah. Good job, come in." I opened the door wider and stepped aside, trying to wake myself up for the important stuff.

"How were the results?" If they came with infusion stuff, then there was apparently a problem.

"He is alright." The doctor nodded at me after entering and came to Henry’s side to crouch on the floor and put the infusion needle onto the back of Henry’s hand.

Seeing that my dog was in the midst of getting pricked, I hurried onto the mattress to hold his other hand in case he woke up.

"Then why the infusions?"

"...The patient lacks every possible vitamin, iron, magnesium, everything. We are now providing him with the necessary nutrients."

"How can he be alright with such a lack of nutrients?" I asked a bit more forcefully than intended.

I mean, we are special cases, but still.

What if I look away and he dies on me? I can’t even feed him my blood to help him?

What is this fucking helplessness?

FUCK! What the hell did I do to him?

"Yes...It is unusual for him to be in such a good state despite the results, but given the changes humanity is currently going through...unusual is the new normal." The doctor looked at me hesitantly, then at Ethan, who pushed his glasses up.

"This gentleman has already experienced people who had an ’upgrade’." He explained to me while motioning to the doctor.

"Mhm..." I glanced at Henry, then back at the old man.

"So you will guarantee his survival with your life?"

"There is never a guarantee—" The doctor started when I interrupted him.

"Hmm??" I hummed deeply, silently asking him if that would be his final answer, and he stopped mid-sentence.

"...Yes. I will guarantee it." He evaded my eyes and worked a bit on the infusion before bidding his goodbye and hurrying out of the room with the advice to change the infusion as soon as it was empty.

"Mr. Howard...how about you go back to sleep? I will come in to change the infusion," Ethan offered good-naturedly.

"How is the kid?" I asked him.

"It seems the kid has upgraded." Ethan sighed before closing the open door from the inside and looking for a place to sit down.

"What? Did she tell you herself?" I asked in confusion and leaned against the wall while on the mattress beside Henry.

When he saw that there was nothing to sit on, he opted to stay standing.

"The kid is a boy. In the two years you were away, there had been quite a few people who had shown abilities. Among them, part of the Four Hundred naturally, but others did as well, especially since half a year ago. Doctors came together to analyze these people secretly and behind the military’s or government’s back. Eventually, they found a way to differentiate between people that had upgraded and people that hadn’t."

"Like measuring their DMT level or something?" I asked him, and Ethan slightly shook his head.

"Something similar. The military caught the doctors that got together to experiment on their own, all but one."

"The old man?" I asked, and Ethan nodded.

"So, you did the test on the girl and found out she did upgrade?"

"On the boy, yes, the doctor tested him, and it seemed he did upgrade not long ago."

Ah. Dammit! I was constantly forgetting he was a boy.

"Wait, not long ago?" The tree? Was the tree the kid’s counterpart? Did we even kill it, and if yes...hadn’t Henry killed the tree?

"You surely just guessed it; I have no knowledge as to what happened to you four. The boy didn’t speak and has been asleep since arriving."

"Can the tests identify in which way someone upgraded? Merging, killing yourself, or because of a destroyed link?" I asked him.

Ethan tilted his head.

"I don’t understand what your second sentence means."

Ah. Did I ever tell Ethan? No, I told my friends some pieces, but I don’t know if I even told them about the merging; only Henry and I have talked about the whole theory. No idea if my grandma even knew.

So I explained shortly the three ways to upgrade while taking the sleeping Henry’s hand and playing with it.

First, the voluntary merging—no memories received, and instead, an additional power would be gained.

Second, the establishing of a link and then killing the counterpart personally—gaining memories and more strength and speed, but it is not recommended to do that often—I didn’t mention the giant, but emphasized that point nonetheless.

Third, establishing a link like with the others, through either hearing or seeing the counterpart, only for the counterpart to die not by your own hands, which would end in receiving memories—possibly even leveling up, but that seemed not to happen to everyone—but was faster at harming one’s mind than the second way.

Fourth, consuming flesh or blood from otherworldly creatures or counterparts, which strengthened the bodies.

I also mentioned the fifth point—just crossing a portal and being in a parallel world for some time seemed to upgrade some individuals, like Henry, who gained, for example, night vision since his first parallel world, the Little City world.

Ethan grew silent for some time when I had finished. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"...I understand. No, to my knowledge, there is no way to differentiate between any of these ways."

"If the military caught the doctors, do they have a way to do these tests?" I looked back up at Ethan, who nodded.

"Yes, although the center should have already found a way on their own."

I hummed, bending Henry’s fingers and then straightening them while I thought about the consequences of such a test.

It would be a good opportunity for a class system, filtering out people with powers to either experiment on them more openly than the center had or to make them an elite.

"What happened to the center?" I asked Ethan.

I had been curious about that topic since hearing my grandmother say that they ’rescued’ Jeyjey from the center.

"I will start from the beginning. We put cameras along the roofs of the buildings inside the street you mentioned to Henry as the spot where the next portal would open and had people watch the stream around the clock. Henry had been notified the moment the portal opened and the fire broke out. We also instantly hurried to the portal, but we were stopped..." he started.

"We never reached the portal, and after the water that gushed out and the fire was extinguished, survivors came out, among them the commander, who we naturally instantly recognized for his similarity to Henry. We whisked him away after he nearly made the same scale of a racket your grandmother was making in the hopes the military would go in or at least let us come closer."

"Ah." I continued playing with Henry’s hand, already vividly imagining how my grandmother threw her stick around.

"She would have been nearly apprehended then and there if I wasn’t present..." Ethan sighed a long and strenuous sigh.

"However, the portal closed after a few hours, and only then did the rescue teams and military close in on the street. But because the portal was closed, we lost both of you and gained the commander. He told us about everything that had happened, and we worked together to find you." Ethan took off his suit jacket and put it neatly over his arm.

"We tried to visit the center more than once to talk to Dr. Lawrence and also find the gentlemen you were able to use to ’visit’ this world, but the military intervened again, blocking each and every street to it with heavy arms. We didn’t even manage to take a look at the building." Again, a sigh.

"The rats appeared, and the whole city fell into chaos. We had to move to the outskirts because not only were the rats drawn to places with many humans, but also because the people started to get violent. When everything was said and done, Mrs. Howard gathered a few of her men and firearms, hell-bent on storming the center." He pursed his lips as if this brought back many unhappy memories in which he probably tried to persuade my grandmother to stop her stubbornness.

"Yet this time, there were no street blocks; the center was absolutely empty. Not only of people but also computers, documents, and security footage. We later found out that most of the Four Hundred were sent back home because the city’s situation had gone out of control, and keeping patients away when they were scared for their loved ones wouldn’t match the whole rehabilitation idea." He stroked over the jacket on his arm.

"However, after breaking into an underground lab beneath the center—"

"You found Jeyjey." I completed.

"Yes. Her and a few corpses."