Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 358. Internet

"Come here." I waved Ethan to me while still holding Henry’s hand, and when he came to my side and crouched down, I grabbed his wrist and flipped the coin.

Gold, back of my hand; past of Ethan Hendricks; the countless hands covering the woman on the coin gave her eyes and ears free.

I stand beside Ethan, who seems out of place, sporting a suit in this devastated big laboratory.

On each side of the room are cells, while in the middle of the room, there are ceiling-height walls with desks and destroyed computers and machines on them.

Each cell has glass walls that provide a view of the insides; the walls, floors, and even the toilets are padded, like one would imagine in a psychiatric ward.

I look at my grandmother, who is surrounded by young and good-looking men with weapons, as she checks each cell with a male occupant in it.

"He can’t possibly be here," Ethan notes.

My grandmother doesn’t answer until she finishes looking at each male corpse.

Then she comes back, lets out a sigh of relief, and straightens up to arrange her long black dress, which makes her look just as out of place as Ethan.

"Who is looking for him? We already know where that imbecile is. I am just seeing if there are any survivors!" She halts because, when she finishes, there is a timely whimper from the side of the room she just examined.

"It seems Mrs. Howard luckily found a survivor." Ethan helps the old lady overcome her embarrassment and goes to the cell where a girl with light brown hair leans against the wall, her olive-colored eyes open as she stares at the ceiling, sitting there motionlessly.

"Jeyjey." I say upon seeing her and watch Ethan and the armed men trying to get into the room that has no apparent door.

While they work on opening the door, I do what I flipped the coin for, which is to also take a look at the corpses to make sure that the twins, Chelsea, and the others weren’t among them.

Each corpse looks horrible—thin, disheveled, with either acne or some other skin problem on them—the epitome of how you would picture a drug addict.

I recognize a few people; they had been in our group inside the center. The rest were part of the four hundred that I had seen in the center.

All in all, there are seventeen corpses inside a total of twenty cells. Two cells are empty, and in the last one is Jeyjey.

I didn’t spot Red Hair, not Patrick or Harry, no twins, no Chelsea.

If two cells are empty, it could hint at two people besides Jeyjey who survived the experiments and were a success.

I thought of the time when I found myself in Harry’s body, the first time I had ever entered another body and found a Henry with silver eyes, who warned me about the drugs and the water.

Seeing the death rate...maybe even my upgraded self would have died.

"We need the Bunsen burner. Would you be so kind as to bring it?" Ethan asked the men who disappeared through a door to the room that also seemed to have been opened by more than just a bit of force.

I have seen what I came for, so I extract myself from the scene.

Opening my eyes, I let go of Ethan’s wrist.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably while straightening up and again stroking the suit jacket on his arm.

"I just looked to see if there was someone I knew amongst the corpses," I explained, while going back to playing with Henry’s hand.

"Bring me an alarm clock or a phone or something. I want to change Henry’s infusion bags myself," I ordered him, and he nodded, making his way to the door before I stopped him.

"You said the girl leveled up, but what about her state?" I asked him.

He stopped and turned around.

"The boy—" he emphasized.

"–is alright, besides the fever, which has already come down a bit."

"How about Henrietta?"

"The doctor found that she was highly overdosed on DMT and that it had been for a long time. It is a miracle she is still alive."

"Is she conscious?"

Ethan pushed his glasses up.

"Yes and no. She should currently be experiencing hallucinations because of the drug, yet with the amount in her system, she is sedated enough to not act on them."

"Got it. Thanks." I mumbled, thinking of the catatonic state where she moved her lips continuously.

That doesn’t sound like a fun experience, but I can’t say that I really pity her, though she helped me the last time we really ’saw’ each other.

I leaned back, and my eyes were already falling shut when there was a knock on the door again, and Ethan delivered a phone to me and an alarm clock.

"As efficient as always, thank you." I nodded at him and stood up to see him off and to lock the door after he left for good.

Taking a seat beside Henry again, I set an alarm for four hours, noticing that I hadn’t slept long before Ethan came with the results; it had only been two hours.

No wonder I felt like crap.

I opened the search engine and just put in ’News.’

Staring at the screen for several minutes, the site still wasn’t finished loading.

So the internet is now slow as hell; this was also very apocalypse-like, though at least we still had access to it.

When the search engine finally finished, I saw mostly reports regarding the Rats. Danny was right; nobody called them ’Hats.’

I saw a few pictures even though I didn’t tap on any sites, fearing they would leave me waiting again forever.

The small pictures were enough to discern the size of the rats, which ranged from ankle-high to knee-high, and to see their ugliness.

The head was shaped like that of a rat, but the body was really more dog-like, making them surely fast runners; the tail was again rat-like.

They had little to no fur, with gray or pinkish skin.

Fantastic, I wouldn’t want to touch something like this.

I scrolled for some time until I discovered the ’Superpower Forum’. I cringed for a moment before tapping on the link and instantly regretted it because it took so long to load again.

While this tab loaded, I opened another one and searched for ’The Center,’ which also took some time to load but was faster than the other one, probably because there were no relevant articles. The internet was wiped clean; I only found things unrelated to the center I meant.

Fine.

I opened one of the countless social media sites out there and found that there was none that was still active or working.

True, any social network that operated globally was difficult to scale down, and now that we could only operate the internet countrywide, maybe even only citywide, they were closed once and for all.

Nevertheless, this was so frustrating; I had been happier without electronics.

I searched for our city name and found an official site that loaded at least ten times faster than the others.

There, on a light beige background, stood in red letters:

1. In cases of emergencies, don’t call the emergency services; the system is overloaded, and you won’t reach anyone! Come DIRECTLY to the hospital.

That was not at all relieving; underneath it stood the addresses of a few hospitals.

2. If you experience strange symptoms or hallucinations either after killing a rat or just randomly, DON’T GO TO THE HOSPITAL—BUT CALL THIS NUMBER: XXX

Ah. So that system wasn’t overloaded; good to know.

3. PLEASE internalize the easiest way of killing a RAT; follow the pictures in the link.

I tapped on it and was again faced with the fastest way on the next site, where I broke into laughter at a little drawing of a man piercing a rat through its eye.

Then there were step-by-step instructions that showed how to react when a rat attacks (stab it through the eye), the best way to help someone who is being attacked by a rat (by stabbing it through the eye), and the best way to react when someone discovers a rat that was sleeping or resting somewhere (stab it through the eye).

The pictures were hilarious, and if there were still social media, the whole world would laugh at this nonsense.

The next series of pictures showed how to act if you didn’t have the stick at hand that the government gave out for defeating the rats and their vicious eyes.

Easy: Take a fork/knife/crochet needle or something similar.

More pictures that were so funny that I instinctively screenshot them for later. Then there was a method pointed out to kill rats that, however, had the danger of getting bitten by them, which was to step on their ribs.

Again, a few pictures, and that was it.

I went back to the main site and read through the other points:

4. Curfew is at sunset, which is currently at 19:26. AFTER sunset, the military forces are hunting for rats, and it is VERY DANGEROUS for citizens to interfere with their work. THE MILITARY IS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT WHOEVER IS OUTSIDE AFTER SUNSET!

5. IT IS PROHIBITED TO LEAVE THE CITY. The city is under lockdown because of the temporary obstacle.

6. IT IS PROHIBITED TO DRIVE CARS FOR AN UNKNOWN AMOUNT OF TIME; ONLY AUTHORIZED CARS ARE ALLOWED!

7. THE CITY IS CURRENTLY HALTING ITS ECONOMY AND EDUCATION: That means you don’t have to go to work/school/college; EXCEPTIONS are medical care personnel and government personnel that are OBLIGATED to come into work!

8. Each citizen is OBLIGATED to register themselves at Address: xxxx, where you are assigned work. After each completed day of work, you will receive necessities (including medications) as well as a vegetarian food package for the day (if you take regular medication or suffer from allergies, please let that be known when you register; we are UNABLE to make changes later!)

9. Convenience stores, malls, apothecaries, drug stores, and supermarkets are all closed for an UNKNOWN AMOUNT OF TIME. During this time, theft or burglary will be PUNISHED SEVERELY!

10. PLEASE SHOWER AND CHARGE YOUR PHONE OR COMPUTER DURING THE DAY; AFTER SUNSET, THERE IS NEITHER ELECTRICITY NOR WATER SUPPLY! Please prepare enough water FOR ONE NIGHT. STORING ELECTRICITY OR WATER WILL BE PUNISHED SEVERELY!

11. SELLING WATER, TOILET PAPER, OR FOOD IS PROHIBITED AND WILL BE SEVERELY PUNISHED!

Mhm, that’s more like it.

Now this feels like an apocalypse.

There was more, but I stopped reading and set up the additional alarm clock just to make sure I would wake up in a few hours.

After making sure that Henry was alright, I snuggled up to him under the blanket and was again instantly out.

Yet, the next time I opened my eyes, I was so damn well-rested that I had to have slept for a few days, if not for one or two weeks.