Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 421. Situation Report

Henry’s POV

The doctor took a look at Ren after Kenny took his medications.

Kenny stared at the ceiling stoically, and I took his hand, watching over him and praying that his counterpart was hurrying up in doing his job.

The noise from the city grew louder, sounding like fireworks...

Or bombs.

I tilted my head to listen in, also perceiving the sound of helicopters in the sky.

However, there shouldn’t be a reason for alarm; they weren’t in close proximity to us.

I heard Ethan talking outside, and he came into the room with a big satellite phone in his hand.

"I understand. Yes, they are alright. Mr. Howard has a fever, but he is stable."

He hung up the phone and informed me and the doctor, who looked up while feeling for the kid’s pulse.

"A few groups among these citizens took the chance in the chaos of rats and zombies leaving the city to launch attacks against the military and official facilities."

"Are Kenny’s friends and grandmother okay?" I wouldn’t even be able to teleport to them for now, but if they were in danger, I would have to find a way. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Yes. Mrs. Howard...she was furious about you all fighting so many...zombies and getting injured." He pressed his lips together.

"The military had been dispatched, and Mrs. Howard and the others had been stopped while taking a detour around the city to come back here. With the staff sergeant present, there is no need to worry; they just can’t continue the drive for now."

I nodded, turning back to Kenny.

I placed my hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat before covering him with the rest of the blanket I had placed him on, wrapping him up.

The doctor stood up and turned to us.

"I will get an infusion for the child, but he is alright."

I glanced in their direction and nodded. The kid had stopped shaking and seemed to be more exhausted than deeply traumatized.

"Good. Get one for Kenny as well."

The doctor left, and Ethan went to the kid, crouching down and patting his head.

"You were very brave today."

The kid nodded, leaning back against Kitty.

"Can you bring a bunch of blankets and pillows, as well as a warm dim light?" I asked him, and he stood up.

"I will see to it." He left, soon coming back loaded with what I wanted him to get.

I took two blankets and the little lamp for myself before motioning with my head to the bundle of child and tiger in the corner, and Ethan brought the rest to them.

"This won’t be the end. The worms should have infested the earth," I warned absentmindedly.

Ethan, crouched down to help them arrange a nest, pushed his glasses up and turned around.

"I thought so too."

"We won’t be doing that again," I told him, looking back at Kenny again, who seemed to be in a daze, continuously staring up.

"We won’t be continuing to take care of this city." Even if my master wanted to, this time had been too close, too harmful for him.

So I will stop him from overexerting himself again.

"It hadn’t been the responsibility of both of you to begin with," Ethan said, before continuing to arrange everything to make the corner a cozy place to rest.

I hummed in agreement.

"Do you two want to wash up before lying down?" he asked the tiger and the kid.

They apparently agreed because Ethan offered to bring them upstairs.

"They can use our bathroom."

"Alright." Ethan stood up and took the kid and tiger through the door next to the corner, and I heard him letting water into the bathtub.

The doctor returned, putting Kenny on an IV, while Ethan left for a moment to get new clothes for the child, and then he continued assisting them.

At some point, the doctor hesitantly came closer to me, looking fidgety.

"I am alright," I told him.

"But...Mr. Howard was worrying about you. How about I just take a look at that wound...?" He motioned to my shirt drenched with blood.

A smile grew on my face.

It’s true; he was worrying about me, hehe.

Even mentioning that I should get looked at first, before telling him to take care of the kid and tiger as well.

I took my shirt off, showing an upper body drenched with dried blood, but not one wound in sight.

Well, there were the scarred biting wounds that I loved so much, but meanwhile, they wouldn’t be noticeable unless one knew of them, especially with all the blood on me now.

However, I had forced my body to completely heal the recent wound on my shoulder, although I would have loved to keep that one as well, so as not to trigger Kenny upon seeing it.

The doctor took a closer look without touching me.

"I see you have already healed."

"Mhm. I am just tired. We both overused our powers." Though sitting down for some time had already helped a lot.

"I will get you an infusion as well. I am currently treating power overuse like I would overfatigue. We have to try and see what really works best in the end."

"Mhm. If you want to experiment with treatments regarding that topic, do it with me." I threw a warning glance at the old man, who nodded.

He looked a bit flustered before leaving the room again.

Ethan came out with a cleaned-up kid and a cleaned-up tiger, both having towel turbans on their heads.

I chuckled, wanting to show them to Kenny to lift his mood, when I noticed that he had finally fallen asleep.

"Is anyone hungry? Thirsty?" Ethan asked after wrapping them up in their corner.

The kids’ and tiger’s eyes twinkled.

"Alrighty. Will you come to the dining room, young masters?"

The kid and tiger remained unmoving in their corner.

"I understand. I will bring refreshments." He swiftly left the room.

I took a look at the little lamp and plugged it into the power outlet beside the bed.

A warm light created an even cozier atmosphere in the room.

I kissed the back of Kenny’s hand before tucking him in, then I stood up to turn off the ceiling light before getting myself clothes and entering the bathroom myself.

Before closing the door, I looked at the kid and tiger.

"You two will watch over him again, right? Like last time."

They both displayed the same solemn look, with Ren nodding.

"I will leave it to you." I nodded back and closed the door to take a shower myself.

Although Ethan had just helped wash up a small and big one, the bathroom was spotless.

Kenny was right; he really deserved a raise.

After rinsing away all the blood from my body, hair, and necklace, I stepped out again, dried, and dressed.

I would love to bathe Kenny as well, but in his state that wasn’t as much a priority as ’getting better’ was.

Coming back to a kid eating (from a plate placed on a silver tray) and a tiger eating (from a big silver animal bowl on the ground), I also spotted a tray on my side of the bed.

I sat on the mattress beside Kenny, leaned against the wall, and dug in when Ethan came back with a stool to take a seat on.

"How long exactly do the worms take to grow into a zombie?"

"Apparently shorter than we had thought." I answered.

"How could the number of zombies be that large? I saw at least two thousand." He continued to question me as if I had the answers to that.

"You tell me." I pointed my spoon at him before continuing with my soup.

He didn’t take offense and really thought about it.

"The stores are closed since the plague broke out; there is no usual commercial business. If people go missing, people would either not care, not notice, or their informing the police would fall on deaf ears, as the authorities have other problems to take care of." He pushed his glasses up.

"Because of the newly implemented system that warrants citizens to register themselves to be provided with work and food, the citizens that are not doing so remain under the radar." He continued.

"There is not enough manpower to make out anyone living or temporarily being present in the city; because of that, they used this way of approach, forcing the people to come to them." Ethan was meanwhile just talking to himself, while staring fixedly at one point at the wall, with his arms crossed, leaning back on the stool he had brought.

"The people under the radar could have fallen victim to the pink rats or infested themselves in another way. Maybe that was the reason they hadn’t registered themselves in the first place. They then had the worms growing inside them but displayed not enough odd behavior to get caught...?" He finally looked to me, and I shrugged.

Returning to the point on the wall, that was probably more helpful than me, he continued to muse.

"For whatever reason they were immobile... until they smelled Mr. Howard’s blood? How did they find their way to our place nevertheless?"

"A pink rat had bitten Kenny and placed worms into him." I finally contributed, taking a long look at said person.

He was sleeping peacefully, hopefully having a good dream.

"A collective? Information worms received can be shared between them, so the worms could easily pinpoint his location?"

"They weren’t only after him but also the blood he had shared with people in this house since leveling up. Apparently the kid and Henriettta, the tiger, and myself as well."

"I understand. They were after the blood but didn’t come to the center?" He asked me.

"If they are a collective, then they must have more intellect than either their finished animal stages or the dark rats themselves. Only human-formed zombies did attack this place." I took the bowl into my hands and tilted my head back to drink the rest out of it.

Inside the rat world, the rats were more powerful than the worms, constantly eating them and stopping them from further growing. So a collective should only form after they have passed a specific development stage.

"Then we could get attacked by them anytime again." Ethan noted.

"Yes." I looked up at the doctor, who came with my own personal IV.

He pricked me before leaving again, and I informed Ethan.

"The Lawrence family has a laboratory under their mansion, with different worm forms in them."

Ethan hummed before falling silent, as if he tried to find a reason, and when unable to find one, he asked me again,

"Why?"

"The whole reason they built the center was that they thought ’otherworlders’ would invade this city, and they probably wanted to form them into their own personal army. It was a false..." I looked at Kid and Tiger, the former asleep with the tray orderly placed on the floor in front of him.

"Prophecy from the Prophet." I finished, placing the tray on my lap on the floor as well before I continued.

"They are obsessed with building an army, even going so far as to use monsters. If the question is again ’why?’ then there could be the reason right here."

I looked at the kid again.

"What had the prophet foretold that scared them so much?"