Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 474; || The Dead Come Talking (by Roe Kapara)

Chapter 474: 474; || The Dead Come Talking (by Roe Kapara)

I crouched down beside Armless and conjured up disinfectant to clean the kitchen knife and my hands.

Next, I pulled away the bandage, seeing not only blood and pus but also black spots on and around the stump... Necrosis?

"Damn."

It also didn’t smell especially good, though I would rate it only one out of five Torsohills.

I held onto his elbow before cutting around one centimeter of flesh from the wound.

Although my kitchen knife couldn’t cut the bone in the middle, the bone wasn’t the problem to begin with, so it didn’t matter.

Then I started scraping off the black spots around the injury until there was only pink flesh left.

Now let’s see if this works.

The second I wanted to put the knife back into the past, I saw myself flip the coin inside my mind.

I raised my eyebrows; I hadn’t had an involuntary vision in forever.

Gold; back of my hand; eyes and ears uncovered; correct past of Armless.

I stand before a gate that seems oddly familiar. After thinking for a moment, I recognize the building behind it as the prison Henry and I were held in, just another side gate I haven’t been at before.

Armless stands beside me, pleading with a man in uniform on the other side of the steel gate.

"Let the others go too; I am begging you."

The man across from the steel bars shakes his head condescendingly, playing with the folder in his hands.

"Can’t do that. You are lucky that they let you go in the first place."

"What will happen to them?" He had not even finished asking when a single gunshot rang beyond the gate, at the back of the building.

The man clad in uniform smiles and motions with his head to the sound of the gunshot.

"They are being punished."

Armless clutches his bleeding arm.

"LET ME BACK IN; YOU CAN’T JUST KILL THEM!"

"Who told you to build bombs? Who told you to attack soldiers and government workers? You wanted to do good by killing people? If you want to do something good, then take this." He shoves the folder through the steel bars, and Armless takes it with his hand.

Nevertheless, a few news articles slip out, and I recognize one of them immediately—because it is picturing me.

I laugh out loud.

A picture from way back, where my eye was held open and an additional finger on my eyeball was forcing the pupil and the bright red iris down for everyone to see.

Beside it was a smaller picture that showed my actual looks, contrary to the zombie picture with the red eye.

"Get rid of that one during the next two weeks; maybe a few of your comrades will get spared then," the man in uniform says while Armless, on his knees, is picking up the news articles. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Another gunshot rings, and Armless flinches so much that he nearly drops the folder again.

He remains on his knees.

"How...?"

Although it’s unclear what exactly he is asking, the other person answers it how he wants.

"Go register yourself at the city hall tomorrow. Get a job." The man in uniform turns around and walks back again, while Armless stays kneeling, counting the gunshots that soon follow.

Only when it is silent for more than an hour does he leave.

Coming back again, I thought, no wonder that guy just walked into the room I was working in on Monday; maybe he wanted to try the assassination back then, maybe he just wanted to talk to me.

Either way, it didn’t end in a talk, nor did it end in a murder attempt—so no hard feelings on my part.

Not that he ever had a chance against me.

Can we somehow get all the articles about me deleted? I can’t believe these pictures are still circulating somewhere.

Alright.

Without putting the kitchen knife away, I continued to flip the coin a few times to figure out that guy’s nature.

As it turned out, this man had been an ordinary supermarket owner.

Then the rat situation happened, and then the government told him to close his store.

He was put to work as manual labor, carrying a bunch of pipes and cables from one place to another for electrical repairs throughout the city.

The first big grievance he received was that his supermarket had to close.

The second was that he couldn’t touch the abundance of food in the supermarket and had to rely on the bit of food the government gave him.

The third was that the government stopped his father’s supply of blood pressure medications at some point, although he had properly registered and received them for some time. It stopped after someone decided he wouldn’t get them anymore because his heart condition was not as urgent as others’ and there was an alleged shortage of medications since the complete lockdown of the city.

When his father died a few weeks later, it was the final straw breaking, and the well-liked supermarket owner gathered people with similar stories.

They started protesting peacefully but were met with violence, so they turned more and more violent themselves; in the end, they built bombs.

Armless was practically the man uniting absolutely normal middle-aged people who had their stores closed and their own grievances to lament.

He apparently lost his arm because of a smaller homemade bomb while quite a few key figures of the unrest were arrested last week.

Hmmm...

I let the kitchen knife disappear back to the past and watched his stump heal and scar over until it looked like an injury he had received years ago.

I hadn’t known if it would really work, but Armless’s skin color turned from bluish back to what looked normal; his body seemed, all in all, to be in better shape—as if he had never contracted the obvious infection and possible necrosis in the first place.

Good.

I crouched down and waited for him to wake up while checking my phone for Henry’s messages, which consisted of ’strong doggy’ stickers and stickers of doggies that carried heavy weight.

Very matching to his current work.

I didn’t inform him immediately of the government-related assassination attempt or the successful operation on Armless because I didn’t want him to make a ruckus.

And after looking at Armless’s memories, I perceived a similar general goodwill I had received from Martin Lawrence.

Also, a similar desperation that good people would encounter after constantly being met with bad people and bad situations.

I have also seen that there was quite a big part of the unrest that hadn’t been caught—these were, as mentioned, normal people, middle-aged uncles and aunties.

So Armless wasn’t completely alone, which was perfect.

Eventually, the unconscious man woke up, startled and alert, when he saw me.

"What happened?" he asked before looking at his healed stump.

"I can tell you the location of a bunch of weapons and proper grenades."

He still stared at his stump before sitting up awkwardly and then even touching the wound that was now healed.

I repeated what I said before and added,

"I just want you to get everyone in this city to know that the government is planning to abandon the city with the people in it. Bring them out of here."

Finally, his eyes met mine.

"What do you know?"

I shrugged,

"Just that everyone has to leave this city because something will happen."

"Did you heal me?" he raised his stump.

"Maybe. Give me your phone number until Friday, and I will send you the location on Sunday."

"Why not now?" he asked after a bit of thinking, holding onto his arm, seemingly suspicious.

"Because that is when I will leave, and I want to make sure you don’t get the weapons to use them against me." I smirked and saw him pale a bit, looking away.

"Think about it. You won’t be able to kill me now that I know; the best chance to save as many people as you can is to cooperate with me. You can even use the weapons to get your surviving comrades out of prison. Just spread the news while you do it."

Chewing his lip for some time, he glanced at me.

"You were the one that left his lunch and the water bottles in the small room, weren’t you?" He looked away again.

"Yes." The commotion with the soldier in the bus regarding my missing lunchbox couldn’t have escaped the other passengers.

I stood up.

"Think about it. I haven’t harmed you even once before, contrary to the government. So who is more trustworthy?"

Reaching my hand out, I waited until he took it and pulled him up.

At the same time, I flipped the coin with the command, ’Tell me if Armless is trustworthy without showing my future self.’

In the end, I saw Armless pacing around in a shabby room before throwing the news articles about me into the little fireplace in the corner.

Then he searched for a piece of paper and wrote a number on it, together with the words "Thank you."

Perfect.

I nodded at Armless and let go of his hand before walking back to the room with the already dried-up plaster...

So I went again to the barrel room, this time not running into someone drinking dirty water, which was progress, and got some water to mix with the plaster to then go back to work.

The meal of the day had already been revealed at breakfast: it was something stew-like, making it especially difficult to eat given that it had just been poured into the lunchboxes and there was no spoon.

Luckily, there was a separate space for the side dish, which consisted of nuts at breakfast and had now turned into rock-hard bread for lunch.

I stood up and left the big ’room,’ which was, meanwhile, nearly fully stuffed with the big steel beams the group downstairs was constantly loading into the elevator.

After putting my lunchbox in the barrel room, I went back to smoke and watched the big lake in the distance.

I still can’t believe they filled that hole with water; it seemed so excessive. Maybe they didn’t have enough earth to fill it up, or it was too insecure to put earth inside and then build buildings atop it?

I also chatted a bit in the group chat with the guys, though Omar stayed silent; Danny and Jordan were especially hyped up for the capital city. Jordan even messaged about how he had been there a long time ago and that it was filled with skyscrapers.

He even sent a few pictures that took forever to receive, and I countered with a picture of the view I had from the skyscraper I was currently on top of, earning ’scared hamster’ emojis from Danny because there was no railing.

Anyway, the rest of the day went by faster than the last days, probably because we couldn’t go home if work ended, as Henry and I had to teleport to either a disturbed human or human remains.

When the elevator brought us down and I stepped out of it, I found Henry glancing at the very much rejuvenated armless with furrowed eyebrows.

He had put the bandage back on when I saw him at lunch, so there was no healed wound for others to see, but the color of his face and his now steady steps were a clear indicator that he was way better than this morning.

When I came closer to Henry, he hung on me, hissing,

"Did you give him your blood?"

"Nope, I used my kitchen knife when he was unconscious," I whispered back while the Yellow Helmet from the first day told us to slowly board the buses.

Before work ended, I had gotten the empty lunchbox back from the barrel room and given it back to the guy who had told me how to build walls, so I had a new lunchbox waiting for me inside the bus.

Yaiy.

"Why?" Henry asked when we sat down, and I told him that we would talk later.

It was super exhausting to constantly whisper so silently that it was no different than letting go of a small breath, just so that the others wouldn’t hear.

So the puppy calmed down and leaned against me in a position that made my limbs ache just from looking.

But he seemed to like it, so...

When the bus finally arrived and we left the city hall, we found Ethan waiting for us as always.

One could see that he really wasn’t made to correct grammar and syntax all day long—probably more the attorney to speak before a jury or make proper contracts and stuff.

"Let’s go," he said upon seeing us, hurrying away from the building as if he were running away.

I chuckled and pulled the puppy after him.

It was the end of the day, but the sun glared down on us.

Ethan was sweating buckets, and even the back of his linen shirt was damp.

It was really so much better with an upgraded body and a stronger temperature resistance.

When we arrived at some side alley, out of the sight of anybody, Ethan asked us if we would go now.

"Yes," I nodded.

"Be careful," he said, and left first again.

"I’ll teleport first," I told the puppy.

"No. I will," he instantly refuted.

"Henry," I called him decisively, telling him that the decision had already been made.

He surely didn’t know Baggy Jean’s last name and could, because of that, not teleport to him anyway, and I wanted to teleport while giving commands as well, like ’To where Baggy Jeans is, but out of sight of cameras or living humans.’ Before teleporting, I had given similar commands, and it had indeed worked.

The puppy turned silent before eventually giving in.

I counted down and teleported first—from the still bright side alley to absolute darkness.

But that didn’t stop me from seeing.

I stood on a spiral staircase made of steel; the staircase was high as hell, but I was nearly at the bottom. Around me were steel bolts much larger and bigger than the ones on our construction site.

The ceiling ended after twenty to thirty meters, but the narrow spiral staircase was going much further, leading into a shaft in the ceiling, where it would continue up for what seemed to be an eternity.

The whole underground construction was as massive as it was strange, but what was the most disturbing part was that the staircase ended far too abruptly in a concrete floor.

And what I mean by that is that the staircase should have continued downward, yet someone had filled the ground in this massive space with cement; no idea how high.