Scorpio opened her eyes. She was unaware of how many times she had done that. It felt like she had done it a lot. It made her anxious that she did not know the exact number, she should of counted. She made a promise to count from now on, but the days she had missed still irked her.
The face was there once more. Once more she was safe. There was a noise, and the face turned away. “I'll be right back,” the face said. Then it left.
Scorpio looked around the room, and noticed a book on the bedside table. Reaching over she grabbed it and sitting up in the bed she opened the book and began to read. She turned to the page the bookmark was in. The bookmark was thin and red with a flick of ribbon attached to the top of it. Scorpio liked the ribbon, she pulled it between her fingers and shivered at the sensation it gave her. She put the bookmark down, noticing the pen on the bedside table and brought the book up to her eyes. She started half way down the page.
...amazing recovery, still. Scorpio now shows reading skills of a ten year old and the writing skills of an eight year old. Her progress in this area is unparalleled, Scorpio didn't understand what unparalleled meant but she hoped it was a good thing... and she should be completely self-sustaining, another word Scorpio had no knowledge of, she thought it meant something like, completely fine. In other news, I recently came across some files that were uploaded, Scorpio frowned, to the system from an external source. They seem to be journal notes from Hacker's laptop. Written while he was in the field during his mission, with... a word had been crossed out here and Scorpio couldn't make it out, her. I've printed out a few and put them in storage for later reading. I can't bring myself to read them yet, maybe soon. Anyway, apart from- the writing stopped mid sentence. Scorpio flipped back a page, yet more scribbles of handwriting. She flipped another couple of pages, more and more writing. She turned to the front of the book, to very first page.
SCORPIO RECOVERY LOG. Day 1: Severe blood loss. Brain suffering from oxygen starvation. Other minor injuries: Stab wound and deep scratches in the back.
“Hey,” the book was torn from Scorpio's grasp. The face sat down next to Scorpio and sighed. “Why were you reading this?”
“Scorpio is my name,” said Scorpio. “It's about me.”
The face gave another sigh. “Yes, it is. You must have a few questions.”
Scorpio thought, and thought. One question came to her. “Why was I hurt?”
“I found you like that. You had been attacked by a creature.”
Scorpio looked terrified, “what... what was it? Why did it attack me?”
The face looked away, and then back to Scorpio, “do you remember the story I read you once. About the labyrinth, and the Manticore that guarded it.”
“I was attacked by a Manticore!”
The face slowly nodded, “it gave you your injuries, and... it was the thing that...” the face trailed off. “It stabbed you in the back, there was massive blood loss. I managed to drag you back here and the system managed to fix your injuries.”
Scorpio was silent, in thought. “What happened to my head? How could someone strangle my brain?”
“Ah, the lack of oxygen. Remember I told you about your body using blood to fuel your body, well you need blood to fuel your brain as well. Because you lost a lot your brain sort of died.”
“I was dead?”
The face nodded, “for about twelve minutes. The damage that did to your frontal cortex and amygdala were profound.”
