What the absolute fuck? Burn wards suck. They suck worse when you know more medicine than the nurses and know they’re making stupid decisions. They suck worse when you live in the United States of Dystopia with crap health insurance.

My entire torso is scar tissue. Guess we’re gonna be incel for life. Oh well. The females can just chase chuds all day and squirt out little chudlettes in their trailer bathtubs.

Not my business. Whatever the hell I got pulled into is dangerous and weird. I finally cracked the code on that black card to find there was noting on it. Empty promise. Enough to make you want to kill a guy.

But I also got wounds that close right up. The burns didn’t vanish, but all the incisions the docks were doing? The skin grafts and IV punctures? All closed up nice and quick.

So, the job paid what it said, even if everything else is a lie. No reports of bombs going off back home on the news, so that was right up there with the card as far as stick and carrot to get me on the job. Or experiment. Or whatever madness that was.

I might be healing quick, but I doubt I’m immortal. At least not yet.

I need to be prepared in case another of these… Events comes along. I don’t have a lot of and there was no leaving the hospital. But I do have internet and second hand shopping. I’m gonna get myself set up for another run, just in case these weirdos aren’t’ done with me yet.

Crazy shit. At least I didn’t end up in the burn ward again. I want to write all this off as drugs and hallucinations, right? Some nut-jobs with money and power playing games. None of it real.

Feels awful real. And I looked into some of those fuckers that were in the simulation with me. One rich kid I confirmed easy. He’s got his idiot face splattered all over YouTube. The Turner guy has a wrap sheet. They look real enough. So, I’ll need to think on this a bit. I’m probably not the only rat in the cage.

As for payment, I’ve been given more control. I’m changing. Come home. Eat a fuck-ton of protein and plant carbs. Fall into a coma and wake up modified. Mind you, it’s the modification I envisioned. That’s the rub. My flesh is perfecting. I’m getting paid exactly what that prick agent guy promised to begin with, minus the cash.

The question is, is any of this real? It can’t be all real. Weird ghost children. Weirder game worlds. Maybe tis s parallel dimension shit. If so, why the fuck have I been dragged in? Why would they give me what I need to become what I want?

Nevermind all that. I gotta practice eating. Plenty more protein in the terrariums going to waste...

Flew home on my own dime. Expensive. Everything is expensive.

Doesn’t matter. I know how to live cheap. Granted, I’m eating more and more and more these days. Protein mostly. The body needs to grow.

I’m moving more as I eat. Sleeping more as I grow. Changing  more as I do both. Getting stronger now. I can feel that. I can feel the buds sprouting in my second mouth. In my maw.

These Events keep me guessing. I never each one is so different than the one before. But I expect more are on the way. Whatever they are, they’re dangerous. With them being so different, how do you prepare?

After than first initiation, I picked up a secondhand vest, secondhand fireman’s jacket, some other surprises. But that’s reacting to what’s come before. What if the next Event is a month on a life raft?

I need to think and plan. And I need to eat.