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Chapter 13: The Injuries of Both
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2024-10-29 19:42:56The falling rocks entombed his family, community, and all he knew. His ears were deafened by the colossal crashes and his eyes by the humungous dust clouds. He couldn't hear anything or see anything, and he felt as if he was coughing up blood, trying to free his throat from those all-encompassing streams and plumes of rocks and dirt, hellbent on suffocating him. He watched his home fall into a giant heap of dust, crushed under his own weight. He looked up towards the cloudy, grey skies, and saw a swarm of tiny, grey dots under the cloud cover. He needed to rescue his family. He stood to sprint towards them, only to see the first of the burning, red flames to fall from the sky.
He awoke. The sun had not arisen. He laid awake, blanket thrown aside, for the rest of the night.
The morning, his forth day at the facility, the newly named Jasper had learned over breakfast from under the glaring, wrathful eyes of Doctor Johnstone, occurred just like
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"My name's Alice, and today we're leaving Emmet to sleep off his two all-nighters. We're gonna have breakfast in the kitchen. Then you can go to your daily physio with the one and only Doctor Lisa Johnstone!"The blonde woman held Jasper up as if he were nothing, not even shaking sweating as he was propped up on her shoulder. He could feel the muscle his legs and found himself sweating.She carried him from the medical wing into the heart of the facility. Jasper had only known the route from his bed to Emmet's office, quite literally down the corridor. Jasper was carried through one long corridor, tilting his head, side to side to spy down the long halls and through the windows of the doors he could see.The facility had grey halls, but the halls and ceilings were at least white. The corridor ceilings had lights to illuminate wherever the sun's rays missed, flooding in from the windows at each turn. Jasper saw workroom tables with laptops behind them. They were
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