All Chapters of The Boy who Circled Time: Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

Gretel, as soon as she arrived at the commute station platform at her destination, at her new home indefinitely, she had been immediately flanked by a large group of burly men, dressed almost identically in the same shade of dark grey. At first, when she had been their clothing, she had thought that they were a group travelling next on the train and just so happened to be getting on at her particular door out of there. She didn't particularly know of any troupes that dressed in such a fashion, and had attempted to move out of their as quickly as she could. As she flattened herself back to stand on the temporary nanobot platforms between the train and the actual platform proper, she stared down at the material that made up their clothing. The quality of the fabric was immediately obvious and glaring, at least military grade, and high, high above the civilian grade of clothing that theoretically nobody could buy with any amount of money. The alm

Gretel woke up and found herself in a hospital bed, not unlike the ones that she had previously worked around. It was a dark and dingy place, all the beds of the room pressed together as closely as possible with bags of fluid, empty or not, hanging from the walls above patient's beds, indicating the room was one of the more long term storage spaces, most likely to put people aside to be forgotten while the main team was busy with other priorities. There weren't any windows and the one source of light, coming through the window of the singular door to the place, was a sickly yellow that flickered more than Gretel would like and expect of a place supposed to treat the sick. Gryaz and Sýnnefa weren't at war, yet. Places like these shouldn't be operating at all, outside of simulations meant to train up those going into the millitary, but she was at least somewhat sure that she was in any sort of simulation at the moment. As much as computers had a

"Mum, what's the most important thing in the world?" Gretel had once asked her mother, playing outside on the busy street during the one and only time that she had ever remembered it snowing. She had spent the day running around, making snow angels on the pavement with some of the other teenage girls humouring her as they skipped from snow angel to snow angel, never disrupting their shapes as they made their way down the street and off to school. Her mother, who seemed to be at home suddenly for no apparent reason nowadays, had simply flashed Gretel a smile. "You're the most important thing in the world to me," she called out from her perch on their doorstep, wrapped up in a hat, scarf, gloves, coat, and blanket, not at all like Gretel who only really needed a coat, her face and hands warming up far too quickly if she had been forced to wear a hat and gloves. "No, not that mum! I mean, in the world, what's the most important thing that I need to get?"

The first days of her time at the North Western Sýnnefa Military Research Facility were quiet, tense, and empty, and no more greyer than her life had already been back in Gryaz. Guards constantly patrolled each and every single member of the few, scant group that made up their research team, comprised of physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and all sorts of other people in that sort of field. Gretel felt as if she had been sticking out like a sore thumb, as she managed to barely stumbled through the most basic of equations, if the comments of all her other teammates were correct, her speciality being chemistry and the biochemical makeup of the human body, medicinal studies being a consequence of her education, considering where she was and the time that she lived in. She hated it here. She wanted to leave, but she knew that there was no possible way that she possibly could. Always flanked by at least two guards, without any keys or supplies,

On the first day that Gretel had been at the North Western Sýnnefa Military Research Facility, she had been allowed the grand total of two minutes of resting in her bed, trying her hardest to acclimate to her surroundings as quickly as she possible could with the man in grey looming over her, before she had been yanked upwards by a harsh clamping hand on her elbow, jerking her out of bed, throwing her to the floor, before jerking her upwards into her dizzying stand. She felt sick, the world still spinning all around her, and she had almost immediately fallen back down again, if not for the heavy and strong arms that caught her, keeping her leaning on a firm chest, as her shoulders were held up. "Oh, hey, hey. I've got you. I've got you," a voice called out from above her, and she took note of its kind tone and the warm hands that kept her from barely falling back down to the floor, probably face planting the grey surface below her and knocking herself out again, the