I lay in my bed, watching the sun slowly creep up the horizon. In time, the clouds broke apart and allowed beams of light to shine into my room, finally signaling that the morning had come.

I had not slept or made a sound since I returned to my room. I simply lay in the dark, listening to the shambling horror trudge its way about the halls.

As per routine, my infinite contemplation was interrupted by my caretaker, I vomited my medication, and emerged from the dormitories to the eating room for breakfast. Outside, the endless factories had begun to run fully, leaving a thick smog hovering over the atmosphere. All the windows and doors were closed in order to mediate the amount of toxic fog inhaled by all of us.

Inside, the patients shuffled to here and there with imbalance and mindlessness.

The eating room itself was a compact and unremarkable place. Small tables with two chairs. A closed-off section with access to the kitchen, and a large countertop with several dishes of unmistakably soulless gruel. I got in line, trying my best to fit in with the groggy masses. As I waited for my turn to take a bowl of tasteless slop, I noticed a peculiar sight in the depths of the kitchen.

On the wall were several cured meats and sausages hung up by their casing. Meats such as those were certainly not integrated into the diet of us patients, and as far as I knew there was no cafeteria for the faculty. The only reason such things were kept in the kitchen is if more people than just the patients lived on the grounds. With the quality of those meats, I could also assume that it was not being eaten by the staff either. Were there doctors living in the hospital? If so, where?

Before my mind could wander further, though, I was weakly shoved by the man behind me. I had held up the line for longer than it took for the patients ahead of me to get their food, and those behind me had become impatient. Most importantly, I was drawing attention to myself, and I worried that if a guard spent too long inspecting me, they would be able to tell I was not under the same daze as the others.

Looking to the floor, I hastened myself to the bowls of food. I grabbed a tray from the counter of many and looked at the dining portion of the room.

I inadvertently brought so much attention to myself, which made it best to lay low at the edge of the room and survey my surroundings.

After finding a decently secluded table, I began to watch those around me. There were two guards at the edge of the room, watching over us. Wooden shutters closed at the opening to the kitchen, secluding us from the cooks. At the tables sat people so disoriented that they could barely manage to move the gruel from their bowl to their mouths.

In the crowd, I made out two people. Bradley and Emilia.

The first order of business was to snap one of them out of the trance they had been ensnared in… But there were two prominent roadblocks to that quest. Who would I choose first, and how in the world was I to sober them up without getting caught?

The first step was to decide on who I wanted to awaken first… I trusted Bradley greatly, and he had been a great friend for many years. I wanted to get Bradley out and hear his retelling of what he remembered happening to us, yet even from my secluded spot at the edge of the room, I noticed his lips softly mumble with incoherent language of increasingly indescribable dialect. Off the medication, Bradley spoke in both cryptic messages and tongues. I knew for a fact he would not be able to communicate what he remembered with me, or even worse, his loud mouth would somehow give us away. Emilia would be difficult to free, but I felt as though she was the best choice anyways.

Next, I supposed I just needed to play things by ear, and that what I would first have to do was simply get ahold of her.

Breakfast was too orderly to make any moves. I needed to wait for our rest period in the lounge.

After a good twenty minutes of choking down the bowl of pale sludge, the caretakers opened the doors to the lounge. Our brief rest period had begun, and my time to find Emilia and formulate a plan was at hand.

Firstly, I made sure to keep my eye on Emilia as we were all shepherded into the lounge. Whilst following Emilia, I noticed the spot in which I had toppled over the vase and crashed it, but luckily the caretakers had cleaned it up without much of a second thought. Hopefully, they did not notice the missing candles and matches…

Emilia found herself a comfortable spot in a large, cushioned, chair and sat. She did not do anything but sit and stare bewildered at her surroundings. She would frequently close her eyes, take deep breaths, dart her head around the room, and shift uncomfortably. It was as if she was trying to tune out information but failing.

I began to get closer. It would be unwise to approach her directly, so instead, I discretely sat in a chair across from her, waiting for her to notice me.

After a moment, she did, and once she caught sight of me she did not break our interlocking gaze. We stared at one another for minutes before I made any action. As we looked at one another, I tried to guess what was going on inside her mind. She seemed confused and lost, especially at the sight of me. She murmured to himself quietly, almost as if she was trying to remember something. Her brows would furrow and unfurrow as her head tilted. The only piece of information I could confidently derive from that was that Emilia did not even remember me; Not fully, at the very least.

Aside from her lack of memory, she did at least recognize me and seemed partially lucid. I nodded my head to the entrance of the dormitories, hoping she would understand my body language.

I stood, and so did she. Without further direction, we both began moving to the hallway. The guards seemed to be nonchalant and lazy. Our best bet was to hope they were negligent in their duties, or simply wouldn’t care. We congregated at the entrance. With one look back to the guards, who were far too lazy to even glance our direction, we were off.

It was a small walk to my room, but once we arrived we would hopefully have all the time we needed to sort things out. Although there were few ways to tell time in the asylum, I thought we had to have at least had an hour before the rest period was over and we were tasked with our menial chores.

As we met near the hallway, I made sure to watch for candlelight. A guard was roaming the corridors, but I had noticed him enter as soon as breakfast was over. It would be a very good long while before he reached the end and turned back.

We continued to move forward, and all seemed well. There was no good way to communicate with Emilia, but even in her inebriated state, she was able to simply stick behind me. As well as that, it seemed us new arrivals were not so consumed by the medicine like the others, possibly even having some amount of consciousness left. Perhaps all our years of taking the previous Andha flower prescription built us a tolerance of sorts.

I tried to wrap my head around the situation and our current states, accidentally missing the footsteps ahead...

Just before us, a figure emerged from one of the rooms. We both stopped dead in our tracks as the caretaker swiftly turned and locked the door behind her, crumpled bedsheets in hand. She seemed calm, at least until she saw the two of us, that was.

Emilia and I were both frozen as the woman stomped towards us. We were caught, and if the hospital knew we were conspiring against them, there was no telling what horrible consequences would be brought down on us.

The caretaker stammered. “W-What do you think you are doing!?”

“I… We… Uh…” I thought for excuses, but none came to mind. All hope was fading from my mind. That was until I noticed something peculiar.

The caretaker was not infuriated, but rather her cheeks were flushed red, and she seemed almost embarrassed or offended… That was when I realized that she had assumed we were up to much different things than conspiring against the hospital.

“You both need to return to the lounge. Right. Now.” She said, finally regaining her composure.

Not willing to give up our saving grace, I timidly nodded. Emilia began to back up as I slowly turned, trying to defuse the situation as much as possible.

Luckily, the caretaker allowed us to simply return to the lounge. No doubt the other caretakers would be notified of our sneaking and a keener eye would be kept on the two of us, but at least that was all the trouble we had brought on ourselves.

That plan was far too idiotic. What was I thinking!? I had to concoct something more discrete if I wanted to stay inconspicuous.

We returned to the lounge, immediately separating once the broke past the threshold.

Our rest period only had a good few minutes left. There was no way I could afford to keep going by myself, especially after that caretaker saw us. Within time, I suspected she would realize the dumbed masses would not be capable of sneaking around like that. If she realized I was not taking my medicine and ratted me out, it would only be a matter of minutes until they found me from my description. I needed a fallback. Someone to rely on if I got caught. I needed a partner.

Things only got worse from there, meaning a plan was required. It had to be a damn good one, too. One more slip up, and it would be the strait jacket...