Chương 48: Impulse

'Why am I out here?' June's face was covered with a shirt; his golden eyes shone through the thin fabric as the wind and rain violently pelted his face. June stood on top of a car that was being weightlessly pulled along by the aggressive currents. In the distance, a hospital stood with a plume of smoke rising from it. A rescue helicopter had been overturned by the winds and crashed through the roof of the tall building.

'God, why am I such an idiot?' The studio was a three-story building; the first floor was just the lobby and the receptionist table, the second floor was purely a green room for photoshoots, and the third floor was Mortimer's primary residence, not to mention the guest room. When June woke up from his heavenly dream, every device in his room was blaring, and a natural disaster was happening. June turned on the TV to see the live footage from a rescue helicopter flying above a hospital.

The hospital was filling up with water, but the damage on the main floor wasn't as bad as the damage in the basement area, which had completely filled up. To make matters worse, the basement was where the primary stores of medical supplies were kept; the hospital had managed until now just using the ones they were able to scrounge from the main to upper floors. The purpose of the rescue helicopter wasn't to evacuate people; there were hundreds in the hospital after all.

The rescue helicopter was carrying supplies to replace the ones that had been lost in the basement. But the wind suddenly picked up, and it caused the helicopter to overturn and crash on the roof. Some of the news crew survived, but the pilots and the supplies ended up exploding due to a puncture in the helicopter's fuel line. The death toll was already in the hundreds; more would die if they didn't get those supplies. Mortimer also seemed to have disappeared somewhere, too.

Before June realized it, he was hitching a ride on flotsam, jumping from vehicle to vehicle, occasionally scaling buildings, trees, and telephone poles, which were often uprooted, bent, or broken; cars were pushed into piles, and the occasional unlucky soul could be seen lifelessly carried away by the current. June was regretting going outside, but he was too far gone and was too close to the hospital already. He was drenched, cold, and his muscles were burning.

He occasionally jumped into the water to fish out a person or creature carried away by the current, and swimming against the current was incredibly taxing. June knew how to float, he knew how to move, but he truly didn't know how to swim properly. The only reason he was capable of even acting was due to his Dreamer physique, and even then, he was pushing his limits.

'Damn impulse' He let out an audible yell, a groan of extreme dissatisfaction. The shirt he was wearing as a mask was falling apart, he had healed a couple of cuts and scrapes, and he had survived almost being crushed by oncoming debris pushed towards him while he swam against the current. June had long started singing the only song he knew.

He was desperate, he wanted to go home, he wanted to be held, he had saved a good dozen people, and had even saved several raccoons and squirrels as well, he had done enough, more than enough, and despite all of that, despite what his mind told him, he pushed his way through the storm to the hospital. In cases where he needed to climb a fully vertical wall, he turned his revenant bracelet into a pick and used it to make handholds.

Every time he swung his pick, he caught a glimpse of Lilia's bracelet with its beautiful blue hue, and it reminded him of why he needed to survive.

June finally made it to the hospital, and he stood outside in knee-deep water; luckily, the hospital was on a hill, but even then, the water had climbed high enough to spill through its sliding doors. The shirt he used as a mask had begun to fall off; it did well holding on this long, but unlike his body, it didn't repair itself when it got torn or battered. June tore the shirt off his face and changed the bracelet into a full face covering. It was a smooth mask with only one eyehole to see out of.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. June walked into the hospital, his clothes were tattered and bloodied, not everyone he saved from the rushing water survived, and not everyone who died had a pretty death. He had seen too much tonight. Surprisingly, no one paid attention to his battered form; he would have felt satisfied about it if not for the flood of people on stretchers, beds, and blankets, and some people were even lying on their jackets.

Some people seemed to be resting peacefully on the floor; water rushed over their faces, and they didn't react. They were already dead. The hospital was working on backup power, but during a short lull in it, people dropped like flies. June had been to this hospital a couple of times in his life; in fact, he was pretty sure he was even born here.

At some point, he stopped visiting his family when they went to the hospital for one reason or another, but oddly enough, despite not going there for a long time, he remembered studying the maps plastered on walls to stave off his boredom. June remembered why he, no, his body had forced him to come here. The basement was flooded. The hospital was running out of supplies. The supplies were in the basement. June read a map and navigated his way to the basement stairwell; the elevators had long stopped working.

In front of the stairwell door stood two doctors and one man in a high-visibility jacket. One of the doctors had a clipboard; June assumed it had a list of sorts. Both doctors were yelling at the man in a high-visibility jacket. June walked up to the doctor with the clipboard and tried to peer over her shoulder to see what was written on the clipboard. He was too short. One of the arguing doctors stopped arguing and looked at June standing behind his coworker's back.

"What's with the mask? It's not Halloween, kid, piss off." June made eye contact with the man; at least one of his visible eyes did"I heard the basement was flooded. I have experience cave diving without gear." A stupid lie, but in this scenario, it gave the doctor food for thought. If June was truly capable of doing something as risky as cave diving without gear, he would be just insane enough and just the right person to go and collect the needed supplies.

People were actively dying as the doctor considered him; the doctor had to make a call. Risk one man who volunteered, or let hundreds of patients die. The nurse who had the clipboard in her hand made the decision and showed June the clipboard.

'Chicken scratch'"I can't read the doctor's handwriting, just tell me what and where, and I'll drag the whole shelf back if I have to." The man in the high-visibility jacket replied before the doctor.

"The hospital has two floors of basement, the first basement level contains things like bandages and medicines that don't need to be put in cold storage, and the second floor… don't bother." The man grabbed a piece of paper and a plastic bag. He wrote a list of things down in a readable writing style and put it in a plastic bag. June knew that this man was preparing to go down himself.

'Lucky Bastard' June plucked the bag from the man's hand, opened the door, and walked into the floor of water that had evened out on the stair line. If he sat and looked at his impending task, he would have run away, rightfully so; this wasn't something he truly had to do after all. June took a deep breath as he submerged; he had expanded his lungs at the cost of discarding a couple of organs that weren't needed for the task. At this moment, he was the most suited human for this task, and he hated being so.

June pushed off the walls and used the staircase railings to propel himself deeper. He was scared. When he made it to the floor, everything assaulted him at once. It was dark, and it was cold. The only lights in the lonely halls were the flashing red ones that were powered purely by the generator. His eyes felt warm; he couldn't tell if he hit a warm spot or if he was starting to cry. Regardless of his tear duct's actions, he forced his body to swim further in.

A body of someone clutching a bag with pills in it floated around in the hallway. June, for some reason, felt an indescribable fear building in him, but kept swimming. The first spot he needed to hit was a bandage storage; luckily, it was near the stairwell that led down, so he didn't need to go far. He was able to hold his breath for well over thirty minutes, maybe even longer.

The only reason he felt so scared was because of how suddenly he had thrown himself into this; this was his first time doing something like this, especially underwater. The red lights scared him; the floating body reminded him of his own mortality. He just needed to hold his breath, but everything around him made him want to gasp or weep; it would only take a single mistake to possibly kill him despite his superhuman form. He was truly scared.

'Why am I doing this?' June had to jimmy the door open, but after that, he was able to safely secure the bandages in a large medical trash bag he found. He swam by the body, grabbing it on the way out, too. June resurfaced out of the water, let out a heaving gasp, and started coughing up some water he swallowed on the way up through the staircase. He pulled the bag up onto the floor and then dragged the body up and leaned it against the wall.

He exited with the bag in tow and dropped it on the ground in front of the speechless doctors.

"What's next?"