Chapter 12

The sudden development of his voice rather bothered him, it wasn't that he particularly minded having the ability to speak, but it hurt his jaw to speak and it felt alittle uncomfortable to speak "you know at this point I shouldn't even be surprised that you didn't even need to learn the language" 96 ignored the sarcasm since he had not needed to learn what words even meant, since the voice had appeared he had just understood, he should have found that strange but he didn't really care. The idea of language made him remember the language that those strange people had been using, he began muttering the sounds that he had heard but the crystal began to react, so naturally he kept going out of curiosity "um you should probably stop doing that now, I know you have a steel trap for a brain but that dosen't mean that you should start saying everything that you hear" 96 sighed and stopped, he could deal with that later for now he thought that it might be nice to see what his hand was able to do, he picked up one of the bones from the snake he had eaten that he had hidden in the shadows of the fire. The bone was emidiatly swallowed up upon contact, he kept feeding the hand bones until he ran out and then he moved onto scales, once he had finished with that he sat back and began focusing on one item he had absorbed, a small scale slid to the surface of his hand, focusing on it he was able to make it fade back into his hand. "what do you make of it voice?" he said it more to make conversation than anything else, the voice came over and watched as he again brought out the scale and returned it, and then without warning the voice jumped forward and was instantly swallowed by the blackness. For a second 96 freaked out, seeing the voice disappear made him lose the ability to think rationally, he sat there for several seconds in stunned silence before the voice poked its head out of the darkness and gingerly hopped out like nothing had happened "what's with the shocked expression? Did you think that I might be gone for good?" 96 frowned "what was I supposed to think with you pulling something like that? plus do you know how weird it is to reserve that much information at once?" the voice shrugged, he didn't seem to really think it was that big of a deal "the thing we need to learn from this is that we need to find a way to keep you from absorbing things non stop" it had a point but 96 also knew that he was trying to change the subject, he desided that he should just be glad that the voice was safe, if it wanted to tell him its reasons then he could be sure that it would.

For the rest of the day he and the voice tried to find a way to stop the automatic absorption, and learned that if he focused on keeping the energy in his hand low enough that he wouldn't absorb the surroundings, it was hard for 96 to focus the energy going into his hand but by the end of the day he was fairly comfortable with keeping it closed, the voice shook its head, 96 knew it bothered it that he was picking things up so quickly, "you need to focus on hiding that part of yourself, or who knows what the nut jobs at this place might do" 96 fully agreed with this judgment, especially since he wanted to keep his head low anyway.

At the end of the day 96 changed his form back into the snake, he found that he rather enjoyed being a snake, for one thing he didn't have to worry about his hand or teeth, plus as a snake he could move much more freely. The two of them made their way to the next room to see how the other children were doing which was not very well. Most of the children were just plain unconscious, and those who weren't were clawing at the stones in their heads as the mutations were slowly but surely taking over the last of their sanity. It was a sad sight but one that 96 had rather expected, after all they had reacted similarly when it had been just alittle of the blue stuff so it stood to reason that they would be in a rather considerably larger amount of pain, and not everyone had a voice to help them threw difficult situations like this one. While they were traveling through they split up to cover more ground since the voice could more quickly than he could, and even more so since he had gone into 96's hand. After traveling alone for a bit 96 came to the room were the three eyed child was, the child seemed to be in a considerable amount of pain so he slithered over to see if there was any way that he could help, the child had a black crystal right below its third eye and its skin was almost completely black, 96 couldn't tell it the people in charge of this experiment were nasty or just plain stupid. What ever the case 96 decided that now would be a good time to test out the capabilities of his hand, and his control over it. He changed back into his human form and placed his left hand on the crystal, he Invisioned the blackness that he hand felt when he had a dark crystal in his forehead and slowly the blackness began to be be pulled into his hand. When he had finished the extraction he felt like he would fall asleep at any moment. The child's breath became steady and 96 changed back into the snake before the child had time to open its eyes. 96 did not really get why he wanted to help this child, he literally had nothing to gain, but who knew maybe him helping now might be beneficial in some unknown way in the future. He desided not to dwell on it for now, as he was going to the next room the voice came running threw "We have to get back they are having a night inspection" 96 knew that he could not make back in time in his current form if only he were smaller, and then he remembered he had eaten several rats when he had first turned into a snake, he focused on the form and rapidly changed until he looked identical to the voice. The two of them made it back to the room before their room was reached for inspection so 96 changed back and got into his basket, exhaustion came over him like a wave and he fell asleep hoping that his hand would not act up while he was asleep but things don't always happen how one wants them to.