Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 452. Meeting again

Henry’s POV

I appeared back home in the green room, and not caring about either the staff sergeants’ or the doctors’ reactions, I instantly came to Kenny’s side, pulling down the mask covering my lower face.

The kid sat up and stared at me while I felt for Kenny’s forehead.

Still a high temperature, but that somehow put me at ease.

A high temperature was much, MUCH better than finding him here lying cold.

The doctor started to say something about Kenny being alright, but I didn’t listen; instead, I cautiously lifted his upper body up to let him lean against me, careful not to disturb the IV.

Kenny didn’t wake up, and while I held onto him and kissed the crown of his head, finally having him within reach again, I found the laptop not far away on a stool and the phone still positioned on another. The video call had ended, probably the moment I teleported.

"Get out." I hummed to the two older men who still hadn’t left, while I started to softly squeeze my beloved in the hopes he would wake up by himself.

The doctor hurried away, while the staff sergeant looked at me with a conflicted expression.

"I didn’t have the chance to transmit the last message he had."

My eyes snapped to him, forcing him to hurry the fuck up.

"He said, ’I thought of him, and it was alright again,’" he said before taking another look at the laptop screen before instantly leaving the room empty-handed.

I felt breathless when imagining Kenny saying the words himself and squeezed him again, overflowing with feelings that were too intense for me to handle.

"Kenny, my love, wake up." I shook him softly before reaching around him and cupping his cheek, softly patting it.

"I am sorry, but you have to wake up." My eyes flitted to the screen, where I saw Mrs. Howard, Ethan, and Judge Kroh leaving the warehouse.

And where the rat corpses I pulled out were easily spotted.

"Kenny, wake up, just for a moment; wake up, my love." I cradled him back and forth, and seeing his eyebrows furrowing, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up..."

"Who is the smartest~?" I hummed.

"Who is the strongest~?"

"Who is the most handsome~?"

Ren laughed, covering his mouth while pointing at Kenny.

I chuckled and nodded at him.

"That’s right—who else could it beeee? Other than the best, the mightiest Kenillillyyy~"

Finally, he really stirred.

"Hmm?" He asked, half-dazed.

"Take the rats back, my love; send them back into the past." I spoke directly into his ear.

"...Really?" He didn’t open his eyes but seemed confused.

"Yes, it’s done. Put them back; the ’present’ is sick of accommodating them."

I stared at the screen.

"Then they are gone..." he mumbled, as if to make absolutely sure that I knew about the consequences.

"I know. If you put them back, you can sleep some more."

Kenny hummed, and while I stared at the screen, I saw the rats on the ground disappear, which meant that the ones in the shelves, tucked away from the camera’s eyes, were gone as well.

I breathed a sigh of relief and felt Kenny’s pulse becoming stronger and steadier than before, and his temperature also seemed lower than it was before.

Another breath of relief.

"Ren, put the light out, and light the small one." I motioned to my bedside, which he was currently occupying.

The kid promptly followed the instructions, and instead of the glaring ceiling light, the warm lighting Kenny had demanded the last time he had a fever provided a comfortable atmosphere.

I breathed in his scent and leaned against the wall, unable to let go of him.

He was dead asleep almost instantly.

"I am also alright when—no."

Placing my head on top of his, I closed my eyes.

"That’s wrong. Every time I think of you, I notice how absolutely not alright I am."

The fake mantra loses its power when confronted with him.

So it was when I choked him the first time we were confronting each other, when he told his friends to let me go, and when he threw the towel at me in the club, and so it was when I saw him cry while reading my memory.

Every mask I try to put on shatters the moment I face him, leaving only these overwhelming emotions behind.

"You mess with my head and feelings so much; how can I be alright?" I whispered.

"However, more than alright, I am happy instead." All these memories we made together replayed before my eyes, and I felt like crying and laughing all at once.

I cradled him slowly and softly and listened to his deep breaths.

It had become dark after spending the whole day with senseless counting and useless jabs, with waiting for messages and contemplating murder.

I hummed a low tune, first from the little song from before, then drifting into something absolutely unmelodic, while the kid fell asleep.

What felt like minutes stretched to a few hours, and meanwhile, Mrs. Howard and Ethan had made it back and gone to sleep after updating the staff sergeant and getting updated by him, asking about Kenny’s health after hearing that he had vomited blood.

Mrs. Howard, also alarmed, asked the staff sergeant what happened with it, probably because of the memory of me telling her how powerful his blood was and that every trace had to be destroyed when he returned from fighting the giant.

The staff sergeant hemmed and hawed, shifting and trying to change the topic until Mrs. Howard angrily stomped away.

She had stopped at one point in front of our door but didn’t knock or enter, instead going to sleep after speaking a few more words with the doctor.

Now in the dead of night, with the small light beside the mattress and everyone besides me sleeping, it was absolutely silent.

Still, there were always soft breaths, strong heartbeats, and the wind whispering with swaying leaves, grass, and corn answering.

While listening, I nearly dozed off as well, though it was impossible to really fall asleep.

Even without thinking about anything, I felt my thoughts in a loud disarray from everything that happened today—but that wasn’t all; there was still a meeting I had to attend.

Putting together Kenny’s first nonsensical message with what the staff sergeant had later conveyed, I could piece together part of what had happened.

Kenny had entered another body successfully, and wherever the body was brought to, it was a place where ’our’ Dr. Lawrence was.

She had seen his red eyes—and with that, she had discovered him using another body, and they said they would meet tonight, and Kenny... to my absolute annoyance, seemed to have not only found that to be a good idea but also wanted to go himself.

And again: Absolutely not.

Even without knowing the place she was in, I had her full name, and like Kenny, who used feelings or memories as anchor points of time and space, I could use names in the same way to teleport.

I finally moved my stiff muscles and slowly slipped out from behind Kenny, putting him back into a comfortable position again.

I took Kenny’s phone from the chair and went to the other side of the mattress, waking Ren.

"When I call, you have to take it, do you understand? You know how it is done?" I ignored the paper rustling under his dark blue pajamas and asked him while he sleepily rubbed his eyes.

He instantly lit up and nodded strongly, taking over the phone with both hands, as if he had received a mission of absolute importance.

Indeed—seeing how Kenny had proved himself needing to be watched with a baby cam, I naturally had to accommodate him.

"It’s a video call; just put the phone back on the chair so that I can have a good look at you two, alright?"

The kid again nodded very enthusiastically.

I patted his head and went back to Kenny’s side, where I crouched down again to peck his face a few times.

"I am right back... you baby." Taking another deep breath from the crook of his neck, I made sure that he was covered with the blanket before nodding at Ren and then teleporting inside the ’attic.’

There, I took a new gun belt and two guns with silencers—all having their numbers filed off.

Here I come, Dr. Cecile Lawrence.

Putting the mask back on, I let the acid spread through my body. I felt my body disperse in no time, felt myself fly, and assembled back just as fast inside a room.

The moment I was put together again, I put a crystalline shield around me in case there were any attackers.

But it really was ’just’ Dr. Lawrence, sitting on a bed and straightening up with a tremble when she saw me.

"Dr. Lawrence." I smiled, and after listening in, not hearing any threat near, and after glancing around the room and not seeing any cameras, I let the shield disappear.

"Henry..." she said, trying to mask her nervousness.

"Thank you for coming."

I spotted a chair in the corner of the room and sat down while I pulled my phone out and asked a question I was dying to get an answer to.

"How did Kenny’s blood get into the red-eyed tiger?"

What had been a suspicion at first had long been confirmed by the fact that Kenny could enter the tiger’s body.

"You denied any knowledge about that topic." I saw her trembling softly again.

I hit video call while I waited for her answer.

The call cannot be connected. It seemed this ’base’ didn’t let people call the outside.

TSK.

Angrier than before, I observe my surroundings instead, STILL WAITING.

There was a soft carpet on the floor with a few small square imprints, telling that the single bed that was now across from me—pushed against a wall—had been moved not long ago.

A shelf on the left side, full of books and some clutter; a desk right beside my chair with documents and a closed laptop.

No windows, just a brick floor and brick walls that seemed to be glazed with a see-through material.

"...I didn’t know back when I told you, but I found out later... they—Dr. Thompson and his assistant—not only injected his blood into people after taking it but also into animals: two mice, two apes, and one tiger cub. I don’t know where they received their animals from, but they hurriedly organized them after..."

"After you gave your permission for them to take his blood," I finished for her, putting my phone away after another try and propping my head sideways against my fist.

I looked at her expressionlessly.

She clammed up, completely silent, before curtly nodding, lowering her head in regret, eventually saying,

"The mice and apes were put down; I don’t know the reason. Only the tiger cub was left, probably because of the change of his eye color... When the training in the center intensified with the participants facing real ferocious animals, a clerk caring for the tiger underground asked why the tiger wasn’t used. That’s how I first heard of the tiger."

"Oh? So the tiger injected with the STOLEN blood was raised underground? Was it near the DMT testing? I have seen the glass cells in which people were locked in." In Kenny’s vision.

Her head raised so abruptly that she could have pulled a muscle there.

"A blonde woman, with a drawn mole on her chin, supervised this experiment with the ’volunteers.’ Now she has dyed her hair black," I sneered.

"My cousin, Elena..." Dr. Lawrence said breathlessly.

I internally rolled my eyes at the name starting with an ’E’ again.

"They were put into glass cells? They were forced?... Maybe to protect others and themselves because of the hallucinogenic components in DMT..." She muttered before looking at me as if wanting me to verify the excuse she came up with.

"Nope," I slowly shook my head and saw her nearly break down, massaging the root of her nose—crestfallen.

"So..." I mused.

"What can I do for you? Why arrange a secret meeting in the middle of the night with the one whose blood you so brazenly stole?"

I repeated, correcting myself,

"What can we do for you?"

Just that you all won’t even get a glimpse of my Kenny.