Late afternoon, nearing evening, "Tap," Dylan landed in the courtyard of an abandoned hospital that had been vacant for a long ti. He retracted his glider.
"Is the person here, KATS?" Dylan asked in his head, staring at the dilapidated and slightly terrifying hospital building.
[That is correct, sir.]
"Okay... let’s go inside," Dylan replied.
[Understood, sir. Use your All Seeing Eye skill.]
Dylan stepped up to the building’s entrance, where the door was tightly chained and padlocked, making it impossible to open. "Kling," using his new Pick Lock skill, he opened the padlock and the chain. He pushed open the glass door, which was covered in paint, and stepped inside. "Gasp," Dylan imdiately jumped back, startled by the scene inside the hospital lobby.
The place was surprisingly crowded, not with people, but with ghosts. They looked like colorless, holographic human figures when viewed using his eye skill. There were no ghosts of nurses, security guards, or hospital staff visible; instead, almost all of them were patient ghosts, floating around without legs, their faces blank and expressionless.
Although they looked young and thin, they were still wearing hospital gowns and pushing IV poles with no bases. When looked at closely, it was quite terrifying, even though they weren’t doing anything except walking around.
"O-oi... KATS, why can I see ghosts now?" Dylan stamred in his head, a little frightened.
[The All Seeing Eye is not just for seeing through objects; the skill can be used to see in the dark, to see sothing very small like a microscope, and to see the realm beyond the realm of life.]
"Grr... no wonder it’s called the All Seeing Eye," Dylan muttered.
[Let’s go inside, sir. The person we are looking for is on the third floor.]
Moving slowly and cautiously to avoid bumping into the ghosts, Dylan stepped further inside. He saw the polyclinic rooms, filled with patient ghosts waiting their turn to enter. He also passed the post-delivery nursery, where several baby ghosts appeared to be sleeping soundly in the dilapidated and broken cribs. The hairs on the back of Dylan’s neck began to stand up. His eyes were fixed on the holographic map that showed his target location.
Ignoring the ghosts around him, he walked up the stairs, avoiding the debris and garbage scattered everywhere. He also saw a lot of food wrappers, cigarette or weed butts, convenience store plastic bags, and even used condoms. He also saw several empty paint cans, mixed with beer and soda cans, and then he looked at the hospital walls and realized that a lot of random graffiti was drawn there.
"Looks like a lot of people co here... this trash is fairly recent," Dylan said.
[That is correct. Perhaps teenagers or gang mbers enter here just to pass the ti and have fun. Let’s keep moving, master.]
"It must be nice not to be able to see ghosts. They don’t know that what they’re doing is being stared at by a bunch of ghosts," Dylan mumbled, carefully climbing the stairs.
[You could also choose not to see the ghosts, sir, but then it would be dark and you wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.]
"Grrr... next ti you create a skill, please separate the functions clearly. Don’t lump them together like this," Dylan replied.
Dylan kept walking until he finally reached the third floor, which was a ward for inpatient rooms and special patient rooms. Dylan saw many ghosts passing back and forth in front of him.
He kept walking, ignoring them, and focusing only on his holographic map. When he reached the end of the hall, Dylan turned left. The left hallway was completely deserted and only had three room doors. It seed that this hallway was reserved for special patients in intensive care.
Dylan glanced at the map and saw that the target was located at one of the three doors in the hallway: the middle door. He slowly walked forward and took a knife from his dinsional storage as a precaution. "Click," when he reached the end of the hallway,
Dylan gripped the doorknob and opened it. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Dylan’s eyes widened because he saw a ruined room with a broken window, a rusted bed with a yellowed mattress, a disgusting destroyed pillow, and a foul odor that attacked his nose, forcing him to cover it.
But what startled Dylan was seeing a smartphone, the sa brand as the one he bought for himself and his family, turned on. Slowly, Dylan approached the smartphone on the bed. He saw the screen was cracked but lit up with the battery at 1%. Just as Dylan reached out to pick up the smartphone, the email application suddenly opened, then an empty email opened and started typing by itself using the keyboard:
"Hello,"
"Huh," Dylan imdiately backed up, startled to see the text appear on the smartphone screen, and instantly raised his knife. He was even more shocked when he saw the smartphone stand up on its own on the bed, with the screen facing him.
"I apologize... I sent emails to the new registered emails on this specific smartphone type and brand network so that one of you would co to get out of here," said the text on the smartphone screen.
"But why did those emails specifically attack the emotional state that would make my family sad and angry?" Dylan mumbled.
"Because if I didn’t do that... I wouldn’t be taken seriously... I’m glad you ca here. I have absolutely no bad intentions. Please forgive ... I’m just lonely and want to get out of here. I’m tired of being hospitalized," replied the text on the screen.
"Who exactly are you?" Dylan asked.
Suddenly, the ghost of a 10-year-old boy, wearing a hospital gown, with a bald head covered by a knit cap, and a very pale, thin face, appeared. His body was translucent and erged from inside the smartphone standing on the bed. Then Dylan saw the ghost boy type sothing on the smartphone, and text appeared:
"My na is Ryan. I’ve always been in this room because I was treated here. I had leukemia, and I don’t rember anything, but now it’s dark here, and I’m alone... no nurses co to check on anymore... Mom and Dad never co anymore... my older sister never cos anymore... I was abandoned. A little while ago, soone was living here... I don’t know who, but he always slept in this room... but then he left too," Ryan said.
Dylan was stunned, reading the text on the smartphone. Then he stared at Ryan, who seed to be looking back at him with wide, sad eyes. Dylan looked around him. He suddenly noticed a mattress that looked new but very dirty in the corner of the room, a backpack, and a broken portable lamp.
"These things... they probably belong to the holess person who was living here," Dylan muttered in his head.
[That is correct, sir. Perhaps he was here but couldn’t see Ryan. And for Ryan, that person was keeping him company. But being holess, there’s a chance sothing happened to him, and he didn’t return, which made Ryan sad.]
"Hmm... right, that could be it," Dylan muttered.
Then Dylan returned to the bed and examined the smartphone. It looked like the smartphone might actually belong to the holess person who lived there, as there was also a charger near the phone on the bed. "Bwuuung," a holographic screen appeared in front of Dylan’s face. He read the text on the screen:
[Do you wish to help Ryan? [Yes] [No]]
Dylan looked once more at Ryan, who was still sitting on the bed without legs and gazing at him with a hopeful face that seed to say, "Please don’t go and leave ."
"Alright, I’ll help you," Dylan said, looking at Ryan.
Ryan’s face imdiately brightened, and he quickly and eagerly typed on the smartphone screen:
"Thank you," the text read.
Dylan pressed Yes on his holographic screen. Suddenly, Ryan’s entire body was enveloped in a bright light. Ryan, now smiling, looked right and left at the light swirling around him. Then Ryan looked at Dylan, as if to say thank you one last ti. Suddenly, "Pooof," Ryan vanished, and "Pluk," the smartphone fell onto the bed, dead.
[He now has a new family, which is us.]
"Huh... he didn’t go to heaven?" Dylan asked.
[He didn’t want to. He wanted to co with us.]
"Well, alright then. Let’s go ho," Dylan replied.
Dylan walked to the window, jumped out, and used his glider to fly high into the sky. anwhile, inside Dylan’s head, unheard by Dylan:
"Thank you, Master KATS," Ryan said.
[You’re welco. From now on, you are our servant and guardian ghost. You can use all kinds of electronics, right?]
"Yes, Master. While I was hospitalized, I always played gas and learned a lot about the outside world using smartphones and tablets," Ryan replied.
[Good. I’ll hand over the electronic matters in the house to you. We will treat you as an AI who protects the house and operates all the electronics just by voice command.]
"Wow... thank you, Master. I’m very happy and ready to work. The most important thing for is that I’m not lonely anymore. Thank you again," Ryan replied cheerfully.
================================
KATS’ secret quest :
Family of thirteen (9/13)
Ghost servant (1/5)
Red Blood’s pieces (0/5)
================================
After returning ho, Dylan imdiately introduced Ryan to the others. He gathered everyone in the living room of the house and turned on the television.
"Hello everyone, my na is Ryan," Ryan said, using text on the television.
"Blugh," Maya imdiately went limp and fainted, while Ellie, Amy, and Lena still couldn’t believe it when they realized Ryan was a ghost. Aaron and Clara seed fine, but Fiona and Iris imdiately started talking to Ryan. Dylan quickly helped Maya and carried her to her room in the house, while the others continued to talk to Ryan.
Reviews
All reviews (0)