NATHAN CROSS STRIKE BACK..

Chapter 7

He looked at his hands or the idea of his hands, since he had no body here and tried to count what had just landed in his mind.

Ancient medical knowledge that would have taken a lifetime to study.

Acupuncture techniques that no modern practitioner had ever seen.

Herb formulas for medicines that did not exist in any current database.

Martial arts so advanced they bordered on something beyond physical.

And the ability to feel spiritual energy moving through him like a second circulatory system.

“How? How is this possible? Am I dead? Is this what happens when someone die? Your brain just downloads everything it never knew?”

He tried to move in the darkness.

He could not.

Not because something was stopping him. Because he was empty. All the energy that had been moving through him all that warmth, all that current had been used up in the d******d. Every drop of it spent in absorbing what had just been placed inside him.

He was completely drained.

“I need energy,” he thought. It was instinct more than reasoning. 

“I need to build up my physical strength. I need to get stronger. Strong enough to hold all of this properly. Strong enough to actually use it.”

“If I can feel all of this in here if this is real  then when I wake up I need to be stronger. I need to build myself up. Because whatever just happened to me whatever this is — it needs a body strong enough to carry it.”

Then the darkness pressed in, the last of the energy faded completely.

And Nathan Cross regain consciousness.

The first thing he felt was the ceiling.

White. Flat. The particular shade of white that existed only in hospitals and nowhere else in the world.

He stared at it.

“Hospital.”

He turned his head slowly and took in the room. Private room. Clean. A monitor beside the bed with soft steady beeping. A drip line running into his left arm. Oxygen sensor on his finger. The smell of antiseptic and recycled air.

A window showing early morning sky, pale gray and just beginning to lighten.

He was alive.

He was in a hospital bed and he was alive.

He sat up.

“Sir.” A nurse appeared from the corner of the room immediately, moving fast, her hands coming up. “Sir, please do not move. You need to stay still.”

He looked at her. Young. Professional. Genuinely concerned.

“I am fine,” he said. His voice came out stronger than he expected.

“Sir, with respect, you are not fine,” she said firmly. 

“You were brought in last night in very serious condition. The doctor needs to assess you before you do anything. Please lie back down.”

He looked at his arms.

No bruising. He pressed his fingers against his ribs no pain. He moved his left leg experimentally under the sheet.

No pain.

He pulled the sheet back and looked at his left leg. The leg that Serena had broken with a baseball bat in front of him while two men held him down. 

It was straight. Normal. Perfect.

At that moment he looked at it for a long moment.

“Sir, I am serious, please—”

“My leg,” he said quietly. 

“When I came in. Was it broken?”

The nurse hesitated. 

“When you arrived your vital signs were very low. You were unconscious. But physically—” She checked her tablet quickly. 

“The attending physician noted that aside from exhaustion and low blood pressure there were no significant physical injuries. Some fading bruising on the face. Nothing structural.”

Immediately Nathan stared at her.

He could remember Serena had broken his leg.

He had heard it crack. He had screamed. He had seen it bent the wrong way.

And now it was fine.

He pressed his hand to his chest. The mark was still there. Still warm. Quiet now — barely a pulse compared to the roaring heat of the night before. But present. Still working at something.

He remembered the garbage yard. Standing up on a broken leg and feeling nothing. Walking to the fence. The energy carrying him when his body could not carry itself.

He remembered the d******d in the darkness.

"Could it be that what I saw was not a dream?"

The thought arrived slowly and then hit very hard.

"Everything in that darkness. All of that knowledge. The herbs. The acupuncture. The martial techniques. The spiritual energy moving through me like a second bloodstream."

He could still feel it. Faint now — almost nothing, like a fire burned down to the last coal but there. The pathways the ancient knowledge had mapped out. The meridians running through his body. The energy moving through them slowly as his body rebuilt what the night had cost it.

"How is that possible? How is any of this possible?"

“Sir.” The nurse stepped closer. 

“I really must insist. The doctor needs to clear you before—”

“I appreciate that,” Nathan said. He was already pulling the drip line out of his arm carefully. 

“But I am okay. I need to leave.”

“Sir—”

“I am fine.” He said it gently. He removed the oxygen sensor from his finger. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

He stood up straight with no support and no pain.