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Sascha was technically awake a while before he showed it. There were too many sensations to note without having to throw sight into the mix. The most prominent of them all was pain. It was dull and hazy with painkillers, but very much present throughout the entirety of Sascha's torso. Every shallow breath caused sharp webs of agony to crackle through his body. At least it let Sascha know he still had his arms and legs.

...That was right. He was trapped in the helmsman station. There had been a problem. There was fire. The memory brought Sascha's attention to his smoke-damaged lungs and he coughed breathily into his oxygen mask. Big mistake. Sascha groaned, as a louder exclamation would have involved more movement. That was the last thing he wanted.

Sascha's eyes eased from their clenched state until he was finally looking up at the ceiling. It was unfamiliar, but clean. He'd been removed from the wreckage. He wasn't dead and haunting the charred lab. This place instead smelled strikingly of antiseptic and latex. It provided a complete enough picture for Sascha to have a good idea of his location without having to move his head--not that he could have if he wanted to.

He continued to stare blearily heavenward.

Sascha hadn't known that Dr. Casini was in the room until she started speaking. Since he hadn't heard her come into the room, he deduced she had been there while he was still unconscious. He was too hazy to be surprised. His eyes slowly shifted in the direction of the doctor's voice. The wheezing in his chest could have been construed as a greeting.

It wasn't obvious from looking at him, but Sascha was listening. There wasn't a lot he hadn't already figured out through being alive and also in a world of pain. Dr. Casini told him he would be fine. He only stared at her silently.

He couldn't reasonably be mad at her. Sascha had acted just as rashly, if not more so. It wasn't like he understood the technology beyond the superficial level that applied to his station. Perhaps that had been his downfall. Even if he had known the full scope of the risks, that wouldn't have prevented Dr. Casini from finding someone else to participate in the test. Sascha found the thought sickening. Then again, he had one hell of a fever.

Dr. Verier always had been the most reasonable person in the room. That had been apparent since night one. Sascha's eyes returned to the ceiling as he further processed the current state of affairs. It was too much to take in with a mind and body as battered as his. The psychic overload had left a needling sensation in his skull reminiscent of a sleeping limb. He took a few experimental breaths to see if the fragile skin of his chest would allowed him to speak.

"What... Next... hhhh... For the tests?"

Sascha regulated his breathing as Dr. Casini flipped through her notes. For once his natural impatience had left him. He blinked slowly up at the doctor.

Next time. There was going to be a next time. Sascha wasn't dead yet, and if he had any say in the matter, he was going to keep it that way. It would take a lot more than hellfire to put Sascha in the ground. He'd proven that much. It was impossible to comprehend coming this far just to give up. For that brief moment in the testing chamber, Sascha had tasted real power--one untouched by trollkind for centuries. It wasn't a loss. Not really.

Sascha's eyes slowly regained their focus. His upward gaze hardened in conviction. He struggled to calm his heart and lungs as his rising lucidity heightened his awareness of the pain. It only spurred him further. He didn't sustain these injuries just to crawl home and live the short, quiet life of some nobody desert lowblood.

Sascha locked eyes with Dr. Casini, though he didn't dare move his head. His resolve rang clear. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

This was twice now that the work of Baista Solkov had threatened to destroy Sascha. When the night came that Sascha would meet Solkov in the afterlife, he was going to make sure he did so with the goods to stick it to that ******** class="quote">

Hivestuck

fin~