I follow Daisy like a duckling as she leads me down the hall. I’m in such a state of confusion I think I’d probably follow her anywhere at this point. We arrive at the clinic and find the door torn off the hinges.

“What the hell? What, or who, happened to this place?” Daisy exclaims, a confused expression on her face.

I just shake my head in response, wondering that myself.

Daisy walks inside first and carefully lays the guy down on a nearby bench. I follow her closely, gazing around me at the ransacked inside. It almost looks abandoned, as if this sector was evacuated and the people left behind went bat-shit crazy. But that makes no sense, why would they be evacuated? This is the lowest layer, so it’s not like it was discovered by the Surfers. Only some type of contamination-wait. The crazy guy. My hallucinations. Is there a contamination? But we’re perfectly fine, or at least seem to be, and I had the first hallucination on layer 4. What’s really going on here?

Shaking off these thoughts to prevent the oncoming panic, I look around for a first aid kit as Daisy keeps the now-conscious guy’s hands from doing even more damage, though I’m not sure if that’s even possible at this point. I start exploring the bare cupboards in the room we’re in, looking for anything that might help.

“No…no…no…. dammit!” I don’t even know this dude, yet I’m getting upset from not finding anything that can help him. Why am I suddenly caring about complete strangers? Sighing, I head towards a door to my right, hoping to find something in that room to wrap his eyes with and possibly restrain him from tearing them off. Opening the door, I see this room looks a little less devastated, so maybe there’s something I can use in here. I smile when I see the first cupboard is stuffed with bandages and tape. Bingo.

I grab as much stuff as I can hold and rush back to the main room, in which I see Daisy struggling to keep his hands down. It seems that he’s gained more energy back and is putting up a fight. She gives me a relieved smile as soon as she sees my cargo, and asks, “Could you first use the tape to bind his hands? I really can’t hold him for much longer, and I don’t think bandages will hold.”

“Sure.” I walk over while unwrapping the end of the tape, then awkwardly reach around her arms to reach his hands. After wrapping the tape around a couple of times, I lean down and nick the tape with my teeth and pat the edge down, feeling satisfied with my work. Breathing out a sigh of relief, I turn my head to tell Daisy that it’s all done, and find her face right next to mine. We both freeze for a second, then jump when the guy starts mumbling gibberish in another language. Backing away after a pause, we look at the guy, look at each other, and immediately swivel our heads back to the guy after our eyes meet.

After bandaging the guy’s eyes, we take a picture of a map on a wall of the clinic showing directions to the MAG, so we can find our way there and take a car to the medical sector. In addition to containing everything health related, the police are based there. If my parents are anywhere on this layer, we could ask the police to keep on the lookout for them. Wait, why didn’t we do that with the police on layer 4? Dammit, Daisy, why did you have to be so eager to head to another layer? Well, what’s done is done, and we can just tell them once we go back up. But first, we need to finish what we came here to do, and tell the police on this layer about Mr. Scratchy and the looted emergency clinic.

We head over to the station and, relaxing on the plush seats, wait for the next car. I lie down and close my eyes, but feeling hair brush against my face I snap them open to find Daisy leaning over me Spiderman-style. I try to keep my cool, but when she starts lowering her head even more I snap.

“Dude, what the fuck?” No reaction from her. I continue lying there, and she remains right where she is. I stare into her eyes, and see she has pretty big pupils, almost like she’s high. She leans down a little more, then suddenly drops onto me, hitting my nose with her forehead.

“Again, dude, what the fuck?” I shove her away from me and she rolls off the bench, landing like a dead weight, face-down and unmoving. Oh no. I jump down and turn her around to find that she stopped breathing and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Is she having a seizure? I don’t remember her ever having seizures when we were kids. Is this a new thing? What do I do? I’m not first-aid trained, how do I take care of this? I drag her back up onto the bench and put her head in my lap, slapping her cheeks.

“Daisy, are you ok? Daisy?” I’m full-on panicking now. The train will be here any minute, and she’s passed out. I never exercise, and she’s a full head taller than me, so either I’ll try dragging her by her legs to the train or wait until she wakes up. I shake her shoulders, hoping that she’ll regain consciousness and I won’t have to perform CPR. Luckily, her eyes roll back to normal and she takes a huge gasping breath. She looks dazed and frightened for a second, then looks up at me, eyes widening, and screeches like a banshee.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!”

“Holy shit, quite down!” I shout over her while covering my ears, trying to spare my hearing, but when she continues screaming I release one of my ears to cover her mouth with my hand. But, Daisy being Daisy, licks my hand and continues screaming after I pull my hand away in disgust. Her screams quickly degrade into laughter, and I realize that she’s just trying to annoy me at this point. I roll my eyes in disgust and flick her forehead, ignoring her cackling.

She pouts and finally stops laughing, and we fall into an awkward silence as our brains catch up with everything that just happened. As we sit there the car pulls into the station, breaking our trains of thought. We simultaneously turn to look at it, still feeling dazed, but realizing that it’ll pull away at any second we jump up and rush towards it, boarding just as it pulls away.

Daisy glances around the empty car and takes a seat, then looks up at me and asks, “What exactly happened?”

I take a seat opposite her, look over at her, and respond. “I honestly don’t know.”

We both turn towards the ground and wait for our stop, but then I think of something.

“Say, did you happen to catch which sector the police are in?”

She looks at me and shakes her head, her eyes growing wide as she realizes what that means.

“Tera, do you know which stop to get off on?”

“Nope.” Shit, we’re already lost again. I start looking around the car, hoping to find a stop directory, and Daisy joins me in the search. Eventually we find a pamphlet with the stops and corresponding sectors, and learn that the very last stop, about 45 minutes away, is where we need to get off. I wonder how many times Daisy can manage to annoy me in that span of time.

“So, ummm, how have you been lately?”

One time and counting.