Everything was black. As he began to slip back into consciousness words whispered in his head. “Don’t open your eyes”
“Why not?” He thought back lazily, his mind felt like it was floating, slipping around. every thought seemed to be covered in soap, and slipped away when he tried too hard to get ahold of one.
“You’re stunt earlier injured your body enough to get you into a hospital. Bet you can’t guess which is higher priority. Your broken ribs or how you managed to deliberately do something to make noise.”
“But why don’t you want me to open my eyes?” he asked again, hardly able to think of much else.
“Well, for one thing you’re so drugged up on pain killers you won’t wake up for days” she replied “So, making them think the stuff has worn off already would be a baad idea.”
“I’m.. asleep?”
“Technically. We’re trying to make it so their poking around in your mind doesn’t lead to them finding anything out about you.”
“That’s ok.. I don’t know anything about me either” he replied, intending to sound sarcastic, but the laziness made it difficult.
“Anything -unworldly- about you.” she said a little more sternly
“Is it just me.. or are you less fun lately?”
“Its just you” she replied quickly “Now I gotta put you back to sleep now, we’re done hiding the information in your conscious mind from the custodian’s scans”
“Wait, if you can do that, why can’t you just give… me back.. my..” blackness seemed to surround him and everything faded away. He couldn’t tell how much time passed but eventually he woke up again. Opening his eyes he could see he was still looking through the stupid camera.
He then tried to move his head to look around, when he saw a scientist standing next to him with a clip board. She looked down at him. “Well, aren’t you a pain? We’re not sure what was causing the custodian to be so.. dysfunctional but after raising it’s strictness levels it should operate fine. You should be more careful not to break any more rules.”
He wanted to say something rude back, but unfortunately the Bane suit prevented him from being heard even if he did speak. he settled for sulking, which after shifting his side numbly ached.
“Now, the suit numbs most feeling but your ribs will take a long time to heal up. So I wouldn’t move too quickly outside” she told him, he was shocked, they were booting him from the hospital without being fully recovered? How bad are his ribs if they hurt through whatever numbing agent they use?
“We’ve been helping you ribs heal up some, Hopper. You should be back to normal in a few weeks” Cherry chimed in in his head.
***
G looked at the massive structure that consumed most of the unconscious space. It represented the physical presence that was monitoring the mind. Learning from it and in some ways controlling it. The custodian. Every day it grew, after the injury, and the tampering, it began to spread like wild growth, unchecked. From the center was a pale human like being that was forming.
The person had short white hair, and dressed in similarly white cloths. Looking at it made G growl, how dare an invader take on a form so innocent looking. Every day he watched this THING form, at first it was just a wisp of presence, and now it was nearly tangible.
G also spent his time trying to force his way through the barrier in Hopper’s mind. Looking outwards there seemed only to be the one wall between him and the consciousness, but through the mind he could see cascading glass walls, isolating several areas of the mind. All the work of that group of people claiming to be helping him.
Days passed, then weeks. Hopper had gone back to his routine of doing NOTHING and G was left alternating between hating the walls, hating the custodian, and being bored out of his own skull. Occasionally that Cherry girl would talk to Hopper about something, but it usually didn’t last. The new stricter mode of the custodian gave him warnings whenever it recognized that they were having a conversation as opposed to it potentially being stray thoughts.
The body had finally started to stir, which G was almost glad about, he could finally pick a bone with the intruder face to face. First he decided to give his uninvited guest a nice warm welcome. Approximately 10,000 degrees warm, in a small easy to carry container he liked to call a fireball to the face.
In a move completely contrary to expectation however, the person instead covered themselves and and shied away from the attack. “Whats the matter? You’re all high and mighty when you were in that indestructible tower. Don’t tell me you’re scared now!” G yelled at it
“What are you talking about?” It called back, trying to get away “I don’t want to hurt anybody!”
“Well then you have a weird way of showing it. I’ve been electrocuted more times than you can count”
“The custodian does that not me!” it called back “I can’t control it”
“Then you better get the hell away from here before I torch you” G replied angrily, under normal circumstances, he might have listened to the other being’s excuse. However several months of constant electrocutions and isolation had given him a lot of anger, and the only place he had to displace it was the person standing in front of him.