Felipe
Giannis is alive. Emaciated, worse for wear, but alive.

He's been lying in a hospital bed, connected to all manner of tubes and machines, for a few hours now. He hasn't spoken much through all of it, except for a few curt, exhausted words to the EMTs while he was in the ambulance.

Only now, the doctors are deciding to disconnect him from the worst of it. They sound surprised when they explain to Akvile and Dae-hyun that in spite of Giannis' emaciated condition, he doesn't need any kind of feeding tube attached. Giannis himself looks a little surprised too.

The doctors depart from the room shortly, leaving Akvile and Dae-hyun alone with Giannis.

Giannis stares at Dae-hyun. He doesn't say anything.
Stephen
Dae-hyun looked at Akvilė, then Giannis, and then the floor. 
He felt sick, conflicted. It was clear on his face. 
*What do you even say in a situation like this.* 

Hospitals put Dae-hyun on edge. The overly clean sterile environment, the death, the pain. It all made him feel fuzzy, and did nothing to ease the tension that pinched his nerves. 

He kept his hands folded on his lap, he sat in a nearby chair. 

The boy wanted to say something but didn't know what.
Angel
Akvilė sits in a low chair upholstered in plasticky red pleather, ribcage and shoulderblade pressed into the intersection between back and armrest. It's uncomfortable; only a psychopath could find comfort in such a space. Seemingly Dae-Hyun felt the same, given a glance.

It'd been a couple of hours since the ambulance raced into the hospital's emergency department loading dock, and the hours had passed quietly. Tense still, given what had transpired, but a quiet sort of tense, not unlike the sight of a police vehicle in traffic. Akvilė had been in and out, rolling cigarettes in her lap to pass the time, and she'd come back in a few minutes before the doctors made the decision to unhook the feeding tube from the emaciated boy's stomach. The doctors left and she glanced at Dae-Hyun, expression slightly confused.

"Uhm... Is it only me or does it seem hasty? What they are doing, I mean."
Stephen
Dae-hyun looked up at Akvilė once she spoke. 

He gave a light sort of shrug, attempting to display a more relaxed expression on his face despite what he was feeling. 

"I'm sure they know what they're doing." He spoke softly and slowly.
Felipe
"It's fine," Giannis rasps, speaking for the first time in several hours. "It's not like I *Like* Being fed through a tube." He sounds *Horrible,* But he looks even worse. One of his eyes is covered by a patch, not because of any inherent medical risk, but simply because the machine parts embedded within were too grisly (or perhaps too paranormal) to show off. And he was blind on that eye anyway.

He again turns his other eye to Dae-hyun.

"Why did you do this?"
Stephen
Dae-hyun looks at Giannis as he speaks, and more guilt twists in his stomach. 
It takes a minute of silence before he even opens his mouth. 

"Nothing else was working..."

*What other option was there?*
At the time, it surely didn't feel like there was any other option. Other than leave him to Oliver. Which sounded worse. 

Regardless, Dae-hyun knew there wasn't any justification for this. 

"I'm sorry." He stood up.
There was more he wanted to say but he didn't know how.
Angel
Hoarse as a dying man, Giannis sounds about as well as he looks, and seems to be feeling the same considering his question he posits. *Why?*

Akvilė thinks for a moment, letting Dae-Hyun take center stage for a moment while everything rattles about her head once more. The wires, the smell, the liquid on the floor, the parallels between the hidden laboratory and the hidden space between the Cradle's walls. It had been much to take in, and even as she sat slouched in one of the hospital room's chairs she couldn't quite form a sensible string of words in her mouth.

"We were uncertain what else could help. If you–... If you wished to die y-you should have said thusly. It was what seemed our option." She manages to get out after a few moments, barely able to look at Giannis out of some sense of shame. 

*Maybe death would've been preferable to this.*
Felipe
"You could have done nothing." Giannis pauses to cough. "I would have had something like a life." He coughs again and shifts whatever minimal amount he's capable of in his weakened state. He doesn't look any more comfortable.

"Whatever. Can't fix it anymore. Just gotta deal with it now."
Angel
"I-I guess." Akvilė looks towards a random poster on the wall, something in Swedish that barely makes any sense to her. "But then life would have stayed unstable at Cradle, maybe, and–... And we knew not how to fix. So we followed Oliver. Mistake, it seems."
Stephen
Dae-hyun sat down in his chair again, his eyes back on the floor. 

He didn't know everything and it was aggravating. He didn't know what Oliver would've done with Giannis— or why he asked for their help in the first place if he wanted them to do nothing. Every single possible outcome seemed like it would've ended poorly. 

Akvile spoke in his silence. 
The boy gave a soft nod in agreement. 

"Oliver's only priority seemed to be getting you out of our heads— we didn't know—" He sighed. 

Nothing he said made him feel like he was helping the conversation. 
The lines on the floor seemed to move slightly. 

"Why did you send out a distress call if you... Wanted us to do nothing? All this started because you set off a flare to your location and... We followed."
His voice was curious, mostly confused. He wasn't blaming Giannis. He just didn't know. 

"You're right though, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore." 
Speculating won't change the past.

"What can we do now?"
Felipe
"And you got me out and I ended up somewhere half decent and you just couldn't stop trying to fix it. Well, I'm here now." Giannis sighs the largest sigh his breath-deprived husk is capable of.

"Nothing. You've done everything you can do. I'm stuck like this. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get one of those mobility scooters fat people get because they're too fat to walk. If not someone's gonna have to push me."
Stephen
Dae-hyun's brow tensed further. 

"... You're right."
The sickness in his stomach grew further. 
The fact he should've done nothing pained him. 

"Im sure you'd be able to recover fully, past that point— or, at least, I hope so."

He had the smallest amount of faith. 
Perhaps it was wishful thinking to cope with the consequences of his actions— that they wouldn't hold such a dire outcome.
Angel
Akvilė takes in what Giannis says, and her heart aches for him. He's right; they fucked up. *Bad.* But how would they have known otherwise?

Akvilė swallows a lump, and it seems to drag along her esophagus on the way down given the twisting expression on her face. It's not disgust or anger or hurt she feels, but instead the indescribable pain of knowing well-intentioned actions wound up causing more harm than doing nothing at all. It sucked. But the damage had already been done, and now it left Akvilė and her compatriots footing the bill of guilt left at their feet by Giannis' sorry state.

But there was no sense in stewing on it. She shakes her head briefly.

"I-I. I'm sorry...? I was only roped in so I knew not how bad it would be for you. But uhm... If you were hooked as such before would it not be possible to produce you a, uhm... New enclosure? Maybe it would help not. I dunno."
Felipe
Giannis' gaze shifts to Akvilė. "Not your fault. I roped you in. Sorry." He then shifts back to Dae-hyun, briefly.

"Don't bet on it."

When he shifts back to Akvilė, his eye is a bit red and he seems to be tearing up, but he still answers. "No. I can't build anything like this. And you probably can't build it either."
Stephen
Dae-hyun doesn't say anything. He continues to stare at the floor. 

No matter what he tried to say, he just seemed to be digging a deeper hole. Once again, there didn't seem to be a right option. 
It was impossible not to feel horrible about the entire situation. 
It was his fault. He didn't know how to atone for it, fix it— he knew he shouldn't even try. 

He wasn't entirely listening to what Akvilė was saying.
He felt sorry she got involved. Her, Sigrún and Danica alike.
Angel
"Don't count me out as easily." Akvilė retorts, soft but certain. "I-I-I understand little of the technology I have witnessed but I already know it will follow me into the earth. I still have, uhm... Maskelynophone. Perhaps it will be base."

Akvilė herself doesn't entirely know if she's being true to her abilities as she speaks, but she knows herself well enough to know how intense her curiosity could become if given enough to latch onto. The mere heart of the Maskelynophone had kept her up three nights after first seeing it; its time a trade secret was limited. She hoped.

She looks over at Dae-Hyun, and sees him slumped against the wall with a clear look of powerlessness coursing through his blood. She frowns without thinking, and rises out of her chair towards him. She kneels and begins to rub his shoulder, unsure of how else to assuage the pain of months of effort and trauma ending in years more of trauma. The world just wasn't fair.
Felipe
Giannis looks doubtful for a moment. Maybe a little uncomfortable. Then his eyes suddenly light up. It's maybe the first sign of optimism or life either Dae-hyun or Akvilė has ever seen from him. He looks up at Akvilė.

"I don't know if it'll work, but. I can't move, but maybe I can tell you what to do and still keep working that way? If... If you wanna help, of course—"

He interrupts himself with a coughing fit and never finishes his sentence.
Stephen
Dae-hyun gives Akvilė a soft smile in response to her gesture of reassurance. 

He listens to what Giannis says, and waits to see what Akvilė says in response. 

Of course they want to help, but he wasn't sure if he was apart of the offer, so he stays silent.
Angel
Akvilė sees the light of life re-enter Giannis' eyes, and her heart skips a beat. She winces as her body autonomously wraps a tendon around her heart– an otherwise alien sensation normalized by way of being born a Šiauriniai. Quickly she shakes that bit of worry out, and continues to knead Dae's shoulder.

"Th-that is good idea! Maybe. You look as though a gust of wind could overpower you... But I– I can try to help. From outside of course." She nods, waiting for his coughing fit to end for at *Least* 45 seconds– an awkward 45 seconds to be sure. Eventually discomfort takes the wheel; "What would it entail?"
Felipe
Giannis clears his throat as much as he can. "Bringing the parts I ask for and sticking them together the way I want. I have the inventions and plans, but I can't build them alone."

He looks down at his hospital bed.

"I can't really do it here either, though."
Angel
"Simply say what I will need to collect and I will." Akvilė looks at Giannis. She didn't trust him in the least when he'd first appeared as a chatbot in the Cradle's Intranet, and now here she was agreeing to piece together a new home for the crippled mangled lad. The irony, for lack of better words, was not lost on her; she'd grown.

She takes her hand off Dae-Hyun's shoulder and wanders back to her chair, taking a seat and producing a notepad from her coat. A pack of tobacco falls out first though, and she cusses softly in her mother tongue while stretching down to pick it off the floor.
Stephen
Dae-hyun looks up at Giannis for a moment. 
Although the idea being pitched makes him uneasy, he knew it wasn't his choice. 

"...What would this... Invention do? To you, that is?"
He once again, just sounds curious.
Felipe
"Dunno." Giannis moves like he's trying to shrug, but doesn't get very far. "I haven't decided what to make yet." He looks expectantly at Akvilė, hoping not to scare her off with the uncertainty of it all.

"I need to keep making things. It doesn't really matter what. I just can't stop. It's..." He coughs, once. He's starting to sound a little bit more himself. "It's the price I pay for being able to build all this. I can't *Stop* Building it. I don't want to, either. I have to keep working. Always. I don't know what would happen if I couldn't."
Stephen
Dae-hyun looks at Giannis, it clicks in his mind that what Giannis is talking about probably has to do with some paranormal ability; something he can't control. 

"... Okay, we can help you do that then." 
It's refreshing to hear Giannis start to sound a bit more energetic, and that alone is enough to convince Dae-hyun to at least attempt to assist in this project that *He* Wants to complete. 
Perhaps he should leave it, remove himself from the situation entirely, but something inside him told him he had to at least *Try* To make up for the damage he had done. 
This time he wouldn't have to make the choice— simply follow what Giannis says. 

He hoped this wouldn't turn out as another mistake.
Angel
"Wh-what to make? I thought–"

Cut off by Giannis, Akvilė's mouth clamps shut and she sinks into her chair a little. She listens, watching Giannis' face shift from emotion to expression as he laments his lot in life as a doomed creative. It goes a long way, then, to explain to Akvilė how all of the paranormal tech she's laid her hands upon came into being, and why she was never able to make much sense of it. Things made just a little more sense now; not like they'd made a ton before.

"I-I think I understand. It is simply price you pay for such... Uhm. Tech-wizardry. Like a technomancer, you are." Akvilė says, looking at Giannis with an expression split between resolute readiness to help build him a better body or a better enclosure and absolute nervousness. "And such I will help. I-I-I already know how to source many odds and ends, I will help as I can." She smiles. "But it seems your work is what keeps you tethered, maybe? Like your soul wishes to leave but action keeps it here. Like chains."
Felipe
"You could say that. I guess."

Giannis' eye shifts to Dae-hyun. "Hey, Hyundai. Or whatever. Leave us alone for a sec?"
Stephen
"It's. Dae-hyun."
The mispronunciation of his name stung slightly, but he could understand if Giannis wasn't in the proper state to remember such details. 

"And sure, yes."
He stood up, giving a sort of blank expression in return to Giannis. 
He looked at Akvilė.

"Call me if you need anything, okay?" 
He gave her a smile and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. 

He sat down in one of the chairs lining the walls, and waited. Given enough time, he'd leave, but for now, he'd wait.
Felipe
"I just—" Giannis coughed loudly. "I wanted to say thanks." He closed his eye calmly, as if he was preparing to sleep, or he simply didn't to look at Akvilė. "For, like. Being interested. You asked about the plugs on the Maskelynophone while everyone else just wanted to turn it off. That meant something to me."

He took a moment to breathe. A heart monitor beeped in the background.

"I'll be here for a while, probably. Come talk sometimes? I'll try explaining how it works if you want."
Angel
Akvilė is unable to stifle a chuckle at his butchering of Dae-Hyun's name. She promptly apologizes, and looks back at Giannis, curious as to why he's asked for privacy.

Admittedly the atmosphere of the one-on-one chat makes Akvilė nervous at first. She knows not what Giannis intends to tell her, but something in her gut screams *It can't be good.* Thankfully her gut is wrong, and she's relieved – if a little flustered and caught off-guard – by his honest thanks, the lack of eye contact, the genuineness in what he says. Despite her social ineptitude she's always been good at reading people, and Giannis is either true or perfectly veiling his true feelings behind his appreciative tone.

"I-I– um." She briefly sputters before finding the right words in English. "You are welcome. I understand somewhat why they were suchly hasty to be... Done, with it. That place. It was unsettling." Akvilė admits. "B-but your technology fascinates me, yes. I will be in touch. Promise. Hospitals are muchly boring; I can perhaps bring books if you are reader?"
Felipe
Giannis chuckles a little. "I think I'll have to stick with audio books if I wanna read. I probably don't have the strength to hold a book up to read it. But thanks."
Angel
Akvilė smiles gently, and makes a mental note. *No hardcovers.*

"It is no worry. I-I should have remembered your arms are boiled spaghetti." She jokes, lightly.