Nico felt a sudden jerk, strong gusts of wind blew past his face, smooth fabric brushed against his skin, struggling against the dream land that wanted to drag him back he opened his eyes a smidge.

  Bright light, brighter than he had ever seen in his life, not blocked by dark clouds of pollution graced his eyes, the air smelled weird, but not in a bad way, just . . . different than the air he was used to smelling everyday.

  Nico noticed two droids moving at the edges of his vision, they moved towards two opposite ends of the stretcher Nico was lying on and then picked it up.

  The droids began carrying Nico, off of the flying vehicle they had brought him here in, he felt a needle brush against his skin, soon everything went black and sleep embraced him once again.

  The next time Nico woke up his eyes looked up at rather opulent and luxurious looking ceiling, he turned his head to the side to see IV drips on his arms, feeding him some clear liquid.

  He felt something on his chest, lifting his shirt up a bit and peeking through from above, he saw a sticker like thing sticked on, it didn’t have any wires dragging from it. He ignored it for now.

  There was a hologram terminal as old people called it, in front of him, the control stick for it was beside his bed, delight flashed through his face, this was the first time he had ever gotten this close to a holo-term.

  His mind chose this moment to flash through all the memories of what had happened over the last few days ? hours ? Nico wasn’t really sure what the time was.

  Anxiety clambered back into his mind as his brain finally started thinking properly, .

  Nico’s hands lips twitched as he remembered the last word he had heard before losing consciousness. “Ambo”, he whispered to himself, he was at a hospital, one of the worst places to be when you were actually hurt, sick or poor, he was all three of them.

  They had probably already billed him up to the high heavens, for anything and everything they could legally justify, oh yes all this is very legal.

  Running his hands through his dark hair and sighed at the misfortunes that kept chasing on him, he looked longingly at the holo-term, the peak of entertainment.

  It had no advertisements plastered on it, that in and of itself told you how expensive this one was, the soft ambient lighting of the room lit up the large blocky body of the holo-term very well, the only logo visible on the entire surface of the holo-term blinked periodically as if calling to him, the logo looked like a wolf with two swords criss-crossed under its head.

  It was the logo of the biggest corporation in existence, WolfCo, they made close to everything you could think of, from bolts in blender to space ships flying to the moon. Though that’s not what mattered to Nico right now.

  His eyes stayed glued onto the holo-term for a while, it had been his dream to play on a holo-term since he was a little kid, but his parents hadn’t let him. When the thought of his parents entered his mind, the air surrounding him seemed to get darker.

  Nico was interrupted from his spiral of sadness by the gentle opening of his door, a nurse walked inside, trying her best avoid making sounds, she walked softly and reached his bedside and smiled at him.

  “Hello sir, thank you for choosing Ash health services, you have chosen our executive care package, do you have any dissatisfaction's with the service provided ?”, the nurse kept smiling as she looked at Nico and waited for a reply.

  Nico gave none, he was still wanted to appear confused about what was going on, the nurse seemed to decide he had no complaints and went back into her sales pitch “We are happy that the service was satisfactory”, the nurse’s face then turned apologetic, “I’m truly sorry to disturb you with this, but we were unable to find any form of ID or payment on you, would you mind rectifying this issue”.

  Nico didn’t have any form of ID or payment so he just stayed silent and stared at the nurse, “No worries sir, we understand that sometimes such papers, or cards may get lost, you may call your family at any time from the holo-term to arrange such matters” The nurse then pulled out a mini-holo, a small black rectangular device, out from which popped real looking food.

  Three different types of food floated in front of him, the nurse went on “Here are the options available for breakfast, we apologize that there are only so few options, we have Premium Protein Dishes, Luxury Seafood Delicacies and Innovative Plant-Based and Global Gourmet Options”.

  The nurse didn’t wait for a reply from Nico, “I personally recommend, the Premium Protein Dishes, since you seemed to be coming off a very harsh diet, the doctor also wants to have a few words with you about your dieting plans ”

  Nico eventually just accepted her recommendation, he didn’t have the slightest idea what any of them might get him and protein seemed a safe enough choice.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The nurse walked out along with her mini-holo saying that the doctor would be with him soon, Nico got lost in thought, there was no way he had enough cash to pay for any of this, he didn’t have some business mogul family behind him to call either.

  He looked around the room and noticed the window was left open, what he assumed was fresh air came in from it, he got off the bed and dragged his IV pole along with him as he walked towards the window.

  Through it, he could see farmland stretching nearly as far as the eye could see, at the horizon there were suggestions of a forest, maybe he could escape to the forest, he looked down, the height was a manageable jump, Nico decided that after playing on the holo-term he would escape through the window.

  Turning back to the holo-term, Nico walked towards it with anticipation. The door opened once again, this time a man in a white coat entered, seeing Nico he smiled, “Going to play on the holo-term ? You have to have a check up first, please come here” the man gestured towards the bed.

  Nico decided that ignoring the man wouldn’t be worth it and trudged towards the bed, the doctor pulled out a mini-term and began reading through it, this one didn’t have any things popping out of it though like the mini-holo, his eyes kept furrowing the more he read on.

  He looked up at Nico “It seems that we haven't been able to ID you yet, so I wont be able to pull up your medical history, we have run tests on you to determine if you are allergic to anything, it was fairly standard” The doctor sat up straighter and then looked at him seriously.

  “What I do want to talk to you about is the diet that you seem to have been under, you were severely malnourished when you came here, the IV is currently feeding you a lot of nutrients to bring you back up to standard. ”, the doctor chuckled a bit.

  “If I didn’t know any better I would have thought you were one of the city rats, the one’s in the slums, you probably haven’t seen them before, feral things really, a drain on the city’s resource and stain on our culture ”, slight anger and a lot of amusement passed through Nico’s head as he listened to what the doctor just said.

  “Anyways, I recommend that you follow a better diet from now on, I’ll refer you to our nutritionist, it’s better to not follow these trends that some of your friends might be following ”, the door that at this point Nico wanted to somehow lock opened once again, this time a droid carrying trays of food arrived.

  “I see that your breakfast is here, also you might consider some cosmetic surgery, we suspected the marks on your body were bruise marks but it just turned out to be strange skin pigmentation”, the doctor turned away, walked towards the door and gave a wave before exiting.

  The drone brought the tray over to Nico and pressed some button below his bed, a small platform materialized above his bed, the drone placed the tray of food on the desk and began unpacking and arranging the food, all the while singing a little tune.

  Nico watched with curiosity as the drone did its task, once it was done it gave a slight bow to Nico and exited his room, still chirping its happy tune.

  With all the hunger he was feeling, he tore into the food in front of him, it was some form of steak and some vegetables to complement it.

  The juice of the steak dripped down his throat, he was tasting new tastes that he had never even imagined before, the vegetables, while not his favorite had a certain freshness and crunchiness to them that still made them a delight to eat.

  After a hearty meal, and a well deserved rest, Nico went back to his main objective of trying the holo-term out, he picked up the control stick, beside it, he saw an instruction manual, holding the manual in his left hand and the control stick on his right, Nico began fulfilling his dream of using a holo-term.

  He opened the holo-term and started looking around, objects began popping up all around him, it felt like all those things were really there with him.

  He watched a holovid, the hours dragged on as a whole world unfolded around Nico, people fighting, crying, laughing and finally ending with the protagonist and his girlfriend holding hands as the jumped around the moon. He wiped a few tears and applauded the director in his mind.

  Nico then navigated to the gaming area, there he found a racing game, on opening it, the hospital room vanished and a race track with thousands of people sitting in the stands appeared around him, he was sitting in one of the old cars he’d once seen at a museum.

  The F1 it was called, if he remembered it right, he was sitting inside one of them in the game, many strange contraptions were all around him, a steering wheel with so many buttons that it made him dizzy was right in front of him, as he stretched his hands to try turning it out of curiosity, the game began showing floating arrows and text.

  That broke the immersion, for a second he had forgotten that he wasn’t really there, the game gave him a brief tutorial on what each of the buttons did, how to control the car and few tips and wished him luck.

  Sounds blasted all around him, people shouting, engines revving and soon it was go time, well for everyone else, Nico still hadn’t figured out how to get the car moving.

  After a bit of a fight with his own legs and hands, he figured it out and began moving, by that time the game and reset itself, it seemed to have decided that Nico wasn’t going to win and that he needed a re-try.

  A few more attempts of crashing, not starting, exploding somehow and getting thrown out of his car later, Nico managed to snag 6th place.

  He was really proud of it, it took a lot of effort after all, nonetheless while the game was really exhilarating, Nico still remembered his other priorities.

  Powering the holo-term down and carefully pulling his IVs and monitoring equipment out, just to have it all starts beeping at him in anger, Nico began rushing towards the window.

  The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside his room reached his ears, people had already begun to rush to his room, courtesy of his executive care package probably.

  Standing on the windowsill he began hyping himself up for the jump, taking in deep breaths, he mimed how he would roll when he hit the ground after the jump a few times.

  The door burst open with multiple people all staring at him, the nurse and doctor from earlier in the center, surrounded by a pair of security personnel in black and 4 other droids behind them, all rushing towards him.

  There was no more time, he jumped, spreading his arms, to feel the air of freedom, BONK.

  “What was he thinking, its obvious that it was a screen, there are no forests or farms left” The doctor muttered as he hoisted Nico back into the bed.