When Khan woke up, his head was splitting. His vision swam and blurred. He was back in J's office, and H was standing in front of him, between him and J.
J's face was pale, her eyes wide with fear, as if a demon had appeared.
"Khan! KHAN! Look at me!" H shouted, his tone so serious it snapped Khan out of his grogginess.
It was then that he noticed the office had been trashed.
"What… what happened here?" Khan asked, rubbing his temples.
"Okay, it seems you're fine. J, you can leave. I'll take care of his training personally," H commanded.
J nodded and bolted from the room, leaving Khan even more confused.
"This… this was a huge mistake," H muttered, concern flickering across his face. "I knew they shouldn't have taken me to the Capitol."
"Can you stand?" H asked.
"Yeah… I think so. But my eyes hurt… so much."
"You're improving at an insane rate, Khan. I think you'll have to move on to the next stage. Your body won't allow us to administer the same level of toxin again," H said, helping him to his feet.
"What do you mean 'won't allow it'? If I need to do this to activate my abilities, then—" Khan started, but he had no fight left in him.
"We'll deal with what you want later. Right now, I need you to come to my office. I need to make some checks… behind your eyes," H said, his own eyes beginning to glow white.
Khan felt his stomach flip. In an instant, he was in a chair, staring into an ocular examination device. H sat opposite him.
"I need you to keep your eyes open, okay, kid?"
Khan grumbled, a sound closer to a Rottweiler's growl than a human response.
After examining his eyes for a moment, H sighed, muttering under his breath, "Why is it back to normal again?"
"J! Come in here, right now," H said into a microphone.
He then looked at Khan and activated his ability, freezing him in time.
J entered cautiously, shaken. H turned to her.
"Tell me everything. Everything that happened here," H demanded.
Through frozen time, J recounted the events. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke, glowing bright red. H listened carefully, taking notes.
When she finished, he asked if she could continue working. She shook her head. She needed rest. H dismissed her and deactivated the time freeze.
When Khan blinked, H's eyes looked normal for the first time—just one pupil in each eye.
"Well?" Khan panted. "What happened? Why was the office trashed? Why did J look like she saw a demon? And… what were you checking for behind my eyes?"
Khan noticed something new. H looked drained. His irises were blood-red, veins prominent. Heavy bags under his eyes made him look like someone who hadn't slept for days.
H sighed. "Did you ever wonder why people's eyes glow when they activate their power, Khan? No? Didn't think so.
It's simple. After that light flash—the Great Light, or whatever they're calling it now—there was a slight mutation. One every person is born with.
You know the lacrimal gland, right? Produces emotional and reflexive tears. Then there are the two accessory glands—Krause and Wolfring. They lubricate your eyes day by day, keep it from feeling like sandpaper scraping behind your eyelids.
The mutation I'm talking about is a third lacrimal gland.
They named it Helmont.
Unlike the other two, Helmont doesn't lubricate the eye. It secretes an enzyme directly into the eyeball. That enzyme reacts with the ocular fluid—and that reaction is what causes the glow.
With enough strain, someone can move from Tier Five—Gray, all the way up to Tier Two—Blue. Training does it sometimes. Severe trauma can accelerate it. Either way, as the body adapts, so does the enzyme. So does the Helmont gland.
All I was checking was whether yours had opened.
It seems… that isn't the case."
"So… what's next?" Khan asked, a hint of disappointment in his voice.
"We'll continue with your training as usual. Rather than skip steps, we'll just quicken them. The others ahead of you are already quite far, so you'll need to catch up if you want to enter the next year with them. Assuming you survive, of course," H replied.
He was already picking up a syringe. "I'll administer Level 2 again, then we'll start."
"Again!? What do you mean again?" Khan shouted.
"Do you remember that you are not allowed to speak at all? I allowed it once due to a misunderstanding. Do not let it interfere with what we're here to do, Khan," Dr. H said, silencing him immediately.
Without another word, H led Khan back to the trashed office—now slightly tidier—and strapped him to the treadmill. He injected the toxin, set the speed to maximum, and Khan was off—full-tilt sprint, no jog.
H stayed beside him. His eyes were glowing again, three pupils in each, the activation of his power obvious.
Five minutes in, the bone-smashing, drill-deep pain returned—more intense than before. Khan was thrown off the treadmill by the shock, but instead of hitting the floor, he seemed to fall slowly. H reached out, placing him back on the treadmill.
"You don't stop running. Understood?" H's voice was sharper than Khan had ever heard.
The pain surged repeatedly, but Khan kept moving. H's ability kept him upright, placing him back on the treadmill every time he faltered.
Left-right, left-right, left-right, Khan thought.
He glanced at the clock. At least four hours must have passed, right? Only to see… four minutes.
H noticed and said, "Don't worry. I've slowed down time here. One minute outside is one hour inside. This lets you complete more training in less real-world time. Just keep going, okay, kid?"
And so it went. Hours compressed into days. The treadmill became his world. H never left his side, eyes glowing, precise, controlling.
By the time the day outside was ending, H finally sat Khan down and deactivated the temporal dilation.
"Khan… you've been running for the whole day, with breaks and vitamin support, for about eight hours," H said. "That's… 480 hours in here. Essentially, twenty days. You'll return tomorrow to continue, without the dilation.
"Now, I'm going to purge Level 2 for a few minutes, let you rest, then administer Level 1. Khan… I need you to keep going, don't stop, alright?"
Khan's body could barely respond. He gave a slight nod.
The toxin was purged. Relief washed over him—but only for a moment. His legs were shattered. His body battered from twenty days of effective running. Tendons flared, joints creaked, sweat production ceased, dehydration setting in. His muscles alternated between shivers and fever, cramps, and exhaustion. His mind went blank for a few minutes.
When he finally came to, H was watching him, smiling.
Without warning, H picked up a syringe of pale yellow liquid and injected it into Khan's neck.
"I've put in some stem cells to improve your healing. You'll be ready for tomorrow," H said, his happiness unnerving.
In the same breath, Khan was injected with Toxin 1.
Dragged to his room, he saw an apple and a bottle of water. He crawled to bed, welcoming the darkness of sleep...