Chapter 369: Something Strange.
Nick looked at Marcus again. The man seemed to be surprised and wary, the guy's question was unexpected. "You were digging in my head, haven't you seen these rings in my memory?"
"I looked only at general data concerning the world around you. I didn't intrude your personal space. Believe me, you would notice right away if I touched the pieces of memory that have an emotional tone." Marcus cleared Rick's memory over and over again and knew what he was talking about.
Nick chuckled, not expecting such nobility from Taubert. He thought that the man had looked through all his ins and outs, about some moments of which even Nick could forget.
"These rings," the guy nodded towards the jewelry lying on the table, "Marcus... You, well the other you from my time gave these rings to me on the day of my parents' death. I remember my mother with a knife stuck in her chest, and then you came up to me and thrust these rings into my hand. I don't remember anything else about that day."
"Or maybe that night?"
"W-what?" Nick asked unconsciously, though he heard Marcus's question. The man's question simply confused him.
"I am asking you, what time of day was it? Day, evening, night?"
The guy frowned as he tried to recall the details. He did not remember the main details, and he did not even try to restore such trifles in his memory. What came as a surprise to him, since as soon as he focused on new information, the picture popped up in his head by itself.
"Hmm, it was dark. Yes, I think it was dark. It was evening or night," he closed his eyes and turned his head as if trying to look around inside a piece of memory. There was a deep crease between his eyebrows, Nick tightly pressed his lips, "Yes, it's dark around, but in the sky... The sun is shining in the sky," he opened his eyes and looked at Marcus with a confused look.
The sun? At night? What is this nonsense?
"It's strange. Probably, I misunderstood something. I will try again."
"Maybe it will be better if I try it? If you don't mind, of course," suggested Marcus.
Nick was definitely against it, but his mind told him that this method would be safer and faster. In the end, his own attempts to remember something for fifteen years were never crowned with success.
"Okay. But do it fast. And only the fragment that we are discussing. If you dig in somewhere else, I'll definitely kill you," the guy said with a threat in his voice, but Marcus preferred to dismiss these words.
"Don't worry, I won't spy on your erotic fantasies," the man grinned, got up from his seat and went up to Nick.
"You are running into trouble on purpose now, right?!" young Anderson jumped to his feet, Taubert put his hand on the guy's shoulder and immediately sat him down.
"Don't jump up, you better sit. The procedure is not the most pleasant one," the man comforted Nick as if he was calming a small child.
Nicholas gave Marcus a murderous look, but said nothing. The guy closed his eyes and felt Taubert's fingers touch his temples.
He had already mentally prepared for the pain, but several seconds passed, and... nothing happened. Nick obediently waited another half minute and decided to open one eye.
As soon as he opened his eyelids a little and looked up, the guy broke out with a cold chill. He looked at Marcus in horror, not realizing what was happening.
Is that how it is supposed to be?
Marcus was standing with a gray face like a dead man, blue veins were protruding through his skin, his head was thrown back in a strange position, his mouth was open, his lips were trembling. With all this, the man did not utter a single sound.
"Yo, man?" Nick asked cautiously, and there was no response.
"M-Marcus?" Nicholas spoke to the man a little louder, a note of alarm could be heard in the guy's voice. He felt nothing, but Taubert looked as if he was being subjected to invisible torture. "Hey what's going on?"
Nick touched the man's fingers and pulled his hand back. Marcus's hands were scorchingly cold, like Antarctic ice.
"Marcus! What the heck?! What are you doing?!"
Nick tried to get Taubert's hands off his head, but they seemed to be glued and did not move an inch. Nick himself realized that apart from his own hands, he could not move anything. He froze, like a plaster statue, under the control of one almighty immortal, with whom something absoultey unexplainable was happening!
At that moment, the guy was seized by real fear. Something absolutely crazy was happening and he didn't know what to do.
"Elena!!!" cried Nick, with all his might. If only this couple were not in their soundproof room! he mentally prayed.
"What happened?" Nick heard David's question behind him. He and Elena were approaching the stairs when the boy's heart-rending scream made them hurry.
Elena, who was descending a couple of steps behind her husband, froze for a second when her gaze fell on Marcus.
Like a sharp stream of wind, she overcame the last ten steps in one jump, ahead of David, ran up to Marcus and clasped his face with her palms. "Let him go!" the woman said in an orderly tone, addressing either Taubert or someone else. Even David was taken aback when he first heard how imperious his wife's voice can sound.
Marcus pulled his hands off Nick and inhaled the air like he was suffocating. He opened his eyes and looked at his daughter not blinking, then at the shocked Nick who was sitting next to him. "What happened?" the man asked in a hoarse voice.
"You tell me what happened!? You scared the hell out of me!" the guy exclaimed, feeling the tension give way to a wave of relief. He really thought that in another moment - and Marcus Taubert would go into a better world! Not that Nick himself hadn't wanted it recently, but this unexpected situation took him by surprise.
"I… I need to get some air… I guess," Marcus muttered, unsure of his words. He pulled away from Elena, the man's gaze was distracted. Taubert turned and hurried towards the kitchen to go out into the backyard.
"What happened?" now David asked this question to Nick, to which the guy just threw his hands in the air.
"I have no idea! He was going to look at a piece of my memory, but I didn't feel anything, and when I opened my eyes, he looked like... like," Nick tried to find a word to better convey the horror that Marcus's appearance brought to him at that moment, "Like a zombie! His hands were icy!"
"Have you seen anything?" Elena specified.
Nick frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. The situation was frankly strange, and he inadvertently felt guilty, and he did not like this feeling.
"Nothing. Separate pictures, nothing new."
There was an awkward silence in the room which was broken by the doorbell. Nick shuddered, completely forgetting about the delivery from the restaurant that Elena had mentioned.
"Nicholas, take the delivery," David's clear order brought the guy out of his stupor. He looked at his parents, opened his mouth to say something, silently closed it and headed for the door.
Elena and David watched Nick until the front door slammed shut. Then they looked at each other. Elena smiled and nodded her head slightly.
David understood his wife without words. He smiled back and followed Marcus into the backyard.
Weekly Power Status
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