Update 3:76:3729

They did it simply at first, honestly.

I would step out of the house and they would be waiting.

It's not that they intimidated me that's not why I did it at all. It's sort of important to me as a person that anyone reading this believes that. I eventually had no choice is all. I kept going for about 25 days after the last post I made. I think they knew they didn't have to intimidate me, they just had to wait for me to run out of food or get tired of not knowing. I still went to the hospital daily and they tailed me daily. I have no vehicle or anything so the fact that they were trailing a person walking on foot was blatantly obvious to the world around me.

Once I made it into town people would see the big dark vehicle following along behind me and stare. Keep in mind that by that point I'd already walked what the Kayani language calls a Cret. It's about equivalent to five or six miles. That's how far out of town Ruyani lived. Fuck. She's been gone so long even I've started to call her Ruyani. Well, anyway, Ruya is still comatose. It's all more or less the same. Turns out she dyed her hair. I suppose back home it's not too surprising but her hair was the same color as everyone else's here, jet black. Apparently in her case that wasn't natural. She's a blonde. I wouldn't feel comfortable fixing it for her even if I could afford to buy hair dye.

She and I were never lovers or anything of the sort and it would feel too damn personal. I do make sure she has her things around her... or at least I used to. I've literally been in confinement since my last visit to her and just got out a few hours ago. See, we did this dance, these suits and I. A man I once knew named Quinn would have called them spooks. They're definitely spooks. Anyway, we did this dance, day in and day out. They followed me from the house, into town and eventually to the hospital. They parked out front and waited for me to leave. If I did not leave, a call would be placed anonymously when visiting hours were over and a nurse would come to chase me off.

It was on my third day without eating anything that the instinct to survive really started to kick in. Of course that, as far as I was concerned, meant going to spooks. I didn't like that idea. So my plan was, if I could make myself get out of the bed I would skip the hospital. I would not be the first beggar or the last out on those streets, the way I figured it. Unfortunately that was the day that I couldn't make it to the hospital. At least not on foot. I simply collapsed. I'm not even sure how far I got.

I woke up in the hospital and no one was asking questions about who I was or anything of the sort. They dodged any direct interaction. I ate, I hydrated, I was wheeled into Ruya's room by a nurse and I sat there all day beside her with my stomach churning and my pride wounded. There was only one reason I was at the hospital and not lying in a ditch somewhere along the roadside, after all. They brought me two more meals and when I finished the final I spent the next two hours checking that all of Ruyani's possessions were still there, none stolen. The man who left the video on this blog came in and for the first time since this all started talked straight with me.

He told me that having a choice was an illusion and that he was as tired as I was hungry.

I spent the next two weeks in a room the size of Ruya's hospital bed with paper gowns to wear and people poking and prodding me. There were any number of tests and scans that I can't really identify or describe, even if I was allowed. Most of it was psychological testing. I didn't know why I was going through any of it, I only knew I had to. I am wrong, in this world and I can walk and talk but I might as well be an infant. I know what they want now, I just don't know why.

They've promised to let me see Ruyani daily when I can but told me it might not be every day because it all depends on one thing.

I have to suit up.

I don't want to. I don't actually want answers.

I just want to see Ruya again.

I think this is my fault.