CHAPTER ONE
Each victory into lucidity came with a cost.
A haunting sensation of being, somehow, incomplete.
I stitched together my sense of identity time and time again against the regenerative lightning tearing apart my grasp on reality. Gaining and losing awareness—until two pairs of footsteps echoed through my disoriented haze.
I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t move my muscles. Couldn’t respond to the spark of urgency demanding that I take action against the intrusion.
"This is the one?"
The man’s rough, dual-harmony tone became a lifeline in my fight to gain control. He was considerably larger than the other newcomer, judging from the heft of his steps.
"Yes,” a woman answered. “The progress so far is promising. He’s made it further than any of my previous specimens."
I knew their language well enough to follow the conversation—although not well enough for it to be my native tongue.
Beyond the conversation, a soft, repetitive beep faded in and out of focus, in sync with my irregular pulse.
My grasp on reality slipped, and the molecular lightning convoluting my senses pulled me under again. After some time, I latched onto the repetitive beep from before—its sound more steady now.
The voices returned. Or perhaps they never left.
"I should have been made aware of this sooner.” The man’s heavy footfalls paced the room. I gauged his distance, the likely positions of his vital points—as if I could do anything with that information if I had it. His voice continued to rumble through the room. “Our operatives aren’t meant to be enlisted into these experiments."
"Well," the woman mused, the weight of her steps closer to my concept of average stature. "He was already dying. And now he's not only not dead—but distinctly improved."
The man's pacing stopped. "Notify me immediately once the procedure is complete. I will be the first point of contact."
Who were these people? My inability to move or speak was infuriating, and the dimming pain gave space for panic to enter. I needed to get out.
Out of what? Out of where?
I searched my memory for information on how I’d gotten here. Wherever here was.
My search came up blank.
The man’s steps faded from earshot. My formless voice struggled to beg the woman who quietly meandered from place to place in the room for more information—for help. My willpower did nothing to budge unresponsive lungs. Only silence filled the room. Silence, and the monitor’s lulling beep, beep, beep.
When the woman's heel twisted against the floor’s hard surface, turning to leave, I tried again to yell, to call out, to find answers rather than be crushed under continually building unknowns.
My words failed me.
The woman’s steps faded to nothing.
Did they know I was conscious? Did they care? I tried to find some point of reference to give meaning to my situation.
I found nothing—same blank slate as before.
As the pain began to recede, other threads of sensation emerged through my existential fog. An icy chill coursed through my body. Dense, chemically sterile air filled my nostrils. I drifted in and out of the ebbing torment until I could open my eyes, wincing at a blinding white blur of a room. Aftershocks of molecular lightning wrung through my body in sync with mechanical, rotating arms sweeping across my vision.
The more reality sharpened around me, the more I wanted to escape back into the murky void I’d woken from. I couldn’t make sense of this place. Or, more accurately, I couldn’t make sense of my place here, under this machine.
I wasn’t alone.
A quiet, methodic pace matching the woman from my first memory echoed from beyond the machinery. She didn’t seem to take notice of my waking. She probably knew I wasn’t a threat. Yet. I still couldn’t move more than to tilt my head and twitch my fingers.
When the woman, at last, drew closer, I couldn’t help but compare her scarlet snake-scale body to my pale skin. Her ruby eyes stayed focused on a holo device hovering at her side, avoiding eye contact like I was nothing more than an object. I didn't question our difference in appearance at first. It was not overly foreign to me, in the same way the earlier language had been familiar without being entirely natural.
The callousness she moved with, however, disturbed me.
Was she an ally? An enemy?
The cryptic woman collected data from the masses of equipment before shutting them down one by one. My steady beeping companion silenced, and the rotating arms slowed to a halt before folding away unceremoniously. She removed the machine’s web of tubes from my body with expert speed, then fastened thick straps across my chest to lock me in place.
Not exactly something an ally would do.
My muscles were still too raw to protest, and my words refused to form. Her hand’s leather texture was silky and cold as she finished harnessing the straps—unaware of my struggle—and stepped back to study her data.
She turned to leave.
I needed context—an explanation. I forced my limbs to move, if only slightly. She couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without telling me something—anything.
A shock released from the straps and bolted through my body—forcing the air from my lungs in something between a plea and a scream.
Enemy or not, I simply wanted to ask what was happening and how I’d gotten here.
My desperate outburst bought me no more than a few seconds of the woman’s attention. The door she paused in front of flashed green and emptied to reveal a vacant corridor. Her slick-scaled brow raised in surprise at the sound of my unintelligible garble, and her ruby eyes scanned me as if searching for an error in her work. When her analysis concluded, she blinked—transparent eyelids closing and opening from the sides rather than from top and bottom as mine did—apparently determining my outburst to be within an acceptable range. Her reptilian features regained a neutral expression, and she stepped outside without a word.
I missed the monitor’s relay. Its steady beeps offered me something to focus on. Without it…my rapid pulse was deafening to my racing mind. Where was I? Why was I here? Why did she deny me such basic yet crucial information? And…why was I restrained? I pulled against the straps, each time pulling harder and each time suffering through an increasing severity of shocks.
I didn’t mind the pain. Pain was simple. Predictable. Each wave of electric bursts brought momentary clarity until something snapped and the clarity reversed course, sending me into the storm. A strange, out-of-body sensation. I gasped and clawed my way out of the disorienting internal free fall.
I expected the restraints to hold me down when reality snapped back. Instead, I fell past the bed’s edge. I groaned and uncurled to lie on my back while waiting for the world to stop spinning. The limp restraints had dropped off my naked body, swaying above me from where they remained attached to the hovering bed.
They’d been unlocked. By me. I did that. How did I do that?
This new intuition, or whatever it had been, was a strange thing.
Strange…and useful. I wasn’t as helpless as I’d been just seconds earlier.
The room’s illuminated walls pulsed red. The doctor, or someone, seemed unhappy with my accidental victory over the restraints. I waited, the floor cold against my bare skin, expecting someone to rush in to counter my escape.
The room remained empty.
So, they weren’t going to do anything. Just keep me locked in here without answers, without acknowledgment. I stared at my surroundings, trying to decipher the electric fog buzzing beneath the floor and through the walls. Not a noise—a feeling.
I pulled myself up, grasped onto the bed to steady my shaking limbs, and turned my attention to the room’s exit. Every step shot needles through my raw body.
I stood in front of the circular doorframe, just as the crimson woman had, and waited.
An intangible scan breezed through my body—silent, unnoticeable, if not for my newly discovered intuition. I could feel the scan’s pulse. Understand it.
The scanner’s analysis concluded—and the door remained a stubborn red.
I slammed my fist against the obstinately solid wall, which had allowed the woman to pass but denied me, and screamed. Again and again, I pounded against the door and screamed at my inability to do anything, to know anything. My frustration changed nothing. I fell silent, unmoving, my palms and forehead pressed against the unyielding wall.
It made sense, of course. The restraints hadn’t exactly been a beacon of freedom. But now, the unknowns caught up to me. Who were they to determine what I could and could not do? Who were they at all? Who was I?
I moved without thinking, edging closer to the door to melt into its electric fog. If the strange out-of-body interaction could buy my earlier freedom—maybe it could do the same for this obstacle.
The fog gave way to a storm as I pushed deeper into the system’s complex, interconnected maze. Its undercurrents threatened to whisk me away. I exited, perhaps a little too quickly, spooked by the possibility. My head spun.
The door remained as red and cold as the woman’s callous gaze. What would happen when she returned? I didn’t intend to stick around to find out.
I breathed through the connection’s disorienting residual effect, then searched for a way to re-enter the room’s stubborn electric barrier. After some time and more than a few mental re-runs through the events leading me to this point, I decoded my new instinct. I took a moment to steady myself, then re-entered the currents flowing beneath the door’s security frame and scanner.
I lost my out-of-body self for a tumultuous, terrifying moment. When I finally got through the fog, I held on just long enough to identify my target and nudge it into compliance.
My vision was the last sense to return after exiting the scanner’s system. I reached out to use the door for support. Instead of finding a solid wall, my hand passed through the air’s green glow. I fell—again—and clutched my aching body, half strewn between my prison’s red walls and the white-walled hallway beyond, gasping for air. When my lungs finally inflated, I laughed. A hysterical, deranged laugh.
I’d done it. I’d made it out.
So…now what?
My laugh echoed and died down the empty corridor.
I stayed on the cold floor, naked and overwhelmed, completely at a loss for what to do.
The hallway plunged into an inky dark, interrupted by periodic flashes of red and a blaring alarm. I didn't mind the alarm. Its screaming thunder and floods of red consumed me and gave me the kick in the ass I needed to move forward. What I did mind, however, was the prickling sensation of eyes watching through a network of cameras.
I peeled myself off the floor and placed a hand on the hallway wall. Whoever they were, the ones behind the cameras, the ones as apathetic as the crimson woman, I wanted them to feel what I was feeling. Confusion. Lack of control. A dose of their own medicine. I closed my eyes to search for a path through the cybernetic fog. I found lines of electric current within the wall, and through those lines, I sought out the ones supplying the hall's surveillance network. Once I found them, I cut them off. All of them, as many as I could reach. The alarm, however, I left on, finding comfort in its rhythmic noise. I traced my way out of the fog, then leaned against the wall for a few breaths to wait for the dizzy aftereffect to pass.
In the distance, marching deepened the alarm’s echo in answer to my challenge. The thrill of danger cleared my head and woke my body. I slipped behind the nearest accessible door, prompted it to close, then turned around and found myself face-to-face with a stunned soldier. He stood, half-dressed, in front of an opened locker. Maybe, just maybe, my luck was beginning to turn.
Neon orange scales covered the soldier’s reptilian body, his size similar to mine. I wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by my sudden entrance or my nudity. Either way, his surprise gave me an opening. I slipped behind him and tightened my hold around his leather-slick neck before he had time to register what was happening. He fought back by slamming me against the locker and nearly crushing my unguarded lower region. I grunted and held on tighter until his will to fight faded, and his body went limp. I released my grip, and his scaled body collapsed onto the floor.
I checked for a pulse, confirmed he was alive, then removed the cap from his skull and returned to his locker to find a new uniform. Voices from the backside of the locker room called out, investigating the commotion. The calls hushed into whispers when the soldier currently on the floor failed to respond.
I counted roughly a dozen pairs of heavily booted steps. Average weight. Average training. Slowly falling into sync, gaining uniformity behind a leader with a confident stride. I mentally mapped their approach while sorting through cartridges on the locker’s shelf. I tested one out by pressing the cylindrical tube’s top. A dull black nano-material released to envelop my naked body, slick like the neon man’s leather-scaled skin. It fit well enough, and I tossed the emptied cartridge to the floor next to the unconscious soldier before positioning myself for the oncoming ambush. Adrenaline aided my instincts to take over. I anticipated the confrontation, hungered for it as I placed a mental line and waited for it to be crossed.
As soon as the targets entered my range, I slid around the corner to greet them. Their leader—a tall, black-scaled man—was quick to react, although it came too late. I moved onto the subordinates before his leather-scaled body hit the floor.
Confusion gave way to shouts after two more of their comrades fell. They had a tougher, thicker build than mine. I slammed my palm into the chin of one and drove another, head-first, into the ground. Their armored scales protected their skull and back—but their brains seemed to bounce around and shut them down like any other opponent, given enough force.
Another fell, and shouts from the remaining soldiers got louder. The increase in volume motivated me to move faster. I made quick work of the proactive ones, the ones trying vainly to avenge their commander, then chased the strays until the last of them fell and silence settled.
I stepped over their bodies to return to the entrance, watching for the rise and fall of their chests. All were alive, I think. A couple of hits had landed harder than intended. Their leather skin required extra pressure, and it had taken me a couple of combatants before I’d gotten the hang of it. But, for the most part, it seemed likely they’d recover. That was important to me for some reason. Protecting life. Even enemy life. I wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure of anything.
I paused at the door. A subtle vibration thudded through the floor. I focused on counting my breaths while the marching outside passed, careful not to let my eyes linger on the unconscious soldiers and their reptilian characteristics that so clearly differed from mine. The vibrations dimmed into silence. I lowered the rim of my stolen cap, covering as much of my pale skin as possible, and exited the locker room—high on the thrill of danger.
Whoever I was, I lived for moments like these. And there was something more, something urgent, compelling me to get as far from these bleak corridors as possible. What was it? What had landed me in that room, attached to that machine and locked away? I tucked the questions to the back of my mind and continued through the halls, avoiding waves of soldiers when I could duck out of sight, marching among them in the inky dark when I couldn’t. I quickly learned it was better not to enter random rooms if I could avoid it—although, so far, I was able to subdue the startled occupants when there were any.
Finally, I reached the end of the corridor maze. I unlocked the exit and glanced from side to side as casually as I could, considering the circumstances. Mimicked daylight veined the roadway tunnel waiting on the other side. I was glad to be out, of course. But now…the dark no longer hid my complexion. I stepped onto the roadway’s vacant pavement with less confidence than before. Moving around out here promised to be more difficult.
The alarm’s periodic blare blasted and—for the first time—filled me with panic. I tapped the door closed, then plastered myself against a thick, subtly curved stone wall. My pulse returned to normal when the empty tunnel’s silence resettled. My entrance hadn’t drawn attention. I scrambled to keep it that way and searched for somewhere to hide.
A cleaning bot approached. Its large, multi-armed body crept along a maintenance rafter overhead. Long cylindrical fingers ran across the veined curving walls, sweeping from bottom to top and then shifting over, inching closer, taking no notice of me as it executed its methodic task. My mind and body were tired, pushed too far too soon. It took everything I could muster to keep from lying on the stone-textured floor despite the risk of discovery. I watched the arachnid-like machine, calculated its speed, and analyzed the wide structural beam supporting it as it crept along the top of the tunnel. A sort of catwalk. When the bot came near, I hopped onto its closest appendage. It protested. I subdued its programmed reluctance, and it continued its task as before, with the addition of me as a hitchhiker.
The arm lifted me closer to the machine’s main body, which wasn’t much larger than mine. I slid into its rafter and breathed a little easier. My escape, however, came with the same hollow victory as earlier.
I’d done it. I’d made it out.
So…now what?
