Chapter One: Awake

I woke up. My eyes were greeted with a blinding light, and I couldn’t hear a single sound. My first instinct was to cover my eyes, but I found myself unable to move my hand. It was being held down, and as I began to become conscious of feeling, my body appeared to be held in place by something. It was confusing. Alarming. I didn’t know how to react to any of it. The sensations were strange. Without much use of my senses, I already assumed I was experiencing sensory overload by how much static had been passing through my head. I didn’t know where I was. What I was. I knew certain things about myself, but I was not sure how I knew them. I was brought into existence suddenly, and I was already uncomfortable and distressed. 

I started hearing muffled mumbling around me accompanied by a ringing noise in my ears. My eyes were adjusting to the light, and some images were starting to come through. I didn’t recognize anything though. A shadow passed over me, and I could see blurry figures in my peripheral. Can I move my head? Will I be noticed? What if I’m noticed? 

“Subject is showing signs of consciousness.” I heard a voice. 

“Vital signs are reading normal,” a female spoke. 

At first, their words only sounded like garbled noises. As their conversation continued, the meaning behind the noises they made became clearer. I was able to understand them. The light shining down in my face was suddenly blocked by a figure, an unfamiliar face hovering over mine. It was a woman in a white garment. She had blonde hair and brown eyes that remained a mystery to me.

She held a finger before my eyes. “If you can understand me, follow my finger.” 

Her finger moved to the left, and my eyes followed it. It moved back to the right, and I broke my focus away for a moment when I saw another like her pass by. 

“Who?” I heard my voice for the first time. It was hoarse. Cracked. The woman seemed surprised as she rushed out of view for a moment. 

“Let the record show that the subject has use of her motor functions and is capable of verbal communication.”

“Wow, you got to give him credit. This is really impressive work. Down to the smallest detail.” I heard the male voice from earlier. 

“He didn’t do anything fancy. This wasn’t from scratch. All he did was put together a very complicated jigsaw puzzle. A dumb decision, in my opinion.”

“But still, could you imagine the engineering for something like this?”

I opened my mouth to speak again. “Who are you?”

I wouldn’t receive an answer. Anything I said or did was either ignored or recorded in their files. I just wanted some enlightenment. Eventually, the bright light was turned off, and my eyes were able to take in the rest of my surroundings as I was allowed to sit up. I had been lying on what might have been an operating table in the middle of a large laboratory. A mess of cables and wires were attached to me. Being as confused as I was, sitting in the nude was the least of my concerns. After a few minutes of removing the cords from my body and dressing me in dark pants and a white shirt, the woman came before me again.

“I know this is very disorienting for you, and you must have questions you need answered. Maybe you don’t. I am here to inform you that you will not be harmed. You will, however, remain in our custody for safety reasons.” The woman looked beyond me, making a gesture with her head. “We will need you to comply. Lack of cooperation resulting in any incidents may result in your immediate termination.” 

Wait. My what? 

“Termination,” I asked as two other men, dressed in full tactical gear, came from behind me.

“To be blunt, one of these fine gentlemen will see to it that a bullet makes it way into your skull if you cause any incidents,” she said so nonchalantly. 

This was insane. This had to be some kind of joke. The woman continued talking to me, but I wasn’t able to fully comprehend her words. I didn’t know a whole lot about my situation, but I know it wasn’t a good one. I was being treated like I had done something wrong. She mentioned to me that I was some kind of criminal. I was a genocidal maniac. However, I had no recollection of proof for these accusations. Maybe it had something to do with being asleep for so long. I was informed that I had been in a state of stasis for seven years, but my birth had taken place during that time period. It really made no sense to me. All I had wanted was some clarification, and I was beginning to feel a form of agitation. A pen rolled off the desk behind the woman. 

“As of right now, you appear to recognize common knowledge. We expected this. Are there questions you have?”

I looked at the crew cuts on the men who stood at my side, rifles in hand, and then I studied the hair atop the lab lady’s head and how it was pulled back into a bun. I was curious. I reached up to feel the hair on my head only to discover a smooth touch. I couldn’t find any hair. I ran my hands over the entirety of my scalp.

“I have no hair.” I didn’t know how to feel about this. All I knew was that this was something else that set me apart from the rest of the people in the lab. 

“Yep, you’re as bald as a baby, kid.” One of the men next to me laughed. 

The woman removed a pair of glasses from her face to clean off the lenses. “Your hair follicles have yet to reach stimulus to actively grow hair. It’s a minor glitch in the awakening process.” 

A desk drawer rolled out on its own, and one of the other lab workers pushed it back. I felt weird. I felt like I was a misplaced object in a room full of matching symbols. The white elephant. Everyone else apparently knew but me, and I wanted to be filled in. 

“Who am I,” I asked. 

The lab lady gestured to the men again, and one of them came between us, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. He reached back and pulled out a pair of handcuffs before forcing my wrists into them. He locked them in tightly to where it hurt with the slightest movement. 

“Who am I?”

The other man forced me to my feet. My legs were liquified, so I staggered to keep my balance. 

“I’ll be taking no further questions at this time, and you will now be escorted to your cell.” The woman began to walk away to her desk. 

“Who am I?” I was becoming frustrated. There had to be some sort of misunderstanding. I wasn’t a criminal. I wasn’t a monster. I didn’t know who or what I was, but it certainly wasn’t anything I was called earlier. The men started pushing me and pulling me by my arm away from the lab table and towards the entrance. I asked the same question over and over to see it fall on deaf ears. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I dug my feet into the floor to try to stop the men from taking me out into the hallway. I pushed back against them, trying as hard as I could to keep the lab lady in my view.

“Who am I!?”

A text book fell over. 

“Who am I!?”

Chairs began rolling away from their desks.

“Who am I!?”

I struggled against the men, one of them eventually throwing his strength into a shove that launched me off my feet. Handcuffed, I wasn’t able to catch myself, so my face smacked directly into the cold tile. There was something in me that started burning in my chest. I lied on the floor for a moment, listening to the men make their jokes and complaining about the kind of job they had to do. Then I started to get to my feet, finding a small blood splotch on the floor from where my tooth cut into my lip. My arms were weak, shaking as I pushed myself up. A drop of blood seeped off of my lip and added to the blood that was already on the floor. What did I do to deserve this? I found balance on my feet, holding my head in my hand. I could hear the men antagonize me with condescending remarks. I could feel something surge in my chest.

“I just want an answer.” I began to turn around to face them. The floor began to vibrate as tools rattled behind the glass cabinets. It certainly got the woman’s attention again, watching her jump up from her chair. The men looked at each other, one of them bringing his rifle to his shoulder. 

“Okay, kid, we’re going to need you to calm down now,” the man advised. 

His words struck a nerve in me. I heard it before, but the memory was far away from me. I stared at the men in front of me, and I found myself unable to move. Those words were familiar. The feeling I had was familiar. I blinked, and for a brief instant, the room had changed. Instead of a lab, I was now standing in the middle of a lobby. A blur of lights flashed outside of the glass entrance. There were a dozen men people gathered before me, all armed, with one older man standing out from among them. He was in a white coat much like the lab woman, and he was holding his hands up. I found red stains on my own. Then in another blink, I was back in the lab again. I was feeling enraged. 

“Calm down? Calm down,” I started to scream at them, “All I want is my name!”

I felt something release from my body. It surged through the lab, shattering the glass cabinets and knocking the men off their feet. Several of the other lab workers ran for cover behind their desks. The woman was too stunned to run away, sitting back against her desk as she watched in awe. Although it had been over as fast as it had begun, a thought crossed my mind that this might have been what they considered an incident. I didn’t know what happened. It was all so quick. From the eyeballs and shocked faces that turned towards me, I knew it was something I did. My head throbbed, and my stomach turned. 

I stood in place out of fear of what might happen next if I had taken a step. The men in their tactical gear looked as if they were sharing the same fear, not considering reaching for their rifles again. I regained control over my feelings. I opened my mouth to apologize because I did not intend to cause harm to anyone, but before I could get a word out, I heard quickening footsteps shuffling through the glass behind me. I turned to catch a glimpse of the person approaching, but all I got was a hard thud in the back of my head. 

Lights out.