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Fear rises up my spine, adding to the chill, but I force the emotion down. Count to ten.
One, what’s the situation?
Other than the cold, I have no idea.
Okay, two, what can you remember?
Flashes. Trees and damp. Some faces that are too blurred, too out of focus to recognise. What the fuck?
Three. Four. Five.
I go through the numbers slowly, forcing myself to breathe in time with my thoughts. My head clears a little, the panic receding enough that I can get my head into some sort of order.
Six. What’s happening right now?
At first, I’m too confused, disorientated, to identify anything. But then I realise the cold is reducing, the sharpness of it less intense. It’s uncomfortable, but not so much as to be painful. I don’t have to shy away from examining it anymore to keep the hurt of it at bay. And when I focus in, really think about it, I realise I recognise the sensation.
Cryostasis. I’m coming out of cryostasis.
Which I’d feel a lot better about if I knew why the fuck I was in cryostasis in the first place.
Seven. Just breathe.
My body listens, and my breaths feel deliberate. Under my control. It grounds me. The calm comes back quicker, my mind able to assert control over my emotions, even if the rest of my body still feels detached, out of reach.
Eight. Analyse the situation. Immediate risks? Dangers?
The gaps in my memory. The people lurking just out of my reach. Coming out of cryostasis shouldn’t cause that. Or the way my body feels like it doesn’t belong to me. Something’s wrong, something hasn’t worked right.
Nine. Move.
No dice? Okay.
Ten - open your eyes.
I squint against the light as my eyelids peel back, slow and sticky like they’ve been shut for a very long time. I’ve been in cryostasis - it could have been a hundred years since I last woke and I wouldn’t know any different. But I push down the thoughts about how long, why, what effect that might have on me, and focus on the immediate.
Where am I?
It takes a little while for my vision to clear - a few more sluggish blinks encouraging my eyes to focus. I can’t see much beyond the glass panel in the cryochamber in front of me, just some bland Mercenia building beyond. There’s not a lot of light filtering in - the strip lights overhead turned down low, like the backup power is on.
My thoughts aren’t clear enough to interpret what that might mean, so I file it away for now, focus on what else I can see instead.
Nothing. And that in itself tells me something. Coming round out of cryo, I should be surrounded by scientists and doctors, people monitoring my vitals and being a reassuring presence. Some stern faced sergeant staring down at me, arms folded across his chest, impatience in every line of his face as he tells me to get up, get moving. Walk it off.
Walk it off. I still can’t even feel my legs.
There’s something else wrong with the view, but when I can’t identify what it is quickly, I go back to focusing on the people. The absence of people. Who was I with? What was I doing? What’s the last thing in my memory before the big, yawning blankness?
An image rears up in my mind’s eye, strange and terrifying. Flashing orange eyes, green skin, fangs. Humanoid but not human, and roaring at me as it lunges towards me. My heart jolts in my chest and I raise my arms to guard against the incoming attack, adrenaline and terror overriding the inertia in my limbs. I bark my elbows against the surface in front of me - the lid of the cryostasis pod, I think, as it starts to swing open.
And realise too late what else is wrong with the view.
I’m upright. I’m not lying back, staring up at the ceiling. I’m facing a wall.
My arms, still raised to fend off my phantom attacker, save my face from the worst of the fall as my legs buckle beneath me, sending me toppling out of the now open pod. My body slams into the hard concrete floor, pain shooting up through my arms, into my shoulders and down my spine, radiating out from my knees, into my thighs and feet. It does the job of waking every part of me up, wiring my limbs back up to my brain so I can move them again, but fuck, it hurts.
For a long moment, I just lie on the floor, breathing hard through the pain. The air smells strange - clean, laden with something thick and almost sweet. It’s familiar and not at the same time, and a knowledge comes into my mind that I’m a very, very long way from home.
