Then he becomes self aware.
The world is cold, the air damp.
He moves his head and it echoes, vision blurs images together. His head moves once and the world heaves to one side like a ship onto rocks. Or a car skidding on ice off the road. There are people talking but they make no sense. Because they make no sound. They make no sense. Their noises are not. They do not reach him but he knows that they are there.
They are there.
And he knows in all this unintelligible confusion that something is very wrong. And their blurs and un-noises are just beyond him and he cannot reach although he knows they are there.
Screaming into the night. Because whatever may have gone before wasn't this. This isn't right. There must have been more than this.
Screaming hurts more. But he knows he's making the noise. He knows his thoughts can connect through his brain into a conscious action. It seemed like an obvious revelation as he screamed but he didn't know it until he started. Because the world rolls over and over and sounds warp because his brain no longer has the ability to process this information properly.
And one of them puts a needle in his arm. Of course, he has arms. His arms are there. And he can't scream anymore, which is terrifying. The pain is gone, but he can't tell them anything else. They are there. He cannot understand much more than that, but they are there.