You slowly rouse from your nap. It's dark outside and your head is pleasantly clear of dayterrors and headaches. You can hear the sopor swishing in your recuperacoon as you shift, and it feels nice, warm, home.
Quiet.
Then you remember that you haven't slept in sopor since your team lost your session. That was a long time ago.
The game. You almost forgot.
Where are you?
You crack your eyes open only to feel the stinging of the fluid in them, you suck in a sharp breath in shock, and choke. There's a funny taste in your mouth, whatever you're breathing tastes too sweet. You reach a hand up and there's a mask on your face, covering your nose and mouth, you run your fingers over it, when you reach the back of your neck you find it's covering the bottom half of your face and your entire neck.
You try to wrench it off but it's latched on pretty tight. You worm your fingers under the top edge, kick at the wall of your- no, what is this thing?
You hear an alarm, it's loud and piercing, but also muffled, as if it's outside of this metal, echoing chamber. You concentrate on trying to gather your psionics to blast your way out, but you must have been dosed up with something, because they're not coming.
Everything seems distant. You feel lightheaded. What is even going on?
You calm yourself as much as you can with that obnoxious ringing going off in the background.
Okay, time to figure out what's going on. Starting off with the game.
Did you guys win?
You don't feel dead. Or even half dead, come to think of it. You do feel strange though.
It starts to come back to you slowly, patchy. You did win. Then there was someone trolling all of you at the same time, telling you that you would all receive your 'prize' soon. Then all you can remember was sitting around for a few hours just waiting.
Then everyone started dying.
Just dropping to the ground, not breathing. No warning. Everything happened so fast.
You thought it was some kind of sick joke. After everything you guys went through, every fight, every death, you would just all be picked off one by one by some unseen force as an afterthought.
Then you felt a sharp shooting pain like someone wrenched your spine from your body and your brain was being pulled out through the base of your skull down with it, your eyes stung from tears and you felt so cold. Then everything went black.
So this is your prize? The game killed you, to bring you here. Wherever here is.
You hear a loud tapping and you look around, eyes stinging and then suddenly you feel a rush of chill and your entire body feels heavy. You blink and your eyes don't sting quite as much this time, you lift an arm to rub at them.
Wow, your arm feels like lumps of jelly, the fluid must have been drained out of this… Tank?
You blink a few times to clear your vision, squint, look around, everything looks-
Dark.
And blurry of course, but mainly just dark, maybe it's just because you seem to be in some kind of metal pod.
You hear the tapping again and turn to a source of light which must be a door and holy shit that's an imperial drone!
You jolt and hit your head on the top of the tank, you wince, and you must be really drugged up because you didn't even feel your horns hit the wall.
The drone doesn't do anything for a while, just stares at you unblinking. It doesn't seem to be too threatening though. It's actually really small, probably shorter than you. It's white with grey patches on it's chest plate and big black eyes. It gestures with it's claws, and you think it wants you to come out of your little cubbyhole. You don't really want to, but perhaps this is all because of the session. Surely it wouldn't drop you somewhere dangerous.
You decide you will come out when you start thinking about the session again, because what if everyone else is here? You could really do with seeing Aradia right now.
You put your hand on the top wall to push yourself down and your fingers sink into an indent in the metal, you grope around blindly and feel another hole close under it, they must be there to help you climb out, so you use them to shuffle down to the opening. The drone grabs you by the arm when you're halfway out and you freeze. It looks at you and tilts it's head in question.
It doesn't look like it's going to cull you.
It taps your leg with it's other set of claws and you flinch. It's being really gentle though, so you decide to slide out the rest of the way. When you put one of your feet on the floor you suddenly feel exhausted and almost slump to the ground, but it catches you on one of it's arms, and you notice it's not as spiky as you remember drones being.
You look around and find you're both alone in a small room with a large set of monitors and computer panels in one corner hooked up to the tank. The drone helps you stand and puts both of it's hands on your shoulders to steady you once you're up, and yes, you are taller than it. This makes you feel a little safer, it seems strong, but you can easily handle it with your psionics if anything happens.
You think about trying your powers again, but you don't want to scare it and have it attack you.
Also you don't want it to know you can't seem to access them right now. That would make you seem weak. And you don't want to look weak in front of an imperial drone.
Thinking about it, what if there isn't anyone else here? What of you ended up in a special facility on Alternia because of your psionics. What if they did something to disable your powers. What would you do if you never saw any of your friends again.
Your snapped out of your little freak out as the creature backs away slightly, making little clicking noises of reassurance, slowly releasing your shoulders and holding it's claws out to make sure you don't fall straight away. You rearrange your feet to stand more naturally. You still can't really see and everything still seems kind of dark, but your head's starting to feel less fuzzy. You must have been drugged, that's all.
You probably shouldn't feel relieved about being given debilitating sedative. You do though.
Once it's happy you're not going to fall over and smash out your teeth, again, it heads over to the computer in the corner of the room.
Speaking of teeth-
You reach your hand up to your mouth to find out the state the game left you in, only to remember you have a mask on, how did you forget that Sollux, wake up. You try and feel around your mouth with your tongue but you can't even lift it from the bottom of your palette, it feels thick, heavy. And kind of numb.
You shake your head to try and clear your thoughts. Everything seems so distant still, you don't feel right. There's a small ball of dread forming in the pit of your stomach but you try and ignore it, everything has been fine so far. And it's going to keep being fine.
You just need to see AA, KK or FF, or even TZ, KN, anyone really. You'll even settle for RL or DR right now, they would probably be perfectly calm in this situation and would be able to talk you through whatever's going on. Not that you need reassuring, you're fine. Just fine.
Everything is fine. Deep breaths.
The drone comes back over to you with a long printout folded up in one of it's sets of claws. It turns to you and you think it's going to show you the paper at first, but it puts it on a table and just rests a hand on your back and reaches up to unclip the mask from the side.
It's not as pleasant as you were hoping it would feel to be rid of it.
You cough and splutter and almost collapse again, the air here feels heavy in your lungs and it burns, the drone takes pity on you and offers you the mask again. You take a few breaths from it, then pull it away and take two of the air, alternating like that until you're lightheaded and you can't feel the burning anymore.
It probably took over five minutes to get used to the air, but you're starting to feel things bleed into a more, non-surreal light now, so you don't mind.
Once you've got the hang of breathing normally the drone wraps one set of smooth claws around your upper arm, it's hand feels cold on your skin, you don't even flinch this time. You try to look down at it's hand but everything's still dim and fuzzy. You scrub at your eyes with your opposite hand. It just makes it worse and now you see little stars dancing in front of your eyes, you follow them down the wall and back up when they disappear from your vision.
The drone tugs at your arm and you stare at it dumbly for a few seconds, you feel so suave and collected right now. It tugs again more insistently, but not enough to actually drag you along. You feel strangely comfortable in this creature's presence, which is odd, because you've grown up fearing these things. Sure this one is tiny, and friendly, but how did you not have a heart attack when you first saw it. Were all those sweeps of conditioning just washed out of you with everything you've seen in the game?
You put that to the back of your mind and try to remember how to put one foot in front of the other, when you look at your feet you realise you're not wearing shoes, when you notice this you worry that you're naked, but you seem to have some kind of gown on.
Wow, you seriously cannot see anything right now.
The drone taps something into a keypad by the door and leads you down a long empty corridor, you fumble a few times but get the hang of walking again soon enough, your legs feel weird. Your entire body feels weird. The clicking of the claws on the drone's feet echo all the way down the hallway, it's eerie but the repetition is strangely relaxing and you start you drift off into a complete sense of thoughtlessness. The ball of dread in your stomach starts to tighten up again suddenly as the drone slows down and seems to be looking at every door you pass so intently you would swear it was looking through them with x-ray vision. Your worry is more nerves now. Surely, soon you'll find out if everyone else is here somewhere, and if they are you're going to see them.
But what about everyone who died. Does that even matter when everyone seemed to pass on just before you ended up here? You have so many questions, you wish there was someone else here with you.
There are so many questions swimming around in your head. But mostly you're concentrating on what you're going to say to everyone. Okay, so you don't want to see everyone, but if they are all here then you are going to see them eventually.
The drone turns to an entrance and taps something into the plain pad there. You wonder if it's just a pattern system, or if there's something written on it you just can't see. When the automated door swishes open you are met with another drone, this one's taller than your escort, than you, and black with piercing red eyes. You wonder how many of these things there are.
It hisses a little at you and you jump as it taps at your chest with the back of one of it's claws, you look down and don't get it. When you look back up it's pointing into the room. You peer around it's shoulder and glance around the room, the drone holding your arm lets you go and nudges you further in, the door closes and it turns to the other one. they don't say anything but they're stood as if they're talking, they must be communicating telepathically or at a pitch you just can't hear.
You don't worry about that though, because there's someone else in the room with the three of you.
They're sat on a bench in the far corner of the big empty room, legs pulled up to their chest and head resting on their knees, face hidden and dripping wet black hair obscuring anything you could see. They look kind of small, but not skinny from what you can tell from here. You slowly pad over to them and they tense when they hear you. They slowly lift their head, your vision is still fucked, but you can see just clear enough to tell from the colour of their skin and lack of horns that they're human, but you don't recognise them from the game.
"Hey, what's your name?" Oh. You sound weird. You still have a lisp but you're mouth feels funny, perhaps you're still pretty sedated. You don't have too much time to ponder why can't feel your teeth pressing into your lip when he answers.
"Uhh, Karkat. Who are you?" You stand there for a few moments, processing that. Well, trying. you don't succeed.
"Huh?"
He relaxes enough to slam his back against the wall and give you a long scrutinizing look. "I said, my name is Karkat. What are you pan-" he winces, "uhh, brain dead?"
You sit on the bench by his feet and just stare at him, you're kind of focusing on him a little too hard to try and see him, you think he's scowling at you. That is definitely him.
"KK?" His breath hitches. "Is that- why are you-" before you can actually gather enough wits to finish a single question he's launched himself at you and is hugging you so tightly it actually hurts.
"Oh my fuck Sollux, I'm so glad it's you." You're more than a little confused right now to say the least.
"Of course it's me. What, didn't you recognise me?" You try not to sound hurt when you say it, because it hasn't been that long has it? Or maybe he just can't see either.
His death grip on you loosens and he sits back on his knees, leaving his forearms resting loosely around your shoulders, his face is very close to yours. "What are you- Sollux." He says starts talking carefully. "You haven't seen yourself have you." He has a weird look on his face, you can see him alright this close up so you don't mind that you can feel his breath on your face.
"No. Why? Do I really look that terrible?" He reaches for one of your hands, clasps it in his own and lifts it between the two of you. At first all you notice is that he's rubbing his thumb over your knuckles, then you can just about see through the dullness of the room that your hand is about the same colour as his if not a little paler. You immediately pull your hand from his and go to feel for your teeth again, sure enough, they're not there. Well, not like you remember. You have flat human teeth and oh god. "I'm a…" you pull your hand back from your mouth and stare at it in horror.
He takes your hand back in his own, lacing your fingers together and pulling it to his chest, using his other hand to pat your face, "Shh, it's alright. So am I. We're together. It's going to be okay."
You lean your face into his hand and close your eyes, deep breaths Sollux. Deep breaths. "So is everyone like this?" you ask.
You can hear his breathing get quieter, you wonder if the drones are still in here with you. You also wonder if he freaked out when he first saw that other one, it was probably over a foot taller than you and KK is shorter than you. He doesn't answer you for a few seconds, until you open your eyes to look at him. He's staring at you, and when he sees you noticed he immediately looks down and away. "I haven't seen anyone else."