-Author's Note: I do not own Generator Rex or the characters etc.-

The first thought the man had was that he was cold. It had settled into his reality as if had been there since the dawn of time, neither created nor destroyed- a fine, acute restlessness in his body. A cold that drifted into his sense of being like a cup full of water from the deep recesses of the ocean, untouched in its frosty apathy.

The second thought to drift through his mind was that it was dark. Pitch-black, inky, with the fuzzy feeling of nothingness surrounding his ears like cotton balls.

He was drifting through the ice-cold darkness. Soundless. Formless.

First, he had these thoughts in his brain, implanted through the electrodes stuck to his forehead, thoughts new and green like the first buds of a planted tree.

Then, as if a switch had been turned on, there was instinct inside him: the urge to live, to see, not to just have thoughts, but to think. A slight upturn to his mouth.

And so his eyes opened up the cool, forgiving darkness and revealed the harsh and hateful light.

The light was distorted through the glass, the point of brilliance in the clear cylinder that he floated in obstructing what he could see on the outside. He would exclaim in surprise if he wasn't surrounded by strange, thick liquid. When he pushed air out his mouth to scream all that rose up was a fluttering swarm of bubbles. A breathing tube was pressed against his lips, chafing his weak, new flesh. The only sound that came out was his muffled yelp against the current.

His brown eyes widened and he thrashed out, at the breathing tube, at the glass, at the wires connected to his body, water sloshed and surged against his ears like it was a living organism.

More bubbles surrounded him, little shiny beads sticking to his cold, pale skin.

Long black strands of hair fanned out and waved like tendrils of seaweed against a surging tide. His hair tangled against the wires, his fingers. He pulled out the electrodes on his forehead, his heart beating audibly in his ears.

Then- CRRRRRRK-CRACK!

The tube popped open and he was emptied out of the cloning pod like a wet fish.

The tiled floor was as hard as ice and chafed his knees on impact. He coughed and choked, vomiting dense, sticky goo.

He lay on his fours shaking, then he scanned his perimeter: foggy cylindrical tubes the each the size of a tall person lined the hexagonal room, each tucked into a corner and built snuggly into the grooves in the wall. Besides that, there were monitors, cluttered tables filled with vials and computers.

The room was dark, the only illumination coming from the other cloning pods lining the wall, which gave off a dim white light, and the blue glow from the monitors. The floor was cluttered with wires connecting to all the strange technology like lines on a map.

He got on his feet, shivering, unsure of his balance. His breath came out in ghostly puffs.

Giving the room another once-over, he moved over to one of the desks and started rummaging through the drawers. The only thing that he could use was a silvery emergency blanket that he promptly wrapped around his shoulders. Warmth immediately started seeping into his body as the strange material swathed him. He sighed.

The tall glass cylinders illuminated the curious look that crossed his face, a soft upturn of his dark eyebrows. The one that he had just popped out of was dark, broken- glass shards and water littering the floor like it was a shattered snow globe.

He minded the messy floor and padded over to one of the other, intact pods, which was covered by a fine layer of foggy mist. He reached out to wipe away the sheen with his hand- and stopped.

His hand...it didn't look right. He closed it and opened it in front of his eyes, and then waved it to make sure it was real.

His hand was made out of a shiny, golden-looking metal. He examined both his hands now, and what was more curious is that they didn't match. The left was pale, almost slender in its normalcy. The right jutted out in an odd, large shape filled with yellow pistons and wires. For some reason, this scared him- it was like he found a foreign entity harboring on his body, entirely different from the rest of him. With the normal, fleshy hand, he felt the metal one, touching it experimentally- and was surprised to find that his entire right arm was made out of the hard material, on further inspection. And-

His heart skipped a beat.

He didn't notice this at first, but now it became certain- his metal arm could feel. It felt the flesh of his normal hand touch his golden knuckles, he could feel his normal hand skim across his metal arm, and he knew somewhere in his mind that this should be impossible. The arm should be fake, like a prosthetic, but it was filled with pain receivers just like his flesh arm. It was made out machinery yet it had all the soul of himself as any other organ. This was wrong, surely- it went against logical nature.

He grimaced, a coldness filling the back of his neck not related to the actual temperature of the room. A robotic arm, large and bulky as it was, was apart of him.

He turned his attention back to the misty glass in front of him. This time he reached out his normal, left hand.

He wiped away the fog- shouted, and fell flat on his back as he sharply pulled away from what he saw. Inside the glass-chamber was nothing but a skull...bits of flesh hanging off of it as it floated in the green-tinted liquid. The glass pod harbored a dead body, one that had been dead for quite some time.

His eyes were wide as he fought back bile at this realization.

This sinister place might've been a torture room. A place where people were forced into glass pods full of acid until they were nothing but bones and slush.

Scary as it is, he had to be sure. He moved over to each of the pods and wiped the steam off each one, checking their contents.

Dead bodies. They were all full of horrible, twisted dead bodies. He retched but there was not a lot inside him to throw up at that point. He was young and empty, his skin not having the experience of even scars- and so, of course, there was no substance inside his belly.

The walls now seemed tight and oppressive, towering over his small frame sternly. He had to get out, and as he scanned the room for an exit he was filled with dread. No visible doors, only walls, and malicious, people-sized containers.

Desperately he searched the walls, scratching the smooth grey metal, he searched for what felt like a lifetime.

No doors, nothing so much as shaped like a rectangle- until he stopped and felt grooves on the wall. Groves that fit neatly into his hands like a ladder rung. He looked down and saw a circular shape on the floor, barely visible in the lighting. A sort of manhole. He got onto his knees and stuck his fingers around it, finding purchase within its thick steel and with a strength that he thought was unheard of, he lifted the circular covering off the floor and away from the exit. He barely had to strain, setting it aside like it was made of cheap plastic. With a sort of newfound disgust, he realized that most of the work had been done thanks to his metal arm.

Now a gaping escape route opened itself up on the floor, leading down into darkness. With the spare light reaching into the hole, he saw ladder rungs as far as the eye could see. Its depths were unknown.

He swallowed, his throat was dry and his tongue was bitter with the last traces of bile in his mouth. He thought about the drop, about his body falling like a rock clanking against each metal rung until he lay in a broken, dead heap at the bottom. He didn't want to think anymore.

With no other options, he got down and gingerly placed his foot on one of the rungs, with both his hands clinging tightly to the edge of the manhole before climbing down onto the rungs. From there he was plunged into darkness, moving farther and farther away from the circle of light at the top of his head, illuminating mere ideas of shapes with the last dim strands it had.

He could see nothing...like a thick black sheet had been thrown over his eyes, as he carefully had to hope that with each blind grasp that there was another rung beneath him to hold onto.

Something felt vaguely familiar. The cold darkness, and the ringing of silence in his ears. Homesickness clung to his ribs, small and benign, though he barely felt it over the din of fear in his head and the metal rungs on his bare feet.

Soon the homesickness, the vague feelings of familiarity, were gone, only to return on nights where he'd fall asleep with a mind clear enough to feel the great expanse of the universe surge as apart of him when he was nothing but home. Nights when traumatic events were far behind him, and he was alone but not lonely. These nights were lifetimes away, and for now, all he had to do was descend the ladder into the unknown. He didn't know these things, but they will define him later.

Until a great tremor hit the building, shaking the teeth in his skull and unhinging his balance, and he then plummeted down into the abyss in a free fall.

-oOo-

Siren felt the tremor too, rocking the floor violently as she braced herself against something.

-Author's Note:

Hello! I hope you enjoyed the beginning of my story, it's about the clones of all your favorite characters! (or least favorite characters, depending on who you are). If OC's aren't your thing, don't worry, for the original characters will be here and back in style shortly, this story is about them after all, and I'm just setting the plot. It's going to be a wild ride!

On another note: if you recognize my username at all- and it's possible that only like one or two people on this site do- you may have noticed that I haven't written any fanfic for about four years, in any sort of fandom, not just this one. (This was just a fancy way of saying I wrote an okay Mary Sue fic in this fandom in the past and I'm now back in the game).

Well, I'd like to use excuses and say that school got in the way because I also started public school four years ago as opposed to homeschooling, but those would still be plain old excuses. I'm eighteen now, going to public high school in advanced classes so hopefully, my writing's improved. I'll be graduating with the class of 2019!

This fic is possible because of YellowAngela (I hope I got that right it's been awhile) because she inspired me to continue in this old fandom. She keeps sending me well wishes around the year that gave me the inkling to keep pursuing this little hobby of mine, and I thank her for her kindness and send my best prayers her way. (Underlined for importance! :) )

Jeez, I hope I didn't make myself sound too important. I really just wrote a couple of things a while back. Glad to be a fangirl again though.