Cerberus Rising
Stage Zero: The Life, Death and Rebirth of Red X
Chapter Three: Awakening
All he could see was black, and all he could hear was silence. Nothingness was all he could feel, and the only taste in his mouth was failure, humiliation and bitterness. This was the irony of his life, his punishment for losing his nerve when it had counted most. He had strayed off the path he'd swore he would uphold; live for him and him alone.
But he had given in to his conscious, that voice in the back of his mind that wouldn't go away no matter how many times he tried to silence it. He had played the hero once again.
And death was his penalty…
What will I be remembered for?
That was the worst part, at the very end he had betrayed his cause, and as a result he wouldn't be remembered as the thief that lived on in legends. He would no longer remain in the minds of those who had obeyed the law, the one man who had undermined the rules and blurred the line between hero and villain permanently.
Was it worth it?
Memory, no – the concept of memory, was slipping from his mind. As his body had unravelled every moment from his life seemed to be replaying and blending together as if it were an orchestration. An orchestration that ended with a note not of triumph, but of regret and utter disappointment.
The image of Robin's grinning face would have made his blood boil, but such emotion was beyond him at the point, he had become nothing, and nothing was what he would remain as. Emotion and inner conflict were luxuries that he had forsaken.
Is this the end?
The faintest light of the nearby sun just managed to reach his frozen eyes before the blackness completely consumed him. It was a beautiful sight, a sight that could only be admired from a view such as his.
He had once ignored the beauty of the universe, now in his final moments it consumed him with blinding force all at once.
He had screamed at first, screamed and wailed and cried, but now as he felt the numbness turn his insides hollow, he let his final thoughts echo in his shell of a conscious.
Was I ever meant for something more…?
The silence deafened him as he fell into the mouth of the ever lingering dream of death...
"Red X has been recovered…"
The voices of nervous yet calm individuals and the rhythmic motion of machines blended together like a sonnet. Lights and holographic images flared up, pictures and images of decorated the bleach white room.
Looking over a table, where a horrific yet saddening sight lay before her, the blonde woman inhaled a deep breath of clinical air and set to work, knowing that there was a long and arduous journey ahead of her.
"The Nero Project will proceed as planned"
Dead flesh, mutilated into nothing but grey lumps of lifeless meat like a valley of cracked scarred skin, where no colour or breath was held, jerked at the infusion of the first needle.
The tubes dug into the broken shell, into various veins and arteries that had been rendered and ripped by intense pressure. Fluid was pumped through, filling the cracks in the flesh.
Time was not registered throughout the process, so no-one was exactly sure how long it took before the internal flesh started to convert back to a pink colour, or when the tarnished lungs began to slowly take in oxygen.
Or when the body itself began to pump blood around its once broken system…
From there it was only one step after another. Bones were welded and connected together by synthetic plating, while the muscles around it were rebuild with extreme precision.
The skull was reformed; chips of bone removed and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, scars of the flesh sewn together, every limb, artery and piece of tissue reformed in such a way that some would say it was the hands of God at work.
The brain's activity slowly began to send out thoughts, the consciousness of the experiment was sealed behind a wall of drugs and comatose, but it was there nonetheless.
Very soon, after what seemed like an eternity of science against the idealism of death…
The once dead heart began to beat again.
Where…where am I?
"Look, I…I think he's waking up" a voice, a very distant voice spoke out, bringing with it an intense pain to his ear, as if it were the first time using them.
Wh-what's going on? What happened?
"Suzaku, what's going on?" another voice, this time female, spoke over him, just as painful, though somehow closer.
I can't see, why can't I see? What happened to me?
"Neural patterns are in the red, brain activity is off the scale, heart rate increasing exceptionally! Goddammit it, he's coming around!"
There was a pain, a boiling pain that was swelling up inside of him, but regardless – he had to see, using strength that seemed extinct, he blearily opened his eyes, and was hit by a blinding wave of white light.
"Damn it! It's still too early!" the female's voice again.
Shadows began to spread across his view, blurred images, like ripples in a pond. The images began to take shape, a hazy one at that, but he could still make out the image of a woman, dressed in a dark crimson.
"Heart rate is going into overtime!" the male voice yelled in urgency.
"Damn it Suzaku! At this rate we're going to lose him!" the view became more graphic as the figure grew closer. He could now make out her face, a pretty one at that, but her most distracting feature was her eyes, which were a colour that resembled a deep red wine, perhaps even blood.
"X, look at me; you have to calm down" she said forcefully taking hold of his face with unusual gentleness.
Who are you? Where have you taken me?
"Heart rate still climbing! We're going to lose him Seras!" the male yelled out, his appearance became vaguely visible at the far reaches of his sight.
"Give him a concentrated dose! Now!"
The intense panic that had been consuming him slowly began to fade away, as if he was slipping back into a dream, only this time the dream was a cushion instead of a coffin. His breath slowed down s his eyelids suddenly became quite heavy.
"Heartbeat slowly down, brain activity normal…we saved him Seras" the male voice sighed in relief, only it was much more distant now.
"Increase the rates of injections, we can't have something like that happen again, we're too close now" the woman heaved, looking down upon him with an almost timid gaze.
"Go back to sleep, X"
And that's just what he did.
The powerful white light pushed against his closed eyes, disrupting the darkness of his sleep, causing a pale red glow to wash over his vision. Soon, his other senses came into place.
He could feel soreness over every part of his body, as if he had been broken apart and mended, every muscle ached and every joint felt bruised and tender. A clinical smell filled his nostrils, air that had been filtered to an extreme extent. The taste of dried blood lingered on his tongue, as if it had been cemented there. Sound slowly flowed back into his ears.
A sound that resembled thunder, thunder that was fired from a gun…
"Wake up X!" a voice echoed through his mind, stirring him, and slowly causing his eyes to open, where he was greeted by the familiar white light.
The sounds and tremors of explosions began to increase around, knocking his vision back into place, awareness creeping back into his system.
"X, get out of that bed! This facility is under attack!"
Slowly he rose up, scanning the room around him. He seemed to be on some kind of operating table, the room around him was a bleach white colour, like a doctor's surgery, only advanced beyond what he had ever seen before.
"What's going on? Where the hell am I?" he thought aloud, but was greeted by an intense pain in his face. He gripped his face with his right hand in reaction; it felt as if his face had been carved, the flesh felt bruised and torn.
His face…not his mask.
It then occurred to him that he was indeed unmasked, topless, and the only shred of clothing on him was a plain piece of underwear. If this had been any other situation, he would have felt a sick sense of humiliation, but right now he was more terrified at the fact that someone knew what he looked like under his mask, someone knew his identity.
"What's happened to me? Why am I here? The last thing I can remember is…" the man frantically searched the back of his aching mind to try and find a shred of memory that would make sense of all this.
The ghostly cruiser edging closer across the dark cosmos, like a vessel of death. It roars like a beast from the circles of Hell and unleashes a burst of golden light, cutting through everything in sight.
Screams and flames, explosions and shreds of metal, killing everyone in sight, survivors flee to escape the wreckage, one stays behind and braves the fire, fuelled by an unknown sense of loyalty.
One lives, one dies
The dying one falls through the vacuum, into the mouth of endless ark, ice and fire and darkness consuming him until nothing is left but a tormenting pain, the living one screams out a name.
"RED X!"
"AAARRRHHH!" the unmasked man yelled out, gripping his head in agony, falling to his knees, trying to block out the vision of death and blood.
"What…what happened to me?" he whispered to himself. It was then the explosions became more intense, knocking him off balance, nearly sending him face flat on the floor.
"X you have to listen to me! Your scars haven't healed yet but I need you up and running!" the voice yelled out, the man looked up, but could not find a face to match the voice to.
"Who are you? What's going on?" he yelled out, shouting in random directions.
"Look, right now I'm the closest thing you have to an ally right now! My job is to make sure you leave this facility alive!" the voice yelled back, it was defiantly the voice of a woman.
"Facility?" he asked.
"We don't have time to sit around and chat! Grab your suit from the cylinder near the corner of the room!" she yelled.
The unmasked man turned to the right; there he saw a large silver coloured object, nearly as tall as him. He sprinted over to it, slamming his hand onto its side, which caused the object to automatically open up.
Where he stood face to face with a skull-shaped mask with a crimson 'x' pattern painted across the left eye.
"The suit? How did…?" a million questions whirled around in his head like a hurricane, but due to the sounds of gunfire coming from outside the walls, he knew now wasn't the time.
"There should be enough xynothium to power it up for at least another hour or so, I'll guide you as best as I can, but for now you have to get moving!" the voice urged.
Without hesitation, he grabbed the suit. The sensation of the fabric against his skin was familiar and comfortable like an old shoe. After applying the basic clothing, he grabbed the two most important pieces of the suit; the mask and the belt.
"I don't who these guys are, or what the hell happened to me…" the belt glowed a dark shade or red, and the suit automatically powered up once again.
"But I'm not leaving this place without answers!" he declared, once again wearing the skull-mask of the infamous thief he was and always had been.
Red X was reborn…