Awakening

He awoke to cold darkness and stiff immobility. He stirred, eyes fluttering open after countless hours of being shut. He found himself in a metal and glass cylinder, large enough to encapsule himself. He stretched, attempted to move an arm and felt a dull pinching pain. He looked and saw a tube tipped with a needle stuck into a vein in his arm. Moving as if he were an automaton, he took a hold of this tube and simply yanked it out. There was bleeding, but not much. His mind, groggy and disoriented as it was, tried to make sense of his surroundings. Why was he cold? He looked down at himself and found that he was naked, not a stitch of clothing on him. More confusion invaded his mind, but something inside told him to calm down. He did, remembering somehow that he should take things one thing at a time, analytically. Do not fear, do not stress, do not worry. These three phrases seemed to march through his mind like a subconscious mantra.

First things first, he wanted to get out of this tube. He looked and found that for some reason, the glass facing of the capsule had shattered. Jagged shards of glass littered a metal walkway just in front of the cylinder, and still more broken glass rimmed the door to the strange enclosure. Moving carefully, or as carefully as he could with stiffened muscles, he removed the other tubes and shunts to his body and stepped out of the pod. Beyond, darkness reigned in all directions. A cold draft blew in from somewhere, chilling him. He looked around and saw that his tube was one of many. In fact, after several seconds of observation, he found he stood on a raised catwalk. It was part of a network of access paths, stairs, and elevators that linked a massive wall of tubes stacked one atop the other twelve wide and uncounted deep from the floor far below to the ceiling high above. What were these tubes for? In the back of his mind, he knew, but he could not bring himself to search for that forbidden knowledge. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, a little voice spoke anyway. It whispered, They changed us in these in his head. He shook his head, looked around, and suddenly felt alone. He realized there was no sound in this strange place. No voices, no footsteps, nothing. Just the hum of a distant power generator and the sound of his own breathing. He shook his head again, the feeling of disorientation lingering. He wondered if the tubes that had been inserted into his skin had pumped him full of chemicals, drugs to keep him sedated. Then he wondered, if he was in one tube, does that mean every tube had a person trapped inside? Who would do such a thing? He went to the neighboring tube next to his and wiped away the condensation from the viewing port. Inside, a dead face floated in a sea of repugnant greenish-yellow fluids. He checked the next, and the next, until he came to the end of his row. All twelve people had died and were rotting in their respective pods.

Then, the realization came to him. That could have been me! I could have died and be rotting right now, too. Why he wasn't, he couldn't fathom. But, he didn't think that much. At the moment, he couldn't fathom anything beyond the basics. At that moment, he decided to go elsewhere. He had to get out. That became his goal. He walked to the end of the catwalk, down the stairs. He padded down twenty flights before he stopped. The flights kept going, each one with a door leading away. He tried one and found it open, the electric lock useless. He padded down a long metal and concrete hallway, the harsh lights suspended above dead and broken. He wandered for what seemed like hours. At last, he came to a section of the abandoned compound where he found something oddly familiar. A logo, a stylized N and a G curled about to form a seal, printed in blood red against purest white. It emblazoned a wall in a sort of courtyard, where many offices and laboratory rooms had entrances. Above him, he saw a shaft cut from rock and faced with tile. Elevator tubes, six of them, bundled together into a pillar and encased in metal ringed concrete rose into a distance unmeasured. He stood and stared at the logo, pondering its significance. Becoming frustrated with his lack of progress, he turned from the image and randomly chose a room and walked into it. There, he smashed open a closet and took some clothing. They didn't fit exactly, but he had to make due. No longer as cold as before, he turned and saw a mirror image of himself. A full-length mirror had been placed on the opposite wall. He looked at himself, the young but maturing facial features, the lithe, lean body, the storm grey eyes, and short black hair.

"Who am I?" This inquisitive statement, born in his thoughts but breathed to the open air, startled him. Not because his voice was the first he had heard since coming back to consciousness, but because he couldn't remember for the world of him who he was? Where was he born? Who were his parents? What had happened! A sudden fit of rage took him, and with an animalistic cry he smashed the mirror with a clenched fist. "WHO AM I!"

Then, he slumped to the floor on his knees, and tried to remember but it was all in vain. Minutes passed and he became aware of his aching knuckles. He had lacerated them gravely, exposing the bone underneath yielding flesh and sinew. Instantly, he regretted having gotten angry, regretted smashing the mirror. Most of all, he wished the pain would go away. He closed his eyes and just rested there for a moment in that office. Suddenly, he started, and looked to his injury, only to find it gone. The wound had disappeared, leaving nothing behind, not even a scar. What was going on! It wasn't a dream, he still knelt before a smashed mirror. The injury had been there! He refusing to believe it had healed so fast, but what other explanation was there? Then he stopped, and thought back. He had thought vehemently about getting rid of the pain, and moments later, the injury had fled. Could it be? Could that have been what caused this extraordinary instanteous healing process? It was impossible! But, on the other hand, there was only one way to be sure. Steeling himself for what he was about to do, he grabbed up another shard of glass, turned his other arm over, and slit the flesh from wrist to the elbow as deeply as he could. The pain was excruciating, like fire on his arm. The blood flowed like water, and he nearly swooned at the sight of muscle and bone beneath torn meat. But, he held to consciousness, and began to furiously concentrate on this self-inflicted injury. After five seconds, an amazing thing happened. The wound began to mend on its own! Muscle repaired itself, flesh returned and bleeding stopped. Another five seconds passed, and the pain was gone, along with any sign of the deep gash, save for the bloodied shard of glass in his other hand.

He sat back against the wall, his mind racing. How could this be? Where did this ability come from, to heal so fast? The voice from before spoke again from the back of his mind, They changed us here... They changed us...

"They changed us...? Who?" The voice inside didn't reply. Now, the nameless young man stood and had a new goal. He had to get out, and find out what had happened here. Why was this place built? Why was there so many dead people and why did he alone survive? He left the office, and went to the elevators. Upon trying them, he found they were inoperable. Next, he searched for the nearest stairs. Finding a stairwell, he started his track upwards. He assumed he was underground, somewhere. To get out, he needed to go up. Up meant freedom from this grim and mysterious place.

Somewhere fifteen floors above the courtyard, he exited the stairwell and found himself near another section of offices and labs. In one, which was labeled for the chief director of research, he found a file cabinet. Hungry for information, and deciding the office of this "chief director" was as good a place as any to begin feeding this hunger, he spent the next hour figuring a way to open it. When he did manage to pry the cabinet lock apart, he found all sorts of folders and printed documents, all baring the seal like the one he saw earlier. NeoGene Corp, was printed in little letters underneath it on these papers. The name meant nothing to him at the moment, but he had a hunch that the company had owned the compound before abandoning it.

Opening the folders at random, he eventually alighted upon passages that bore relevance to what he wanted to find out. He read about a man named Jacques Gaurotte, a leading researcher on advanced psychological evolution in humans and how he worked for NeoGene Corp as their chief director on the Superus Animus Project, one of their most top secret of agendas. Putting that folder aside, he picked up another with the label of the project printed on its front and opened it. Inside, he found dossiers containing the medical reports on approximately a thousand young children, from all walks of life and from several different nations. The reports held everything about their physical health and vital statistics, but lacked names. Accompanying these reports were scans of each child's brain. In each scanned image, the same regions of the brain were circled with red ink. Each image, except his own. He looked down at his own report and brain scan and saw that in the scanned image, his brain showed no red circles. There was only one mark, a blue circle drawn around a small tissue formation nestled between the hemispheres of his brain. Beside it was scribbled notes in an illegible hand.

Laying the reports down on a nearby desk, he sat down and pondered for a moment. "So, I was special, then?" He looked again at the scanned image, eyes narrowing as he focused on the inked circle. "Something about that thing... that growth, in my head..."

They changed us... They changed us...

He shook his head, dispelling the growing sense of horror. Something had happened to him while he was here. And, apparently, he wasn't supposed to be here. None of the others who had died were supposed to be here. This was all so very wrong! The nameless young man decided to gather up some of these files, reasoning that they might be worth keeping as reference material in the future, when he began his own research into NeoGene Corp. He rummaged around and found an old briefcase covered in dust. Wiping it off, he opened it and began to pack it with the documents. As he did so, his gaze fell on a thick leather bound book sitting on a nearby shelf. He picked it up and dusted off the cover. It was entitled "The Human Mind: The Key to Ascension", and the author was none other than Jacques Gaurotte. The young man tossed that too into his newly appropriated briefcase, along with the other papers. Snapping it shut, he picked it up and left, headed up once again.

Another ten floors later, he reached a sort of atrium. Above, through dirtied glass, he could see stars and a crescent moon. He hurried through more hallways, half choked with fallen masonry and other debris, before exiting a doorway that had been cunningly built into the side of a mountain. Outside, he found himself in the middle of no where, a forest extending in every direction, an endless sea of greenery and foliage. He looked around and then realized that this place had been built in secret, a hidden research laboratory far from prying eyes. NeoGene Corp looked more and more like the enemy, hiding like this.

Picking a direction at random, he started off into the forest. He didn't know where he was going, and he didn't care how long it would take him to get somewhere, anywhere really. But he did know he had to find some answers. Especially to one question that burned the hottest, "Who am I?"