Ugh… my head… I groaned as I slowly drifted back into consciousness, eyes still closed. What did I do before I went to sleep to feel this bad…? Hang on… Where… am I? The first thing I noticed was the smell of the room. It did not smell like my room, nor any room I was familiar with. This smells like… cleaning alcohol? I opened my eyes slowly, wincing at the bright lights from the ceiling. This was not my room – I always had the lights off whenever I went to sleep.

As I looked around, the room I was in looked like a hospital room – but there was a lack of medical equipment. There was no TV, either – it was just a room with a bed and several small desks. Huh, where am I? This doesn't feel like a dream, either – can't wake myself up. Why would I be in the hospital? I don't feel like there's anything wrong with me, except maybe this dizziness… Over the past few years, I've managed to practice lucid dreaming to some extent. Whenever I had a nightmare and I realized it was a dream, all I had to do was will myself awake, and I would immediately wake up. It took some amount of focus and mental strain, though.

Before the feeling of panic took a hold of me, I heard a noise. The door to my right slid open, and a uniform-clad woman entered the room. The first thing that caught my attention was her long, red hair – not the colour of hair you'd see every day. Next was her uniform-like attire, with several decorative garments on it – and her sharp red eyes, which slightly softened as she saw me.

"You're awake. How are you feeling?" she asked, approaching the side of my bed.

"Mostly fine… umm… where am I? What happened to me?" I asked cautiously.

"You don't remember? We found you unconscious in the forest yesterday. You were awake for a while there but passed out almost immediately afterwards."

"Forest…?" I closed my eyes as I tried to focus. Her mentioning the forest did ring a few distant bells, as I recalled the sensation of grass and dirt on my face…

The smell of dirt and rain… A hand patting me on my face…? Oh, it's her… she looks serious… what's going on? I try to ask… but nothing comes out. She looks ahead as my hearing returns… I hear shouting… is there a fight going on? Several men lined up in front of me, armed with swords and the like… fighting… what are they fighting? I could only see masses of black moving…

Wait… I hear rustling in the bushes behind me… something is coming for the man on the rightmost flank! He doesn't seem to notice, and my voice hasn't returned… I see a large sword next to the woman… instinctively, I pick it up…

One short dash forward, one sword-swing upwards, aimed at the black blob. It was a set of movements that I was all too familiar with from a certain game, where repeating this set of movements was somehow a faster way of moving than running… Wait, how am I even able to do this? I… ugh… suddenly feel dizzy, and everything blacks out…

I pull myself back to the present and look at her. "I… kind of remember? Did you bring me here afterwards? Thank you."

"No problem. What else do you remember? How did you end up there?"

"Not much, unfortunately, sorry…" My head was still a mess. Who? What? Where? How? Why? Those were the only words that kept spinning around my head.

"Hmm… do you know what this is? I found it nearby from when we first found you," she asked, handing over a coil of black rope.

Rope? Wait… isn't this…?! What I thought was black rope at first began to look much more familiar, as I saw the three metallic protrusions on one end, and a rectangular box in the middle of the length. Isn't this my laptop charger?! Wait, she doesn't know what this is…?

"Um… y-yes! That's mine! Did you find anything else nearby?" If this really was my laptop charger, then…

"Oh, good, you recognise your belongings. It seems you're not completely amnesiac, at least. That's a relief. We couldn't exactly find out what was wrong with you, so I was somewhat worried… anyway, we found these as well."

She stepped out of the room for a moment, and brought back a rectangular black block with red engravings, and two more smaller rectangular blocks, one covered in a translucent white cover, and one with a length protruding out of it on one side…

My hard drive… and my phone?! These were near me when I was in that forest…? Some sense of relief washed through me, after seeing something that was finally familiar to me. But why…?

I tried to focus on trying to remember why I had all of these in my possession in the first place. As I touched my laptop cover, I suddenly remembered. That's right, I was about to get it fixed! It wouldn't turn back on, so I was on my way to bring it to a store… I brought the charger with me because it may have been my charger or battery malfunctioning… but…

I couldn't remember anything else other than that, and everything else was a blur. I didn't even remember if I had left my apartment unit or not.

"Was this all you found?"

"We tried looking a bit more, but yes."

If they didn't find my apartment keys, does that mean it would've been right after I unplugged my laptop charger and was right about to leave? Then again, my keys could've just been lost during the fight in that forest… but I have my phone with me, though…

I decided to stop thinking about it for now. There were more pressing questions to be asked, after all.

"I'm sorry, but… where am I, exactly?"

"You're in one of the medical stations dedicated for the ARKS. Specifically, the main one here."

"Huh?" Arcs?

"Hmm? What's wrong?"

"N-nothing…" What is she talking about? I've never heard anything about arcs! Are we under a bridge or something?! As I eyed around the room, trying to get more information, my eyes fell on her uniform. Specifically, one star-shaped symbol…

T-that's…! What? Why? How? THAT'S what she meant by 'arcs'?! That ARKS?!I can feel my mouth opening and closing like a fish. I must've looked like a complete idiot, but I was so overtaken by surprise that I didn't have time to care about my image.

Wait, hold up a sec! ARKS?! But then… that means… I thought back to the encounter in the forest. They were fighting with swords, fighting masses of black, the way I moved when I picked up her sword… masses of black… in a forest…?

"Dagans…?" I couldn't stop myself from saying out loud. I had a bad habit of talking to myself.

As she heard that, her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed, trained at me. "How did you know that? It isn't exactly classified information, but the general public should not know the names of Darkers."

Crap. "I… I must've heard the name from somewhere else. I'm sorry, I can't really remember much… I don't even know how I know…" I felt bad for lying to someone who saved my life, but I had no idea how to explain my situation, nor did I know if they would even believe me. Hiding things may make me somewhat suspicious, but I highly doubt telling them a detailed story with things that might not even exist here, or things that don't follow their common sense, will be any better… in the worst-case scenario, I might end up offending her.

"I… see…" she didn't seem fully convinced, but she let me off the hook, at least for now. "If you're feeling alright, come with me. We have some questions for you, and we'd also like to run some tests on you as well, just to make sure there's nothing else wrong with you."

We? Tests…? I figured this would also be a good chance to get more information as to my current situation, so I nodded and agreed. There were no other options, anyway. If this really was a place where the ARKS exists, then there was only one possibility…

"U-umm… sorry, but what should I call you?" I asked a question that, in retrospect, I should've asked an hour or two ago.

"Oh, right. Never did introduce myself," she said, turning around, her red hair floating a breeze entered as she opened the door. "The name's Allia. I'm one of the three top commanders of the ARKS, and the main commander of those stationed in this part of the solar system."

Wow, that was tougher to write than I thought it'd be. Mysteries and revelations were always my favourite part of any story, but actually writing one myself was a greater challenge than I thought! I hope I pulled it off well…

That marks the end of the first flashback chapter. After this one, the present story will continue, and there will be another flashback chapter after a few chapters of the present story. I'd like to keep that pattern up until I've covered all the flashbacks.

As for the update schedule, I'd love to have a new chapter up every day, but realistically I think two or three days sounds more accurate. This is largely because I still have lots of ideas and they're still fresh, and updates might slow down once I use them up, although when that will be is another question entirely.

Until next update!