There were noises all around me suddenly. I felt like I had just been pulled up form the very recesses of my mind into a bright and busy world. Something was roaring in my ears and I felt soft material against my skin. I was someone! I was a being! I could feel.
It seemed like all around me there was chaos. The sounds of machines going off, sirens and warning bells. The sound of talking and shouting. I opened my eyes to see the lights. I smelled chemicals and rock, and something...orangey.
Something was almost covering my face. I tore it off. I could see a lit room, people were running about.
I had to run!
I stripped myself of the needle jammed into my flesh. It caused a tiny sting, but I ignored it. I had to run. For a brief second, I took in my surroundings, machines, computers and the strange bed-like thing I had been lying on, surrounded with lights...
Then I broke out into a run.
I remembered that day, though not as vividly as I remembered most things. Normally I saw things in my memory in perfect detail, but that memory was flawed. I was so new that day, my mind hadn't been working properly and I hadn't taken the detail I take now in. It's foggy and vague, but there is no way I would forget the layout of the first place I remember.
I'm looking at the layout now, and I know who it's for.
Not even Maria saw the place I lived my first few moments. After a minute of running blindly down cold corridors, we rounded a corner, found each other. She never saw were I woke up, confused and alone.
Sarah Jane was giving me a strange look. I must have reacted in some way, stopped or gasped to show I had seen this set-up before.
"Luke?" she asked, unsure. "You OK?"
I glanced again at the bed, the lights the monitors and managed to squeak out. "I've seen this before." I leant against an old desk, dusty and covered with grime. Mum came over immediately and put a protective arm around my shoulders. After all this time, it was a natural gesture she didn't even have to think about.
"Where?" she asked.
I composed myself a bit. It was strange that the layout had such an effect on me. I've really thought about the place were I woke up, but seeing it here now had bought all the old memories back, crowding my head.
"When I woke up." I answered. Knowing this sounded like when I woke up this morning, I added, "The day I was activated, this is what I woke up to. It's exactly the same."
Sarah Jane's eyed widened slightly. Then she looked down. It was a habit she had when she was thinking about something, one I think I picked up somewhere along the way.
She looked up suddenly.
"This is all too much of a coincidence." she announced, coming to the conclusion I'd already drawn myself. "One day we find a girl in the alley, wearing exactly the same clothes as you wore when we found you, with no tummy-button, and a few days after we find a place with exactly the same set-up and the place you woke up in? The two have to be linked. This is probably where she was to begin with. Only how did she end up four miles away in an alley?"
"Could it be the Bane again?" asked Rani anxiously. Didn't like the Bane after kidnapped her mum to get our attention. I didn't particularly want this to be their doing either. I preferred my real mother to the race that gave me life.
"Could be." answered Sarah Jane thoughtfully, "But last time they have a whole factory, a bus, the works. Why would they do their work in a grotty warehouse when they could make another factory?"
Clyde grinned. "Maybe they're scared of you." he joked. "I'll bet you've got yourself a pretty bad reputation with the Bane, after all you've done."
I grinned back. It was true we always seemed to thwart their plans.
Sarah Jane took her arm from around my shoulders and started to take a look at the machinery. There were computers, monitors, machine, all well beyond earth's ability to build. Of course, they couldn't beat , but nobody could.
"I'm going to see if I can find any information on the computers about what happened here." Sarah Jane said absently as she clicked away and some computer keys. "It might give us some idea of what we're up against and maybe some information about who lay on that bed." she paused. "Though I'll bet a tenner she's lying unconscious in our spare bedroom."
I could see Clyde was considering taking the bet on, but the odds were quite low. How many people in white smocks with no belly-buttons did you see walking around? I smiled to myself. I had almost made a joke. I was improving.
"Aha!" crowed Sarah Jane. "I think I found something!" she did some more tapping on the keyboard, then clicked on something. She frowned, buzzed her sonic lipstick at the screen, then relaxed back and started scanning.
A few seconds later, it was obvious she couldn't make anything out of it so I stepped up to help her.
She looked exasperated. "I can't make head or tale of this." she admitted. "It's just some random numbers and words." she moved over so I could have a look at it.
At first look, it did look just like a random bunch of stuff all merged together, like someone had pressed any key on the keypad and added some word in in some places. But then my brain kicked in and within a couple of moments I had it figured.
"It's a software package!" I exclaimed. "All these numbers and words, if you copied this code and put it into a specific system, it would do what the software was meant to do. They must have bought the package and just inserted the code into...." I paused and looked around. "That system." I pointed to a small screen, flashing dull green figures. I looked just to be sure. The sentences on the screen mimicked the ones on the computer.
"What does this software package do?" asked Sarah Jane urgently.
Within a few minutes I had the answer. I rechecked my calculations and translations just to make sure I had got it right. I rocked back on my heels, not in the mood I had been in minutes before. The eager, curious mood in had evapourated. This was strange. And utterly wrong.
"Well?" Sarah Jane asked my after the silence had grown too tense. "What's it all for?"
I hesitated, not thinking she would like this answer.
"It- it grows people."
A look of disgust crossed her face, replaced by horror. She was silent for several more minutes. Then she unplugged the computer and lifted it up, forehead creased.
"Everybody take something." she ordered shortly. "We're going to get this back to . He can confirm what you said." she carried the computer out of the warehouse.
Ten minutes later, we were in the car and driving back to our house. Sarah Jane hadn't said it, but I think she found the idea of growing human being repulsive. This thought wasn't very comforting. Was that what the Bane used for me? A software package?
No-one had said a word, not even Clyde, since we had put all the stuff in the boot of the car. Everyone was mulling the idea of human beings made from software packages in their heads. Me too. I couldn't stop thinking about it.
We got back and unloaded he car. Rani acted as lookout, in case anyone was around to watch us take alien equipment into our house. We piled it up in the sitting room, behind the sofa and in front of the TV. I went into the kitchen to make some tea for us all. I was just reaching for the biscuits in the cupboard when I realised someone had been sitting on the kitchen table all the time I had been there. I turned round, opening my mouth to ask them to get the milk, and found a small figure sitting there in my overly-large t-shirt, swinging her legs.