G told me that for the single day that I knew Agent Matthews, my decision to enter cryo-sleep changed the man's life. In that same day, Matthews also said that I had a sharp wit, which I explained was due to my inherited inability to infer a bad time to make jokes and dish out insults. A part of me was incredibly happy that at least one thing about me had stayed the same, even if it was my worst trait.

“You look like shit, dude,” I said to G.

He replied with a scoff, “You're one to talk.”

In a scene reminiscence of the first time I met Matthews, I found myself back in a bleach-white hospital room, the dizzying stench of alcohol disinfectant managed to irritate even me. Sitting beside me was the agent, dressed in his classic suit and horn-rimmed glasses which I was sure had gone out of style at least a decade ago. My theory was that he wore them more as a point to prove his job than anything else. The man had gotten exponentially older since I last saw him. His hair was full but slightly greyed, with a set of wrinkles that stretched his skin.

I looked around the otherwise empty room. A vase of flowers with a 'get well soon' card was placed on the bedside table.

Solemnly, I asked, “How many years has it been?”

“Before I tell you, you need to know something happened.”

“I know something happened,” I snapped back, fiercer than I thought I would. “I want to know what I've missed.”

He sighed, taking off his glasses to clean them. “Six months after you went into your last sleep, we had a situation. Parker noticed a drop in some science mumbo jumbo. I don't really remember what he said,” he admitted to his lack of knowledge in the medical sciences. “We took a look and...the Mist Poisoning managed to jump a few nerves and spread into your right arm.”

Slowly, I slid the blanket away from me. Part of me knew what I would see. A sleek, thin, silver robotic limb had replaced the entirety of what used to be my right arm, ending at a cleanly bandaged shoulder. I held the contraption up to the light, where it glinted and glowed. My new fingers opened and closed easily, likely due to my practice with the legs, but still would not turn into a full fist. But the rest of the prosthetic moved without any visible jerks.

G continued, “We had to amputate. The nerves in your arm was too damaged. The moment you woke up, it caused unbearable pain. It took awhile, since we did not have the medical capabilities to halt the poisonings' growth.”

“How many years?” I asked again, deducing where the conversation was going.

“The freezing process was the only thing that slowed down the poisoning—”

“How many years?” I demanded.

The agent stopped his explanation, slowly putting on his glasses again. It was now spotless and shining in the light after the lengthy cleaning. “Fifteen years Milton. It took fifteen years for us to get the medical sciences well enough to stabilize you.”

My arm dropped to the side with a loud clang as it hit the rail of the bed. “Fifteen years. One-five.” I repeated in disbelief.

“Yeah,” G confirmed grimly. “And even then, we didn't really want to bring you out yet.”

My gut was spinning. It was the feeling you get when you stared over the edge of a tall building and the body reacts to the idea of plummeting to your death with a somersault in the abdomen. That kind of feeling. Something else about the grimness of the whole situation had thrown me off though. Had it just been a damaged arm, the successful surgery should have been an occasion for celebration. Instead the foreboding mood told me something else was at play.

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Sensing more bad news, I asked, “Why didn't you want to bring me out?”

G paused, taking a couple of breaths, opening his mouth as if about the speak, only to close them again. I watched patiently as the man tried to form the sentence he needed to tell me. “Our surgery procedure hadn't improved enough with the times.”

Without him saying it, I figured the situation out. There was no one here to greet me but the agent. It could have only meant one thing. He was waiting for me, not knowing when I would wake up. “How long have I been here? In the hospital.”

“Three days. Two and a half, if you want to be precise about it.”

The information hit me harder than I thought it would. I shot up from my bed and sudden heavy breathing took my respiration like a freak storm. G stood up and approached me, putting a worried hand on my back.

“Hey man, you okay?”

“I'm...I've...lost two days.”

He apparently had not thought the news would hit me as hard as that either, for he could only stare at me in stunned silence.

I stared down at my new arm. “I have only a week left to live now,” my fingers finally managed to ball itself into a fist, the steel creaking as it did so.

In frustration, I swung my robot arm against the railing of my bed and G jumped back, surprised. The metal handlebar broke clean off its hinges, flying across the room and clattered across the floor. Red started to seep through my bandaged shoulder.

Anxiously, G pressed the call button on the wall for a doctor. “You can't move so fast yet! You're not fully recovered and the surgery just ended. You could rip your arm off.”

“Fifteen years G. Leila is...she's...she's thirty-seven now.” I looked to him. “I missed half her life again.”

“Hey!” He held me steadily at the shoulder, turning me to stare straight into his deep brown eyes, one of the few things of him to still hold colour. “She doesn't blame you. Not once. Not one day.”

I nodded, still in shock, but managed to ask, “And Joan?”

Suddenly, his stare was no longer at me, but through me, and I knew then that there were even more bad news to come. After all, good things come in threes. Why not the bad stuff as well?

“Randolf. How is she?” I asked again.

He swallowed hard. Enough that I could hear the saliva between gulped down. “She's sixty-one this year,” and he paused.

Forcefully, I pushed, “And...?”

“Milton, she's old. I'm old.” Somehow, for the first time that day, I heard the ageing creak in his voice, saw the thin bones of his hands. The once young man, smooth and charismatic now looked like my teacher from junior high, the latter who must have been dead by now. G's hairline had receded, and the slight greying I saw earlier was actually the undergrowth of his hair, where the only brown remaining were the canopy, where they would also soon disappear.

I muttered, “You're old...”

Sarcastically, he replied, “Thanks for reminding.”

I clambered out of bed, sweeping the blanket to the floor. Without any hitch, I got back onto my robot feet, just as a much older Doctor Parker knocked and entered the room.

“He's awake?” he asked G, before seeing me head for the window, his question answered.

With both hands, I drew back the curtains to the city of Roagnark. The familiar skyline was doused Mist blue. Like a thin fog that had moved in, the Mist had overtaken the entire lower atmosphere. The roads were emptied and abandoned and the faint lights that came from the buildings looked like ghostly lamps in the distant sea. I placed my left hand on the window pane, expecting to feel the cold for some reason. However, my nerve damage had returned, and none of my physical sensation was working again.

Doctor Parker said, “It's been like this for ten years. The underground road is working. The cities are thriving. We even have trains and ports that connects all five cities. We can't fly anymore, but we're alive.”

I was entranced by the sight. Before, I had thought that a couple of years had brought about a large change to the world. Then, a decade later, standing at that window, I realized just how small scale a change the years before had been. And that on the scale of the time of the world, how much impact fifteen years had.

“They did a good job,” Parker continued. “Leah. Joan. G. Without them, none of this would have happened. Everyone's alive.”

I turned away from the window to face the two men. Strictly, I asked, “Where is Joan.”

“She—” G started, but couldn't get the words out. “She's—”

“Milton,” Parker cut in for the man. “You just got up. You need to rest.”

“I'm rested,” I said sternly, a low growl in my voice. “Now I'm gonna ask one last time. Where. Is. My. Wife?”