The funny thing about regaining conscious after cryosleep was how you cried.

It was like that for everyone. The toughest men and women alive, even: those people who could take anything the universe had to throw at them, would sob tears like little babies upon waking up. The cause wasn't pain, either. Far as the scientists seemed to be concerned, the reaction was just some weird biological quirk. Ann oddity which lead to a bunch of hardasses in the military all sharing a moment as they cried their eyes out and tried very hard not to look at one another.

But there was another weird thing about waking up from cryosleep:

When you woke up from cryosleep, you were subconsciously trained to check a list of factors. It was programmed in, apparently, and as long as you were under long enough, it would be ingrained.

First to confirm your pulse. Was it fast, or slow? Was it erratic? Depending on the answer, there would need to be a specific response.

Then, the wrist would need to be visually inspected.

Printed on the skin, there was always a standardized tattoo of specialized ink that was designed to fade with a set half-life, and the reading would accurately show an individual how long they had been under for. It operated under the method that somehow you would just know to look, and somehow you would just know what it meant.

Memory conditioning was a bizarre concept.

There he lay, knowing all of that- checking all of that, but not understanding the obvious.

Where the hell was he?

The conditioned thought breezed by his fog filled mind as the activation enzymes took effect. “Longterm memory loss is common and temporary after cryo.”

That was all well and good, but what was not common was the serious unrelenting pain, and the panic that was coming with it. Pain was not normal, so something must have gone wrong.

In fact, his tattoo was wrong. It made no sense. There was no way it could be what it was unless there had been some kind of mistake.

What the fuck is going on-

The pain.

His heart had been slow, but now it was rapidly increasing its pace. Thumping away as if he were running at a breakneck speed.

The pain was unbearable.

His head throbbed as though it were set to burst, and his arms and legs felt numb with needle stabbing pulses flickered through them. He seized up, once, twice. Like a fish out of water, he flopped out of the containment pod and his lungs creaked. Exhaling a soft scream, as though he was embracing death.

It lasted an eternity.

He knew nothing.

He remembered nothing.

Surrounded by pure pain and terror as his body fought itself in fits and bursts. His life could have ended, begun anew, and ended again before it finally ceased.

His pulse slowed again.

Then came a calm.

As if an ecstasy were washing over him. Any sensation other than pain meant life, and life was welcome.

Life.

Cold could be felt, along with his heartbeat which pulsed through his chest: normalizing once more. The pressure pumped behind his eyes, under his scalp, to his toes. Consciousness seemed to grow a little more with each steady beat, bringing with it the knowledge that whatever had hit him just then, had been survived.

Somehow.

That didn't change the fact that something was amiss, in the way that you turn to realize you're about to crash, or you've taken a bad step; Something was very wrong. His brain felt slow and knotted. All thoughts seemed to bend back on themselves and no recognition was surfacing but the conditioning. The worst part was that too was fading, but it was shouting at him as it left. Something was wrong... Something was... something... some...

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... Where was he, again?

As the man sat up, he found that he was in a glass box. Edged with metal along its angles, it stood as an almost perfect cube. Beyond the cube was simply more metal, and a series of lights which flashed at regular rhythms. Bleary eyed, he stared in mild confusion. This wasn't his ship, but as he tried to recollect what his ship would look like he realized he simply could not.

The metal along the floor looked rough. As if cut and melted off. It seemed out of place with what lay beyond the glass.

He sat beside the metal cryo pod, which leaked chilled mist over its edges. The lid lifted up and away above him, as it poured out the white cloud to fill in the floor around him. Markings and letters covered it, along with dents and scrapes. Language that he recognized, but somehow couldn't seem to read. Eyes drifting back to the tattoo on his wrist, he could see there were similar markings, but he couldn't understand those either. Only that they seemed wrong.

For some reason he felt as though he was at the butt end of a sick joke.

Wiping tears from his eyes, he noticed that his skin was bare. Pale and white from the cold, it glowed within the glass cube's strange light. For the exception of some loose shorts around the waist, his flesh was naked.

There was no recognition at all.

Where was he?

He'd woken crom cryosleep, and he was in some sort of glass containment. It almost looked as though his pod had been forcibly removed from its original placement, and brought here.

Confused he sent for his memories- for anything at all to explain his situation, and met nothing but a wall. No acknowledgment, no information. It was as if he at this very moment had just been born from a snapshot. Details were there, but no background, no depth. A migraine worse than hell itself struck him as he tried again to recollect himself, causing his already blurry vision to sway. He cried out, as his heart raced and the pain returned.

When it finally calmed again, he realized he was no longer alone.

Hairs on his bare skin began to rise. One by one, they prickled along his skin.

Somehow he knew that response was ancient and residual, serving no purpose. He dared not try to chase down the knowledge now though, as sounds triggered alertness and he turned to face them.

It was from this instinct, that brought the man to attention face to face with a terrifyingly ugly creature; It was that same instinct that then forced him to hold his gaze.

Fight or Flight, the coin was tossed to land on it's side in perfect balance.

The thing that stared at him through the glossy texture of his cube, was skinned like that of a frog. The face was scrunched in on itself, and folds of slick skin creased along it. There were spikes that seemed to cover random sections of it's strange skin with no perpendicular nature, and organs that bore no flashing glimmer of recognition. Four legs, and then four smaller limbs were what sprouted from it's strange torso and molded shoulders. It seemed to be spread too narrowly for any true physical work, but moved with graceful ease. Each scuttling series of steps caused it to jiggle beneath its green and black skin; the man could see what appeared to be organs and faintly luminescent flesh rippling in unison.

This was a very strange way to wake up.

The man blankly reached his hand through a faint beard of brown hair in a movement that could only be attributed to muscle memory. He tried again to remember where he had been before he woke up, but the crushing headache returned, and he grimaced in pain. Despite all his efforts, he could barely remember anything at all.

The creature stared at him.

He stared back.

It pointed, lifting one of its arms to tap on the glass, face scrunching, before waddling away. It seemed to snort out a gurgle of what the man guessed was some type of speech, as it headed toward the left side of the room. Occasionally stopping to fiddle with small holographic displays that appeared, the creature went about it's strange tasks.

The room outside of the glass was large, the man realized. Filled with all manner of strange things, which didn't seem to be familiar. Odd tubes running along pure metal walls and rounded floors. Glowing projections of what might have been language, or schematics.

In the front of the room sliding doors blurred with an unnerving sound as four more of the creatures funneled in. Each specimen was varying shades of green and black, and each slightly illuminated by their own innards. The man tried to speak then, he focused his thoughts despite his throbbing head, but nothing came out. In shock the man felt at his throat, and encountered the smooth texture of scar tissue.

He was a mute.

He looked down at his skin and saw several more spread out on his arms, chest and legs.

These were terrible injuries. Something had happened. Something had gone wrong. If only he could remember how he got here.

He tried again and again in vain to speak, but still no words would fall from his lips. Only air. The gasping rasps of it billowed a fog in front of him as the warm air met the chilled room. The creatures seemed to find this amusing, because they quickly turned to one another and began complex gestures with their arms, weaving in a mix of sign language and short quick gurgles. They were quite animated, as if spurred on by the behavior of their captive.

Their amusement died quickly as it came though.

As the human stood up and attempted to touch the glass walls of it's confinement, their motions quickly turned to panic. Suddenly, it seemed that they didn't find that funny at all; in fact they found it terrifying as they scrambled with holographic displays- their strange limbs hitting holographic displays in a frenzy.

The air in the cube seemed to thin, and immediately the man found his legs collapsing, his lungs gasping in vain. The creatures scuttled around in the edges of his vision, their short bursts of guttural speech faded to black with the rest of the human's perception.

Perhaps this was hell.