It's never an enjoyable experience waking up on a Russian tanker ploughing its way through the arctic ice under any circumstance, even less so when it's not where you went to sleep. With a few vague memories of bitingly cold water and an intense burning pressure in his chest, Lucian Clark woke. The first thing to strike me when I woke up was the metal underside of the bunk above me. The second thing that more metaphorically struck me was the fact that I had not fallen asleep in a bunk bed. No in fact I had fallen asleep in my comfortable bed in my apartment, and I had also fallen asleep naked. Looking down at myself I saw that I was in fact no longer naked but instead dressed in the scratchiest flannel pyjama set I had ever seen or felt. Looking at myself I saw my feet poking out through the edge of a thin blanket and hanging off the end of the small twin-sized bunk. The sight was so surreal and yet so mundane, I had seen my toes at the end of my feet for almost twenty five years. Five toes, normal looking as feet go except for two freakishly long second toes (index toes?). Looking down at my feet was incredibly normal that's why it was surreal to see them at the end of a different bed than I’d gone to sleep in. That and I was missing about half of one of those index toes on my left foot. It didn't hurt particularly bad but down to the first knuckle was gone. It was weird to me how such a minor change could propel me into such a feeling of unreality, but it did. I almost thought he was dreaming, after all, I had been having vivid dreams for as long as I could remember and maybe this was just one. I wiggled my toes experimentally and the mundane action combined with the shooting pain brought the weight of reality crashing down onto me. I was not dreaming. I felt pain in dreams before but this was sharper, more present. I could feel aches along my body, sore muscles and bruises. More than that though everything felt too solid, too real, it lacked that sort of gauzy molasses feeling that dreams have more often than not. Even as I was convincing myself that I wasn't dreaming the room shifted in a deeply unpleasant way. I have never liked roller coasters, I've been on them but never because I wanted to. With my limited experience with g forces and weightlessness, all I felt was my stomach move. Then the world shook like it was a bell hit with a hammer and I was trapped inside. I swung my legs off the bed and stood as quickly as I could, smacking my head against the edge of the bunk above me again. I was immediately shocked by the pain in my foot as I stood and yelped in a very masculine way and fell to sit on the edge of the bed. Reaching up I rubbed my head which now hurt in two separate places from its encounters with the metal above me. Pushing around I felt through my mess of brown hair to feel at the lumps forming on my head tentatively. It didn't feel like I’d done any sort of serious damage but by my estimation there probably wasn't that much to hurt up there in the first place. Holding on to either side of the bed I felt my hair fall and settle brushing my shoulders in a way I found both annoying and reassuring. I didn't like sleeping with my hair down, it got tangled and ended up being hellish to brush out. I had just recently had it trimmed which everyone said to do to “get rid of the dead ends” and that was supposed to help the problem. It hadn't. Honestly, I kind of wished I'd woken up with it shaved off, I would have definitely traded losing my hair rather than losing the tip of my toe. I confirmed this thought to myself as I pushed myself up off the bed. Slowly putting weight onto my feet as I rose I found the gradual increase in pain was much more bearable. In fact, if I just shifted my weight slightly I could barely feel any shooting pains, instead just a dull throb. Practically glowing with pride that I had managed the herculean task of standing I turned to look around the room. It was a small room that reminded me of a dorm, or maybe a nicer prison cell. It was floor to ceiling metal with a set of lockers against the long wall facing me. To my right was a sink with a mirror above it on a much shorter back wall. If I had to guess the room was maybe eight or nine feet long considering I could have laid down on the floor comfortably at six foot two. The width of the room was maybe six feet but it was hard to judge with the lockers in front of me and the bed behind me. To the left of the lockers was a sturdy looking metal door from behind which I thought I could hear some faint sounds. Tentatively stepping forward I grimaced with pain and decided against walking towards the door. Instead, I tried to more hop towards the door. The hop almost immediately turned into a lurch as I felt the room and the floor beneath me lurch again. It was much less this time and I managed to catch myself as I started to fall, on my bad foot. Cursing and yelping I pressed against the far wall and turned to lean my back against it. Looking at the door at my left I thought I could hear voices maybe, and definitely movement. I was struck with a sort of clarifying feeling as the last of sleep was driven away by adrenaline. I had woken up on what was clearly a boat I now realized, in clothes, I didn't own, and I was missing a bit of toe. That was about all the data I had, that and the sort of murky dreams that I was struggling to remember. Had I somehow ended up in the lake and been fished out by someone? I had sleepwalked a couple of times before and it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility I guessed. This boat was big though, way bigger than most boats that got close to shore if it had a room like this for crewmembers to sleep in. The sounds of movement were getting closer and so were the voices, I guessed they had probably heard me when Id stumbled. I was very nervous, not because I thought they wanted to hurt me or anything, I wouldn't have woken up if that was the case. No my reason for anxiety was that I really didn’t want to talk to these guys, they were definitely gonna ask me how I ended up in the water. I also definitely did not have an answer as to how that happened. It was just going to be a really awkward conversation as they tried to pry a story out of me. I had no story though or at least no story that I knew yet, if anything they probably knew more about me ending up here than I did. 

I could tell that the movement had stopped right outside my door and I could hear hushed voices talking to one another outside the door. I decided it would be better to meet this conversation head-on and get it out of the way. I reached forward grabbing the handle of the door and pushing it open. The door didn't move. I tried again a little harder and the door didn't budge. I slammed my shoulder against the door and still nothing. They had locked me in the room. Now I felt pretty justified to start getting worried, as I heard more movement from the other side of the door I started trying to figure out a rough escape plan. The plan essentially consisted of trying to rush past the people on the other side when they opened the door. Hopefully, the pain in my foot wouldn't be too debilitating and hopefully, we were docked or I was completely screwed. As I devised my escape plan I watched the door handle slowly turn and I prepared myself to move. Then the door moved, inward, I had been pushing. I immediately felt blood rush to my cheeks as I realized they had definitely heard me trying to slam through a door that opened inward. Two men stepped through both wearing faded maroon jumpsuits and both seemed far more nervous than even I did. They stood one slightly behind the other, to fit through the doorway and they looked at me with open curiosity and anxiety. The one closest to me was a shorter than me but broad in a similar way to my build. Thickly built you maybe could have called him fat, but I wouldn't have. I knew enough about my own physique to know that he may not look like a gym rat be he could probably throw me across the room. The man behind him was a little taller with a slighter build, he had thinning blond hair and was turning and squeezing a cap in his hands nervously. The man in front of me was clearly older and had lined cheeks with heavy jowls and almost comical mutton chops. Streaked through with grey he made an overall stern image as he stood in front of me. Then he spoke. 

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

It was completely unintelligible, just a garbled mess of harsh constants and syllables I could not make any sense of. It was like hearing a vaguely familiar song but less in an “I forgot the words” way and more in an “I heard this once I think” way. He repeated himself and I was startled to realize that I was right and I had heard this before, the language at least. He was speaking Russian or maybe something from that region, it felt rude to just assume the language. I shook my head slowly trying to figure out if this was some kind of joke. The blank look on the older man's face told me that either this man was an amazing actor or this wasnta joke.

“English?” I asked tentatively as I shrugged my shoulders in the universal sign of someone asking a sort of embarrassing question. 

He scrunched up his face as if I was making a joke that he definitely didn't appreciate and the man behind him gripped his cap tightly in his hands as he looked at me. Looking me up and down the older man began to speak slowly in heavily accented English.

“How did you get here?” He had a deep voice and it was rough with what I assumed was age and probably smoking, he smelled like cigarettes. It's really odd the things you notice when you're panicking I thought. The smell of cigarettes and salt on the man was the only thing I could think of. Salt, he smelled like salt, I don't live near an ocean. Any chance that I had either slept-walked or that this was some elaborate prank left my mind right then. I get nervous in social situations, in low-stakes stuff like romantic things or job interviews, making new friends. Stuff like this is different though, it's like everything shuts down and I'm ice cold, not anxious not worried just focused and clear. When I realized that there was no way that anything with a rational explanation was happening here that switch got flipped. 

“I don't know, where are we?” I spoke slowly to make sure they understood and even through my chilly veneer I could feel an anxious heat rising in my chest.

“This is RS Sahalinsk, right now we are maybe a few hundred miles from the arctic circle.” He looked at me to gauge my reaction, it wasn't good.

I could feel my stomach churning as it felt like the boat tipped and turned around me, this time though I knew it was in my head. Usually, I could count on myself being collected, it was failing me though, this was all too much. 

The younger man must have noticed my reaction as he decided to speak for the first time.

“We fished you out on the inside of the arctic circle, we were on the way back from a supply run to an offshore drilling site. The ice above you was extremely thin or we may not have been able to see you through it.” He scratched the back of his head with one hand, his voice was higher and he seemed shy, bashful even.

“Alexander saw you in the water, he's the one who sounded the alarm and got you out, it was quite a sight.” The older man had the beginnings of a grin on his face as he said this and Alexander blushed behind him.

I blushed as well as I realized that they had almost definitely fished me out of the water as naked as the day I was born. I'd never been the biggest fan of how I looked tall, big, fat wasn't really the right word but definitely not skinny, and too hairy to be conventionally attractive. I felt heat rise to my face and forcing through my embarrassment I looked towards Alexander.

“Thank you, I don't know what's going on but I do know I probably would have died without you,” I spoke softly, hoping that my words would carry the understanding that in all likelihood I owed this man my life. 

Alexander nodded his face reddening slightly as he looked down towards the metal of the deck at his feet. I turned my head to look back at the bigger man and tried to organize the flood of questions I felt building inside of me. He was looking me over as well, from what I couldn't exactly tell as his eyes swept over me. After a moment of silence, he seemed to make a decision and squared his shoulders,

“Come with us, the captain wanted to speak when you woke up.” 

I grimaced as he turned to walk out of the room and coughed weakly to get their attention. Alexander turned to me as I looked down at my foot and back up at him grinning weakly as I did. He looked at me for a second before realization dawned on his face and he rushed forward towards me and stooped slightly to let me drape my arm around his shoulders. His stature made it so he barely had to stoop as he helped me walk out of the room and catch up with the older man.

We kept a brisk pace as we moved through the ship, taking turns marked by small signs in Cyrillic writing I had no chance of understanding. Instead, I tried to remember where we made the turns in the case for some reason I needed to make a quick escape. Even as I did this though I knew in the back of my head that it would make no real difference. I was in the middle of the ocean so in reality the best I could do would be run back to my room. It kept my mind occupied though, something to do as my mind tried to make sense of what was going on. I fell into a daze as I automatically logged turns in my mind while walking and I tried to understand my situation. At the moment the best I could come up with was that I’d had some sort of psychotic break. Maybe I had some sort of dissociative identity or something along those lines and I had ended up here. It wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility and at the moment it was the life raft I was using to cling to any sense of normalcy. It was a sad day, I thought to myself when the good option is that I have a debilitating mental illness that almost made me drown or freeze to death. Looking up I decided that there was an easy way to test this hypothesis and I almost spoke before I stopped myself. If the answer I got didn't confirm my theory then what would I do? The only options after this theory were full blown conspiracy theories. Government experiments, alien abduction, dark magic, that sort of thing, and as much as I loved fiction it was just that. When I was younger sure I’d wanted to be some sort of hero, demigod, or dragon rider, but what nerdy overweight kid who saw Lord of the Rings too young didn't? At a certain point for me, my love for that stuff meshed with science, with the stuff that makes reality fantastical. It was for that reason that I needed there to be some sort of rational explanation for this. I may not have been a scientist but my love for science and my understanding of reality were part of me. That same love for science though was what drove me to speak though, I knew I couldn't this hypothesis untested. 

“Excuse me,” the older man's head turned slightly to me, “What's the date?” 

“November twenty five, twenty twenty, your American Thanksgiving was yesterday” He replied gruffly without turning around to look at me.