Shifting his left hand, the man felt around the sides of the cabinet. Two metal latches held the entire thing together, and with some strength, both were flung open, allowing the door to unlock.
Clink!
Clink!
A gust of thick dust displaced itself with the sudden movement.
The room’s air was about as stale as they came. Due to the prevailing conditions, a thick layer of dirt and grime had been allowed to build up undisturbed. Almost contradictory, the floor wasn’t very dusty, not to this degree at least.
After coughing some, he decided to leave the thought at that.
It was time to get to work.
His hand first started grabbing objects on the tallest shelf. Only after being done with the highest, would he go further down.
The first object he grasped was fashioned into a thick roll, with a textile texture.
‘Soft fabric. Best guess would be bandages.’
There were many useful things, but less than one would expect from a supply cabinet. That didn’t matter though, he only needed to come out with a light source. That, of course, didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep track of what he found inside. Quite the opposite. Anything could be of help to him at a later date.
The man kept searching.
***
‘Hard, cylindrical, and smooth. The top is textured and of a different material. Maybe some sort of flask?’
Yet another unidentifiable item. He moved it to the side and continued. There weren’t many things left anyway.
The next object inspected appeared quite irregular, both in shape and material. Its bottom part was riddled with grooves and felt encrusted with a very grippy texture, almost like rubber. The top part though…
‘Hmm.’ The man pondered.
‘Hard, smooth, metallic and…’
A sudden strange feeling came from his pointer finger. While not necessarily unpleasant, he quickly retracted it. It was better to be safe than sorry.
‘Fingers are a precious commodity these days.’ The man thought, rightfully so after what had transpired only a few minutes ago.
After he did, something definitely felt out of place.
And that something was quite obvious. Holes weren’t normal additions to one’s finger!
‘Metallic and… sharp.’ He noted with an unamused expression.
‘Great. Who just haphazardly puts a knife without a sheath?’ The man lifelessly sighed.
Great indeed…
It took some more time to go through the rest of the items inside. It was still packed with quite a few things after all, and his clumsy, bleeding left hand didn’t exactly help either.
But now that he had gone through everything the cabinet had to offer, a small problem arose.
Well, ‘small’ was giving it too little credit. The man… hadn’t yet found a light source. Thankfully, there was still a chance of finding one. It just entailed going to the other side of the room.
‘There should be another emergency cabinet at the opposite end, but it’s a long trek, blind and all. This time could end with more than just end with a few lost digits. Wouldn’t be surprising if I tripped and broke my neck with my luck.’
Remembering how he lost his fingers sure left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, but it was perilous to not repeat the same mistake twice, or at least try not to. It didn’t take too long of a train of thought to conclude that making sure he did everything he could where he was right now before wandering off would be the smarter choice.
Turning to his pile of goods, he prepared to rummage through everything once again.
‘Don’t think I missed anything, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.’
And so, he did. This time he had put the knife in another corner so as to not poke himself again, and with it, no other accidents accrued.
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But at the same time, he found nothing of note.
With his search concluded, all there was left to do was dress his wounds with some of the medical supplies he had found.
Of all the things he found, the most important were placed on the top shelf. These were the ones he’d try to bring with him.
Before doing anything else, the man reached to where he put the bandages. It seemed that the amputation of his fingers by freezing was really a blessing in disguise, as much as an unwanted finger amputation could be that is.
Rather than by crushing or cutting off, having his blood vessels frozen solid had certain benefits, mainly the natural coagulant. The Achilles heel was to that was the gradual warming of the wound, in turn allowing the icy floodgates of blood to open.
‘Still don’t remember where the saying comes from, but it sure does fit. Under all rust lies a steel shine.’
While not an ideal solution to his dilemma, a bandage would have to suffice. With a little effort, he managed to patch up both of his wounds.
With his mind now wandered to the cabinet, he had to choose what to take. Conveniently, he wouldn’t need to carry everything by hand. He hadn’t woken up naked, weirdly enough. On his body were a pair of baggy pants and a long coat, but what he wore wasn’t important. What was thought? The fact that his clothes had pockets!
And so, now began the sorting process.
‘More bandages? Why not? Knife seems important, I’ll put it in its own pocket.’
And so, most of the cabinet had been ravaged through. In total, he had taken a few more medical supplies, a knife, and some crunchy sealed goods that were most likely food. No water unfortunately, even after checking every item for sounds of sloshing.
With nothing else of value to take, he turned opposite to the cabinet.
A deep breath later, he took his first step into the unknown.
Treading as cautiously as in his first march, this one would surely take many times longer.
After a while of walking on the rough metal plating, the floor’s texture changed. Now, it seemed as if all the plates merged seamlessly together into one big floor of smooth metal. Everything was perfectly smooth for a while until some ‘waves’ started appearing. These small waves in the flooring only grew in size and density as time passed by.
At its peak, it almost felt like walking on steel grates, with not a bit of smoothness remaining. Continuing forward, everything started to smooth out again, until a distinction between the metal plating could once again be felt.
And finally, after a longer than expected trek, another wall came to be.
‘Guess I really didn’t break anything’ The man thought in relief while at the same time touching the back of his neck.
Following the new wall, he eventually lightly headbutted something hard, sticking out of the wall.
Clang!
‘Guess I found it…’
Opening it the same way, his hand was greeted by a myriad of items, many almost falling over.
‘That’s more like it.’ He subtly smiled.
Rummaging through, he found much of the same, but also many other things. He continued his search until…
“Yeah?”
“…”
‘Did I just hear someone?’
He stopped everything that he was doing to listen more closely.
“I don’t fucking know! Go look somewhere else, can’t you see I’m having a smoke?!”
The muffled voice of a man could be heard, presumably from the other side of the wall.
‘That’s… I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that I’m not alone or not.’ He debated.
‘You could almost say that under all rust… actually, I don’t think the saying works in this situation.’
With the voice gone, the man continued searching for a flashlight, subconsciously keeping quieter than before.
Nearing the end of his search, he couldn’t believe his luck.
‘A flashlight!’
Indeed, in his hand was a small contraption indicative of a flashlight.
‘Knew I’d find one eventually.’
Deciding to first conclude his search, He put it away for now.
‘I’ll test if it works later. If it doesn’t, I think I found some spare batteries already to test it with.’
Just moments later, he made another, possibly vital, discovery.
A neatly tied bundle of plastic sticks, right near the back of the shelf.
‘Are these… glow sticks?’
Deciding to bend one to check, the room suddenly exploded in an overpowering verdant.
“Aghh.” He yelped from the familiar burning sensation.
‘My eyes!’
While not as bad as with the red lights, it nonetheless burned like hell. As a solution, he simply shut his eyes and turned the other way.
Although it wasn’t perfect, still letting a small amount of light through, the pain was manageable.
‘Huh, I needed a way to get my eyes used to light. Isn’t this exactly what I needed?’
Considering the current situation, one could almost say that under all rust…
‘You know what? Screw that saying!’
Seconds passed slowly, at some point turning into minutes and eventually into hours.
In the meantime, the man sat facing the opposite direction of the green glow stick, his eyes wide open.
From what he concluded, his vision wasn’t great, but also wasn’t useless. While unable to see finer details, he could still make out a bunch of things.
From the rusted floor plating to the deteriorated wall and decomposing cryogenic capsules, everything seemed so…
‘Abandoned. Not surprised, I woke up from cryo-sleep after God knows how long. Although, abandoned in this case doesn’t mean alone.’ The man thought, thinking back to when he had heard someone else’s voice.
Getting his eyes adjusted to light hadn’t been a fun time, but it brought its benefits.
After first looking around for a bit, everything made much more sense.
He could roughly piece things together, but still remembered nothing more from his past.
‘Well, I did find out my name, so it isn’t all bad.’
Lifting a decomposing badge attached by pin to his white coat, he silently read its finely printed text:
COL. ACCESS
NAME: ADRIAN-KARPENKO
JOB-TITLE: MECHANICAL-ENENEER-
DEPARTMENT: ENGENEE-
EMPLOYEE-ID: 649241-
CLEARANCE: 3
ISSUE-DATE: 23/2/1755PF
While some parts weren’t fully legible, damaged by wear and time, the important parts remained.
There was a lot to dismantle from the ‘Access card’, but most of it was for another time.
Right now, he simply wanted to bask in the feeling of finally having an identity. A name. Something to finally anchor him to his past.
Reading it once more, it brought a half-bitter smile to his face.
‘Adrian, huh? What a nice name.’