You…

Don't remember what happened.

Or how it happened.

Your last memory was being stuck in the gym wall, bleeding out, struggling to stay conscious, and then you woke up on the floor of the stasis chamber.

Surrounded by glass, gel, and screams.

You couldn't move at first, it felt like your entire body weighed a ton so for the first few minutes all you could do was stare up at the ceiling.

It didn't feel real, like you were watching a movie through somebody else's eyes. Like you were just along for the ride. You should have been considerably more distressed about that but you were being bathed in an otherworldly sense of calm. Beneath the screams you could hear a Song, a deep melancholic melody that resonated through your bones. The Song had no words but you could understand it just the same.

Whirls of impossible, improbable colors poured from the vents in the walls, the grates in the floor, they leaked through half open doors and oozed through the hallways like blood… like honey. The colors settled on the back of your tongue and tasted like longing, like the sickly butterscotch sweetness of pain. It tasted like Hurting in ways you could not fathom, but somehow Knew and Understood.

You tried to move towards the sound, but could not feel your arms or legs. You could not turn your head or blink your eyes. The Song wove around you and showed you yourself outlined in eerie neon colors laced with Aching and Fear that felt so real and alive it could have been your own.

Some part of you was singing too.

You were a mass of undulating black flesh and jutting bones, your organs bobbing in the sea of exposed muscle and pulsating blue veins. Scientists stood around you in horror and awe, unsure of what to do and when. A few of them were bleeding, shards of glass stuck deep in their skin. One of them held a bloody, broken looking, Specimen 37 close to their chest.

You registered 'friend hurt' before the memory of her abilities could climb out of the foggy soup of your thoughts. You told your body to move and it did, sliding at first, painfully dragging your mass across the glass strewn floor and leaving a trail of blue behind you like some kind of fucked up slug. You wished for limbs, for a mouth to speak and cry out with, and your body obeyed. Bones sliding beneath muscles tearing and reshaping themselves into familiar shapes, the iron in your blood forced its way through your skin and solidified into steel, blue-hot and steaming in the cool air of the stasis chamber. You felt so heavy, your legs slid uselessly out from underneath you and left you crashing to the ground.

Hard.

You weren't fully formed yet, just some horrible meat-blob with a child's face and twisting boneless limbs made of metal and wires that struggled to hold you upright. You reached for your friend with a wretched almost-hand and watched the scientist's eyes widen with horror, reflexively holding the little girl tighter to their chest.

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The Song grew louder, rising to a nauseating neon crescendo that crashed into every available surface like waves. For a second, you could see Everything. Every nook and cranny of the Facility, every floor and every foot that tread there.

For a second you saw the End-of-Everything too, that Nameless Nightmare Thing, twisting and twining Its incomprehensible body through toothy holes in the world that drooled ink and babbled strange sentences that made zero sense. All seven heads of the End loomed over you, grinning like a madman, Its violently green venom replaced by streams of black ink that nobody seemed to notice except for you.

Nobody saw the End except for you.

Nobody saw the flames and molten glass glinting in the depths of fourteen eyes.

Except for you.

And that scared you more than anything.

The fear gripped your heart and ripped your consciousness backwards, your body slumping to the ground like a puppet without strings. You couldn't think, you could barely breathe. A staff member nudged you with the tip of their shoe and jumped back like a startled bird, chuckling uncomfortably when nothing happened.

You were only vaguely aware of the sensation.

You weren't there anymore, at least not mentally.

Your eyes were open, unblinking, staring at nothing.

Inside your own head was a different story.

Surrounded by shadows and turmoil your brain struggled to make sense of everything, of anything.

Wrong, disjointed feelings, like someone flipping haphazardly through the pages of a book leaving most of the story behind and unread. Context and coherence falling by the wayside.

You knelt in a puddle of dark water.

You lay prone in the stasis chamber.

The shadows seethed with something tremendous just beyond your reach.

The scientists stood there in fear and awe, unsure of what to do next.

Your awareness of the physical faded until there was nothing left except you and the dark water spreading away into forever, surrounded by writhing dark full of growling things you could not see.

Something prowled in the dark, cat-like and uncanny. Its bulbous feline head swung as it loped, kicking up waves of black water. Suddenly it was there, an eyeless beast, inches away from your face. The beast opened its horrific maw, lined with dozens of glowing blue teeth trailing strands of drool, its warm and rancid breath hit you like a punch to the gut. You flinched, shutting your eyes in anticipation of the worse, but when you opened them again the Beast was gone.

Before you stood another child, he was no more than 8 or 9 years old. Gray and black eyes nearly hidden beneath a mass of thick blonde afro-textured hair, brown skin, gray rabbit ears and ugly prototype cybernetics pressed against the fabric of his white cotton jumpsuit. Wires trailed from the base of his spine like a tail, winding into the darkness around you both. His voice was Wrong when he finally spoke, raspy from disuse and horrifically artificial.

Another You.

"Get up." His mouth didn't move, the sound utterly colorless and shapeless, it poured from the darkness like a roar, a prayer, a promise. His hand shot out, fingers spread and empty, offering nothing and everything all at once. "Get up and fight."

You took the hand and the darkness swallowed you both whole, curling around you like smoke.

You blinked and the Other You slowly smiled.

Every tooth in his mouth was needle sharp and glowing neon blue.