At some point I fell asleep again, though I had no idea exactly when it was because the time between my sleep and waking up passed in what felt like an instant. One moment I was fiddling with the lock on the manacle, and the next I was waking up on the floor. I considered the disturbing possibility that I had fallen asleep and somehow hallucinated that I was still working on the lock, but decided not to believe it without further evidence. The implications of something like that happening are dire, I thought, I might not ever be able to trust that I am where I think I am. Of course, I knew on an intellectual level that this was already the case because highly accurate simulated realities existed, but the transition was almost never as seamless as the one I might have experienced.
There was a bowl of water and a pile of tuber root bulbs in my cell when I looked around. I gulped down the water as fast as I could, checking my heads-up display and seeing it fill up my dwindling reserves. The food, on the other hand, I ate slowly. Why didn't they put it on a platter? I wondered before looking around at the broken chips of wood which had been scattered around the cell. Oh, I realized, that's probably why. I suppose I should keep the bowl intact unless I want to drink mud then. I set the bowl down by the door and moved back to the center of the cell.
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I was bored. It had been some time since I had eaten and not a single person had come to speak to me or interact with me in any way. I had had enough time to dig a small hole in the corner of the cell and, for lack of a better term, dispose of my waste in it before burying it again. It's strange that the cell wouldn't have some waste disposal system in it, I thought, it must not be used for long-term holdings. That fact alone gave me confidence that I would eventually be let out, even if it was to be taken to another cell with better amenities.
Finally caving in to boredom I began studying the links of the chain on my leg. Each one was subtly different, as was expected from pre-automation forging methods, though the degree of dimensional similarity between them was high. I noted that a few of the links had scars on them, making them weaker than the others, but also that they were not substantially weaker enough to be useful to me. Another hour, or what felt like an hour, passed as I worked my way down the chain. I found myself at the wall, looking at the final link, and then I noticed something.
I ran my hand along the wall where the last link met smoothly with the rock behind it. The thought hadn't occurred to me to ask how the people had done it, since embedding a chain in a wall was relatively easy when using omni-cement or other common building materials. It wasn't, however, possible to do so nearly so easily without those things. Sure enough, despite the color of the wall being almost identical, my hands could detect a different pattern of roughness around the chain than on the rest of the wall. Cement of some kind, I grunted to myself, that can't be nearly as hard as the rock.
I yanked and pulled on the chain and did see the cement budge slightly, but not enough to cause it any real damage. Damn it, I thought, I need a tool of some kind. I looked around at the cell and my eyes scanned the walls for any sort of weak spots. I found one location which looked as though it had some cracks in it and headed over. I might be able to break a chunk of this off, I thought, it's just going to take some effort. Gripping the mostly flat wall as well as I could, I began the arduous job of trying to force a shard of rock that appeared to be disconnected but embedded out of the wall.
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Thirty minutes later I found myself questioning my eyes and my sanity as my fingertips pulsed and warned me. I'm sure I saw it move, I thought as I kept pushing, it's probably a spike shape, just barely attached inside. If I just push it the right way- The sweat from my hands had made the rock surface slick, and my hand shot off as my grip failed. My right palm slid along the wall, catching one of the cracks that had been my indication to begin trying to extract rock in the first place, and I felt the skin tear open.
“Just great...” I muttered under my breath as I withdrew my hands. With my left hand I constricted blood flow to my right as much as possible to contain the bleeding. The damage signals were very slow to come out, being almost nonexistent at the moment my hand was injured but slowly coming out in a wave more powerful than was reasonable for a simple skin rupture like the one I was looking at. Red blood oozed out onto my hand, then a new wave of damage signals washed over the cut. I looked around to find the spot furthest from where I had excreted that had loose dirt and quickly shoved my hand into it, hoping to induce clotting and coagulation as fast as I could.
I kept my hand in the dirt for a minute, even though the damage signals had stopped almost immediately once I had touched the ground. It doesn't look like blood is pooling under it, I thought, I guess I missed the veins and arteries. Slowly, I released the pressure keeping my hand against the dirt and watched for blood. There was some, of course, but it didn't appear that any was flowing out. I lifted my hand off the ground and looked at it, seeing a mess of caked dirt and blood on my palm. Gently, with my left hand I wiped the dirt and blood away to get a better look at the cut. Under the dirt and blood was a perfectly intact palm with a small scar where the cut had been.
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I was stunned. I stood in the cell, perfectly still, looking at my palm. Eventually, I broke from my stupor and felt up the scar with my left hand, pulling and twisting it to see if it would bleed again. The skin held together strongly as though it had been healed for weeks. That's impossible, I thought, that's just like... it's just like the hunter in the woods. Memories came flooding back, and I examined them for something which I now noticed was missing. I never injured myself even once as I made my way here, I realized, even through all that walking I never so much as stepped on a sharp rock and cut myself. I looked at the soles of my feet closely for the first time and saw numerous tiny scars dotting them. I did step on some sharp things, I finally understood, I just healed so fast that I never noticed.
I went back to the wall and kept pulling and pushing at the rock, much harder than before. My hands slipped again several times and were cut open, but quickly healed back up as if nothing had happened. Every time I watched my flesh knit itself back together was incredible. To see it happen to another was one thing, but to actually feel the sensations of rapid healing myself was quite another. It was unpleasant, to say the least, but the feeling faded very quickly once the process was complete. The closest thing I could liken it to was receiving instantaneous third-degree burns from an electrical plasma arc, but in that case the lack of lasting pain was due to the artificial nerves themselves dying. Or in my case, the damage sensors under the skin being overloaded, I mused, Since this body is so accurate to a creator human, I wonder how close my damage signals are to the authentic qualia of pain?
I heard a crack and the stone under my fingers finally shifted. Good thing it happened quickly, I thought, all the blood and skin from wearing my fingers down had been making it hard to keep a good grip on the wall. A few more alternating tugs later and a rough equilateral triangle of stone fell out of the wall. It was only four centimeters long from a given base to the point on the opposite side, but it was enough. I picked up the stone and looked at the cement on the wall. I suppose I could spend some time testing out my healing ability first, I thought, just in case I break this rock when I start digging.
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In the center of my cell I sat down and began taking the rock to myself. At first I only used it on my hands, as I knew the bounds of their regeneration. I split skin in many ways, sometimes cutting flaps and sometimes digging deeper into the bone and cartilage beneath. Every time it took mere seconds for my body to heal. I also removed the skin on my left index fingertip, then watched as it regrew itself in just under half a minute. Looks like it's slower if more matter is lost, I thought as I looked at my new skin and compared it to the old skin. The dimensions were exactly the same, and even the fingerprint was the same as far as I could tell.
Eventually, I moved on to my arms since I wanted to test more than just skin and cartilage. After creating an incision I reached inside my arm and started to dig around in it. The task was surprisingly challenging because my healing was so fast that it would force my fingers out by growing skin beneath them and thickening it. During my exploration I found that the interior structure of my arms was nearly identical to a warbreed's arms, with no obvious signs of circuitry or other robotic hardware being visible. Very next-gen, I grunted, despite all the issues with it.
I tested my tendons, watching them snap back into place and tighten after being severed, then moved to my legs. It's amazing how accurate this body is, I thought, if I had a proper knife I'd love to look around at the inside of my chest. I wonder how they fit the digestive system in beside the processing core. It must be huge since it's the main power source. For a moment I was tempted to try to get through the abdominal muscles and take a look, but the edges of the rock were already starting to dull so I opted to save the examination of that area for later. All that was left on my body as a record of my own self butchery, besides a large amount of dried blood, were a few thin and faded scars at my incision sites.
I rolled around in the dirt for a few seconds, then scrubbed it off of myself as much as possible to get the blood off of me. Once I looked less like a man who just killed someone and more like I was simply dirty, I went over to the chain in the wall and began to dig. The cement was hard, but the rock that made up the walls was predictably harder. They must have used the sand and dust from carving this place out in the cement for coloration, I thought as I chipped away at it slowly, it's a clever trick to blend the patching in with the base rock. The rock in my hands was holding up well, but I had no idea how deep the chain was stuck into the wall so I worked carefully.
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Some time later I was around four centimeters into the wall and had freed another link of the chain, but behind that link was another that was also embedded. I'm getting hungry, I thought, and very thirsty. I should converse my energy. My work on the chain was somewhat obvious if looked at closely, but I wasn't worried. If someone came into my cell I would simply take them hostage and use them to escape, so there was no real negative outcome for me.
I heard footsteps walking down the stairs, lighter than before, and quickly hid my rock and sat down in the center of the cell again. A smaller human rounded the corner, wearing a shawl and pants that were woven from fiber and dyed with runic-looking patterns, carrying a bowl of water and a bowl of tubers. Our eyes met, and instead of shrinking back like I expected the human's eyes widened and its face showed excitement.