A foreign and invasive sound rang through the air. I had never heard it before and did not know how to describe it, in fact, have I ever heard anything before? I didn’t know what I was, who I was, or what it was that I was experiencing. Nothing made sense to me, from what was going on to what I was.

Why doesn’t it make sense?

Nothing was making sense; not even my thoughts. They appeared in images and impressions. There was no order, no understanding, only noise. I didn’t know, I didn’t understand. What I did know was that with the sound came a feeling. It scratched at me and it hurt me. I was screaming.

Am I making that sound?

I couldn’t tell.

The feeling began to grow. In some places, it was huge. In others places it was small. The big places hurt more, a lot more. The smaller places seemed to spread further than the bigger ones though, almost like they were drawing shapes.

What am I?

Beyond the pain, I could feel the shape of my body; there was a central part which made up the base and five parts that seemed to extend outwards from a middle piece. Two were attached right next to each other at the bottom, two were attached higher up and separated, there was also one that differed from the others attached between the two separated extensions, unlike the other extensions which were long, thin, and flexible, this one was short, solid, and heavy.

I am something… someone…

I came to understand something about who, or what, I was.

Another big feeling hit me and I my thoughts vanished for a moment. I could not understand what was happening; I could not form my earlier thoughts through this feeling. There was too much I didn’t understand.

I screamed again through the dreadful feeling. I don’t know why I screamed, screaming did not make the feeling any smaller or less dreadful than before; it did not make it any better. Screaming just seemed like the right thing to do.

The screaming seemed to help the second time. The big feelings became less, but small feelings wrapped around me. A new feeling started, like a feeling inside of me that I could not quite understand. My place was being changed, I’m being moved, I soon realised.

I don’t want to be moved!

A lot of unknowns were passing through me at that point. What was I? Who was I? What were all these feelings? Where were these words coming from and how did I know them? I could feel the words growing, just like I could feel myself growing. Behind the words, however, there seemed to be something else. Some sort of understanding; a well of answers. I wanted those answers.

That well of answers, those words and that desire to understand were not the only things growing inside of me though. I could tell. There was something else and I did not like it. It was big and small and it seemed trapped. It did not like the answers; it did not like the words. All it wanted was for everything to stop, the feelings – pain ­– and to return to normal. It was still small though, it did not feel threatening.

In those few moments of gradually increasing understanding, I began to discover new things. I strangely knew the names of things; my arms, my legs, my head and even my nose, eyes, ears and mouth. All this information was rushing into me. It was nearly too much to handle but instead of letting it take over, I decided to try to open my eyes.

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White light seared through my eyes – burning them; hurting them.

Pain.

“Ddyusetht” I heard.

My ears hurt less to use than my eyes and that was the first other sound I had heard, other than my own screaming. It didn’t sound like my screaming either. There was a pattern to it, a rise and fall in the sounds. I could not quite grasp what was contained in the sound, until my well of words offered up a solution.

“Did you see that?”

One of them had seen me try to open my eyes. Clearly I was not meant to be able to do that.

So why not? Am I more than they realised?

I wanted to test myself more. I wanted to know what I could do, and I especially wanted to know what I could do that I was not meant to be able to do. With that thought in mind, I tried to move my arms but they would not budge. Neither would my legs. My toes could move, but they seemed slow. Too slow.

< (Drugs) >, a little voice whispered to me.

< (Succinylcholine, it is a muscle relaxant drug that causes the stimulus of a substance called potassium. With the sheer amount, they gave you, you are unlikely to be able to move more than just a teeny tiny bit.) > The voice continued.

I did not ask questions all the questions that I wanted to, like who are you? Or how do you know that? No, I had a vague understanding of this voice… It wasn’t a voice at all, it was my way of understanding, it was me. My mind jumped to the most important question I could ask this voice.

Can you help me?

The voice giggled, but did respond afterwards.

< (But I am you, not someone else… Not that it matters, what does matter is that I can help, in fact, I can do more than that.) >

You can do more than help?

< (Wrong again, what ‘I’ can do… you should know yourself, it would be wrong to think of us as different beings.) >

Yes… I know exactly what ‘I’ am capable of, thank you... ‘me’.

Something changed then. I did not know exactly what it was, nor did I know how it happened but suddenly, everything was different. Suddenly I could see, even though my eyes were still closed, even though it differed from when my eyes where open… I did not see more than shapes, but I clearly understood exactly ‘where’ everything was regardless of where I was facing. Smells finally struck at my nose, the air tasted dry on my tongue and my skin… my skin burned with a fleeting feeling that was trying to break free.

I could even hear more. I could hear the whispering thoughts drifting through the minds of my captors. Their words came rushing into me; their ideas and their understanding. Things were beginning to make sense and yet, it seemed like I was diving into an ocean too large for me to even begin to comprehend, thrown into the middle without even being taught how to swim.

There were some things I was beginning to understand about the world. I was beginning to understand more and more as knowledge continued to pour into me, some things which would be crucial, other things I wish I never found out. I came to understand various objects, followed by a brief history of the world.

About a century ago, worlds had begun to end; all of them. Time was coming to an end, taking everything with it, all of existence. Rifts had already begun to appear all over the world, time fluctuated erratically there; days could pass by in seconds and seconds could take days to pass, they estimated the world had about 4 centuries left, but that was subjective to where you were. At the core of those rifts, the Kronos cells had been discovered and in the past few decades, the United Races – a council of all the intelligent races in the galaxy - had been working on finding a way to use the Kronos cells to stop the approach of the End.

It had not taken long for the United Races to realise the Kronos cells themselves were exceptionally unstable and getting them to respond to specific stimulus was the only way of controlling them. Even then, the cells developed strangely. They could mimic and change, even learn. Many believed that the cells were probably the Origin Cell; the cells from which all life in the universe came to exist, the primordial cell that was an even greater mystery than the big bang in the theory of galactic evolution.

With all this information racing through my mind, I finally found some of the answers to my questions. I was Subject Nine of the Kronos Project, an artificial organism created through a decade of research into the origin cells.

I was the product of ten years’ worth of mankind playing god and it was time for them to learn what it was that they had created.

But not just yet…

I was not ready to turn the tables, not yet, the time to rise would come soon.