Thud!

My eyes shot open, letting through a painfully bright and blurry gray light. I coughed violently and wheezed. I wanted to rub the pain away, but my arms refused to move. Everything felt either tingly or burning.

What had I been doing again?

That noise must have been Lena making a mess somewhere in the apartment, as usual. What time was it? I knew she would soon ask for treats, not letting me fall back to sleep now that she had heard I was awake.

My head ached. A migraine, and not a small one. Had I eaten something bad yesterday?

Wait... No... Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

I opened my eyes again, forcing myself to bear the pain. This was not my apartment.

The memories surged in a flash. Having been selected for a mission at Supplicant Station, our planet’s disappearance, the crew’s treachery, and... the cryogenic pod filling up.

I lived! Against all odds, someone had come to save me. Was it the ship? Had they changed their mind? How did they bring me back to life? Where was I? Was this gravity holding me down, or just atrophied muscles? I was lying down, so it had to be gravity. Had we found our planet, after all?

My view was slowly becoming more focused, letting me see written words less than half a meter above me. They glowed black on a gray background. A screen of some kind. Though not as sharply defined as they ought to be, I recognized the letters. “PRESS KNOB TO START”, it said. There were other much smaller writings in the corner, but I could not decipher them yet.

That migraine was not receding. I closed my eyes. That barely helped. I was hungry. And thirsty. My limbs were starting to respond again, but the effort of lifting anything more than a finger was beyond me. Even breathing was difficult. The air was too warm, and the bedding too hard.

I gave up and my consciousness drifted into a feverish half-sleep. Somewhere in my mind, I knew this was a dangerous state to be in. That I needed to take medicine to make sure I did not hurt anyone or break anything.

“H-help...” I croaked. Possibly no more than a whisper, but to my senses, it seemed to echo in the otherwise deafening silence.

There was no answer. Or maybe I had simply missed it. I kept fading in and out of consciousness.

After some unknowable amount of time, I started feeling noticeably better. My arms, while trembling from the effort, could finally move. I carefully felt around and realized I was in a metal box. Almost a coffin. It would be fitting, I supposed, to wake up in one after going to sleep as I expected to die. But the bright screen and the small tubes leaving my left arm told a different story. I noticed I was still wearing my EVA suit, although large patches of cloth had been cut off, and what little remained was tattered.

My eyesight recovered enough to let me read what had escaped me before. “L12”, “Castonius Medical”, and “232-4298-3504” were each displayed in their respective corner. While I did not know what “L12” meant, nor had I heard of “Castonius Medical” before, I recognized the Scriptures’ date format as it increased. Day 4298, counted as the number of half-rotations made by the Watcher’s inner ring, and 3504 out of the 10000 seconds each half-rotation took. But the year had to be wrong. Surely. The Scriptures had not given us any indications about when to start counting years, so we marked them from the year the First Supplicants reached the Watcher. However, this date format was rarely used, as the length of days did not correspond to our planet’s synodic period. Supplicant Station used it, of course, but I was not on Supplicant Station, as the oppressing gravity kept reminding me. But maybe... Maybe the year was correct. Had I spent centuries frozen in that pod?

I still could not concentrate. Halting my diverging train of thoughts, I refocused on the screen. There were no egregores that I could sense, except one at my back, which I recognized as the small one the EVA suit had been equipped with. Strange, but what was considered proper design might have changed with time.

I found the knob mentioned by the screen on my right, slightly raised and further than my arm could comfortably reach. It could rotate in either direction, and did so as I struggled to get a good grip on it. I pushed, putting as much force as I could, which proved to be just enough to trigger the mechanism.

The screen blinked, leaving only its corners unchanged. It now displayed a very long text. Definitely beyond what was reasonable to communicate over this slow medium. Why did they not simply use an egregore? I was too tired for this! Rotating the knob made that wall of text go up or down, revealing that my initial estimation of what constituted a “very long text” had been a severe underestimation. Struggling to read such small characters, I vaguely recognized the structure of a legal contract, with mentions of laws, referred to only by numbers. But what could possibly require so many clauses?

I was about to dial it back to the start, to study it in more details, when an involuntary twitch made me press the knob and caused the text to disappear. Thankfully, it seemed I was not required to leave a thought recording of my agreement. I was in no shape to do so and had no real understanding of what that text had been about.

The new screen displayed another scrolling text box. I was relieved to see this one featured a much more concise list of items. While I did not understand all the terms, entries such as “Room and Board - 4500LC x 3” and “IV Solutions - 1300LC x 1” told me what I was looking at. A medical bill. Going all the way down revealed the total to be 1,745,866LC. Not helpful, given that I had never heard of a currency called LC. The number seemed rather high, though. Rotating the knob further exposed selectable options. That interface was just too awkward. Why not use some egregore instead, and have all of this be communicated much, much faster?

The screen was offering me two choices: connect to an existing local account, or create a new local account. I was interested in neither. What I wanted were answers, and this thing was not providing them.

I still felt woozy, but by now I could perceive people all around me. Many people. The sensation was strange, as if my brain failed to interpret what I perceived. Even the Watcher’s presence had grownconsiderably dimmer, although that would make sense, given that I was no longer on Supplicant Station. Attempting to concentrate on one of the surrounding minds quickly led to vertigo. Perhaps a side-effect of de-cryogenisation. I had never heard of a successful resurrection procedure, so I knew nothing of the potential issues it could lead to.

“C-can - cough! - can anyone hear me?” I asked as loudly as I could, prompting a coughing fit.

No answer. No water. No food. So what could I do?

I returned my attention to the screen and selected the connection option. It prompted me for credentials I did not have. Returning to the previous menu, I opted to create a new account instead. It required me to fill up various information, such as name, date and place of birth, and... species? Alright, whatever. I was in no state to care, and confirmed that, on my honor, I had answered to all questions truthfully. It assigned me a serial number, which I committed to memory.

Having now access to the connection menu, I was welcomed by an alert about insufficient funds, followed by a myriad of bank options sorted by name. I perused them all, trying to find the one that should be holding my accounts. Indeed, before leaving for Supplicant Station, I had arranged for my savings and pay to be invested, thinking it a good way to plan for a couple of decades without use. And surely, if I had stayed frozen for centuries, then this could only mean even more money.

Nothing matched the name of my bank. Not knowing what else to do, and frustrated by my a lack of progress, I chose one at random. It gave options to convert funds into LC. Even with my limited business sense, I could tell the transfer rates were ludicrous. The conversion was not close to being linear. Not at all. Starting at a minimum of 113GRC, that bank’s default currency, to get 100LC, it went all the way up to 999,999GRC for 2,000,000LC. But there was no prompt letting me input an arbitrary amount. Worse, the display indicated that it may need up to 28 days to validate the transaction. So even if I had funds in that bank, I would have to wait and pay for quite a lengthy extra stay in that metal coffin.

Getting annoyed at how much was asked of me despite my recovering state, I left that menu and kept scrolling down the bank list. I never found any that I recognized, but an “Other Payment Options” button at the end of the list gave me a surge of hope. There might be a way to delay payment until after I got back on my feet, thank the Watcher.

“Castonius Medical provides the best healthcare to even the poorest among us,” the screen displayed, “offering FREE* organ extraction. Never let a lack of funds deny you the treatment you need!” A footnote indicated some conditions may apply. Any doubt I started having about the meaning of that message evaporated in an instant after the next menu showed up, listing the value of organs it knew I still had.

I had to get out of here. Right the fuck now!

Having tubes connecting my left arm to this infernal machine no longer seemed so innocuous. Cringing, I extracted their needles from my body with a trembling hand. It was painful and messy, but it had to be done.

I was not out of the woods yet, being literally stuck in a box. It had to open somehow, but I could not tell from which direction. All the surfaces I saw had the same metallic texture. Just in case, I pushed the one that stood outside of my view, near the top of my head. It did not budge, nor did it feel different to the touch. Damn. Damn! I started panicking in earnest, my breathing getting erratic as I clawed frantically at everything in reach.

A wet sensation informed me I had torn the tubes coming off the left wall. Thankfully without hurting myself further with the needles. That got a reaction. The screen changed its message to tell me that vandalism would not be tolerated, and that security was on the way. I was beyond caring. I wanted out, and kept trying to push and tear the limits of my prison. It was not working. I started screaming in a mix of frustration and fear. The one part I left alone was the screen above my face. Destroying it would most likely cause severe injuries, and I did not want to spend more time being healed by whoever had put me in this thing.

After a while, I had to stop. I was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and hurting from every muscle. But at least the panic had somewhat receded. I knew it to only be a prelude to fatalism. Following what I had been taught, I attempted to meditate, consciously ensuring I was slowly but fully inhaling and exhaling. Brute force was not the answer. It rarely was, in my case. Seeking to make a dent in what was most probably steel would just end up with me breaking my claws and bones. I was not particularly good at finding the inner peace one was supposed to seek through meditation to start with, so in the state I was right now, if felt hopeless. It helped a little, but I knew I was still no completely rational.

The screen had not changed from its warning about incoming security personnel. Perhaps I could explain the situation to them. Surely, they would understand that I had been, and still was, under a too much stress and just needed to return to a semblance of normal life before being able to deal with all of this. And payment through organ harvesting had to be illegal. Surely. That option had not been too prominent, so it might only be shown to the most desperate of patients. Those unlikely to report it to the authorities, or too uneducated to know any better. Castonius Medical were vultures.

More relevant to my immediate troubles, could I sense security personnel coming? In what mood they were? That would be useful. Unfortunately for me, even at my level of aptitude, empathic communication required some concentration and peace of mind. At the moment, while I could feel the presence of other people around me, they remained too distorted to attempt any contact. I dared not push a thought into their mind in that state. What if my warped perception led me to harm them? I knew this to be a real danger. The Watcher’s Chosen were forbidden judgment-altering drugs, and had to take blockers should they find themselves losing control. Despite the warnings, it was not rare for newly appointed Chosen to get into serious trouble as they fell into the temptation of joining their friends in what was otherwise harmless fun. My blockers were on Supplicant Station, of course. I forgot about them, not having been at too much risk of a breakdown during the last decade. I needed them now.

Clang!

I jolted at the unexpected noise and hurt myself by hitting a hard surface. Before I had time to react any further, bright light blinded me and I felt whatever I was lying on shift, dragging me along and away from the screen. Blinking a few times, I accustomed myself to the drastic change of brightness.

I was out! Finally!

I sat up a bit too fast and cringed at the pain. I knew I should count myself lucky even to just be alive and whole after going into cryogenic sleep, but I could not help but get annoyed at how painful this resurrection was proving to be. But this was not the time for self-pity. There was someone next to my drawer-bed. Or at least, that was what my mental senses told me. My eyes only saw a child-sized suit of high-tech armor with no visor. That thing was clearly way beyond any mechanical suit I had ever witnessed. Utility normally took over design for these kinds of things, and the black and white sleek shapes proved this had not been deemed necessary here. That had to be security.

They stood there, facing me, but unmoving. There were strange chirping sounds coming out of it. Almost melodic. I just hoped it did not indicate some weapon being charged up.

Not wanting to take my chances on that, I looked around for an escape, and had my first real view of the surroundings. Only the warm temperature belied this being a mortician’s cold room. All surfaces were painted white, with the one exception being the metallic body (or patient?) storage system. No other drawer was currently pulled out. There seemed to be no consensus on the size these drawers were meant to be, as proven by the twenty or so squares on that wall. What were they even storing in there? Oh, that did not matter. I still needed an exit.

I saw the operation table with some tools readily available. Weapons to fight security? Ha! Not likely. The bed looked considerably more complex than what I was used to, but that could easily be explained if I had spent so long in hibernation.

Finally, I found an open door. I could leave! I just had to get up and go through there. And be free from this madness.

The armored suit made a louder, more strident noise that disrupted its little song. That reminded me I should try for a more peaceful option.

“Can you help me?” I asked. “I don’t know where I am and-“

The security guard moved. It was so fast I missed it, only realizing what had happened once they had already grabbed my arm with their large metallic claws.

“Ouch! Let me go!”

They instead used their remaining hand to detach a rectangular, palm-sized thing from somewhere on their back. A weapon? The armor kept making those annoyingly loud screeches. Being unable to escape whatever they meant to do to me with that thing was terrifying. My mind, already shaky from so many overwhelming emotions in such a brief span of time, went into full panic. Using my free arm, I madly clawed at the obviously protected limb that held me in place. That only made the suit squeak louder. Throwing caution to the wind, I employed my last, forbidden resort.

‘RELEASE ME! NOW!’ I ordered whatever was controlling the armor. That was practically a blind attack, since I could not get a clear reading on anything but the small egregore at my back. I made it as strong as I could to compensate.

That... did not produce the desired outcome. They were slowly falling backward, yes, but still had not unhanded me. Knocked unconscious, I assumed. I was not far from that myself. I followed them to the ground, not offering any resistance as vertigo and a splitting headache ensured I would have fallen regardless of their grip. The impact finally freed me, but I was in no state to get up for quite a while. Once the world stopped spinning, I fought the oppressive gravity to get on my feet, fumbled around, and picked up the cubic weapon. A dangerous move. Another dangerous move, actually. That attack had not been a smart move. Thankfully, the weapon did not go off as I grabbed it. I had absolutely no idea how it worked, but this was no time for idle wonder. Reinforcement might arrive at any moment, and I would not be able to defend myself.

I limped my way out of the room.

I had to stop every five steps or so, as movement worsened my vertigo. Delirium was not unheard of after this kind of mental strain, and indeed the corridor I found myself in did not appear to be vertically straight. How weird... In a daze, I kept going slowly forward, my left hand leaving blood marks on the wall as I took purchase. A quick check informed me that the wounds were a combination of the harsh removal of those tubes earlier and the security guard’s claw having cut through skin during the fall. I was not lucid enough to feel the pain. I went on. I knew pushing myself too hard just meant I would end up fainting, but recalling the “organ extraction” screen was all I needed to find the will to keep going, no matter what.

Time appeared to dilate as nearly identical gray doors let way to more gray doors in this equally gray hallway. There were things on the walls. Indications, perhaps. I dared not look at anything but the ground at my feet, for fear of losing balance. The ever-increasing amount of little dancing white dots in front of my eye were a clear sign I was about to reach my limit. I even saw monsters hiding on the edge of my vision, surprisingly realistic, though my judgment may not have been at its best. I ignored them all.

My trek took an abrupt end as I collided with one of the creatures. Not thinking I would need to avoid something born of my imagination, I had moved straight into them. They did not react, but the door they had been next to opened and I fell into the room. I stayed on the floor, at the edge of consciousness. It resonated with deafening mechanical sounds. That kept me awake, but also amplified the headache beyond what I thought possible. There were dirty cushions everywhere on the walls, even the floor. I took it as confirmation that I was hallucinating the whole thing. In fact, the being I had collided with was still visible at the edge of the room. Covered in dark silks, thin, with gray scales. What was that even supposed to be?

Gravity suddenly increased, in an attempt at finishing me off. Breathing became the only thing I could concentrate on. I just hoped this was going to end soon. And it did, after close to thirty painful breaths. But then things became even more absurd, as gravity started going sideways, slowly making me drift toward a cushioned wall. At least, this time, the force was not too overwhelming.

And then I flew. I was used to it. My dreams usually involved flight. Although this one was not follow the usual pattern. No arm flapping required. This was more the feeling I had in space. Had my journey to Supplicant Station finally ruined dream flight for me? What a shame… Oh, well. Not an uncomfortable feeling, all be told. I could sleep like this. Not something I usually did in dreams, that.

I fainted.

---

Thirst woke me up. I was still fairly tired, but my body would not let me rest before I drank and ate something. Considering I was floating in a very large dilapidated corridor, my chances of finding food were dim indeed. Luckily, I had not drifted out of reach of the walls, because with nothing to bounce on in this microgravity, I would have been trapped. Usually, I could simply rely on a gadget or two, or even some article of clothing to help swim through the air, but I had no such thing here. The EVA suit would not serve well for this purpose in its current state. Oh, it still had some of those tiny thrusters that were meant to provide attitude control, but no fuel to power them. I had left that at Supplicant Station, which this was not. I had to be on some other station, built while I was frozen, and somehow capable of generating gravity in some places.

The little black box I had stolen from the security guard had drifted a few meters away. I caught it, and a closer inspection revealed this to be no weapon, but a container of some sort. Food? I really hoped it was food. But no such luck, according to the tiny gray “Emergency Translator” writing on its front. I used a claw to open the plastic box, revealing a tiny triangular badge with an adhesive side, accompanied by a thin transparent tube and a small instruction manual. The entire booklet was white, the words having been embossed in without ink. No doubt the result of some cheap recycling. They could have made the effort to put some colors, though. That was a pain to read.

“Sacrovir Emergency Translator,” the front page read. “May your words never be mistaken.” Despite that manual being over twenty pages long, the instructions fit on a single one. “The Sacrovir Emergency Translator uses bone conduction by default. Use the provided attachment for an alternative method.” I stuck it behind my left ear, before realizing the fur would not transmit the vibrations. Why was I even bothering with this now? Whatever. I had better finish the procedure, anyway. I positioned the little tube so that it would reach my ear and heard tapping noises coming from the apparatus. The next step was to do a long press of one of two buttons to set up the device, then read each of the indicated sentence, keeping the other button pressed at each recitation. I dreaded having to read all the pages, given how hard the letters were to decipher, but my fears proved unfounded as I recognized the text. Those were excerpts from the Scriptures.

Once the translator was set up, I started exploring the corridor.

This time, I paid close attention to my surroundings. I was in a rectangular room, about three meters tall and wide, but ten times that distance in length. One side led to an emergency evacuation pod and its opposite to an elevator. The hallway was formed of nigh identical modules, each connected to the previous one by large automatic doors, no doubt meant to seal off the compartment should any leak be detected. The direction I was following indicated “A”, while the other was “F”. There was some kind of padding covering all the walls, a safety precaution against high-speed collisions. A myriad of fabric handles provided a good purchase to propel oneself forward.

I had elected to go back home. Surely, if this was centuries in the future, space travel had to be commonplace. My mission was over, and if this station was any indication, our planet had to have reappeared. Finding someone willing to bring me back in exchange for promises of future payments ought to be doable. Or maybe I could just rely on my status. Though… I did not have my ceremonial ornaments or any document proving that I was anything but a rogue. In fact, wearing a tattered EVA suit and bleeding from one arm did make me look exactly like a fugitive.

Only then did I recall attacking security personnel. I was surprised they had not caught me yet, especially considering I remained unconscious for a while. The Watcher’s mercy, perhaps. I could not linger for too long, however. They were sure to come get me at some point, and might very well shoot without warning, this time.

I spent a long while crossing bland corridor after bland corridor, but then I finally reached something different. A module with a hexagonal shape instead of the square one. Seven choices, including the one facing me, which was basically just a continuation of that overly long hall. But it grabbed my full attention with three simple words. “Free Drinking Water,” the device on the wall promised. I rushed toward it.

Use of the water distribution construct was surprisingly straightforward. You pushed a button and it would output water in a small chamber with a transparent door for as long as you keep the button pressed. Release it, and the door opens, with a light breeze moving the water bubble slowly forward. I drank my fill, despite having to wait a couple minutes after each use. I chalked that up to a safety mechanism, or just some way to avoid people doing stupid stuff.

The food distributor was on the opposite wall, but this one required payment, so I regretfully stopped looking at the delicious meals shown on the advertisements it displayed. I floated back to the hexagon intersection. Each branch went off in a straight line, extending for what seemed hundreds of meters. They had markings to tell their destination. The one I chose led to “Docking Port S-2-4”. I could sense someone past the hatch at the end of the tunnel. And indeed, once I reached it, I saw it was pressurized. I opened it and entered.

What welcomed me on the other side was a creature the likes of which I had never seen. Gray smooth skin shone from wetness. A shape that merged all organs into a single block, from which escaped long tentacles. Some gripped the walls to ensure the being remained stationary, and others held a complex-looking piece of machinery beneath the alien, as if it were a something to sit on.

Enormous eyes on the sides of the body focused on me.

“Wrong way, buddy,” I heard my voice say.