The wistful sounds of classic rock music called out to Damien, inviting him back into consciousness. He found himself lying down once again, only this time it was on a much more comfortable surface. A deep green ceiling that had clearly been chipped away by time stared back at him.

“Looks like our friend’s finally awake,” a gruff voice said.

Damien turned toward the voice to find a man seated a few feet away hunched over a workbench. The man dropped the small machine he’d been fidgeting with and shuffled his feet along the ground, dragging his chair until he was beside Damien. From this distance, Damien could see that metal had been etched into the side of the man’s withered face.

“How are you feeling?” The man said as he studied Damien.

“A little dazed.”

“Can you get up?”

With a slight bit of effort, Damien pushed himself up into a seated position. He’d been lying on what looked like a futuristic dentist’s chair. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Sure,” the man said. “But first, I need you to answer a question. What do you remember?”

What do I remember? Damien thought as he searched through his memory. A dense fog filled his head, clouding all his memories except one. “I was in a gun fight alongside a woman.” He said. “A bunch of bald guys with tattoos on their heads were shooting at us…”

“And what do you remember about that woman?”

In contrast to his other memories, her image played clearly in Damien’s head. “She had shoulder-length black hair. Wore a small, black jacket with matchings pants. Hell of a shot on her. Hell of an ass on her, too.”

The man chuckled as he poked his head to the side, looking at something behind Damien. “Hear that, Kat? Looks like you have an admirer.”

Damien swerved his head to see the woman from before leaning on a bench on the other side of the room, her eyes focused on the tablet in her hand. He felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

“Don’t know if that’s a compliment, Doc.” She said in a bored tone as she kept her gaze on the tablet. “Judging by the way he shoots, I’d swear he can’t see past his nose.”

“Now, now, Kat.” The man said, dismissing her and returning his attention to Damien. “Back to my question. What do you remember from before that moment? Before Kat got you out of that room.”

Before then…? Damien searched back through his memory trying to find something, anything. He tried to think about his past experiences, his background, where he was from, anything to trigger a memory. But there was nothing. The more he searched the foggier his thoughts became.

“I got nothing.” He finally said. “All I can recall is my name.”

The man sighed. “That’s what I thought. Looks like my theory was right.” A slight hint of worry began to creep into his face.

“Hold on.” Damien said as he turned toward Kat. “What’s going on? How did we end up here?”

She looked up from the tablet for the first time. “After your lights went out at the warehouse, I killed the remaining Skulls. Your bio signals were bad, but I couldn’t exactly take you to a hospital, so I brought you here.” She nodded towards the man. “Doc here saved your life.”

“Call me Roger.” The man said. He reached over to his workbench, grabbed a bottle and gave it to Damien. “You were in pretty bad shape when you got here but you stabilized quite quickly. You are a little dehydrated, however, so drink some of that water.”

Damian took the bottle and downed a big gulp. The icy cold water cleansed his parched throat, relieving the discomfort immediately. “Mind filling me in on everything else? What was I doing in that warehouse? And why were those guys trying to kill us?”

Roger rolled his chair back to the bench he’d been working at and started rummaging through the mess on top of the counter. “Go ahead, Kat. Fill him in.”

“Where to begin…” Kat said as she placed her tablet down beside the gun on the counter next to her. “The warehouse you were in is owned by a gang called the Skulls. The people who were trying to kill us were Skull members. I’m sure you saw the tattoos on their heads; all members are required to get them.”

Damien nodded along as he took another sip of water.

“We had received intel that a corporation known as TrillTech was working with the Skulls to hide something or someone significant. We had reason to suspect that someone who’s important to us could’ve been in there, so my friend and I went in to rescue him. Turned out it wasn’t him; it was you.”

“So why’d you save me?” Damian asked. “Why not leave me there if I’m not who you’re looking for?”

“I figured that you might have some clues that could help us. We suspect that whatever TrillTech was doing with you, they’re doing to others, including our friend.”

“So you think this TrillTech organization is behind me losing my memories?”

“It’s all but certain.” Roger said, as he turned back around and wheeled his chair beside Damian once more. This time, he gripped a handheld device which appeared to give off some readings to him.

He thumbed through the device as he spoke. “We checked your biometrics while you were knocked out. You appear to be 21 years old and in excellent physical and mental shape. No signs of memory loss or mental deterioration which is quite strange. However, here’s where it gets interesting. I ran your info on official and unofficial databases and found nothing. It’s like you never existed.”

“Something like a ghost.” Kat said. “Everything points to TrillTech messing with you and erasing your existence from within your own mind and from the world.”

Damian crunched the bottle in his hand as he mulled over what he was hearing. The thought of people messing with his head pissed him off.

“They definitely installed some cyberware on you.” Roger said as he put the device away in his pocket. “The good news is I took out the location tracker and a few other nasty things they had implanted. However, there is one thing I didn’t take out. It’s called a T-Deck.”

“Any reason why you left that one in?” Damien said

“It seems to be wired deep within you. Since I don’t know precisely what it does, I have no way of knowing what’ll happen if I remove it. Though I do have my suspicions of what it may be, they’re only theories, so I figured the safest thing would be to keep it in.”

“If he ever blows up on us,” Kat said, “I’m blaming you, Doc.”

Roger smiled. “No need to worry about that. I suspect it’s merely some kind of interface module.”

The memory of the shutdown procedure progress bar flashed in Damien’s mind. Those bastards really got in my head and messed with me.

Kat jerked to a stand. “Alright, since that’s all out of the way, we should get down to business. Can you move well?”

“Yeah,” Damien said, ”apart from my missing memories I feel fine.”

“Good, you’re going to come with me.”

“Where to?”

“A Skull hideout.” She said as she picked up her gun off the counter. “We got a job to do.”