ONE

“Ouch. What the heck?” Bay said, his voice slurred and muffled, nose and mouth covered in an oxygen mask. His body was completely submerged in water. His hands traveled to his head, which felt weird- it was hairless, perfectly smooth. He had no idea where he was. It was dark. He slowly opened his eyes then immediately shut them again, feeling as if they’d been scorched by acid. All he had seen during the instant they were open was very blurred, faint blue light.

What is happening???

His neck and wrist throbbed and his eyes burned. He felt like he was in zero gravity- whatever he was floating in did not feel like water- more like maple syrup or something. His ears were filled with fluid, and it sounded like he was ten miles deep in the ocean. He extended his arms and felt the walls of the chamber, perfectly smooth and very cold, in a perfect circle around him. He pounded on it with his fists, and realized there was something embedded in his wrist that restricted his motion. He pulled at it and felt a sharp pain. He began gingerly banging on the walls again with his other hand, but nothing happened. The next thing Bay noticed froze him in place: the mask tightly clamped over his nose and mouth had suddenly stopped providing him with oxygen.

Panic descended on him.

He frantically pounded on the walls for a few seconds, but the walls felt like titanium. He forced his eyes open again, then immediately clamped them shut in pain, this time catching a blurred glimpse of light and a green glow- the walls were glass.

I can break glass.

Searching his body for any kind of weapon or tool, his hand finding the metal object embedded in his wrist. Head pounding. Lungs burning. Blind, drowning.

He had to get out now. He lifted his wrist and felt the device- it felt heavy, with a sharp, triangular point extending outward, like a pyramid. He could use the metal to break the glass. He ripped it out of his flesh and screamed, his mask filling with water, his body exploding in white hot pain, accentuated by the burning fluid scorching the wound like fire. His blood blossomed in the pod. The device in his hand had metal protrusions on it- two razor sharp, serrated knives. That must be how it stayed in his skin. Feeling faint, he slammed the monitor as hard as he could against the glass, scraping and bending the knives against the wall. It thudded against the glass and ricocheted like it was struck with a bouncy ball. The chamber resonated a dark tone from the impact.

Nauseous with pain, Bay realized he was going to die.

I will not die. I cannot die.

He hurled it at the glass again with all his strength, and heard the glass crack and strain- not quite enough. Now it just needed some convincing to break it open. The oxygen mask felt like it was sucking the air from is chest. His screaming was drowned in the water. In a last desperate attempt, he placed his back against the opposite wall and kicked with both feet as hard as he could at the weakened glass, finally rupturing it.

His world dissolved into white.

Bay exploded out of the side like a whale breaching the surface of the sea, landing on something bristly and thick. Water gushed out of the pod and soaked into the earth around him. His bare skin had scratched against a shard of glass on his back which bled and stung. He lay on the ground, gasping for air in the freezing cold. His wrist bled vines across his skin. It felt like he’d ripped a meat-hook out of it. He sobbed on the ground, shivering and bleeding, alone.

It was over.

I escaped.

Bay breathed, breathed. He coughed out the liquid filling his lungs.

In…

Out.

His heartbeat slowed.

His wrist throbbed.

His ears were filled with water and all sound was muted and dark.

He opened his eyes a third time- this time to air. The burning sensation had faded and was replaced with blurred vision. His eyes adjusted to the morning light and focused on the light green he had seen from the pod. The pain in his wrist and back subsided enough for him to move and breathe, aching and throbbing immensely with every heartbeat. He examined the wound… jagged and deep, two vertical, centimeter long cuts in the center of his wrist, aligned one above the other. On the ground, his eyes blurring and focusing again, he registered flashes of light, and he smelled a mixture of coppery blood and sharp smoke, like sulfur. The pod was sparking with electricity near the top, the embers dive-bombing like fireflies into the pool of water at the bottom, hissing and crackling as each one touched the surface.

Blades like fractured ice scattered on the ground and on the side of the pod reflected the blue-grey haze of the sky- so alien and foreign. Cracks formed an intricate mosaic on the side of the pod surrounding the gaping breach like a spiderweb, shards like monster talons reaching in.

He’d ripped the monitor’s cables halfway out of the pod’s roof. Like a dead viper, he could see the cables coiled on the base of the pod, bearing it’s silver fangs.

He moaned in pain, clutching his wrist and gritting his teeth.

It hurts… so bad. So much pain. It aches deep.

In the fractured and half broken glass of the tube, the oxygen mask lay in a pool of saltwater at the bottom, gurgling and slurping up the pod’s sticky liquid at the bottom of the cell.

It had been sucking out the air from his body.

The water drained from his face and ears and eyes, trickling down his face. The ground felt gritty… dusty, filthy. He opened his eyes, and all of his senses exploded as he was bombarded with a soundscape and landscape unlike anything he’d seen in his life.

Light.

Humidity.

The air was… moving, shifting, cold against his wet skin, yet somehow there were no fans or air vents in sight, nor any sound of them. Where the heck was it coming from?

Wind… movement in the air created by a butterfly effect of air particles shifting in the atmosphere… How do I know that?

There were no sounds of any artificial technology at all.

In its place were other sounds.

Noises completely alien to him. Sounds of nature.

He gingerly sat up. His skin was now covered in mud and blood, grit and dust, and fibers from the plants on the ground. Rough bristles of dry, tall grass caressed his skin. He smelled the earthy scent of wet ground and clean air. He focused on the noise he heard. It was so strange, and beautiful. A kind of repetitive, mechanical, yet organic chirping, combined with the sound of what sounded like whistling. It was elaborate and beautiful, musical, and chirped in a vaguely familiar repeating pattern. He tried to remember the names of these sounds… they were called “crickets” he thought. He couldn’t be sure. Come to think of it, he could remember almost nothing about his past… except that he’d never seen anything like this. He’d heard about a flying creature that made these noises. He guessed they also were called crickets.

He arose.

Behind him with a cracking and grinding sound like straining ice the fractured shell of the pod retracted into the ground and was swallowed by the earth.

The green wall in the distance revealed itself to be a barrier of viridian evergreen pines and firs, entangled in the vapor of the morning.

Some distant creature cried out in a high, eerie song.

This is forest.

They taught me what forest is.

Wind stirred the fog into silent wolves and serpents of mist lurked everywhere. The sky was covered in dark clouds and the waxing light told him that it had just begun the day cycle.

So cold.

His heart was pounding and his mind reeling.

He was on the surface.

He hadn’t escaped.

It wasn’t over.

…

Coal stared intently at the monitor as scientists behind him scrambled.

“We need a visual! We need a visual!” Dr. Pau said, frantically opening all the cameras in the deployment sector on the main screen.

“Lauren, Check cam 24-17.” Coal said quietly and calmly. “Where’s my coffee?”

Nobody listened. Everyone was upset in some way… worried, stressed, angry, scared. What had just happened was remarkable. Certainly unplanned.

For once, Dr. Coal seemed to be the only one among the scientists who was not comparatively unhappy.

He was intrigued. Curious. Interested. The unexpected, to him, was an opportunity to learn more about his subjects. He wasn’t unpleased. By the same token, they were certainly unprepared for this, and it threw a wrench in all of their plans. It was a part of the organic nature of science, the unexplored territory where the greatest discoveries all come from.

The Control does not appreciate that kind of nuance.

“Dr. Pau!” A slick looking agent shouted above the chaos.

“What?!” Lauren barked.

“We need to file a report on... what just happened.”

“A, um… one of the… HEY SOMEBODY GET A VISUAL ON THIS GUY!” Her voice rose in pitch and her expression was warped by stress.

“Lauren. Chill.” Dr. Coal said quietly, eyes traveling across Patient 0023’s status:

S-0023 MONITOR sTATUS: DISCONNECTED

“Can somebody tell me what is going on?!” The agent shouted, throwing his hands in the air as scientists scuttled around the room, darting in and out hallways.

“One of our subjects displayed an unusually… er, creative escape tactic.” Coal said, his attention mostly focused on rapidly typing commands on his tablet.

“His eyes were blinded by the saltwater and he couldn’t find the “release” switch on the inside of the pod. The subject should’ve died. But he was smarter than that, or more driven, or crazy, one of the three. So instead…” He pulled up an image of the fractured pod on the big screen and zoomed in on the wrist monitor. “...he ripped his tracking monitor out of his wrist… which would’ve caused incredible pain… and used it to break the pod open and escape, displaying strength and innovation…” As he said it, Dr. Coals eyebrows furrowed, drinking in the implications of those words.

Coal set down his tablet and walked swiftly into the Pod Room, followed by the flustered agent, rubbing his hand against his bald head and excessively clicking his pen.

Coal placed his keycard on the door which split like the petals of a flower and vanished into the walls, revealing a large open room filled with wires, cables and hydraulics.

On a pedestal in the center was the chrysalis.

It was destroyed, its glass shattered in four places, the top cables halfway ripped out, and the door permanently jammed. Sparks from the top flickered in the chamber and crackled in the fluid at the bottom of the pod, which dripped from every surface.

“Usually, we only open the pod to release them when they pull the switch at the top, once they’ve drained the Simniotic fluid from it…”

“Simniotic?” The agent questioned skeptically.

Dr. Coal rolled his eyes and pried free a blade of the glass, turning it over in his hand.

“It’s designed to simulate amniotic fluid, so we call it Simniotic liquid- a compound of 96.2% water and inorganic salts, as well as hormones and traces of melatonin. Anyway… Bay just did something we didn’t think was possible, and because of it, the pod is broken, and because he ripped his wrist monitor out, we’re unable to…. How do I put it. Tracking him will become more… challenging.”

“So, this kid- er, test subject -was an idiot who was only saved by his brute strength?

“Not necessarily. Half of our subjects never find the release lever, especially when the pod is still full of liquid, and in a real-life situation, a switch like that wouldn’t exist, so it’s natural to search for another means to escape. It’s a sort of cruel puzzle. He figured out possibly the only loophole in our otherwise flawless test.”

“So, this was a mistake… he broke the system?”

“Well, yes, but it’s under control. One of our drones will find him and tranquilize him,” Dr. Coal said shortly, focusing on the camera feed on his tablet, which was beeping.

No camera in the area detected motion. He was already in the woods.

“The situation is under control? I have to report to my superior immediately.”

Dr. Coal eyes fixed on the shattered husk of the broken pod.

That pod was made of centimeter-thick semi-tempered glass; It was almost impossible to break by beating it or punching it. He’d personally taken a hammer to one of their test pods. But, it could be broken with a single piece of porcelain. The porcelain is brittle and absurdly sharp, and able to shatter it into smaller, knife like pieces. Anything hard and very sharp could. Somehow, via experience or raw intuition, he knew to use the edge of the steel tracking device to shatter the glass. Even then it would require brute amounts of force to break it, the edge of the device wasn’t sharp enough to shatter it with a single touch, and his wrist was bleeding and probably in agony from the salts. He had never seen so much power and determination and intelligence in one of his subjects. It had already been an hour since he’d left the pod and entered the forest. The chances of a drone locating him now were rapidly shrinking.

This changed everything. Suddenly, the outcome of the experiment had many more possibilities, and Coal had a very bad idea brewing in the back of his head.

“Yes,” he lied. “The situation is under control.”

…

Bay rifled through the backpack, favoring his right hand. The wound had stopped bleeding about 15 minutes into his hike. A few minutes in, it started raining, and he found shelter in a small grove of trees.

He’d found the backpack hanging on a tree just outside the treeline by the grove. In it were clothes and supplies; a pair of grey cargo shorts, a clean white t-shirt and a pair of boxers, a pair of shoes and socks, antibiotics, pain meds, a cigarette lighter and a large, black knife with some paracord wrapped around the handle. In his pocket he found a compact silver multi-tool.

Someone was looking out for him.

It was no accident that he was here.

He paused for a moment, savoring the sensation of being alive at all. Despite the pain and discomfort and complete and total disorientation, he was thankful he was still alive to feel it. He’d almost died less than an hour ago. The feeling of his heartbeat, of raindrops trickling down his head and neck. The sound of birds. None of it he could hear or feel in the cold darkness of a coffin.

The sky, at least, he thought that was what it was called, was covered in a veil of mist, like steam from an air vent.

Air vent. Where did that image come from?

The thing that most disturbed Bay about his situation, despite the trauma and fear he had just experienced, was his lack of memory.

He remembered nothing.

It was as if he’d just lost a thought… it was right there in his mind, but he had no access to it. Like a vague silhouette or shadow. Just out of reach.

He’d spent thirty minutes sitting, naked, covered in his own blood, crying, searching his mind for any trace of memory. He only knew his name--Bay--and the vague outline of a young woman’s face, along with a few random shreds of memory. A warm presence standing over him. An image of a cement passageway with water trickling through it, moss growing across the sides and top. A dead flower. His own reflection in a pool of water in a gutter.

He couldn’t remember his own eye color.

He shook his head, trying to remember what he was doing.

Oh yeah. Water.

On his hike, he’d decided to think up a plan of action.

One: Find some kind of clothing. Well, that was surprisingly easy.

Two: Find water.

Three: Find shelter.

Those last two worried him. He could eat leaves if he had to, and he’d seen creatures scuttling around the woods he could hunt. Where would he get clean water, though, other than by opening his mouth and hoping to catch some raindrops?

I’d need a tarp to collect rainwater. Maybe I can find a creek to drink from.

Bay tucked the knife through his belt loop and pulled his sneakers on.

Ow.

His wrist tingled oddly, like it was being shocked.

In confusion, Bay held up his wrist and examined the wound.

No way.

It was halfway healed, and although slightly red and puffy, the wound was closed. It had already begun to heal itself, and it was already beginning to hurt less. His hand traveled to his back to feel the cut he’d gotten from the glass, expecting it to have bled through his shirt.

Instead he felt nothing. His skin was dirty and sticky from sweat, but there was no trace of any wound save a thin tender line marking his skin where the cut used to be.

It’s gone?

Bay dug through the loose soil and dry leaves until found a sharp rock. He gritted his teeth and scratched his arm deep, as hard as he could. He gasped with pain as the wound bled momentarily, then, as he watched, the wound, very slowly, began to fade and close. In less than two minutes it was entirely gone, except for a slightly tender, pink mark less than an inch long, like a rug burn.

How am I doing that? My body can heal itself… that’s incredible.

He froze.

What’s that noise?

He didn’t know how…. He couldn’t see or hear anything consciously… but he knew something was coming. He felt it. Like a tingle of static electricity on his scalp and the base of his neck, he could feel a low frequency vibration in the distance.

His eyes scanned the horizon to the east.

He could hear jet engines.

He knew exactly what it was.

Lightweight UAV. Maybe a Scout Drone. Less than a klick away.

He had no idea how he knew this. Just that it was bad. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and bolted deeper into the forest.

...

Coal brushed past the official interrogating him and left the room.

“Dr. Pau is in command until I come back. Find the subject, and keep him alive. I’m getting some coffee.”

“Coal!” Lauren grumbled after him as the room turned to her for instruction.

He walked briskly down the cement, windowless hallway beneath blinding, naked fluorescent bulbs, his head pulsing with thoughts and fears and interest.

I never expected one of my subjects to remove their trackers.

A Tracking Wrist Monitor is embedded into the flesh the via two jagged knife blades, With sensors connected to the Meridian nerve and Radial Palmar Artery.

His footsteps slowed and his eyes scanned the floor, seeing nothing.

It’s connected to his nervous system and bloodstream to monitor their vitals and to administer low voltage shocks directly into the nervous system to alert or punish subjects. The blades are hooked into the skin, requiring huge amounts of strength to pull out. It would be immensely painful to remove, like twisting the nerve in your funny bone. His regeneration abilities may heal most wounds, but a cut like that would leave a permanent scar.

The implications of that kind of scrappiness astounded him. He was sharp. Fast. Not afraid to do what is necessary.

Bay’s training and natural instinct, combined with the fact that he'd ripped out his tracker, would make him nearly impossible to catch in such a large area. He would likely die of infection or exhaustion if he evaded the drones… but if he survived?

Coal’s eyes smoldered as his feet stomped through the steel hallways. Scientists and guards swarmed the rooms surrounding the base. His little bad idea was taking root in his mind, a little seed beginning to grow in his head, and it would continue to grow and burst out of his ears unless he made a decision about it. He needed to clear his head.

...

Bay ducked under a fallen tree and scrambled upright again. The sound of the approaching machine behind him grew louder and louder until it became clearly recognizable as the low purr of a drone, like the growl of a monster, reverberating through the trees, rousing dry leaves and dust from the forest floor.

The drone slowly hovered low over the ground, stalking him through the trees like a salivating tiger closing in on its prey.

It was hunting him. He didn’t know why, but his instinct told him to hide. To be still.

It uses motion sensors. If I stay still it won’t know I’m here.

He lay perfectly still behind a large stump. It was directly to his left, maybe only two feet above the treeline. He didn’t know why he was running from the drone, except for his instinct ordering him to.

He trusted it.

He waited, listening to the growl of the engine. It had stopped moving. The machine was hovering just to the left of him. Slowly, the sound moved closer to him until it was uncomfortably close.

It’s looking for me alright. I’m just going to wait here until-

KH-KH-KH-KH-KH-KH

At the sound of the first gunshot he was

Bullets tore apart the stump he hid behind, sending splinters of rotten wood in every direction. One bullet grazed his shoulder and another just missed his head. The Drone slowly orbited the stump and Bay frantically crawled around to the opposite side, still hiding, bullets still pelting the stump. Bay found a rock at his side. If the drone really did use motion sensors, he could distract it. He threw the rock as hard as he could at a tree twenty feet away. It cracked against it’s thick bark and crashed into the ground with a loud thump. The drone revved its engines and spun a full circle on a dime. It recalibrated and reloaded in a whirr of motors and then pelted the tree with bullets as Bay crawled into the woods as fast as he could go and dove behind a tree growing on a dry creek-bed. Finally the drone stopped battering what was left of the poor tree and turned, hovering above the stump he’d hidden behind, scanning for any signs of life for a full five minutes before beginning to glide away.

Bay exhaled with relief. At first fear prevented him from moving at all until the noise faded at least somewhat, but finally he forced himself to look at the monster that had attacked him, flying away slowly. It looked like a giant mechanical insect, hovering in the distance, at least 10 feet long. It was a drone, with four metal wings extending from a metal body, painted charcoal grey with white markings on its wingtips. A geometric, head-like structure with cameras and antennae angled down, perpendicular with the ground, with sensors and wires spurting out of what would’ve been a mouth, along with a long, vicious looking gun barrel. A long antennae protruding out of its abdomen looked like a stinger.

What’s that little miser shooting? I think it spent all its ammo on me.

He sat up, gasped in pain and felt his shoulder. It wasn’t bleeding much, the bullet only scratched and bruised his arm a little. He was extremely lucky.

That’s two times I’ve almost died, and it’s just day one.

He got up and examined the stump, riddled in bullet holes.

Looks like .223. Makes sense, lightweight, high velocity, high penetration rounds… perfect for a little drone like that. I need to find some kind of gun to defend myself with. Whoever it is put me here doesn’t like me. Why did they put me here if they’re immediately gonna try to kill me?

Bay knew he had no memory, but somehow felt a familiarity and trust with his own abilities and thoughts. He trusted himself, and despite the bittersweet feeling that trust came with, the feeling of being alone for many years, he was grateful he could at least trust his instincts, which had saved him twice already.

He had already made up his mind: wherever he was, he would escape from it. Whatever was attacking him, he would survive and kill it.

Most importantly, he would find his memory. He had to. He would regain his lost identity. Whatever it took.

He took a step forward, and another step, then fell to his knees, squeezing his shoulder and wincing. He felt so weak and beat up already.

He was so scared.

It was overwhelming him. He was terrified.

...

Bay wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

He pulled himself up, leaning on a tree, his fingers running over the grooves of the bark, his eyes drinking in their surroundings. One of his fingers suddenly touched something rough and sharp. He cursed under his breath, removing a splinter.

His eyes widened and he got down on his knees. Something was carved in the tree.

Carved into the bark was a symbol that looked like a square, a little larger than the palm of his hand. Bay looked closer, eyes rapidly studying and memorizing it. It was a basic square shape, marked with many intentional looking indentations and rectangular regions that jutted outward from the shape. It wasn’t just crudely drawn, it was carefully calculated.

Bay realized two things: one, there were people that had been here once, maybe years ago, maybe a week ago, but they were here, and two, they had left him little creepy notes carved in trees.

He had no idea where he was, and he had no memory. He was being hunted, and he had incredible abilities that he somehow knew he hadn’t possessed before. He felt an overwhelming sense of purpose, and an overwhelming sense of dread.

Something had gone horribly wrong. He just had to survive.

His head pulsed. It ached.

Water. I need to drink.

Rain still fell through the trees, but they seemed to be shielding him from most of it. He needed to find a clearing. Whatever he did, he couldn’t go back to where he’d been before. He’d heard two more drones humming, flying around like nasty little wasps. He’d evaded them so far. How long could he keep it up?

Suddenly, he froze.

What is that?

There was running water nearby, that or wind… no, it was too consistent to be wind. The wind seemed to come and go as it pleased.

It had to be running water.