EYES OPENING
A silhouette could be seen standing in a dark void. It was an endless expanse of blackness; the floor had a pool of water that reflected the darkness. The water rippled as the silhouette moved trying to make out the place he was. He turned round searching for a wall, door window, anything that could give a clue but all he saw was the endless void.
"Am I dead?" he whispered. "I'm finally dead. Those f*ckers finally killed me". The figure slumped down, sitting in the surface in the water pool, which surprisingly wasn't wet.
"at least I won't have to go thought hose tortures anymore", he muttered to himself
He pulled his knees to his chest and stared into the nothingness. In the silence of the void his mind drifted back. All the memories about the torture he endured; the needles, the cold, the screams of others, and of every waking second, he spent in the facility since the day they took him, came back to him.
Four years,
It had been four years since the world ended for him. Before or the hellish torture he was just a clueless twelve-year-old. He remembered the warmth of a shelter; his parents' love and charming smile. All the stories they told him about the Old World.
About two centuries ago a great disaster occurred which was later coined as the zombie apocalypse. 20 years after the disaster, humanity gained immunity, people thought the nightmare was over. Then one day a PULSE came. No one knew where it came from, but it shook reality itself. People gained immunity but at what cost. Areas which had been eradicated of all zombies once again crawled with them again. Many lives were lost.
But that was not the only change; a strange phenomenon occurred; teenagers who were sixteen or just turned sixteen developed strange abilities. This made the world which was already in chaos spiral further into chaos. This led to the emergence of an ambitious terrorists group the Hetrams. They were a notorious group who saw the apocalypse as a chance to gain power.
He started to remember the day his shelter was attacked by this same group. They burnt down cottages, plundered resources, slaughtered innocent lives. They took away the adolescents, and he was one of the unfortunate ones, as he was dragged away, he saw the scene of his mother being felled in a desperate attempt to save him.
Now sitting in the dark, lost I the wreckage of his past the void begun to bleed.
A purplish red aura seeped into the space and begun to spread like ink dropped into water. The sudden emergence of colour in the void jerked him out of his stupor. He moved towards it and stretched his hand to touch it. The aura also sensed his approach and moved towards him. When it got close to him it lunged, latching itself to his silhouette, he struggled, striking out at empty air hoping to remove the aura. The aura began to engulf him slowly climbing up his arm to his neck and down to his torso. He could only watch in horror as he was slowly engulfed by the aura.
Back in the physical world the researchers were oblivious of the psychic struggle. They stood in the laboratory; their eyes glued the twenty figures in the tanks containing the green fluids. The head researcher watched the digital display as the timer approached the final seconds.
00:00:03
00:00:02
00:00:01
The clock hit zero.
Unbeknownst to Subject 088, that was the moment his reality fractured.
In the void, just as the reddish-purple substance was about to swallow him whole, a wave pulsed through the void. The actions of the purplish red aura froze.
Before his mind could even begin to process what had gone on, the space around him shattered like glass. The void, the creeping purple rot, and the suffocating silence all broke apart.
His silhouette was pulled through the cracks of the breaking dimension along with every distraction of the dark.
Moving forward to the present....
The attendant handed Joe the results as he compared it with the live monitoring of the electroencephalographic headset.
after monitoring the signals for a time he asked, "Have the necessary preparations been done to figure out why the signals are of the charts even though the subject is comatose?"
The attendant nodded saying, "Sir, due to the unstable state of the brain activities, making an intensives diagnosis can cause the brain of the subject to shut." Joe became irritated hearing that. "Do you have any other alternative", he barked and continued, "get the electroneurological stimulator". The subordinate hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Sir, the neural spikes are already at critical levels. Forcing him awake with the ENS could…"
"I didn't ask for a risk assessment," the researcher snapped. "Get it."
Two technicians hurried to the back of the ward, returning with a heavy, industrial-grade chassis. It consisted of a high-frequency conduction halo lined with crystalline electrodes and a series of thick, insulated coils. They positioned the halo over Subject 088's shaved head. The electrodes hovered just millimeters from his skin. "Initiate neural jumpstart," Joe, the head researcher commanded.
Arcs of electricity leaped from the electrodes, biting into 088's scalp. The current jolted through his frame, bypassing his nerves and striking directly at his brain stem.
The boy's body reacted with a violent spasm. For an hour, the room was a chaotic display of strobe lights and the rhythmic crack-snap of high-voltage discharge. Subject 088 lay in the center of the storm, his long frame vibrating under the relentless assault. Suddenly, the subordinate at the monitors raised a hand. "Stop! Look at the waveform!"
Joe leaned in. The chaotic spikes were lengthening, smoothing out. "Terminate usage," Joe ordered.
"He's awake," the subordinate whispered, his voice trembling. "He's just... not moving yet."
Subject 088's eyelids fluttered, feeling as heavy as leaden weights, before they slowly peeled back. The first thing that hit his retinas was a searing, clinical white.
"Have I moved to an all-white space" he wondered. The memory of the pressurized black void and the shattering of that reality was still fresh. "Where is the thing that tried to engulf me?"
He waited for the reddish-purple aura to find its way into this new white world, but before he could delve deeper in his thoughts, a shape interrupted the void above him. A blurry, pale oval drifted into his line of sight. For a heartbeat, he felt a surge of cold dread, he sathought the dark substance had transformed, taking on a shape to finish what it started.
Then, his vision snapped into focus. The blur resolved into skin, eyes, and mouth. He saw the face he loathed more than any other in existence.
It was the head researcher. "Welcome back, 088," the man whispered, his voice sounding like dry parchment rubbing together.