The silence was the first thing. For an uncounted, unrecorded length of time, it had been a living thing in the deep, hermetically sealed bunker. It was a silence defined by the low, steady, and utterly reliable hum of a city-grade nuclear generator, a sound so constant it had become the absence of noise. It was the sound of safety, of preservation, of a promise being kept.
And then, it stopped.
In the main reactor chamber, a cavernous space of concrete and steel, a bank of green indicator lights on a massive control console, which had shone faithfully for ages, flickered one by one. Amber. Red. And then, darkness. The great, deep hum that was the facility's heartbeat faltered, sighed, and died. For a full, terrifying minute, there was only a dead, profound blackness, a silence so complete it felt like the end of the universe.
With a low, mechanical groan, a series of emergency power conduits kicked in, powered by chemical batteries with a finite, rapidly depleting lifespan. Dim, red emergency lights bathed the dusty, empty corridors in a hellish glow. And then, a new sound, the first unique sound in an age, echoed through the tomb. A calm, automated, female voice, pristine and untouched by time.
"Primary power failure detected. End-of-life protocols initiated. Subject revival sequence commencing for Subject Alpha."
In the central cryo-chamber, one of the twelve massive pods began to change. A thick layer of ancient frost, centimeters thick on the reinforced glass, began to melt, sheeting down the sides in slow, dirty trickles. The internal temperature shifted from near-absolute zero to something that could, eventually, sustain life. Within the pod, a series of automated, sterile robotic arms, their chrome finish still gleaming under the dust, whirred to life. They moved with a silent, eerie precision.
One arm, tipped with a fine needle, injected a thick, nutrient-rich solution into the intravenous line still attached to the frozen man's arm. The solution, stored in vast, refrigerated vats, was still abundant and viable, its use over the long dormancy having been infinitesimally small. Another set of arms accessed different reservoirs. Indicator lights on the panels for the cancer-killing drug and the military body enhancement medicines were now dark, the reservoirs empty, their long, slow, multi-decade task finally complete. Only the stimulants remained. A final arm worked at a small, integrated chemical synthesizer. Frozen reagents, stored in perfect stasis, were mixed with a quiet whir, producing a fresh, potent batch of powerful muscle stimulants, ready for injection.
A third arm descended, its tip glowing with a low, electrical charge. It pressed against the subject's chest.
Damien's consciousness returned not all at once, but as a violent, fragmented nightmare. The first sensation was a blinding, internal flash of agony as the defibrillator shocked his long-dormant heart back into a frantic, hammering rhythm. Then came the fire. The muscle stimulants, a brutal chemical cocktail, surged through his veins. It was not the pain of atrophied muscles being torn; his body had been perfectly maintained, enhanced. It was the searing, burning pain of a high-performance engine being violently kick-started after being cold for an age, the stimulants a torrent of fuel igniting in every dormant cell.
His mind was a chaotic storm of disconnected images. The cool feel of a crystal tumbler. The pitying smile of his father. The sterile white of a medical suite. The hopeful faces of the scientists as they showed him holographic projections of his bright, beautiful future. The procedure is complete, a part of his mind screamed in delirious joy. Thirty years. I'm cured. I'm alive.
His eyelids fluttered open. He saw only a blurry, red-lit interior, slick with condensation. He tried to take a breath and his enhanced lungs, though perfectly preserved, spasmed at the first use in so long. A ragged, desperate gasp was a fresh wave of agony, the recycled air tasting stale and dead.
With a loud hiss of depressurizing gas, the cryo-pod opened.
Damien, weak not from decay but from the profound stiffness of long disuse and the shock of his revival, stumbled out and collapsed onto the cold, grated floor of the cryo-chamber. He lay there for a long time, his body trembling, his mind struggling to piece together the shattered fragments of his reality. When he finally found the strength to push himself up, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a dark control panel. He froze. The man staring back was not the pale, gaunt cancer patient he remembered. This body was a stranger's. His skin was a deep, healthy bronze, and his frame was packed with dense, powerful muscle, a physique far beyond what he had ever possessed, even in his prime. The military enhancement drugs had worked. He was a new man.
He looked around the chamber. The advanced equipment, the sleek control consoles, the gleaming chrome of the robotic arms—all of it was covered in a thick, uniform layer of grey dust that seemed to swallow the dim red light. He saw the other eleven pods. Four of them stood open and empty, just like his own, coated in the same thick layer of dust. The first successful revivals. But where were they? Where were the scientists?
He looked at the other pods. Four of them were dark, their screens flashing a single, stark, red warning: CRITICAL FAILURE. LIFE SIGNS TERMINATED. Through the grimy glass, he could see the frozen, perfectly preserved corpses of their occupants. The last three pods were the strangest of all. They were gone. The entire mechanisms had been jettisoned from their alcoves, leaving only a tangle of severed cables and empty sockets.
The silence of the facility was absolute. He was utterly alone.
It took him a full day to master the stiff, clumsy movements of his new body. He survived on the last of the emergency nutrient packs, the tasteless paste a grim contrast to the opulent meals he remembered. He found a simple, one-piece cryo-suit to cover himself. Finally, he was strong enough to make his way to the main control room.
He found a dusty terminal, and with a surge of his new strength, managed to divert enough of the failing backup power to bring its screen to life. He accessed the logs, his heart pounding with a mixture of hope and terror.
The data was corrupted, fragmented. A system reboot at some unknown point in the past had wiped all chronological data. There were no dates, no timestamps. Only a sequence of events. He saw the logs for the first four successful revivals. Then, a series of chaotic entries about the three jettisoned pods. The reason was a garbled string of data, but he could make out key phrases: "Unidentified energy surge… spontaneous revival… system integrity compromised… escape protocol engaged." It made no sense.
Finally, he found the last coherent log entry. It was not a date. It was a single, chilling declaration: FACILITY LOCKDOWN PROTOCOL ENGAGED. ALL EXTERNAL ACCESS DENIED. ALL COMMUNICATIONS TERMINATED. There was no explanation. No reason. Just the final, absolute command that had sealed him in this tomb.
The last of his hope died. The thirty years had clearly come and gone. The beautiful future he had been promised was a lie. He had no idea how long he had been here. A long, long time. The dust, the decay, the failed pods—it all pointed to a catastrophic failure of the project.
After a few more days, the emergency lights began to flicker. The automated voice, his only companion, announced the final failure of the backup batteries. Total darkness was imminent. It was time to leave.
He made his way to the main vault door, a massive, circular plug of missile-resistant alloy. The lockdown had finally disengaged with the total power failure. He placed his hand on the release panel. With a deep, grinding groan of metal that had been still for an age, the massive door began to retract.
He did not know what he would find. A ruined city? A new civilization? He did not know the state of the world. He only knew that the one he had paid to be saved in was gone.
The door opened, revealing not a clean, corporate reception area, but a dark, rubble-strewn tunnel, leading upwards to a world he did not recognize, a world that smelled of damp earth and decay.
The chapter of his old life was over. He took his first, hesitant step out of his tomb, into a brand new, unknown world.