Wh… where am I?
What… is this?
I…
What is "I"?
Who… am I?
How do I know that I exist… yet not how I know it?
Why don't I remember anything?
What is happening?
Why… can't I move?
No—
A sharp white light burned into his eyes.
He tried to turn away.
He couldn't.
Something held him down.
No… not something.
Many things.
His arms were pinned. His legs locked. His chest could barely rise.
Straps.
Cold. Hard against his skin.
A bed…?
No.
Not just a bed.
Too rigid.
Too precise.
Like something designed to hold, not to heal.
The light came from above—thin lines tracing the edges of the ceiling.
LED strips.
Too bright.
Too clean.
It burned.
His body trembled.
Not from fear.
Not from cold.
Something deeper.
A constant vibration ran through him.
Like every part of his body was slightly out of alignment with the world around it.
He didn't understand it.
He couldn't stop it.
"Let me go!!"
The words tore from his throat—
Wrong.
His voice warped as it left him.
Too high—
Then suddenly too low—
Like multiple tones collapsing into one another.
It cracked, stretched, folded over itself.
"Le—t… me… g—o!!"
He froze.
That… wasn't his voice.
It couldn't be.
It sounded like it couldn't decide what it was.
He pulled.
Nothing.
He pulled harder.
Pain shot through his arms.
"Let—me—GO!!"
His body jerked violently against the restraints.
Again.
Again—
Then—
Something snapped.
Not the straps.
Something else.
They were there—
And then they weren't.
Gone.
No sound.
No break.
No resistance.
Just… absence.
But he didn't stop.
He kept pulling.
Clawing at his wrists.
Trying to tear free from restraints that no longer existed.
His breathing fractured.
His voice still wrong.
His body still shaking—
No.
Worse.
The vibration had grown stronger now.
Like the world around him had shifted slightly out of place.
He collapsed.
Hard.
The bed—gone.
He struck the ground, limbs thrashing, still fighting restraints that weren't there.
His thoughts shattered.
Noise flooded in—
Distant.
Muffled.
Sirens.
Shouting.
Footsteps.
Fast. Uneven. Too many.
Somewhere outside.
Somewhere close.
But his mind couldn't hold onto any of it.
It slipped away.
Everything followed.
The floor beneath him—
It didn't crack.
Didn't break.
Didn't sink.
It simply…
Forgot how to exist.
No fragments.
No debris.
Not even sound.
One moment—solid.
The next—
Nothing.
Something reached him.
A smell.
Sharp.
Chemical.
Wrong.
It burned the back of his throat before he even understood what it was.
There was nothing around him.
No source.
Just him—
and the smell.
His thoughts faltered.
Slipped.
The noise in his head began to fade.
The panic dulled.
His body slowed.
The shaking weakened.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Darkness crept inward.
Not sudden.
Not violent.
Controlled.
Precise.
His last breath felt heavy.
Thick.
Like something had filled his lungs that didn't belong there.
The sirens were louder now.
Closer.
More urgent.
Then—
Nothing.
Silence settled over the room.
What remained of it.
The center was gone.
Not broken.
Not shattered.
Gone.
A hollow carved into the ground—wide, deep, and impossibly clean.
The surrounding walls still stood.
Untouched.
Too far away.
Too safe.
At the bottom—
He lay there.
Still.
Unmoving.
The air above the crater shimmered faintly.
As if something had disturbed it…
and the world hadn't quite settled yet.
A faint hiss.
Then—
A click.
The wall.
It cracked open.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Just enough to see through.
A pause.
Then—
It slammed open.
Hard.
No hesitation.
No caution.
A shadow fell across the boy's body.
Tall.
Still.
Unwavering.
It did not hesitate.
Did not recoil.
Did not fear what lay at its feet.
For a moment—
Nothing moved.
Then—
A step forward.
The boy's body trembled.
Not violently.
A subtle, constant vibration—like something beneath the surface had slipped out of alignment.
His outline wavered.
Blurred.
Uncertain.
As if the world itself refused to hold his shape for long.
As if he wasn't meant to be seen.
His clothes were gone.
Not torn.
Not removed.
Simply—
absent.
Leaving him exposed.
Unshielded.
Not just from the cold—
but from whatever had begun to notice him.
The figure looming above him raised his right hand.
Leather shifted softly as the sleeve of his long coat slid back.
Deliberate.
Measured.
His left eye began to glow—bright cyan, sharp and unnatural against the stillness of his face.
His arm lifted at the elbow.
Palm turning upward.
The boy's body followed.
Slowly—
unnaturally—
rising from the ground as if pulled by something that did not exist.
Limbs slack.
Head lolling.
Weightless.
Like a puppet without strings—
and yet perfectly controlled.
The figure extended his other hand toward the ruined room, fingers straight and rigid like spears.
Slowly, he rotated his wrist.
Precise.
Almost delicate.
Like adjusting an unseen mechanism.
The cyan light in his left eye shifted.
Yellow bled into it, the color brightening and twisting through the glow.
Cyan and gold intertwined within the single eye, swirling together in quiet harmony.
There was no strain in him.
No resistance.
Only calm.
Absolute control reflected in the slow motion of his hand.
Then—
the room began to change.
The fractured ground trembled.
Not with violence—
but with intent.
The broken surface drew inward, reforming, knitting itself back together as though time itself had reversed direction.
Edges softened.
Cracks sealed.
The crater closed like flesh healing over a wound that had never been allowed to exist.
Within that restoration, something began to take shape.
Not emerging—
assembling.
Piece by piece.
Form by form.
As though invisible hands were rebuilding reality at the smallest possible scale.
The bed.
As the final fragments settled into place, the figure made a small motion with his raised hand.
The boy's suspended body responded instantly.
Lowering.
Slow.
Weightless.
Until it met the surface of the bed with unnatural grace—
as if gravity itself had been instructed how to behave.
The glow in his eye dimmed.
The yellow faded first.
Then the cyan.
Leaving only a steady, unremarkable green—
as if nothing unusual had happened at all.
He studied the boy for a long moment.
Silence stretched.
Then, almost to himself, in a voice low and steady—though edged with something he could not quite hide—
"What the fuck are you?"