Chapter Text
You open your eyes to a throbbing pain in the back of your head and an inherent feeling of wrongness that you can’t quite place. Like your legs are too long or your torso’s too short and it’s all just wrong. You don’t like it. You want to go home.
You’re
s o
t
i
r
e
d…
You open your eyes feeling like every muscle has been pulled as tight as possible and then locked. It hurts, like a leg cramp but in every muscle all at once. Even your fingers! It hurts. You hurt. You’re tired…
…
No.
You are not falling asleep again. At least not here. The floor is cold and hard and you’re reasonably certain it’s concrete, but the room is too dark to tell. Regardless, if you’re going to pass out again it should be in the comfort of a bed. Or at least under a blanket. God you’re cold. The kind of cold that just saps all your energy. You can’t even shiver, which you’re reasonably certain is a bad thing. Or maybe it’s good? You can’t remember.
Wait. Stop that. Focus.
You try to take a deep breath but cough instead. Your chest is tight and won’t expand properly, which is… distressing? Is that what you’re feeling? Hard to tell. Your brain is foggy, thoughts sluggish, and you’re so, so t i r e d . . .
Nope! Nope. None of that now.
You full-body jerk and suck in a breath. Alright. Okay. That’s enough. Time to get up. Get your blood flowing so you can wake up properly and… and… Well, you should at least get up so that you can figure out what to do next. Maybe pop a Tylenol. Your head fucking hurts.
You try to move your arms, but only one responds with a weak twitch. You’re still stiff all over, but the pain has died down to a dull, full-body throbbing. Wish you could say that about your migraine. Oh well. For now, moving.
You try wiggling your fingers and the results are… not great. You can feel some vague twitching but no real movement yet. Hm. You keep trying, slowly working the stiffness out of your fingers until you can comfortably and reliably open and close your fists. Alright! Good! Progress! Now up!
You wet-noodle flop an arm out and internally scream. This isn’t working! Why isn’t this working??? You awkwardly roll your shoulder before you flop your arms to your sides. Deeper breath - is breathing getting easier? - and try again. This time, you try lifting your arms back and bend at the elbows to try and get your hands under you. The results aren’t quite what you were hoping for, but eventually you managed to coordinate your arms enough to get your palms on the floor to try and push yourself up.
It doesn’t work. Your arms are too floppy, your muscles feel weak and useless, and your legs don’t even twitch when you try to pull your knees under you. You are well and truly boned.
You’re also exhausted. Who knew trying to move around would be so draining? You’ve already been on the floor for god knows how long. A short nap won’t hurt. You close your eyes.
You wake up to a sudden, odd sense of urgency. Like you'd forgotten to tell someone something of utmost importance. You’re also not nearly as tired. You’d still rather take a nap, but it’s not the same bone-deep exhaustion from before. In fact, you’re starting to feel actually awake and alert. Awake enough to slowly prop yourself up on your forearms and take a look around.
The room wasn’t as dark as you remembered, but to be fair you’d been barely conscious and had your face pressed into the floor. Regardless, the room is large and dimly lit aside from a bright light ahead of you. It takes a moment of squinting before you realize it’s some sort of large, tube-like structure an animatronic repair station.
How did you know that?
You sigh - a problem for a later time - and start to push yourself up only to realize this isn’t going to work (again). You can’t get your legs to coordinate enough to get under you. You’re fairly confident that you could remain vertical if you could pull yourself to your feet, but you’re in the middle of a large room with no immediate access to anything to pull yourself up with.
Wait.
The repair station!
Surely there would be something you could use to pull yourself up to your feet in there. You take another quick look around just in case, but the repair station is a direct shot in front of you as opposed to any other structure you could try using (most of which do not look exactly safe…). Decision made, you army crawl your way over only to pause halfway when you realize the entrance is closed. Welp.
You drop your forehead to the floor and groan in frustration while you aggressively slap the floor. Why can’t anything go your way? You’re having a hard enough time as it is! Once you’ve got that little fit out of your system (or rather, your palms sting too much to continue), you once again prop yourself on your forearms and take a look around again.
There’s a short set of stairs to the side that lead to a small platform that wraps around behind the repair station, with at least one door that you can see clearly. The stairs could work. There’s a railing to grab, at least. It won’t be comfortable, but at this point it can’t be any worse than how you already feel so…
You do wonder where the door leads though. If you can get up the stairs, you can take one of the elevators up to Rockstar Row and go from there. Okay. Yeah. You can work with that. That’s… Hm. You side-eye the stairs. Getting up is going to be interesting...
You groan again and start crawling. Moving is getting easier, surprisingly enough. Everything below your chest is still stiff as hell, but breathing is no longer a process and your arms feel fine. Better than fine. Great! Maybe. Jury’s still out on how exactly you’re feeling because every part of you seems to vary wildly from “better than ever” to “kill me now”.
You’re gonna go with “great.” Less distressing.
You’re pulled from your thoughts when you reach the edge of the stairs. They’re a smidge shorter than you anticipated, but that shouldn’t matter too much. You just need to get up enough that your legs can take over. Okay. You can do this. One step at a time (hah).
You start by awkwardly climbing up the rail. There’s a lot of flailing and failed chin-ups involved while you try to figure out how to coordinate your legs in time with everything else. Look, it’s a whole process, okay? Your head hurts, climbing is making your migraine worse to the point of seeing spots, and your knees keep either locking up or buckling under your weight. It’s a process, it sucks, and you’re on the verge of just giving up when you finally manage to lock both knees at the same time in just the right way that you’re finally, FINALLY upright!
Mostly.
Okay, you’ve got your arms wrapping around the rails like a piece of driftwood and your legs are so far apart you’re about to fall into a split, but you’re off the floor and that’s what matters!
(You keep telling yourself that.)
You’re also tired again, which causes a leg to collapse and you scramble to get your legs back under you, after which you lean against the handrail to catch your breath. And you have to do this for how long? Suddenly the few steps feel like a cliff and you just want to lay down and go back to sleep. You don’t, of course. You’ve spent far too long getting here and you’re so close to being done. You just… You just need to get to a door and you’ll be fine.
Yeah.
Yeah…
You heave a sigh and haul yourself up the first step.
It takes you an uncomfortably long time to reach the upper level, but you get such a rush of emotions when you finally do. Your hips have also finally loosened up enough for you to stumble around. Granted your knees are essentially useless so you’re reduced to an awkward shuffle-scoot as you make your way to the second door (why second? No idea. But that’s still a not-right-now problem), but you don’t fall and your knees don’t collapse from under you, so you decide to count that as a win.
You press a button and the door slides up - neat! - to reveal a narrow hallway that may or may not also be doubling as some kind of storage. Regardless, you can barely reach the walls for support. You are beginning to regret not just laying on the floor for someone to come find you.
Shuffling down the hallway is as tedious as it sounds. You can’t move quickly without risking a fall and your balance is just bad enough that you have to awkwardly lean over the piles of boxes and stuff to use the wall as support. Somehow you manage to make it all the way down to another door that opens up to a… small… room? You feel like your brain had filled in this info for you earlier, but now you’re drawing a blank. You are supposed to be here, though. You’re fairly confident of that fact.
That said, you have no idea where “here” even is.
There’s a button just inside the door. You notice it as you shuffle in to lean against a wall. You really shouldn’t go around pressing things, especially if you have no idea what they do, but you get the feeling that’s never stopped you before so why should you start now?
You press the button.
The floor lurches hard beneath you. You get a brief moment of ‘Oh sh-’ as your knees buckle and you flail for something - anything - to grab. There’s nothing, of course. This lift wasn’t built with humans in mind, after all. And then your head hits the floor.
You feel something hit your chest and you suck in air, lungs screaming for oxygen. Awful doesn't even begin to describe how you feel. You feel like you've been yanked out of your body and slammed back in. You're also unnaturally loose, like how you'd been unnaturally tight before but in the opposite direction now. At this point, the appeal of being awake has long since worn off and you just want to go back to sleep. The room spins, colors blurring together, before you finally close your eyes.
The idea of doing anything at this point is overwhelming. Closing your eyes gives a moment of respite from the vertigo, which rapidly develops into exhaustion. You're tired. Tired of moving. Tired of fighting your own body to do literally anything. Tired of being tired. Just… tired.
A rapid patting on your cheek rouses you and you try to blink the sleep out of your eyes. There's a vague shadow of something - someone? - hovering over you, but when you finally get your eyes to focus there's nothing there. You huff in irritation before closing your eyes and relaxing. The floor is by no means comfortable, but the bone deep exhaustion you feel makes that an insignificant detail. You're almost asleep when you feel it again. A soft pat-pat-pat against your cheek. When that gets no response, the patting gets more insistent until a hand grabs your shoulder, fingers digging in hard, and gives a hard shake. Your eyes snap open as you gasp - did you stop breathing?!? - but once again there's nothing there except for an intense unease and a static whisper in your ears.
Clearly, sleeping is not in your best interests. As drained as you are, you decide that lying on the floor doing nothing is also not in your best interests. There’s no telling when - or even if - someone will find you. If you want something done right, you should do it yourself. Or something. Whatever. First things first, you need to be vertical.
You continue to stare at the ceiling. Turns out, being loose is just as bad as being stiff in terms of sitting up. Who knew?
Okay, maybe rolling over would work better. You groan as you awkwardly twist in an attempt to roll over. It’s trying to coordinate your legs all over again, except you’re dealing with the wet sack of spaghetti that is your floppy body instead of just your legs. You end up having to roll your shoulders until the rest of your body gets the hint and follows suit.
Well, you’re finally on your stomach. Now what?
Has breathing always been this hard?
You haul yourself forward to get your hands under you, pause to catch your breath, and then slowly pull your knees under you. Getting up is hard. You have to brace yourself against the doorway with one arm while simultaneously pushing off your thigh and the floor and standing up has way too many steps. Whoever designed legs like this needs to be shot. But! You’re upright and almost out of the elevator! Granted it’s been god knows how long, but that’s not important right now.
What is important is the gentle prod against your shoulder and movement in the corner of your eyes that guides your attention to another door with light spilling out through the seams. Another glance around shows you’re still alone, which is unsettling because who keeps touching you?
Another “not now” problem, that’s who. That room is your ticket to being not here. You would like to be not here.
You lurch forward and raise your brows. Walking is… Well it’s not exactly easier. There’s a whole new set of problems now, but you can move your legs enough that you’re not restricted to a slow shuffle.. The next step makes the whole room spin and you sag against the wall, only barely keeping yourself upright. You want to lay down again, close your eyes until the world stops spinning, but getting up had been so difficult.
You wait. And Breathe. Eventually the room calms down and you can look around without your balance being disrupted. Once your stomach settles you try again. A few more steps and then the room tilts again. Static whispers in your skull and a hand rests on your back, grounding you. It’s not much but it helps, just a bit. A soft pat against your shoulder and the hand withdraws.
Okay then.
Weird.
You opt for shuffling instead of walking, since moving so much seems to be the new source of problems. That or the sudden exhaustion starting to tug at you. You pinch the bridge of your nose to try and will it away - why? That makes no sense… - before you finally shuffle the rest of the way over. The door is shut, because of course it is, and without thinking you reach over and press a button at hip height. You have so many questions and honestly you’re beginning to wonder if you’re ever going to get any answers. And then the door slides open and all those questions get shelved for later.
Because apparently making problems a “not now” issue was so natural that it was easier to compartmentalize than to try and deal with whatever the hell was happening now. You decide not to think too hard about that. Problems for another time.
What you do decide to think about is just how purple the room is. Like, wow. There’s a massive window straight ahead, “Roxanne Wolf” in neon lights, and the carpet makes you nauseous. Actually, the whole room makes you feel sick. The lights hurt and the room spins, causing you to stumble. There’s a crash as you knock and then trip over a keytar and you only barely manage to catch yourself on the desk (if by “catch yourself” you mean “fall to your knees but not all the way to the floor”). The lights at the desk are even worse and you bury your face in your arms to try and block the worst of it out.
You’re tired.
You’ve started to doze off when a hand pats your back as a gentle reminder that you have things to be doing. Like finding the security guard. Maybe going home to sleep in the comfort of your own bed. Your head hurts. You don’t wanna. Fine. Fine! Okay! The desk is a good height to use to haul yourself up, at least. It takes you a couple tries but then you’re up, feeling worse than ever, and moving forward.
Until you see your reflection.
You’re not stupid. You know a mirror when you see one, and you’re the only person around. The reflection has to be yours.
Except
It’s not.
That’s not your face. Those aren’t your eyes. Your hair’s all wrong. Everything is wrong.
You lean against the desk and do your best to ignore the lights to get a better look at your face. You wave your hand, touch your cheek, turn your head, and yup. That’s you alright. Except it isn’t. Because that’s not your face.
You close your eyes and hang your head to think. Try to recall what you actually look like. You… don’t get much. Vague impressions of what you think might be your face, but the mental image is obscured. Like trying to picture something that’s been described but that you’ve never actually seen.
You aren’t “you”.
The realization hits hard, settles in your stomach like a rock, and you lift your head to see your reflection once more. Your new face is a hot mess. You look like you haven’t slept for a week with deep bags under your eyes, too pale skin, and a bruise across your face from laying on the floor. There’s also an uncomfortable amount of blood around the collar of your jumpsuit. Like, a lot.
Should probably have bled out a while back levels of a lot.
The world tilts sharply and you stumble. A loud kl-chink! draws your attention to who can only be Roxanne standing in the doorway. For a robot, she’s surprisingly expressive. You can see the surprise and confusion in her face as she looks you over. The confusion changes to panic when your knee chooses that moment to give out, sending you slamming into the desk and then toward the floor. She only barely catches you in time and quickly hauls you back to your feet.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” She asks while you try to not collapse again. The floor keeps tilting under your feet and you just want to lay down until it all passes. You can feel her concern grow as you don’t respond until she finally bundles you into her arms and carries you. You have to close your eyes against the spinning colors but then the movement stops and you’re placed on something soft. A hand strokes the side of your face as she says, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
The door opens and shuts and you’re alone. You let your mind drift a bit as you wait. Surprisingly there’s no nudging force trying to get you up again. Maybe because you’ve finally been found by someone? Or maybe your brain is so broken now that whatever hallucinations you’d been having have finally stopped.
But you didn’t spend this much time and energy to just give up at the end. You still have to find the night guard. You’re not sure why, but it seems really important all of a sudden. Guess that odd sense of urgency from way back had finally decided to show up with a vengeance. Wrestling your eyes open is hard because you just want to let yourself sleep, but you force yourself to look around.
The room is horribly out of focus and everything keeps shifting. You can’t seem to get your eyes to focus on anything for more than a few seconds and it’s seriously throwing your perceptions off. Even so, you slowly force yourself up. You sway dangerously once you’re on your feet, but you manage to get your balance vaguely under control by hunching over and keeping your legs wide. It’s uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it works. You even manage to lurch your way to the vanity where you pause to catch your breath and reorient yourself.
By the time you reach the door the world is somehow even more out of focus and you can feel your mind slipping in and out. During a brief lucid moment you wonder if you’re maybe bleeding out again. There had been a lot of blood around your neck, after all. Too bad you can’t see well enough to check the mirror. Still, you’re on a mission. You’re so close now.
The door doesn’t open as you approach and it takes you far too long to realize that you’re facing the wall. You fumble around until your fingers find the edge of the door and you haul yourself over. The door slides open with the familiar kl-chink! and you stumble out before it can shut you in. You use your hand to trace the wall ahead of you as you try to stumble your way… somewhere.
You’re honestly not sure where you are anymore. Somewhere both light and dark. Colors swirl together and everything you can make out is doubled. You swallow back the nausea and keep moving forward. You just have to make it a bit further.
Just have to…
Just a bit…
You aren’t moving. How long have you been staring into space? Everything feels so far away. You feel yourself sink to the floor as every muscle goes slack at once. You should have stayed on the couch. It was more comfortable than the floor.
Oh well.
You’re slumping forward slowly when you hear distant voices. Static hums in your ears in what feels like a reassuring tone but you’re too tired to care. You just...You’re so tired. So tired…
“Hey.” A woman drops into your view, brushing your hair back to get a good look at your face. “Okay. Um.” She talks to someone - multiple someones? You can’t tell if your eyes are just doubling everything or if you’ve got one hell of an audience - but you can’t quite make out what she’s saying. Not because you can’t hear her but because you just aren’t processing things properly anymore. Something about “bad” and “rooms” and something something 911.
You wheeze. Breathing is hard. Your wheeze seems to catch her attention though because she waves off the crowd(?) and focuses on you again. “Just hang ----- na be okay. Amb----- the way an-----” Her voice comes and goes until it finally just fades away completely.
You’re roused by a hard pressure on your chest and something being pressed against your face. It’s uncomfortable and keeping you from sleeping. You’re tired and cranky and god why can’t you just be left alone? You push at the thing on your face and the pressure on your chest pulls away. Hands grab at yours, pulling them down to your sides before the whole world lurches. You try to raise them again but something cinches around your chest, pinning them to your sides. Not that it really matters. You’re too tired again to care.
Someone pries your mouth open as you fade again.
When you finally open your eyes for the nth time, you feel… better. Still groggy and kind of slow, but you don’t hurt all over. The room is bland but not boring. Off-white walls, tubes and wires, noise, there's a lot going on in the room. A nurse - at least you think they’re a nurse - comes in as you close your eyes. You give her a few minutes to check on things before you weakly wave your hand to catch her attention.
“You’re awake!” she says and rushes to the door to shout. When she returns to your side, several others follow to start poking and prodding, reading off numbers and tossing around terms you don’t understand, while you lay helplessly in the middle of the chaos. A light shines in your eyes - first one then the other - as someone finally asks you, “What’s your name?”
“Emmett” is the name you blurt out and your brain comes to a screeching halt. Oh right.
You're not “you” anymore.