Chapter Text
Cold darkness. Voices. Searing pain. That's all I could remember.
I couldn't tell you why I woke up here, but I've always believed that everything happens for a reason...even if I don't know when "always" was. Getting up from this stasis pod was much easier than I expected, for being asleep for who-knows-how long. I distinctly remember there being a sole object in the room I woke up in: it was a handbag of some kind, a worn leather brown like a nice pair of western boots; inside, a lone file folder, with a name I didn't know and a face that felt familiar on the cover. Like my memories felt, it was stuck shut, reluctant to spill the details trapped inside.
Still, I took it, and kept moving. Corridor after corridor, the stage was all the same: dreary steel walls, cold floors, and very heavy doors that were all ajar.
For a place that looks like it's supposed to be secure, it's not doing a very good job. And a jacket would have been nice.
The voices returned as I made my way up a flight of stairs toward what I understood to be the surface. The path to the outside, which at the time was being thrashed by a thunderstorm, was barricaded by a pair of men clad in intimidating yet nicely-pressed suits. With pure luck, I was able to locate a pair of discarded handheld radios and knock both of them out one by one. My aim, and how easy it was to take them out, surprised even me, even if it was the least of my concerns at the time. Manuevering out of the final door using a key card I picked up from one of the mystery men led to an overwhelming sight of tall buildings touching the sky, cars speeding through the streets, and, as I realized my first observation was true, the rumble of thunder and the impending pouring of rain on my head.
So, I did what any kid in boring scrubs who just escaped a laboratory would do: I ran for it. With no set destination, I dashed through the city alleyways as I believed that I was being pursued without my knowledge by whoever was keeping me locked in that place. My luck would eventually run out as an open manhole cover went unnoticed. I fell through, and the dual sounds of a THUD and bones cracking were enough to make me black out cold.
And much later, when I came too, at first, a sharp stinging pain all over my body, and as soon as my vision cleared...
"Hey, kid, you alright? I don't have all day, let's get going!"