Chapter Text
The first thing I heard was the sound of beeping, opening my eyes to- nope. No opening eyes noted that fucking hurt.
“Eye movement detected”
I felt something being pulled out of my mouth and I immediately gagged, fuck, what was in there I can feel it in my throat.
… It was definitely in my throat. Ew ew ew ew ew!
I choked as whatever it was finally came out, gagging violently and looking away from where I thought I heard the voice from before. It sounded like a chick, a stone cold prude of a woman, but a chick. Probably a solid five or six out of ten.
“What’s two plus two?”
“Fmm -fffff” I retorted. Well shit, I was trying to tell the mystery lady to fuck off, but my voice decided to go on break, lovely, wonderful even. I’m trapped somewhere, possibly drugged, and I have to deal with this stick in the mud.
…
Fuck was I kidnapped? I was kidnapped, wasn’t I! Fuck!
“Incorrect.” The woman spoke up again, “Cognition Assessment: What is two plus two?”
I manage to roll over, still trying to spit out that fucking chemical taste that was still in my mouth. Eugh, why did it have to still be there. Where’s some water when you need it?
“Incorrect.”
Fuck you.
“You have been in an induced coma,” The voice elaborates. It… wasn’t a human voice, was it? That lady was a machine, “You may experience some memory loss, difficulty speaking-”
“Nnnn- shhhh-t,” I shot back. A butchered fucking attempt at saying ‘no shit’ but at this point? I’ll take it. Surely the machine’s gonna appreciate my attempt at cussing her out.
Some fuckass whirring started up, it sounded like a buzzer- Oh shit!
“Nnnnnp-!” I flailed, managing to force myself in a random direction away from the razor aiming to slice me up. Great lovely the bitch was already trying to kill me!
“Body movement detected,” the computer announced, no shit sherlock, and I feel something pinch the bottom of- wait what was he trapped in actually?! “For your own safety, please remain to the medical platform.”
Yeah no, not happening, sorry not sorry.
Fuck the pain, I open my eyes and struggle out of the- whatever it was that I was stuck in- oh fuck that’s a body bag! Fuck I knew it! I was kidnapped and they were going to kill me!
I squirm out of the bodybag, away from the voice, and finally got the chance to look at my prison even through the fucking glare-!
I yelp, nearly falling a fuckoff distance to the floor. Whatever bed I was on, it was suspended way above the ground, from the looks of it, it slid out from the wall, there was a little space I could probably cram my body into. The room was… aggressively white, like I was in some sort of insane asylum, crazy since I wasn’t insane. White padded walls, what looked like a bed right next to me and… evil machine arms. Yep, I’ve been kidnapped by a villain.
Shit!
I shimmy back into the earlier cram space and just out of reach of the arms as the lady speaks up again, “Please remember muscle function has not yet been restored.”
“Fuuk- y-uu!” I got closer that time, fuck yes. Now he just needed to find a way to get out of this prison cell-
There!
There was a ladder leading up towards a hatch, what am I being kept in? A nutcase’s war bunker? Fuck was this just some crazy loner’s idea of a fun time? If so, zero stars. I want off this ride yesterday.
Beat being stuck in the bed's asshole where it could slide in and crush me at any given moment.
I drag myself on top of the bed again, rolling away from the demon arms as they reach for me. Not today motherfucker!
And I’m hit with a sudden wave of vertigo as I end up falling. I rolled right off of the bed. I’m also and very helpfully made aware of several things still attached to me as they all rip out of my body at once. I scream, and then slam into the ground at the bottom of the room. It’s padded, which was great and all except it still didn’t help the severe fucking pain I was in.
“Elevated stress levels detected.”
Oh no, oh fuck no.
I scramble into a corner despite the pain, I wasn’t going to be victim of those arms, absolutely fucking not!
Ow-!
I flinch and curl up, grabbing my stomach, gasping as the pain spiked from the movement. What the hell tore out of me?
Looking up gave me the answer.
…Where the fuck was that inserted?!
It looked like a partially inflated tube with a fucking ton of bulge to it (heh, bulge). Tracing the pain I can feel it in…
I look down.
“M- d-ck’s bleed-ng!” I yell. I can talk again, but I’m loud and shrill enough my voice keeps giving out. Entirely warranted by the way because THAT THING WAS IN MY DICK! My poor poor dick. I’ve been assaulted!
Holy shit I’ve been assaulted.
I stare up at the arms, I must look insane. I feel crazy. What the fuck did I do to deserve this?
… What did I do to deserve this?
I can’t remember.
Actually, I can’t remember anything- shit I can’t remember fuck all!
I can’t remember where I’m from, I can’t remember what I could have done to end up here- or fuck who I could have even pissed off to deserve this! Why can’t I remember? What the fuck happened to me?!
“Physical distress,” The arms lunged for me again and I pressed myself further into the corner. I hold a hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming, the hell I was letting my captors know I was awake any more than I already have. I looked around, was there surveillance, anything?
No. Just me, the beds, the robot, some kind of storage area, and my bleeding dick. Well- the blood smear that it left behind. The bleeding was done, but the little streak of blood really sold the situation here. It was kind of like…
“The world’s shittiest red-”
“-String of fate, why couldn’t they have just called it that,” I shrug, leaning back and throwing an arm over someone's shoulder, “I mean the Petrova line sounds so self important, we’ve got better shit to call it!”
I’m sitting in the living room, watching the TV as it shows a news broadcast. Some stuffy man with wild hair talking about something he only cared to slightly pay attention to. The world was bathed in soft warm light, most of the lights dimmed so that the two of us could watch the screen easier. There was a charcuterie board on the coffee table in front of us, picked through and half eaten. On the screen, there was a news reporter, some scientist, and they were standing in a flight centre. NASA, probably, I’m barely paying attention to it.
“Language,” my boyfriend shook his head, “And it was discovered by Dr Irina Petrova, I told you this. When you discover something, you get to name it.”
“Still, lame name,” I scoff, opening my phone to look at literally anything else and groaning. Fuck it was everywhere, “What’s the big deal about it anyway?”
“... you really don’t pay attention to the news, do you?” Ryland just sighed, “The petrova line is an active problem. Those black dots on the screen? For some reason, they’re causing the sun to dim.”
“Bullshit.”
“Language!” the man laughed, and I chuckled. He always looked so cute when laughing, “And I’m telling the truth, I saw the message about it a few days ago by Dr Petrova herself. The petrova line is real, and…”
I watch him trail off, staring at the screen in mounting shock. I blink, “Ry ry?”
“Oh… my god.”
I tune back into the news to see the news reporter and the flight control room freaking the fuck out. What the…
“Telemetry!” One of the sciencey guys barked out, “Any shimmy in the probe?”
“Already checked!” Someone else called back, “No shimmy!”
I look at the dots that appeared on the screen, “Are those dot’s… moving?”
Ryland suddenly jumped out of my arms, “Oh my god!” He began to pace behind the couch, running his hands through his hair, “Oh my god!”
“What? What’d I say?” I stand up.
“Particles don’t move- well, they do, but not like that,” Ryland turned to me, “You know what does move? Cells. Those dots aren’t debris, they're cells.”
Huh.
…
Wait-
“Holy shit those are aliens?” I double take, looking back to the screen where the aliens were and my boyfriend.
“No? Maybe? I don’t know!” Ry let out a disbelieving laugh, leaning against the couch and staring at the screen.
Aliens… wait-
“You know what this means, right baby?” I grin, walking behind the couch to wrap my hands around Ryland’s waist, leaning in close, “The sun’s pretty hot right? Hot enough to boil water?”
“Looks like somebody just got proven right.”
I- holy shit. That was a memory just now. Oh thank fuck that was a memory. A real one. I can get my memories back! Take that you cunts!
Now that I’m actually aware of my memory loss, I should probably start trying to remember who the fuck I actually am. I’m well off, I remember that much. Actually, well off was too light of a work now that I’m thinking about it. No, I was loaded, stacked to the nieces, dripping with bags. I was the fucking king of the world with how much money I had. I could spend out my ass for the rest of my life and still be a millionaire with how much money I made.
But how did I make that money? What’s my job?
… Nothing, not even a little bit of a hint here brain? Fine, go fuck yourself, myself? Not thinking too hard on that one.
I lift my head.
“Body movement detected, what’s two plus two?”
Fuck it, maybe miss machine will have some answers.
“Four,” let’s play lady.
“Correct,” The machine states, “What is the cube root of eight?”
Fuck me more questions.
… what's a cube root again?
A cube has four sides, and roots are like weird fucked up lines so… “Two?” I guess. I don’t entirely know what the fuck I’m talking about but eight divided by four is two and it’s division because roots have weird knobs and lines everywhere.
“Correct.”
And that’s an A+, great grade Ry would be proud of me.
… I know more about Ryland than I know about myself, I’m just now realising. It’s starting to come back to me in little pieces. Ryland Grace. I met him through work (Though again I can’t remember my own fucking job) and he was my boyfriend. He’s smart, really smart, and works as a teacher. Was I a teacher- nope, nah I fucking hate that idea moving on… He lived in San-Francisco but we would visit each other frequently. Other than that we were long distance as need be. He loved his little science puns and he adored his students, grinning like an idiot whenever I so much as mentioned kids.
My brain caught on one word from earlier. Was.
That- no… I think about what I know about him, I still love him. There’s no way it’s a was.
Ryland Grace is my boyfriend.
That sounds… unbelievably good. Almost addicting with how good it was.
The machine lady was quiet again, thank fuck. Hopefully that meant she was done torturing me with math.
Alright, what else do I know about myself outside of my boyfriend.
…
Absolute shit fuck.
Great.
I have a boyfriend, I’m rich, and that’s about it. Well, at least I know why I was kidnapped, they obviously wanted me for my money.
Something about that thought also snagged. Why? I was right, I’m always right I know that so why did-
It had to do with the memory from earlier. The one that lovely red streak of blood caused. The Petrova Line-
Oh.
Oh I don’t like that.
I feel a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. It’s completely different from the memory. There is something heavy in my chest, it almost makes it hard to breathe. I’m… scared. But that’s crazy, they’re just tiny dots that prove my boyfriend right and everyone else wrong, what the fuck was scaring me so bad about some black dots?
“The petrova line is an active problem. Those black dots on the screen? For some reason, they’re causing the sun to dim.”
Oh.
Oh shit.
Maybe this wasn’t a kidnapping. Maybe the reason I’m in a bunker is for my own safety.
I look at the beds in the room. Three beds lining the wall at various heights. They looked way more sci-fi than a nutjob. Either I’d been kidnapped by some government, which, again, why would they do that if they have enough money. They don’t need to steal my dashing good looks on top of it.
Or… I was being kept safe because the world fucking ended while I was asleep and losing my memory.
I can’t breathe, the closest I can make is a shitty whistling noise from my mouth as I try and pull in oxygen because I can’t fucking breathe.
“Physical distress.”
“Shut up!” I barked at the robot, “I’m having a crisis here I think I’m allowed to fucking freak out!”
Am I the last man alive?
No I couldn’t be, there were three beds. Meaning I had at least two more people here to talk to. I’m not alone, I’m not. I… I need to know I’m not alone.
But first I need to get up.
I move, wincing in pain because Ow, fuck this stupid fucking body. God fuck I hate this. Fuck this, fuck the robot, fuck my stupid fucking body-!
I’m able to force myself into a kneeling position before having to catch my breath. I keep my legs slightly spread because if I even think of closing them right now I… won’t cry but it will be very painful and I will have a lot to say.
Step one: Passed with flying colors.
Step two…
I take a deep breath, count to ten, and scramble to my feet, swaying and nearly immediately topping over before I catch myself on the wall. But I am up! Take that kidnappers!
Or… government.
Okay! Okay. I’m standing! Not well, but I’m standing. I haven’t fallen yet so I’m gonna take it.
I look at the other beds. The one right below mine was out, but the one closest to the ground was still in it’s little hidey hole. What was up with that?
… Maybe the one under mine was waking up like I did?
“Hey! Rise and shine sweet cheeks!” I call up at it, “What the fuck’s going on here! Where are we!”
Nothing.
Great.
“Man you must sleep like the dead,” I mutter sourly. Guess it’s still just me against the world, or what’s left of the world. I need to stop thinking about it.
Using the wall, I start inching over to the ladder leading up. No matter what, I wasn’t going to find any answers just sitting here doing nothing. I don’t even have food or water down here. Just… sleeping people.
If I wanted to survive, period, and more importantly get answers. I needed to get out of here the only way I can, through the mystery hatch in the ceiling.
I stop holding the wall a few steps in, I already feel steadier on my feet. That’s great! I’m not completely fucked for life there’s hope for me after all. First my memory, now my body. I’m gonna be fine… Of course I’m gonna be fine I’m-!
…
I’m-
Why can’t I remember?
Why can’t I remember my name?!
“Fuck- Fuck!” I physically recoil, falling back and accidentally swinging myself into the mass of hanging bags that make up the storage nook. Getting tangled quickly. Great! Wonderful. Why can’t I remember my name? I knew I had amnesia, but my name was mine. I can’t- I can’t-!
I let out a mortifying sob and slap a hand over my mouth again.
I can’t remember my name.
I have a boyfriend. His name is Ryland Grace. He’s smart. I have an apartment. I’m rich. And I can’t remember my own name.
I need to get out of here. I need to find people. I need-!
The beds.
I stare at the bed that’s outside its cubby. The one that’s not mine. I need to wake them up, I need to demand answers and I need to get them to tell me my name.
I throw myself out of the storage area, slamming into the ground and scrambling to my feet as I all but race to the ladder like a mental patient. I felt like I was going insane. Maybe I had, maybe I hadn’t.
I reach the first rung and nearly fall off immediately. I’m either not as strong as I thought I was or there was something fucked up with the bunker. Was it so far underground that the gravity was higher? Gravity can get higher, can’t it? Probably.
“Physical distress.”
“Shut up!” I snap at the machine, starting to haul myself up the ladder. It takes more effort than expected, but I’m able to get to the bed that’s outside like mine, “Rise and shine darling!”
I pull back the covers and-
That’s not a living person. That’s a corpse.
It’s a woman, with grey skin and sunken cheeks and hollowed eyes. Her hair is long and dead. She looked like some sort of mummy. It… explains why she was out of the bed and unresponsive, waste of resources and stuff.
But that was still a corpse.
“Fuck!” I yell, falling off the ladder- shit!
I’m caught by the mechanical arms, it hurts, but I’m starting to get numb to the pain. That, or I’m starting to go into shock or something. They return me to my bed which was… useful. Closer to the door. Right above the corpse.
“Fuck- shit- fuck!” I curse, curling up on the bed and hugging myself tightly. I don’t even care anymore if anyone sees me. I don’t remember my name, barely any of my past, the world might have ended and there’s a corpse under my bed. I think I’m allowed to panic, “Fuck…”
I stay like that for a while, holding myself and shaking as I sit there, trying and failing to even breathe properly. I can’t calm down, I can’t. This is too much. I'm not built for this. I can’t do this, I don’t even remember my own name!
I shut my eyes, trying to block out the world before an abrupt wave of fatigue hits me and-
I open my eyes. I must have fallen asleep.
It’s easier to open my eyes now and look around. Sleep did… wonders for me. I sit up easily throwing my legs over the side to stare down at the beds below me.
The dead lady’s was put back, maybe I caused it to pull out when I fell that first time, just my luck. The bed on the bottom though I still haven’t taken a look inside. I probably should. But I- I don’t want to see any more corpses. Not for a long time.
I move my arms and feel a sudden tug, looking down I see an… IV. Oh fuck I was drugged.
Without even thinking about it I tear the thing out. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would but I have to quickly clamp a hand down to stop the blood. Nope! I’ve seen enough blood to last me a lifetime thank you.
“Full body motion detected,” The computer lady pipes up, “What’s your name?”
My name? What question is that I’m-
Fuck. Right, I forgot. Literally, I still don’t remember my name.
I let out a strangled noise, blinking away the sudden tears in my eyes. If I think about it too much I’m going to get drugged again and then I definitely won’t learn. Fuck, maybe that’s what happened to the woman, she kept getting it wrong and then kept getting put under and eventually-
“Fuck.”
“Incorrect.”
Not helpful. Great.
“Can you give me a hint?”
“Incorrect.”
“Well fuck you too,” I hiss, inching over towards the ladder. I want out of this room, and now that I’m so close to the top, I can do that. Grabbing and holding onto the ladder is way easier this time, and I get a hold of the hatch pretty quickly too if I do say so myself. I only threatened to slip once. Nobody does it better than I do.
I stare at the hatch. It looked like I could open it from the inside. Well, there goes the kidnapping theory from yesterday (was it a new day?). I grab at what I think is the lever and push it, then pull it, then slide it- yes!
Ough.
The thing’s heavy when I try to push it up, it takes me hunching over in a very… unstable pose and using my shoulder as extra leverage. I keep psyching myself out of it every few seconds just because of how much I feel like I’m gonna fall. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was getting hungry by this point and I needed food I think I’d take my chances here. Please and thank you.
I do manage to get it open though, shoving up into-!
A god awful hallway and more fucking ladders at the end of it. Great.
It was dark up there, and I hesitate, looking down at the beds below. Maybe I should stay down there, it’d be safer. I know what's in the small room. All of this was… foreign, and potentially dangerous.
Maybe the last guy in the bed could wake up and I have someone else in this mess to lean on.
Yeah, yeah I’ll do that.
I move to slide back down the ladder when a glow catches my eye. I look and- no.
I scramble up into the corridor and race to the window. Slamming a hand against it and staring out into the world above.
A void of stars greets me. Nothing but stars forever and ever, all consuming. I can’t see the ground, I can’t see my planet, I can't see my home. Something in me recoils at that, something old and primal that screams that I shouldn’t be here. I’m-!
… I’m not on earth.