Animosity – Prologue : Awake & Alert
A faint light broke through the swirling black haze. For a moment, he could feel again. His body felt heavy. It wanted to fall back into the sleepy blackness, but he resisted. Locked on the glow, he tried to focus and the light slowly grew wider. His eyes took long enough adjusting that he considered if he may have slept for weeks.
Awake
Without notice, the feeling in his arms returned soon after. He could sense the hair on the back of his neck bristle against the cold steel of his enclosure. The more sensation returned, the more he wished his eyes would stop burning. His arms began to reach forward to check for walls, but they found one earlier than expected and pain shot through them as they collided with a wall only a few inches in front of him.
“Am I in a coffin?” he silently wondered.
When he hit the wall, he could hear a shallow pool of water ripple underneath him. He looked at his hand in the dim light and thought he could see blood, but wasn’t sure.
With some effort, he moved his neck to test his vision; nothing but shapes. He raised his elbows, more carefully than before, to feel the walls at his sides were just as tight as the others. He couldn’t feel his legs yet, but he could tell that his box was upright.
“Where am I?”
Glancing back up toward the light, he realized that his vision had improved enough to see the outline of a small rectangular cut out of the box he was in. Now it was clear that the light was flickering somewhere out of his view and refracting off an unremarkable slab of metal nearby.
Beginning to panic, he searched his memories for answers. Images of his family, home, and friends came clearly, but nothing else.
“Neza.”
After several minutes of strain, all he could pull back was his name. He let his head slump in exhaustion and frustration and it banged loudly into his cage. The sound rang around him and echoed outside as his head leaned against the wall. It was almost comforting. For a moment he thought he could feel a new memory coming, but the blackness returned. He felt himself falter, but his legs caught his weight as he helplessly drifted to sleep.
Alert
A blood-curdling scream escapes Neza as he’s ripped instantly from his comatose state. His eyes adjust to the light –quickly this time. Burning heat and electric pain radiated through his body from his spine. His back arched and every muscle in his body tensed. Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone. He found himself in a different place than his last memory. This room was bright and clean. He was laying on a table by himself with a blanket covering him from the neck down.
Neza looked down at his hand to see scars where bloody scrapes had been last time he was awake. Only pale pink hairless spots remained from just moments ago in his flawed memory. He looked at his other hand to see fresh blood there instead.
He felt no unique pain, but pulled his hand closer anyway. A flaky red substance coated the underside of his nails. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the glint of metal beneath the sheet covering him. He carefully dragged it off to the side to find his legs missing the skin and hair that normally covered them. As the sheet fell to the floor, it revealed a slick metal surface beneath.
Everything froze for a moment.
Neza had to force himself to breathe again.
“What the hell is this!?”
Before he could get his bearings, Neza heard a commotion outside the door. He instinctively rolled off the table. When he stood, he tripped over something on the ground and gasps when he sees the body of a creature he has never seen before lying on the floor with blood pooling under it.
It was small, but appeared like it could walk upright. Smooth nearly hairless skin wrapped itself around flimsy-looking limbs. Odd damaged clothing wrapped itself around part of it.
“At least you bleed like anyone else” Neza muttered to himself.
The noise outside grew louder, so Neza checked his surroundings. Nothing in the room looked like it would make a useful weapon, and there were no enclosures to hide inside. Neza felt like he hated being cornered, but he couldn’t recall any specific memories that would confirm it.
The second he saw the door move the slightest degree, Neza burst through it. He felt organic bodies give into the surprise momentum of the door, but didn’t stop to look at them. His metal legs were amazingly responsive, despite them being entirely numb. They caught his balance whenever he thought he would stumble and moved under him at the slightest thought as if they had a mind of their own. The acceleration was impressive as well, as while in motion the limbs felt nearly weightless.
Neza followed an endless hallway, ready to veer out through the first window or door he found. He turned a corner and saw a group of fourteen creatures dressed differently than the first he saw. Their round eyes widened as they stared up at him. He could feel their fear just before crashing through the group and stomping violently over their bodies. The few that got out of his way in time fired at him with weapons he didn’t recognize. He did recognize the pain when one of the projectiles tore through the flesh over the left side of his ribs.
He turned another corner to see the night sky through a large window in a room full of tiny furniture. Without slowing down, Neza strode toward the window. He lifted a metal chair and threw it at the glass in front of him, causing several cracks to appear but not breaking through.
That was the moment he realized how fast he was running.
Thick shards of glittering glass exploded around him as he made contact. It gave way, but not without a fight. Neza’s right shoulder, hip, and side of his head all pulverized when they hit the window. The pain shut him down for a few moments, but his legs deftly caught him after falling the few dozen meters to the soil of the dense jungle.
Next Chapter: Home is Where the Heartbreak Is