The cold.

  It came before thought, before memory, before even fear.

  A silence so deep it became texture. Pressure. Weight.

  He floated in it—or maybe he was suspended. There was no way to tell. No reference point. No sky, no floor. Just a creeping sensation that he existed, somewhere between death and life.

  Then came the cold.

  Not like winter. Not like wind. This was something older. Deeper. A glacial presence that penetrated flesh, slowed thought, dulled even the capacity for pain. It wasn’t just around him. It was in him—woven through muscles, wrapped around bones, anchored in marrow.

  And beneath it all, he was still.

  Held in place by something thicker than water, heavier than air. A gel. Cryogenic. Clinging to his skin, sliding between his fingers, pushing gently against his eyes. His body didn’t move. Couldn’t. Not even to shiver.

  Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t.

  He didn’t breathe. He didn’t dream. He simply was.

  Then—a flicker.

  So faint it could have been imagined.

  A pulse of electricity. Somewhere far away. A tremor in the structure that held him.

  Something ancient grinding back to life. The echo of a machine’s cough. A burst of static in a speaker. Lights flickering somewhere in the dark.

  He did not recognize the sounds. But he felt them.

  And something in him reacted.

  Deep within that immobilized shell, a signal fired. A twitch.

  His right index finger moved—barely. A single joint, stiff and trembling, obeying the ancient reflex to survive.

  Then a toe curled.

  Then his jaw clenched.

  It hurt. Not like injury, but like waking up from a dream and finding your body turned to stone. Every micro-movement sent ripples of pain across frozen nerves. But with each second, warmth crept into his limbs. A fraction of a degree. A whisper of heat.

  And that whisper became a scream.

  Then it happened.

  His body, acting on instinct older than memory, tried to inhale.

  A mistake.

  The gel was still there—thick, half-melted, clinging to every surface. It surged into his mouth, slid past clenched teeth, down his throat.

  His lungs spasmed, trying to reject it, but the reflex was too slow. The fluid filled him like concrete poured into a collapsing tunnel.

  Panic detonated in his chest.

  His heart thundered in his ears. His limbs jerked against the restraints, flailing in slow motion. Fingers scraped against the interior of the pod, nails bending. Legs kicked, but the cryogel held him like a grave filled with wet cement.

  Then—blessedly, horribly—something gave.

  A hiss.

  A groan of ancient hydraulics.

  The pod’s internal clamps disengaged with a shudder.

  The canopy opened with a moan that echoed like a tomb unsealing. Cold air rushed in, sweeping over his naked, gel-coated skin.

  He exploded upward.

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  Not gracefully. Not even consciously.

  He fell.

  Slamming into the floor with a brutal, wet impact. His knees struck first. Then his hands. Then his face nearly met the metal before he twisted and caught himself, heaving forward—

  And vomited.

  The gel came out in choking waves, splattering across the floor in translucent chunks. His whole body convulsed. He gasped, but only managed to cough harder, choking on air that burned as much as the gel had drowned.

  He screamed. Loud and ragged. The sound tore from his throat like rusted machinery.

  Then silence again.

  Except for the drip of fluid from his body. The rasp of breath through abused lungs. The quiet, trembling whimper of a mind just now remembering it exists.

  He collapsed to all fours.

  Alive.

  But barely.

  He stayed like that for a long time.

  On hands and knees. Gasping. Shivering. Gel oozed from his mouth and nose in slow, sickly streams. Each breath came with effort, like dragging air through splinters. His ribs ached with every expansion, and a tremor had taken root in his muscles that refused to leave.

  He forced his eyes open.

  The light in the chamber was dim, flickering with the pulse of unstable energy. Somewhere above, a damaged panel sparked weakly—just enough to cast stuttering shadows across the room. The walls were metal, tarnished with rust and decay, streaked with old condensation trails. Cables hung like vines from broken conduits. The floor was cold, slick with the residue of thawed cryofluid and time.

  And in front of him—crooked, forgotten, but whole—stood a mirror.

  He stared into it.

  What looked back at him was not a stranger. Not quite. But it wasn’t familiar either.

  A pale figure, gaunt and weary, skin tinted blue by cold and exhaustion. Short, uneven hair clung to his scalp in damp patches. His face bore the raw imprint of time—the kind not measured in years, but in absence.

  Dark circles hollowed his eyes. His jawline was sharp, but not with health—with hunger, with neglect.

  He didn’t know that face.

  He blinked.

  Raised one trembling hand.

  The reflection did the same, perfectly synchronized.

  Fingers trembling. Gel trailing down the wrist. Bones visible beneath thin, almost translucent skin.

  “Who…?” he croaked. Then stopped.

  Even his own voice startled him.

  He searched the eyes in the glass for something—anything. A name. A history. A fragment of meaning.

  But the eyes only stared back.

  Empty.

  He closed his eyes, hoping it would help.

  That maybe, in the dark behind his lids, the truth would come rushing back—names, places, faces. Something. Anything.

  But nothing came.

  No clarity. No relief.

  Only fog.

  Memories flickered at the edges of his mind like dying embers.

  A city, maybe. Seen from a hillside. Tall buildings reflected in a calm lake. Mountains rising in the distance beneath a sky of pale orange. The sound of water lapping against stone. The scent of grass, freshly cut.

  It felt warm. Familiar. Safe.

  And then—gone.

  Replaced by static. By emptiness.

  He tried to hold onto it, to rewind it, but it slipped through his grasp like mist.

  Every time he reached for more, his head throbbed, dull and heavy. As if something inside was resisting—pulling the curtain back down.

  “I should remember,” he whispered.

  But the words were meaningless. There was no anchor. No label to apply to himself. No identity.

  Not even a name.

  Just the echo of thoughts half-formed and a silence that weighed heavier with each second.

  He wrapped his arms around himself, curling slightly, the cold from the floor biting into his knees and feet. But it wasn’t the temperature that made him shiver—it was the hollowness. The gaping void where a life should have been.

  He looked up again.

  The pod behind him stood open like a coffin. Frost clung to its interior. Condensation ran down the glass like tears. The cables that had once connected to his body now hung uselessly, twitching with residual charge.

  And somewhere deeper in the structure, he heard something groan.

  A low mechanical sound. Distant, muffled. But real.

  The place was waking up.

  And he was alive.

  That fact, at least, remained.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Whatever else had happened—whatever he’d lost—he was here.

  And now, he had to survive.

  The cold returned.

  Not the suffocating chill of the gel—but the raw, open kind that bit skin and bone.

  With every passing second, he became more aware of it.

  He was naked. Completely.

  No cloth, no warmth, nothing to shield him from the metal floor beneath or the air that scraped across his skin like sandpaper. Goosebumps spread across his limbs in waves. His breath misted in front of his face, curling faintly before vanishing into the dark.

  He forced himself to stand.

  It took effort.

  His legs were weak, barely responsive, shaking beneath the weight of their own purpose. Every joint felt rusted, ungreased. He pressed a hand to the wall for balance—its surface cold, ridged with old damage. Flakes of paint and oxidized metal came away on his fingertips.

  The room was larger than it had seemed from the floor. A circular chamber, domed, with several exit points sealed by reinforced doors. No windows. No light save for the flickering emergency panel above. The silence was thick. Even his footsteps—bare and cautious—echoed faintly, as though the walls themselves were holding their breath.

  He approached one of the doors.

  Not to open it. He wasn’t ready for that.

  But something pulled at him. A feeling, a whisper of instinct that said: move. Look. Survive.

  And then—something changed.

  A faint click.

  Barely audible.

  A small panel set into the wall pulsed once—just a dull red glow. It blinked again. Then steadied.

  He stopped breathing.

  The light didn’t speak. Didn’t flash instructions or play a message.

  But it was new.

  Something had noticed him.

  A presence.

  A system.

  An echo of the world that had made this place, and maybe—maybe—could still respond to him.

  He took a step closer.

  And the light brightened.