For Xander, the world was still coming into focus, and he could barely recall what had just happened to him. The world was still out of focus, and his hearing was muffled, almost like he was underwater. Yet he felt like he could still breath just fine, though the air seemed incredibly heavy, which was strange.

  The quiet voices that didn’t make any sense grew louder and something in front of him moved to the side.

  It was at that point Xander realized that he wasn't breathing air, but a strange liquid that was the perfect temperature for him to now know what it was. The stuff wasn’t as viscous as oil but was still thicker than water. Xander also found out that it was slightly orange, since the world gained a blue tint when it was whipped away from his eyes, which immediately burned upon being exposed to light.

  Something moved from around his body. His arms and legs, slightly tingly as the blood flow returned in full, gave out when the support holding him retracted into his pod. At this point, he could feel the air on his skin and felt some sort of spandex material covering his nether regions.

  What the... The pod didn’t have support clamps when I saw the plans... I was also naked... The thoughts floating through Xander’s head were muddled, and half-membered details seemed to conflict with what was happening right now.

  Even as a hand grasped his shoulder, and dragged him away from his pod, coughing and spewing up the strange fluid he was submerged in in the process, he felt a disconnect from his body. It was as if his mind was floating, and he could barely keep himself conscious as he was dragged forward.

  Two humanoid figures, one taller than he was, and the other more than a foot shorter by his measure, stood before him. The figure that had grabbed him was wearing armor, but not anything that Xander had ever seen before. A distinct difference from the barely armored figures in front of him.

  He failed to say anything as the two people in front of him spoke to the one holding him. A wave of dizziness overcame him when the latter shook him and pulled him up from his half-dragged position.

  What the hell is going on? He tried to speak, but merely coughed up more liquid, this time splashing the shoes of the shorter figure in front of him. Something that made the one holding him scream something that he didn’t understand.

  There was a dull crack as something in his shoulder moved, but other than that he didn’t know what just happened. His face then hit the floor as the one holding him fell to the side.

  Xander tried to look over at the person, but what was once a fully formed human figure was now nothing more than half a torso attached to a pair of legs. One with its head missing.

  The taller of the two figures he had been brought toward had an arm extended, but it was no longer humanoid. It was far scalier, twisted, and whip-like with extended claws that were longer than Xander’s forearm.

  Both figures looked down at him, and the smaller one held out a hand. While still blurry, Xander could barely make out more details as the figure, curvier than their taller companion, reached out with a glowing blue hand.

  She, at least Xander assumed it was a she, touched his shoulder, and he felt it move against his will.

  He didn’t know why, but he felt like something had just been put back into place. Something that the now dead figure had broken.

  The smaller person turned back to her taller, more masculine, companion. Xander could hear her say something to him. Her words were becoming clearer as his mind lost the fogginess that was keeping him half asleep.

  Oh! This is a dream. Katie put me to sleep, and now I’m dreaming. They said that this was possible.

  As his mind grew clearer the world slowly began to make more sense to him. After all, how else could he have had his shoulder broken by one hand gripping too tightly and then healed by a woman’s glowing hand not a few seconds later. Though the words being spoken to him were still utterly unintelligible.

  Something in his chest twitched, and he immediately moved his head to the side, to ensure that he didn’t get whatever was in his lungs on the woman’s boots once again.

  This time he was bent over, coughing and hacking, for several minutes, all the while the two figures stood next to him. Only when he was done, and he could feel himself taking a deep breath of what was actually air, did he finally become aware enough to see what was going on all around him.

  Countless pods, just like his, but far sleeker, simplified, and seemingly advanced than his, lined the walls, and he was kneeling on a walkway suspended hundreds of meters in the air. A stark difference from the massive underground warehouse that his pod had originally been in.

  “This... Is some dream...” he muttered as he watched hundreds of other figures dressed in armor, just like the now dead man, moved from pod to pod and dragged the inhabitants out without fanfare or ceremony. Something that he knew couldn’t be real, since the process of waking up the sleeping subjects was explained in extreme to him when he was signing forms before going to sleep.

  The process of taking someone out of their cryo pod took nearly twelve hours. You couldn’t just pull them out and wake them up. All their blood was replaced, after all.

  The two behind him spoke once more, and this time something told Xander that it was directed at him this time. So, he turned around and tried to stand.

  More unintelligible words were thrown in his face, and he tried to make sense of it all, but failed to comprehend anything being said, even as his vision finally cleared up.

  The two figures were probably the most beautiful woman and handsomest man that he had ever seen before.

  Bright golden hair that sat softly on the former’s shoulders framed a soft face with red eyes that seemed to swirl in the fluorescent lighting that shone up from the floor. She reminded him of a stalking lion prowling after its prey. Calm and focused, soft and fluffy looking, but with a terrifying presence and a strength that could destroy him with one swing of her arm. It was an odd feeling, since she was barely 5 feet tall at best.

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  Darker yellow hair that was shorter and slicked back showed the widow's peaks on the male figure's forehead, but the sharpness of his eyes, and his narrow face made him look like a snake about to strike. There was a lethality in his gaze, and Xander sensed that getting on his bad side was not a good idea.

  Shame I think I already am... He thought while glancing at the short woman’s shoes.

  Glancing to the side, he tried to find the body of the one who dragged him over here, but there was nothing to be found. More evidence that this was just a dream.

  “Oy!” A shout from the man grabbed Xander’s attention, and he turned back to see the man glaring at him.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying.” Xander couldn’t help but focus on the sound of his own voice. It was deep and clear, nothing like the relatively weak rasp that he had been stuck with for the last couple of weeks before he was frozen.

  Now that he was thinking about it, he realized that his body was in very good condition. Better, it seemed, than his peak before he got sick.

  More words, this time from the woman, grabbed his attention, as did a commotion happening over by the pods. By this point, it seemed like all the pods were open. It seemed to him that they had been working on this for quite some time. Given that his was apparently right at the end of the massive hall, it was a given that they had cleared out more before his.

  Turning back to his pod, he realized that it was even more different than he had thought. It was not only sleeker, and seemingly more advanced than many of the other pods, it was also emblazoned with the symbols of Sage Pharmaceuticals. Though there seemed to be golden highlights that ran around the primary symbol of the owl on a branch.

  “The gold is a new feature.” He bent down to take a better look at the symbol of Sage Pharmaceuticals. “I wonder why they made the change.”

  He gently ran a hand down the side of the pod, only for the golden scriptures that bordered it to begin glowing. A tingling sensation spread through his arm, and for a moment his vision was filled with light. The was a small sense of vertigo, and it was as if he fell into a daze.

  A hand grasped his shoulder once more, and he was pulled away from his pod. This time the two apparent leaders of the soldiers milling about were arguing. The small woman was obviously much more highly ranked, however, since the taller man backed down after just a few seconds.

  Shaking his head to clear it, the dizziness from the golden light faded away. Looking over his shoulder at the one who had grabbed him, he saw that this time it was a woman, one dressed in the same armor as the man that had grabbed him the first time.

  Without any rhyme or reason, he was dragged away alongside the other groggy people who had been pulled from stasis. Each one was dressed similarly to him. Though it seemed like they were in varying states of awareness.

  More soldiers pushed them along, and while he wasn’t being handled as roughly as the first time, the soldiers weren’t gentle as they pushed him forward.

  As one, the entire group met with more and more people, all from different pods, and seemingly from different rooms as well. Eventually, after several minutes of walking, they reached another large chamber, this one filled with obviously freshly built structures.

  The architecture was nothing like the rest of the building that Xander and the others had been marching through. The fact that there were soldiers putting up new structures was also an obvious indication of their newness.

  More people were gathered around as well. These ones weren’t soldiers, however, since they were dressed in what looked like a cross between robes and lab coats. They all had badges on their chests too.

  A bright golden traditional chimera with red eyes on each of its heads. Looking over the soldiers once more, he realized that their emblems only had a lion head etched into their shoulder plates. Something he had ignored as an unnecessary detail of this dream.

  Before he could look much more into it, however, he was forced forward into one of the tents. It was large and contained several more figures in lab-robes. Alongside them there were several more figures, just like him, who had been woken from cryo and were strapped into chairs. Helmets were put on their heads, and they began shaking in their seats, but no screaming could be heard.

  Instincts he had forgotten he had due to his inactivity cause by his sickness flared to life. Years of honed warning signals told him that something was wrong.

  He ignored them, since this had to be a dream. If it wasn’t, then it would’ve hurt when his arm was broken.

  Then, it was his turn in the chair. The helmet covered his head. He heard screaming, but he didn’t know where it was coming from.

  It was only a few seconds later, when his hair caught on fire and his nerves began to burn, that he realized the screams were coming from him.

  ----------

  Elyria couldn’t believe her luck. She was nearly ready to jump for joy, even with the primitive man’s vomit all over her shoes. So much so that she had actually healed that apparently very important person with her own [Vigor]. The primitive had better praise her mercy when he finished recovering.

  For now, she was focusing on the pod that had, ever so slightly, glowed at the touch of the primitive man that was sealed inside it. She stepped forward, uncaring of the ongoing lecture from her cousin. Her hand was placed just above the pod, a yearning for its secrets swelled in her chest.

  “I have a report, my lady.”

  Turning toward the quiet voices of her advisor, Elyria ignored the huff of annoyance coming from her cousin and stepped away from the pod. The wretched snake she was related to had just finished trying to chew her out for being too lenient to the obviously important figure that was sealed inside the ruin.

  She nodded, and the small woman dressed in the formal robes of the Malicent Kingdom’s Ruin Scholars spoke of what they had found out so far.

  “The figure of importance has had extensive gene modifications done to him, but beyond that, we can tell nothing more than that he comes from the early Age of Imperial Strife. Prior to even the fifth Chaos Incursion.” The Scholar bowed her head in subservience and shame, emotions that Elyria could smell emanating from her small figure.

  An angry growl escaped her throat. Elyria had hoped to learn more. Perhaps even find a few new [Gene Sequences] that might elevate her mutation to the 4th Evolution.

  Behind her, she heard her cousin chuckle for barely a moment before he schooled himself. She didn’t bother turning around, even though she instinctively knew what he’d done. Doing so would just give him attention he was unworthy of.

  “Have the conscripts been given the necessary language downloads?” She instead asked the Scholar without paying her causing any heed. “If so, ensure that the VIP is brought to my personal dwellings. The study will do. I will interrogate him myself regarding what he knows. However, if what you’ve said is correct, then there will be little he is likely to be consciously aware of. It’s obvious that he was not a Scholar of any sort, after all.”

  She sneered derisively down at the small Scholar, who bowed even lower. It hadn’t escaped Elyria’s notice that the Scholar was only of the 1st Evolution. Such a thing was shameful, and if she had any more influence on the Scholars, then she might’ve struck this one down for failing to meet her expectations.

  “Of course, my lady. The VIP will be brought to you the moment he wakes up from his download. Also, you may be pleased to learn that there has been no rejection to the download thus far. As such, your conscripts have successfully replenished their numbers, and we can begin further delves into both this, and the other Ruins within your domain within the month.” The Scholar didn’t rise from her bow.

  Elyria, on the other hand, grinned widely. Things were truly looking up for her.