The Firmament

The first thing I can feel is my own suffocation, my empty lungs burning for want of oxygen.  Panic floods my whole body and I arch and contort, mouth opening in a silent screaming inhalation that fills me to the brim with cool, flavorless air. The more I breathe the more I become aware of the here and now, more aware of the tickle of tears sliding down my dry temples as I lie on my back. Cold metal grips at my bare skin and the air smells faintly of ozone and dust, and there is no sound but that of my own breathing. My skin squeaks on the tabletop as I move, a modest suction of moisture pulling at me as I sit up, shaking and dry-heaving to expel water that's no longer in my lungs and stomach. 

Seconds pass and slowly, very slowly, I realize that I'm no longer dying. The terror ebbs, flashes of being locked in a metal cage, gripping at the bars as the bitter cold water rises up above me, up above the top of the cage. I shake and heave again, hugging my slender knees with arms that ache and fingers that are cold and still numb. I'm no longer in that cage, I can see that; as my eyes clear, I can see that I'm in a dry, brightly-lit, austere room in white. The only thing in here is the steel table I'm sitting on, myself, and a large mirror taking up most of the wall to my right. 

The sight of myself is startling and I wince at first. My hair is tangled and unkempt, and I'm miserable, tense, sore, but still beautiful. My pale, scrawny body is on full view, small and delicate save for the stronger boning in my hands and feet. With my long auburn hair and slender physique, I could be mistaken for a girl, though when I slip off the table to stand the rest of me dashes any illusions. I know very little but I know that I'm strange. I'm different. Are the people watching me behind this mirror surprised? I know that someone's watching me back there. Whoever they are, I hate them. They are party to my suffering. They must be if they let it happen.

It's hard to get my balance back, but I manage not to fall down as I walk about the room. The intense last memories before blacking out consume me now and again, but eventually they fade and grow less intense as an hour passes, then another. I'm starting to grow hungry and I would like to be clothed, but more than anything I want to be away from this mirror. There is nowhere in the room I can go where the people behind the glass can't see me. There is no movement they don't see, no expression they don't witness. I hate waking up in this room. I hate every time I come back in here, and I hate that I only remember just enough to know that this isn't the first time. 

I hate that I'm being studied. 

After another hour I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the far wall, facing the mirrored wall and hugging my knees. My cheek rests on my crossed arms, eyes closed as I try to wait out my stay when I feel something in the floor and the wall. It's brief, a rumble that blossoms and fades, but immediately after I feel it the lighting in my room changes from white to red and a siren begins to keen. There's another rumble and another, and I begin to hear sounds from the other side of the mirror. There are muted voices and a great deal of movement. 

Then there are screams. 

I stand up immediately, growing tense, my body on high alert. Whatever's happening is dangerous and I'm stuck in here, completely naked with nothing to defend myself. My heart pounds in my ears and squeezes my throat as moments pass in slow motion, but the commotion behind the mirror stops. The door suddenly clicks and startles me as it slowly opens, slipping ajar just slightly. I ball my hands into fists, readying myself for a fight, but all for naught - nothing comes through. There's only the siren's wail coming in past the door, but I smell strange things. Bleach. Ozone. Smoke and the stench of burning plastic. Copper. 

Very slowly I approach the door and look out past it, seeing through an observation room and out to a hallway. I nearly open my door wider when I see a shadow lurch down the hallway, accompanied by the wet sound of panting. It sounds like an animal and it sounds big. If I hid in this bright holding room I'll be found, and I can't lock the door from my side. The movement grows closer, so I slip into the observation room and look around quickly for some place to hide, spotting a cabinet just in time. 

I slip inside and latch the door quietly, sealing myself up into pitch darkness as I listen past the thin metal as something large enters the room. It grunts and breathes heavily, scenting the air.  I can hear it move closer and closer to my cabinet, breathing heavily in seeming anticipation of my ruin, and I clasp my hands over my nose and mouth, shaking. At the last moment I squeeze my eyes closed, but the sound of the thing stops as another noise interrupts, like a pen dropping from a desk onto the floor. 

I didn't think there had been anyone else in the observation room, but the creature moves towards the source of the noise, and after the sound of something heavy being moved aside, I hear someone scream, a deafening gun shot, and a roar of pain. Another few gun shots fire off and I clap my hands over my ears, gritting my teeth at how painfully loud they are. I begin to see red, my heart hammers and I feel rage at the noise. But the blasts turn to clicks, and the beast snarls and charges forward, and the screaming resumes and, abruptly, stops. The wet snap of bone and slap of fresh flesh is all I can hear as the thing feeds, and the pungent scent of blood fills my hiding space. I feel moist heat where I sit, and at first I'm horrified to think I've wet myself, but I'm disgusted to realize that a pool of blood has oozed into my cabinet and I'm sitting in it. 

It's still hot. 

As the minutes pass the blood I'm sitting in cools and congeals, and the sound of feeding slows in its urgency. Eventually it stops and the creature gets up and leaves the room, the sounds of its passage labored, each movement causing it pain enough to make it whimper. Perhaps some of the bullets hit their mark. I wait until silence has loomed for several minutes more before I dare to look out of the cabinet, wincing and shutting the door again on reflex as I see the ruined body of the shooter. There's no face left, no skull, just a bowl of scraped bone with no brain left in it. The chest is ripped open too and the organs are gone, but the meat is left behind. What animal would do that? 

I dare to open the cabinet door and crawl out of it, avoiding the body as I look around for anything to help me. There's not much in the room, but the body has a keycard clipped to it, so I take that. The stern face on the ID photo looks back at me. It's haunting, and I still feel sorry for him despite him being party to what's been happening to me. There are some spare lanyards on the wall, so I grab one, loop it over my head, and attach the man's ID card to it before I approach the open door to the hallway and peer out of it. 

Bloody smears dry on the hallway, but I can't hear the creature anymore. I have no idea how to get out of here, but the air smells fresher and feels cooler to the left so I take my chances and go that way. There are other doors in this hallway, all open, and they lead into observation rooms that look into sterile chambers like mine had been. All of them are empty now. I can't remember what this place is or why I'm here; I only have flashes of memory that I've woken up here many times before. 

What had happened to me after I'd woken up before? 

Why am I here?

Why is this happening?!

Even in my desperate need to escape, I stop in the hallway and begin to panic as all before me tilts and rotates. My chest tightens beyond breathing and my heart beats so strongly that I fear blood will flow from my eyes and mouth given how hard both pulse. My fingers grow cold and I grip at my biceps, hugging myself and shaking as I see my vision begin to tunnel. Everything is red - red emergency lights blaze down the hallway, making it look like a raw, diseased throat slowly rotting over with cold black. Blood smears on the floor and up on the walls. Handprints. Many handprints. The wailing siren makes it hard to think; it's so loud out here. I'm sweating. I feel slippery. I feel like I'm dying.

No. No, only if I freeze here will I die. That monster will find me and defile me like it did to the man I saw. I don't want to die. But it's so hard to get moving. It's so hard to move. I'm killing myself. If I don't take another step I'll die.

I feel a sudden surge of fury at my own fear and inadequacy, and a moment later I hear a wet crack to my right. I feel a jarring up the bones in the back of my right hand up into my arm and shoulder. When I look, right at the center of my severely tunneled vision I see that I've punched the painted cinderblock wall beside me. Fresh blood has smeared on the wall, which has chips and a crack in it from the impact, and I see that my knuckles are split open and I've broken two fingers. I stare in amazement at it - how can it not hurt?  Unthinkingly I shake out my hand and nearly double over when the pain washes over my hand and arm, a cold sour agony that blossoms into searing fire, and suddenly my vision snaps back to normal and I am alive again. 

It hurts so badly, throbbing and pulsing with every terrified heartbeat, and I lean my shoulder against the wall with a gasp. I've really hurt myself. My left hand shakes as I caress my fingertips over the broken bones protruding from the backs of my curled, ruined fingers. It looks like food to me and the horror of that doesn't linger immediately. The meat is so raw and fresh, still living. I think back to the ruined man in the observation room and how fresh his blood had smelled, how untouched the meat of his body was, and my stomach starts to rumble. I'm starving. 

My hand lifts, my lips part... and I'm horrified at myself and stop. My eyes well up with tears, but even through my blurred vision I see something that pulls me from my disgusting thoughts. The broken bones protruding from my skin begin to dissolve and grow tendrils, feeling around for something. It doesn't hurt, not until the tendrils find the other half of the bone and seize it, pulling it back together to fuse and mend. It pulls on my hand, forcing my fingers back into shape, and I hiss and gasp, feeling nauseous as I heal. The bones knit together like tree roots, and soon flesh covers it, then skin, sealing over in a scar that swells then shrinks and disappears. It's all so fast, and though my nerves still blaze with pain, my right hand can move again just like before. 

If this is how bodies heal, why wasn't the man on the floor healing? Was he damaged too much? Is he healing now, and is he angry I took his ID? I had better keep moving. 

My right hand still throbs as I walk along the red hallway, but the pain helps keep me focused. Every once in a while I flex the hand and then curl it into a tight fist, testing the juncture of new flesh and old, pinging nerves to make me clench my teeth. It helps, and the next time I see movement, shadows further down the hallway, I look quickly and find a closed door with a card reader on the wall beside it. In a hurry I press the card to it and the red light on the pad turns green, the door hissing open on its tracks. With a heave I tug the door open just enough to slip inside, then close it again, holding it shut until the locks clasp securely. There's no window in the door, but I can hear the passage of many things - the quick step of running bare feet. Who would be running on bare feet? 

More people like me? People stuck in the rooms? 

I nearly open the door again to look when I hear cries of fear and the quick race of people in the other direction, and following soon after is the heavier movements of something else. The creature. I can hear its growling even past the seal of the heavy door, and I feel sick at the relief I feel for the suffering of the others. At least it's not me. The commotion fades away down the hallway, and I try to ignore the wet crunch of bone that barely passes through the metal. Again I'm reminded of how hungry I am, and in my disgust I slip silently from the heavy door and look around the room. 

Unlike the rest of the places I've been, this room is bathed in pale white light, but only in the farthest half of it. The portion nearest the door, where I am, is shadowed, with computer screens and monitors that blip and move and adjust in patterns that don't repeat. It's very strange why this room stayed fully powered when the others didn't. Why have the locks remained working when the other doors all opened? What's in this room that's so special? I don't understand what the readings and charts mean, and it's hard to see through the light in the other end of the room. There's a mist back there, a heavy fog, like things are very humid the closer I get to it. Ephemeral cool tendrils grip and coil around my naked, blood-stained feet and ankles as I move closer. Sweat beads on my skin from the warmth of the overhead lights. 

A hanging panel of heavy, white plastic flaps hang down from the ceiling within the fog, and nervously I push past their drape. Feeling them against my fingers is like pushing aside heavy leaves of a giant tree, if the leaves were sterile, white, and felt rubbery like stiffened flesh. The fog is overwhelming now, but a glow emanates yards away, a pulsing glow of yellow that adopts a familiar rhythm. The closer I get, the more I realize that it's pulsing like a heartbeat, slow and steady. My breathing gets shallower in this quiet place filled with mist and light, until at last I get to a tall cylinder made of glass. 

At first I see my reflection in it, but it's only on the wet sheen coating the sweating glass. There's something in there, something floating in water I think, and I press my hand to the surface and slowly wipe the condensation aside. Within the small window I've made through the wetness, I see a body floating in the water. It's slender and pale like mine, with hair like mine. Tubes flow all around it like vines, some connecting to its neck, and others cinched to the stumps where its legs should have continued from the knees, and where its arms should have continued from its elbows. A muzzle covers the lower half of the person's face, which itself looks sunken, lined, and tired. 

I feel a cold dread seep through my whole body, and when I look aside at my blurry reflection, then back at the thing floating in the water, I realize that we look the same. At first I'm horrified. What am I doing in a tank? But clearly that isn't me, just someone who looks like me. I'm surrounded by thick fog lit from above and I can't remember which way the door was, so I slap my hand on the glass. I have to help the person in there.

Immediately a strange, synthetic voice sounds from somewhere above the tank. 

"Do not do that again."

I frown and ignore the warning, banging on the tank with my fist. Very slowly the creature's eyes open and look at me... and then they narrow in anger. The synthetic voice sounds again. 

"I told you to stop. Will I have to make you stop?"

Far away, I hear a heavy mechanical thud and click, and the soft sound of a heavy door moving on a track. The door to this room. With a gasp I move away from the tank. I'm too scared to deal with the person in the tank, why it wants me to leave it there, and how it's doing any of this, so I run back towards the dark part of the room and the open door. Yet just as I do, silhouetted in the door is someone else. Something else that crawls in on all fours. 

The pervasive scent of blood floods into this room through the open door, and I duck down in the far corner by the computers, keeping to the shadows. The creature stalks in, panting and agitated. I can't see it clearly - the fog from the lit part of the room has bled into the terminals and blanketed everything in mist. But I can see that it isn't like me - there are extra things coming from its back that help it walk. Extra limbs that look like arms but aren't - large, heavily boned and muscled projections without hands or fingers. It moves like an insect and smells of death. Yet rather than scent about like it did in the observation room, it heads directly for the bright fog. While it does, I move slowly and quietly to the door to slip back out into the hallway. 

Blood, fresh blood, coats the floor, and several naked, slender, fragile people lay dead and mangled. Consumed. Perhaps they looked just like me too, but too much of their faces are gone to know that for certain. Again, like the man in the observation room, their heads have been carved out like bowls. Yet as I look into the skull cavity of one, I see bony tendrils grow out from the broken edges and feel around, growing and coiling. Eventually they touch each other and begin to weave together, and ribbons of flesh and sinew slip in after, slowly and painfully rebuilding a face. The body begins to quiver and twitch in the limbs, and the sound of movement makes me realize that the other bodies are doing the same thing. 

I shrink away from the body I'm closest too, pressing back against the wall as its face fills in with flesh, jaw wide open, moving in silence until tubing grows in quickly from a sealing chest, connects, and the body begins to wail as loudly as it can. The others do the same thing, one after another, a cacophony of shrieking that trails after me when I begin to run as fast as I can.  The smears and puddles of blood make it hard to retain my footing and I slip, falling hard and sliding along the floor, my bare skin squealing almost loud enough to lift above the constant wail of the sirens. 

And then, suddenly, the sirens stop. All is quiet for a brief moment. 

My ears ring for a while from the previous assault of all that noise, but soon enough the sound of my own breathing feels unbearably loud. I can hear many things moving, both down the bad end of the hallway and the other, unknown end I haven't gotten to yet. I hear shrieks and cries of pain resound. Grunts and the slap of flesh on wet flooring. Further ahead in the hallway I hear whispers. The gentle opening and closing of a door, like someone's trying to keep quiet. I would rather deal with the quiet voices down the hallway, so I drag myself to my feet and start hurrying that way. The further down the hallway I go, the more it smells like gunpowder. It stinks, but I see no bodies at all, only impacts in the wall with bullets lodged inside. There are imprints on the floor, smudges from boots and shoes, all heading in the direction of the hallway further down. 

Suddenly there's three loud pops and a white hot pain in my shoulder that knocks me back onto the floor. My bare back hits the smooth material and I skid to a stop, sticking to the streaks of dried blood already there. I'm stunned at first, but then the pulsing pain radiates out and I grit my teeth, gripping at the wound. Something, a bullet probably, ripped through the muscle but, from what I can feel, didn't get stuck in bone. It hurts and bleeds through my fingers, and beneath my touch I can feel my flesh ripple and move and heal. It's disgusting. Is this healing new? Why am I so shocked by it? When I try to sit up, I realize that my shoulder isn't the only place I was hit - there's a bleeding hole at my hip, and as I move I can feel flesh move against lodged, burning hot metal. 

That makes me collapse back onto the floor and I cry out in agony and panic. I can't get up, I can't move. There are monsters behind me and people with guns ahead of me, shooting at me. My vision grows fuzzy, pulling in and out every few seconds, and what I see occurs as if in a dream. I can feel the rumble in the floor of movement from both ends of the hallway, many things converging on where I lay on the floor. To my left a door slides open, and two figures move out to stand over me, their backs to one another. 

Cover your ears.

It's a voice in my head, crystal clear, and before I begin to question how it's happening I clap my palms over my ears tightly. Just in time too - the taller figure stands over my feet begins opening fire at the gunmen up the hallway. and the shorter figure standing over my head unleashes a long, powerfully loud banshee's shriek that rattles every unfastened item further down the bad end of the hallway. Being so close to the source, I can feel it through the floor and my bones and skull, the noise threatening to wipe out every bit of rational thought or drive or anger to leave me hollow and unwilling to do anything but cower. I squeeze my eyes shut, hands pressed to my ears, and I don't realize that I'm screaming until I feel hands patting my knee. 

I gasp and fall silent, daring to open my eyes to see the taller figure crouching next to me. That voice sounds in my mind again to say, You're safe. We're here to help you.  My ears are ringing even now, but the shriek has stopped at last, and I catch my breath. There's no audible speech, but I can see the taller one looking over at the shorter person as they walk over into my field of view, and I blink. The shorter person is far paler, and though the tall individual is a handsome man, the shorter one is far too beautiful to describe. The beautiful one's face, despite its grace, is stern as they look me over from top to bottom, gesturing after a moment to the wound in my shoulder and then to the one in my hip before it walks further up the hallway towards where the gunmen were. 

The tall one nods before the short one leaves, and takes to both knees next to me. Can you sit up?

I wince, but with some help I manage to sit upright, feeling confused at how much less it hurts than before. 

Can you speak?

What an odd question. But when I open mouth to do so, I find that all I can offer is silence. With a frown I try to respond mentally, pressing my lips together to think my answer, but the tall one still waits patiently, as if whatever I had thought back didn't get through. With a sigh, I shake my head 'no'. 

He looks sympathetic and his smile is warm, and he moves his attention to my wounds. You heal very quickly. Your shoulder looks about finished, but your hip might need some work. Feel that lump there?  He guides my fingers to feel the bullet trapped inside the sealing flesh. I nod. That needs to come out. I can do it now or I can do it later. It'll hurt less now. 

A cold shiver runs down my spine, but I nod and point to my hip insistently. 

Okay, turn on your side and lie down just a second. This will be fast. 

I do as he instructs me to do, gritting my teeth as I feel the cold slide of a metal edge opening up the wound again. The cuts are quick and not as painful as I feared they would be, and after a strange sensation of metal clicking on metal beneath my skin, I feel a hand pat my shoulder. When I open my eyes, I see the tall one's hand holding a bloody bullet, and his smiling face past that. All done! Give yourself a moment to heal properly.

Knowing no other way to ask, I point at him with a questioning expression, and though he looks confused, the beautiful one looks down at me. Their voice is like several speaking as one in a chorus, my mind filled with sonorous peace as I hear, We are angels, and so are you. Your new life begins now.