Daemon Impact Chapter 1

 

Chapter 1

It started with a low whirring sound coming from all around her. Everything was dark and silent before, but this whirring brought her to her senses. Her body felt cold and heavy, but as the whirring continued, she felt her body begin to warm up. Her mind that was deep in sleep before, was now slowly awakening. After some time she was able to take stock of her situation. She was lying face up on some sort of soft surface. The material took shape around her, so her body sunk in slightly. Opening her eyes, she was greeted with a pitch dark room. As her eyes began to adjust, she could make out the surface of the ceiling above her. It was curved outward and continued curving downwards as far as her eyes could follow. With nothing else to do, she tried to move her body. However, her whole body felt stiff and unresponsive. She then focused on moving just her fingers. For a few minutes they were also unresponsive, but soon she was able to move them slightly. A bit more effort and her fingers were moving fully again. As she regained movement in her fingers, the low whirring around her stopped. After a pause, a low rumbling noise replaced it. With the new noise, she could see the ceiling start to move upwards. At the same time, she felt the "bed" she was lying on start to incline. It kept going until she at around a 45 degree angle and stopped. As the ceiling was retracting, light began to pour from the opening it was creating. Being accustomed to the darkness, she had to close her eyes when the light reached her face. After a few seconds, there was a thud sound as the rumbling stopped. She then heard small thuds come in through the opening and heard a voice coming from in front of her.

"A kid?" A male voice questioned. 

"She looks to be about...10 years old?" Another male voice stated.

"We'd know for sure if the pod had a datapad, but for whatever reason the only pod that had someone in it was missing it." The first voice complained.

"No use in worrying about it now Marco." The second voice replied. "Hey, can you hear me? Give me some sort of sign if you can." The voice was now directed towards her.

"U-uh" She tried to reply but her mouth felt dry and she couldn't form the words.

"Good, she's awake." The voice who was called "Marco" observed. "Here, I'm going to give you some water. Don't try to drink too much at once, just take very small sips, ok?" After Marco said this, she felt the top of a canteen touch her lower lips, and a small trickle of water started flowing into her mouth. She was careful to take small sips, and felt the water help rehydrate her mouth and throat. 

"Feel better?" Marco asked after pulling back the canteen.

"Y-yes" she managed to squeak out. "Where am I? Who are you two?" 

"I know you must have many questions, but could you hold off on them for now? Right now we need you to be able to move your body again." The second man's voice answered her. "I see you have regained movement in your fingers. Just try slowly moving your wrists, then your shoulders, and then your arms. Once you can move your arms, the rest of your body should start waking up as well." She then set about on this task and in a few minutes she was already able to move her shoulders. While she was doing this, her eyes became adjusted to the light, and she was able to open her eyes. She could make out the silhouettes of the two men, but with the light directly behind them, the only details she could see were their rather bulky bodies. She kept working on getting her arms moving. She slowly moved them up and down and in small circles,  before finally stretching them straight out in front of her. As she accomplished this, she could feel the rest of her body start to wake up as well. She experimented with moving her legs and was able to see the hem of a white dress and the white sneakers she was wearing. 

"Take it slow." Marco told her. "No need to rush. But since you can move your legs, we should get you out of here. We're going to slowly get you off that bed. Anri, get her right arm and I'll take her left."  She saw the silhouette of the man called "Anri" move to her right as Marco moved to her left. "Now raise your arms forward and then hook them around ours." Marco directed. She raised her arms forward, and when she saw both extend their arms towards her, she then hooked her arms around theirs as instructed. However as she did, she felt both of their arms were metallic and not flesh. 

"Alright now we're gonna just lift you up out of there, and we're gonna slowly walk out of the pod." Marco explained to her. "If you feel any pain, let us know right away. Alright on three. One! Two! Three!" And with the third count both men lifted her off the bed and placed her on the floor. Her legs could quite hold her up yet, so she started to to collapse, but the men kept a firm grip on her arms so she wouldn't fall. She then tried getting to her feet, and succeeded after a few tries. The men then slowly guided her towards the opening in front of her. Each small step she took she could feel the strength in her legs return and by the time they got to the opening, she was able to walk normally again. Stepping outside, she found herself in a room lined with strange egg shaped devices. She guessed these were the pods the men were talking about, and that she was previously lying in one similar to them. Aside from the pods, the room had no decorations. Only the bright lights coming from the ceiling and a singular door to their left.  There were no windows lining the walls. She slowly unhooked her arms from the men's and took a few steps by herself. After seeing that she could walk unassisted now, she turned to the two men who had helped her out of the pod. 

"I think it's high time we introduced ourselves. My name is Anri Sakai. This is my partner, Marcus Etel. It's nice to meet you." As she examined the two men, she noted a few...no, a lot of peculiarities. The big one being the men's attire. Both men were wearing...some kind of armored suit? Their bodies were covered with what appeared to be a black skintight wetsuit that stopped at the top of their necks. Layered in multiple places on top of this were grayish-brown metal plates that covered nearly every part of their body, while leaving room for free movement. They were wearing metal boots that created small thuds with each step they took. On their left thighs they each wore a gun holster with a pistol resting within arms reach. Above that on their left waists were strange cylindrical objects. She couldn't make out what they were exactly. On their right waists they wore canteens. The one she drank from earlier was resting on Marcus' hip. Going further up; slightly below their right shoulders, they wore knife holsters with the handles pointed diagonally downwards. In a similar position on their left were small rectangular boxes that resembled radios. On the side of their shoulders a blue arrow was painted onto each shoulder plate. Anri's had two blue stripes under the arrow, while Marcus only had one. Finally, the suits had weird looking indentations around the collar. It looked if something was meant to attach there. 

Moving on from their armor, she then studied the men's faces. Marcus stood a few inches taller than Anri, about 5'8". Anri's skin tone was a warm beige, while Marcus' was light brown. The men both looked fairly young, probably around their mid twenties. Both men had short, crew cut hairstyles, with Anri's being black and Marcus' medium brown. Both were clean shaven with no facial hair showing. But one feature that both men shared stood out among everything else. Looking at Anri's almond shaped eyes and Marcus' round shaped ones, both men's eyes were a strange red color. Their eyes almost seemed to glow with their strange, otherworldly color. 

"Yeah the eyes are strange, but we'll explain it to you later." Anri said in reply to her staring. "Now that we have introduced ourselves, could you tell us your name?" She paused. After hearing him ask this, she realized she couldn't remember her name. In fact she couldn't remember anything at all! Who was she!? Why was she in that pod!? Where even was this!? As she tried to recall, she felt her head start to ache and fell to her knees clutching her head.

"Hey! What's wrong!?" Marcus shouted kneeling down to lay an armored hand on her shoulder.

"I-I can't remember anything!" She replied.

"Amnesia?" Anri inquired. He also knelt down and placed his hand on her other shoulder. "Ok just take deep breathes with me and try to calm down. Breathe in...and out. Breathe in...and out." She followed Anri's instructions and calmed herself. She felt the pain in her head recede and was able to stand back up.

"What's the normal procedure for amnesiacs? I can't remember" Marcus asked Anri.

"I don't know either. Normally the medical unit handles situations like this. But since we find ourselves in this strange situation, we have to handle this ourselves for now." Anri replied. Still kneeling he looked her in the eyes. "Ok I know this may seem strange, but we've encountered a few amnesiacs before. It happens sometimes with the brain waking up from cryosleep. I promise you, every single person who had it eventually regained all their memories, so don't try to force it ok?" She nodded and tried to digest what he said. Cryosleep? So she had been put to sleep? By who? And for how long? As she began pondering this, Anri turned to Marcus.

"Can you call this in? I'll stay and try to answer some of the questions she undoubtedly has." Anri asked his partner.

"Sure. Radio won't reach from here, so I'll head out where we can re-establish communications." Marcus replied. He turned and exited from the singular door in the room.  

"All right, you must have a million questions right now. I'll answer a few, but I don't want to overwhelm you with information. Before you ask though, neither of us know who you are sadly, so I can't answer personal questions." Anri told her with an apologetic look on his face.

"You said cryosleep earlier, what did you mean by that?" She asked him

"Cryosleep is a process that preserves living things for long periods of time. Basically it freezes your body so you can sleep for a long time without getting older." Anri pointed to the pod she came out of. "These pods are designed specifically for putting humans to sleep."  

"So I was sleeping inside there? How long?" She asked. But Anri avoided eye contact as he answered.

"Sorry, I don't know how long you were sleeping for. Normally these pods have these datapads on them that have all the necessary information on the people sleeping inside. But for whatever reason your pod does not have one of those."

"I see...what about the other pods? Was there anyone sleeping in them?" She asked hopefully, but Anri shook his head.

"No, there was no one in any of these pods. In fact there wasn't anyone else in any of the pods in this entire facility. When we finally found the one pod containing someone in it, we opened it hoping the person inside could answer our questions. That's how we came to wake you up." Anri explained to her. She felt dejected as she hoped someone from one these pods could tell her who she was. Seeing her face Anri kneeled down and placed his hand on her shoulder again.

"I know you must be scared and confused waking up without any memories in a place like this. But everything will be ok. You'll get your memories back, and we're here for you." Anri gave her a smile trying to reassure her, and she felt better seeing it.

"Ok. By the way, who are you guys?" Hearing this question Anri released her shoulder and brought his hand to his chin. He seemed to be contemplating on how to answer her question. 

"We're-" Before he could finish answering, suddenly the door burst open and Marcus ran in with an alarmed look on his face.

"Anri, swarm! They've breached the facility!" Anri's face briefly expressed shock before turning dead serious. 

"W-what's going on?" She asked nervously. Anri looked her in the eye.

"Listen to me, we are in serious danger right now. I need you to stay quiet and follow our orders. Do this, and we'll make it out of this ok. Do you understand?" Anri asked her with all seriousness. She nodded her head, too taken aback by the man's abrupt change in tone to answer vocally. Anri stood up and walked over next to her pod. On the floor were two sets of helmets and two rifles. Each man picked up a helmet and placed it over their heads. It attached where the indentations along the collar of their suits were. As the helmets latched into place, she noticed a feature on the back of the suit. In between the shoulder blades was a strange circular piece that was imbedded into the suit. The piece glowed with a light blue color. When the men slung their rifles around their shoulders and turned to her, the eye pieces of their helmets glowed the same light blue. 

"This room is not secure. Marco, do you remember any room we could bunker down in until reinforcements come?" Anri's now slightly muffled voice came from the helmet.

"There was one not too far from here with a pretty heavy door that would work well." Marcus replied.

"Alright." Anri turned to her. "Stay behind us and don't wander off." He ordered, and the three of them exited the room.