Simon

Pain comes before any awareness of being awake.

He knows he has a head because it’s clanging and throbbing. He knows he has a face because it’s stiff and crawling with sting. He knows he has arms because they’re aching and itching like crazy.

He needles and scrambles awake to a sandpaper throat that has him lurching up into a dry cough.

White, blinding white. He didn’t know he’d opened his eyes but the light burns. His throat burns. He coughs and chokes and veers over himself. No blood. Just a light blue blanket. He’s on a hospital bed. He’s cleaner than he remembers being in a long time. How come there’s no blood? But there is. In tiny flakes, in the creases of his skin. Beneath his fingernails. He can feel it in his hair. His head is fucking killing him.

The robotic voice blares from close by: “Attention! Patient awake. Patient awake.”

Well, he gets it now.

Everything hurts, it’s completely overwhelming. He groans and retches and blinks and something is stuck into his arm. Needles. Someone’s pumping fucking blood into him--

He reaches to tear that shit out but no arm arrives.

No arm. He looks at his shoulder. Just a stump covered in bandages.

His hand itches violently but there’s no hand there.

And he remembers. He remembers bracing a foot and pulling until--

Whywhywhy--

The flesh tore right off--

And the blood is gone but this is permanent, no arm–-

A silicone hand grabs at his shoulder. “Patient agitated. Patient must rest."

Getoutgetout--

Momentum does the job of getting him off the bed, out of the reach of that fucking robot thing, the needles out of his skin. His legs are nearly useless, though. It’s like his shuddering heart is pumping blood only around itself and won’t let his extremities get at any of the supply. He’s in nothing but his underwear; the floor is cold under his weak bare feet.

“Fuck,” he says. Fuck. Talking hurts. His knees buckle but he doesn’t fall. Grabbing for the white wall with his one hand, he staggers against it and tries to get his bearings. There must be a door here. Wherever this is, he’s gotta get out. Did the COI manage to pick him up after all?

The last thing he remembers is the jaw of that beast. Being engulfed, blood everywhere, choking on it. How could he possibly be alive?

And the COI looked nothing like this. He can’t make out the details of this place yet through the clanging of his head and the blur in his vision, but the place is bright and clean and everything the COI station wasn’t.

He’s never seen anywhere so clean.

The black box. The fucking black box--

A seamless door slides open and in rushes a figure that just about blows Simon’s mind.