Routine 684 - Prologue

Prologue - Hope

A cool breeze of air brushes your cheek, helping color and shape slowly return to the blackness that is your vision. Your limbs feel heavy and sore. Your head is spinning. While waiting for the vertigo to subside, You cling to the hard floor, providing you with a comforting sense of stability.

Still dizzy and disoriented, you feel the rough stony texture beneath you rubbing against your body as you instinctively try to push yourself onto your feet, only to immediately lose balance and hit the cold stone surface once again.

You open your mouth to let a mute groaning sound escape.

Even though you are still far too much off your senses for the fall to actually hurt, you drag your arm across the concrete to feel your face, checking for traces of a forming bump where your skull met the cement.

A sudden surge of pain finally snaps you out of your half-conscious state.

Your arm snaps back, removing the hard tip of your limb from the squeezed, bruised patch of skin on your forehead.

You roll on your side breathing heavily, trying to catch a breath.

You hastily fill your lungs with cool air a few times before your breathing eventually slows leaving a faint metallic taste of blood at the back of your throat.

Minutes pass as you lay there unmoving, eyes closed, slowly breathing, until you are finally calm enough to focus on something else than the sensation of disorientation and throbbing head pain you are caught in.

“Where am I?”

As the thought passes your mind, you open your eyes, revealing a dim-lit chamber.

The only source of light being a tiny glassed window far out of hands reach, just below the very ceiling, scarcely letting light pass through its stained and weathered transparent.

Several objects indicated only by dark silhouettes and pools of light collecting on reflective surfaces are visible along the wall to your right.

You blink a few times, letting the reflections in your vision dance like a swarm of fireflies, while you try to adjust your sight to the poorly lit conditions.

Again minutes pass, waiting in the dark, until you eventually manage to make out more than just basic shapes.

The room seems to be rectangular with two walls about three times the length of the other two.

The wall right ahead of you features the room’s window.

No chance reaching it though. The chamber is way too high for that.

Upon closer inspection the objects located at the wall to your right seem to be a collection of waist high boxes and storage trays with something looking almost like one of these old stovepipes coming down from the ceiling above some kind of drain mesh integrated in the floor. The wall to your left, being one of the longer, seemingly is void of furnishings however strangely smooth compared to the rest of the room with a fine crack just a bit off to the left from the middle.

“What happened?  Where am I?”

Puzzled by the observations of your surroundings, you raise your head, checking every direction hastily.

After a short moment of silence you apply force to the ground in front of with your elbows, once again trying to get on your feet. While attempting to stand up in near darkness you try to reach for the closest wall for support. Before you can catch yourself,  you falter, tipping over, crashing down on your back.

A little clicking noise briefly announces the searing pain shooting through your bruised joints.

You try to scream, but nothing except for a hollow panting sound will come out. In agony, you try to escape the highly uncomfortable position, wildly waving your limbs; trying to get hold of something while hectic feathery flapping noises come up all around you.

You suddenly flinch at the feeling of something fine but stiff like an old quill pen brushing you from the side.

Shocked by the unexpected sensation, you roll over, landing on all fours. You ignore the pain only to have it stifle your movement by it a moment later.

Gritting your teeth you back up against the wall. Crawling backwards on the floor you can feel one of your newly discovered back limbs scraping across the floor alongside you.

Your heart is still pounding from the sudden excitement and you are  breathing fast,  impulsively gasping for air.

Waking up in a dark unfamiliar room had been frightening enough in itself, but THIS ?

Now this is SERIOUSLY freaking you out. This is too much, all just too much, too much to cope with all at once.

You press yourself tighter against the wall while forcibly trying to remember what happened, as if the firm structure of the building might help set your mind straight again.

“Come on, think!”

Remember something; anything!  Anything at all! Every little bit, every fragment of sane memory would help to get through this, out of this destructive black hole devoid of reason.

“How did I end up here? What is this place? The feathers? Oh, God, the feathers! Where did the feathers come from!? “

You desperately try to dig deeper into your mind’s memory. The answer has to be somewhere.

“What did I do last night?”

“Did I dream before i woke up?”

“What did I do yesterday?”

“Who did I talk to before now?”

“What was for breakfast yesterday?”

“What did I do the day before yesterday?”

At this point a horrible realization starts to manifest in your mind.

There is nothing there.

Nothing there at all.

No yesterday. No day before yesterday. No day before that, no week before that, no months, no years of your life. No friends, no family, home; interests or hobbies. No memories of childhood, none of growing up, none of your parents, no siblings, no name.

Your entire past, wiped out.

That’s assuming you even had one begin with, of course. But if you had no past, how could this is even worry you to begin with?

Where would this binding sense of terror stem from, forming a giant knot in your throat, threatening to suffocate you from the inside?

How could you even know what terror is? Think in words? Know the concept of speech?

There had to be a past, somewhere. Without it, nothing would make sense.

But what did this mean for you? A person being the total sum of its experiences? Can you even call yourself you at this point? Can you even call yourself alive? Are you dead now? Is this heaven? Is it hell? But why would hell have feathers?

Thinking about this over and over again yet never getting anywhere is driving you literally insane. You just keep  going around in circles never to discover the answer to bring release from this agonizing ensnare of uncertainty.

The knot in your throat hardens further, making it even more difficult to breath.

You just wish for it to end, for everything  to make sense again, for someone to come to your rescue; to make the world alright again, and finally for the knot to just finish its gruesome work so you can be freed from this nightmare.

Between thoughts running wild, the numbing pain from the bump on your head and your injured joint, cowering at the wall, trembling with fear, your ears pick up a noise, breaking the unbearable silence at last.

The sound starts very faintly but steadily increasing, going from just a distant humming to a deep mumbling. You are instantly ripped out of your mental down-spiral; now in a state of high alert, an adrenaline rush turning out to be your final saviour. There is, however, not much reason for you to be happy about this, either. The mumblings volume further increases, drawing closer from the left wall, now also being accompanied by clapping, hollow footsteps, as if  someone is walking down a long corridor.

Without too much thinking, you immediately push yourself away from the wall, looking for a place to hide yourself from whom or whatever is closing in on you.

Naturally dark places are excellent hiding spots; so you back away from the illuminating window, all the way to the end of the room, where you discover what seems to be a big pile of dry grass in one corner.

By now the steps sound very close not more than 10 or 20 meters away.

Your whole body trembling from the tension, you manage to break through your mental freeze reflex and dive into the grass pile, immersing yourself in it completely.

This sure should have hurt quite a bit with one of your joints obviously badly injured but the adrenaline in your system is numbing the pain quite efficiently.

Motionless you wait in cover, trying your best to calm your breath rate even though your heart is still pumping like crazy, looking out from under the straw.

The steps abruptly stop and the mumbling dies down, but is swiftly replaced by the sound of something heavy being placed on a hard surface followed by rustling noises like sheets of paper rubbing together.

Whatever is making that noise, it must be right in the next room.

For a second, you think about calling out for help, but you quickly banish that idea from your mind.

There is a high probability that whoever is operating in the room next to you is responsible for your sufferings and alerting him might not be in your best interest.

You’re quickly ripped out of your thoughts as the footsteps start once again. This time, they’re definitely aiming right at your chamber, becoming even louder and now, strangely enough, sounding more as if they’re coming from a lower floor. You wince as something big hits the wall the noises came from, producing a palpable tremor in the room.

A metallic knocking noise can be heard followed by a few mechanical clicks, then a moment of silence.

Now even more excited, you try your best to keep as silent as possible, fighting your own breath to prevent the grass around you from rattling. You feel another small shake, and with the screeching sound of plastic rubbing on plastic, the wall splits open at the crack and slides to the side, flooding the room with bright, blueish light.

Blinded by the sudden sensory overflow, you press your eyelids together.

Your poor eyes just had gotten used to the dark, so the flood of brightness hurts quite a bit but you can’t look away now. Despite the pain, you try to focus your sight best as you can.

A dark silhouette shifts into the light. Through the blueish shine you can make out the shape of a human showing only head and torso, the rest seeming to continue down beyond your floor.

Oh, God! This guy must be enormous!

You back up a bit more into your cover as the figure lifts something circular shaped up from beyond waist level reaching inside your chamber. Without hesitation, he stretches out his arm, searching the right side wall with his fingers, then having apparently found what he was looking for, starts to untangle some cables tucked to the wall.

After flashing a few times, a light bulb mounted on the ceiling springs to life, accompanied by a subtle buzzing noise now filling the room with its warm, yellowish shine. The man’s head turns, inspecting the room, then stopping as his eyes fall on the pile of straw.

Oh, snap! He knows where you are! You feel your heart dropping to your stomach.

This is it; its all over now! Your mind runs wild with ideas of all the horrible things this person could possibly do to you. You want to run, but you are frozen in place, unable to move a muscle.

The giant smiles faintly for a moment, then shifts his focus off of you again and proceeds to place the round container in his other hand in the middle of your chamber.

Landing on the ground, the thing makes a metallic ringing noise.

As quickly as he had appeared, the giant retracts himself from the room and with another plastic screech and a loud click the wall snaps into place were it was before, leaving you alone, still shivering in your reedy hideout.

Opening your eyes again, you yawn heartily.

All the exhaustion from the sudden excitements had apparently gotten to you, and the straw surrounding you, conserving your bodily heat made for a cozy makeshift bed, so you must have dozed off.

You enjoy just laying there, still dreamy for a few moments before the seriousness for your reality catches up to you again.

Sticking your head out of your straw bed you see that  the room is now somewhat lit.

“Well, that’s at least something”, you think to yourself. But before you can go on with your thoughts,

your stomach interrupts you with a deep growling noise. Apparently it’s been awhile since you had your last meal, and the alluring smell that reaches your nostrils only makes it worse.

Not without a bit of uneasiness, you slowly dig yourself out of your hidey-hole, taking great care not to further twist your already hurt joint. Standing very wobbly on all fours, you slowly put one foot in front of the other.

Come to think of it, foot might not be the right term here. You have something more like … hooves?

Hard at the edges of the underside yet seemingly blending to your skin without transition.
Now that you take a good look at yourself, you notice that  you don’t really see skin either; you are rather coated with a soft short haired fur-fuzz.

Left a bit confused and wondering, you stretch out one of your back limbs and turn your head to inspect it.

Your extra extremities turn out to be two feathered wings, very filigrane and smooth to the touch, just like a bird’s.

Have you always been like this? It’s hard to tell from your current position, but walking definitely feels awkwardly harder than it should be right now.

You stumble your way towards the obvious source of the scent, which turns out to be the large metal cup in the center of your chamber.

A look inside reveals a colorful mix of dried oats with, raisins, cranberries and dried banana slices emitting the wonderfully delicious aroma. The hungry part of your brain would just dig in, but considering the situation, you are a bit more than distrusting that and a free meal provided by an anonymous giant is about as suspicious as it gets. Hesitantly, you stick your tongue out, poking the oat mix as if you expect it to be acidic.

Almost to your surprise, it doesn't burn your tongue; neither does it taste bitter nor spoiled.

Still not entirely convinced, you take some oat mix into your mouth and try chewing it.

It’s crunchy and fruity, probably a bit dry, but still delicious. Sweetened with honey, just like your favourite cereal.

Wait… was that a memory ?

A bit perplexed, you gulp down the food.

Did the taste of your favourite breakfast seriously bring back some of your lost past just now?

It’s not so much the memory of the taste, but the fact that you know for certain you have always loved cereal with dried fruits and honey. You would have it at least four days out of the week, more often than not!

As insignificant as this might seem, to you it means a lot right now.

To you it means hope.

> Chapter 1 - Three times a charm - [coming soon]