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Survived Panchaea collapse

Nov 24th, 2023
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  1. He remembered some of it now. Not a distinct chronology of events, not
  2. second by second, but flashes of action disconnected from one another. A
  3. random pattern of blinding, painful moments held together like pearls on a
  4. string.
  5.  
  6. The shrieking of tortured metal under the impact of a colossal volume of
  7. polar ocean. The wild screams of the mad and the dying. The thunder of his
  8. fading heartbeat. Lances of light through glassy, shifting waters. And a
  9. terrible knowing, a certainty that he would die out there and nothing would
  10. stop that from happening.
  11.  
  12. I should be dead. The thought grew, sharp and diamond-hard.
  13. His artificial eyes adjusted steadily, the color tone of the room shifting as
  14. it gained greater definition. Digging deep, he reached past the fear and
  15. found the steel that had never left him. Took it, held on to it.
  16.  
  17. The next breath was rough, but it was controlled. By force of will, he
  18. moderated his ragged breathing and concentrated on calming his racing
  19. pulse. In the corner of his vision, a softly blinking warning icon faded to
  20. nothing as the hammering of his heart subsided. Sweat beaded on his flesh,
  21. and he swallowed hard.
  22.  
  23. “I remember the sea.” They were the first words he had spoken in
  24. months. “The cold.”
  25.  
  26. “You’re very lucky to be alive,” said another voice. A man, this one, the
  27. accent behind it a firm northwestern burr while the woman had sounded
  28. more like a southerner. Those facts emerged in his thoughts automatically,
  29. some ingrained means in his mind immediately sifting their words for data,
  30. for clues.
  31.  
  32. He blinked again and now he could see them better. The woman, of
  33. average height with a dark face framed by a white headscarf; the man pale
  34. and fatigued. Both of them wore doctor’s coats and cradled digital pads in
  35. their hands. At their shoulders, a small monitor drone the size of a softball
  36. floated on a cluster of whispering impellers, patiently framing everything in
  37. the room with a blue-tinted lens.
  38.  
  39. The woman tried on a practiced smile. “You were clinically deceased
  40. when they plucked you out of the ocean. But a combination of the chill and
  41. the actions of your Sentinel implant kept you from going beyond our reach.
  42. They were able to pull you back.”
  43.  
  44. - Deus Ex: Black Light, Chapter 1 pgs. 7-8
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