Weekly Drabble #305: Restore Point (Patreon)

This week's prompt is 'broken body built anew' from Henri Black and it inspired me to put down a bit of a scene I'd been thinking on, which may or may not become A Thing in the future.

Enjoy!

~

Restore Point:

She woke up.

Her vision was blurred and she realized she was underwater. No, not water – something more viscous, murky and an off-yellow colour. Before her rational mind could assert itself and wonder how she was breathing with fluid in her lungs, panic set in. She flailed towards the surface, or what she assumed was the surface. Her right arm was caught on something and wouldn’t move, but her left reached up, pressing against an unseen barrier.

Full, mindless terror gripped her and she clawed at the obstruction. It was flexible like a membrane, shuddering as she beat her fist against it, nails digging into the skin-like covering. It snapped open. It wasn’t a tear or break, but it pulled away from the point of contact to allow her up. Fearing that it might close up, she wasted no time and thrust her arm up beyond the membrane and into warm air, flailing until she found purchase on her left side and hauled herself up and out of the liquid, to lean against the side of a... tank? Cryopod? That too was something she didn’t have time to consider as she shuddered and vomited the viscous liquid out of her belly and lungs. It oozed and dribbled down the side of the tank onto the deck.

As the panic faded and her breathing evened out, the aftertaste of something chemical and medicinal in her mouth, she examined at her surroundings. Confirming her first, fleeting impression was that she was indeed in some kind of fluid-filled tank. It was about the size of a bathtub, large enough for an adult human to lay comfortably within and deep enough that sitting up, the edge was even with the middle of her ribcage.

Her second revelation came as she tried to drape her right arm over the side of the tank only to find out that she couldn’t. She’d thought it was tangled or caught and that was why she couldn’t move it, but there was nothing to move. The limb was gone, only a stump left behind.

She forced herself not to focus on that. She could panic once she knew where she was, how she’d gotten here and what was going on. Until she had those answers, she couldn’t let herself get distracted, no matter what the rest of her brain was telling her. This place looked like some kind of medical facility. It was partially illuminated as if the lights were set to dusk, dawn or night time; well enough to see her surroundings but dimmer than she’d expect for any facility during daylight.

The walls were a dull off-white, there was equipment and monitors along them and on shelves and tables. Some of the devices were hooked up to her tank. She studied the readouts, but they made little sense to her. Some were obviously tracking her pulse, blood pressure and neural activity but she couldn’t even begin to guess what the others were monitoring. There were several other pods, but none of them appeared active and there was no sign that they had been used recently. She was alone here – wherever ‘here’ was’.

It wasn’t that sense of isolation that sent cold, crawling anxiety creeping up her spine but it didn’t help it, either.

Everything here was wrong.

It was the angles, the shape of things, the look of the displays. They were all... wrong in a way she couldn’t describe. The architecture was familiar, yes, but... but this wasn’t right. Everything was subtly or, in the case of the strange membrane over the tank instead of a latched door, not so subtly different  It was like... it was like a medical facility made by someone who had only seen them and didn’t quite know what it was actually supposed to look like. For a moment, the insane idea came to her that the room itself was impersonating a medbay.

She spat up another mouthful of oxygenated fluid. Even its taste was different to what she was familiar with. “What is this?” she said into the quiet, empty room. She didn’t expect an answer, so when she received one, she flinched, remaining hand clenching the side of the tank.

You are alive. It was answer, assertion and assurance all in one and it seemed to come from everywhere. Not as a booming voice or from an intercom, but as something that surrounded her like whispers in the woods.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I guess I-” the next words withered on her tongue. “No,” she said, a sudden slew of memories coming back, fragmented but unmistakable. “No,” she repeated. “I died.”

Yes, the Voice told her. You did. But an incomplete death.

She remembered more now. The battle. The alarms. The betrayal and then... then, she remembered the void, the pain and the darkness after it. “It felt pretty complete.”

Your bodies are so small, the Voice told her. Its tone never changed, but its words chilled her. So fragile, but so simple. Enough of you was preserved that function could be restored. Your... she wasn’t sure, but it sounded like the Voice was trying to hide a sense of amusement. ...soul... did not dissipate before I recovered you.

Her fingers tightened on the edge of the tank. She looked down into the tank, swallowing. Both her legs had been severed and... her guts were exposed. She could feel the fluid pulsing around and within them, feel a faint itch where her tissues were regrowing. She could even see movement inside her body and beneath the skin. She’d never been hurt this badly before. She shouldn’t be alive. “What,” she said, trying not to sound as afraid as she was. Normally she could. Normally she was better than this, but not now. Not wherever ‘here’ was and when the only thing keeping her intact and alive was the pool she was sitting in and the ministrations of... whoever this was. “What are you?”

The answer she received was no less unsettling than the previous one. Curious, the Voice told her. But be not afraid, little thing. I have done this before, and I am quite good at putting fragile insects back together.