A SENSATION OF COMING BACK to life, only not quite that: half life maybe. Still utter darkness, though perhaps a faint hint of light on the horizon. A swirl of memory and imagination, a swath depicting a past, real or imaginary, smeared across the inner walls of his skull.
The darkness spattered with light now, but still nothing visible, no figure distinct from the ground. A tickling in the throat, aching fingers, hunger, well-simulated feelings and sensations, almost as if he were really experiencing them, almost as if he had a body again.
And then suddenly, vague laughter, slowly fading. Words, their sounds murky but comprehensible and properly sequenced—probably real for once rather than imagined—this:
Hey. Hey. Are you still alive? Are you still alive in there?
A woman’s voice, something parting his eyelids, a blurred and twisted face, vaguely female. A dull pain that would have been located somewhere in his head, if he still had a head.
Hey, you fired the flare, right? I mean, who else would it be? Has to be you. And that wasn’t so long ago. We both know you’re not really dead. You’re not the sort to die.
Something moist against lips, trickling into a mouth and pooling against one cheek, trickling down a throat. A hand on a throat, rubbing it, massaging it, until suddenly it convulsed, swallowed.
There we go. Alive after all, aren’t you.
It came again, wet, and this time the throat swallowed a little less involuntarily, and he was aware, too, of it as being more than just a throat. He was aware of it as being his throat.
And then just as quickly as this awareness had begun, it flashed away.
* * * WAS HE DREAMING STILL? He was somewhere, inside now, a blurry space, round, as if he were in the center of a sphere. A vague shape, a face, a woman’s face, or no, not quite a woman, not exactly human. Or maybe it was just that his eyes couldn’t focus. Hairless? Maybe, or maybe simply shorn short. Eyes not focused enough to do anything. Distant laughter. Something cool and wet touching his face, obscuring his vision.
Words again, or sounds anyway gradually becoming words. Female voices. But when in this world had he seen a woman? No, he must be hallucinating. Then again, how could a world exist without women? Maybe the rest of it was the hallucination. Maybe this was the only thing that was real. Was he becoming more conscious? Maybe, maybe not. He tried to sit up, felt something holding him down, hands or straps.
…anything? one voice finished. What had it been saying before? No, he couldn’t capture it.
Just this, said the other voice. It was wrapped in his shirt.
Ah, said the first voice. How enterprising of him. Shall we partake? Diversify the field? Was it a woman’s voice after all? He wasn’t exactly sure anymore.
I don’t see why not.
Leave him some. Otherwise he’ll be disappointed.
He squinted, tried to see them better, but their features remained in flux, something wrong with his eyes, maybe.
Seems to be waking up. Resilient, isn’t he?
We all are, at that stage. At what stage? he wondered. He groaned, tried to sit up again, felt this time the pressure of hands.
What shall we do with him? Which voice was that again? Harvest him?
He’s not ready. He’s even less ready than the other one.
And yet here he is.
It can’t be forced. When it is, results are … unstable. Remember what happened to Sarne.
Who is Sarne? he wondered.
So what do we do? asked the second voice.
Do? What else can we do?
We throw him back.
* * * A GLARE OF SOME SORT, the sensation of heat, the smell of dust. He coughed and felt a hand on him, gripping his shoulder, acknowledging him.
A voice:
There, there. It’s going to be all right.
Strange the things that seep their way down to you while you are unconscious, part of him thought. Or were such things just imagined, a story he was telling to himself, a dream he was dreaming?
Where am I? Coming out of storage? Coming out of sleep? Dead?
With great effort he managed to open his eyes, saw little more than a blaze of light, furious, scorching the inside of his skull. And then, through it, suddenly bursting, the rough shape of a face, little more than a white circle with two eyes gouged out of it.
Decided to open your eyes, did you?
Face sliding sideways to momentarily block the light. A round head, bald, pale. A mouth with its corners tensed up in a smile.
Glad to see you’re coming around.
He tried to speak, but nothing came out. The face gave him a keen look and then leaned closer, so that all he could see was the top of an ear and the side of a head. It was there for a while, while he tried to speak again, and then it moved away, revealed the whole face again.
And then his vision blurred and faded and he felt himself slip away.
* * * A STRANGE SENSATION, a feeling of light-headedness, a sense of motion, of movement. He heard someone groan, but it took him a while to realize it was him. He willed his eyes to open and they opened, but only very slowly—one of them, anyway.
He saw the ground moving below him, but farther away than he would have thought. He saw the curve of a man’s back, and far below, appearing and disappearing, two booted feet. He was being carried, he suddenly realized, but the person carrying him wasn’t in a hazard suit, was neither Qatik nor Qanik. And then he remembered that no, of course it wasn’t Qatik or Qanik: both Qs were dead. But if not them, who would it be? And why would they be outside without a suit?
And then he remembered what’d seen earlier: pale head, lack of hair, just like himself.
Oh no, he thought, they’ve found me.
