nagpurpolice Chapter 2: Awakening in the Void
Chapter 2: Awakening in the Void
Chapter 2: Awakening in the VoidDarkness.
Adam remembered everything just before this. The long, quiet years lying still in a hospital bed. His body felt like it was sleeping, but his mind was wide awake, a prisoner inside. He couldn't move his arms, not even his pinky finger. Could this darkness be... the end? The nothingness people called death?
Or it was some weird, lonely place after you die? He couldn't tell. There was nothing to feel, nothing to see, nothing to hear except silent of emptiness.
Then, something changed. A tiny flicker, like a ripple in a calm pond. It wasn't outside him; it was him.
His body moved.
Adam shot up. He pushed himself off whatever he was on. He was standing, shaky but standing. His hands flew up in front of his face, trembling hard.
He stared at them. He turned them over. Fingers, palms, knuckles. His hands. He could see the lines on his skin, the shape of his fingernails. They listened to him!
A huge wave of shock washed over him. He ran his shaking hands down his arms, across his chest, over his stomach, down his legs.
Skin. Muscle. Bone. He could feel his own body, solid and real underneath his touch. He pinched his arm, hard. Pain! It was sharp and real.
He wasn't dreaming. This wasn't just in his head. After years of being stuck, unable to even blink on his own, he was whole. He was... alive? The question felt huge, filled with disbelief and a small, growing spark of hope.
But as the first shock faded, and his brain started working properly again, something felt very, very wrong.
He was completely, totally naked.
He looked down. His feet weren't on dry ground. A thin layer of water covered the surface, only about four inches deep, just enough to reach his ankles.
It was cold, really cold, and the cold feeling on his bare skin made the impossible situation feel terrifyingly real.
He splashed his foot a little, sending ripples spreading out into the darkness.
He looked around, trying to see into the gloom. It was no use. Just an endless, flat stretch of black. The water under his feet shimmered faintly, showing... nothing.
"Where... where am I?" The words came out rough. He hadn't used his voice in so long.
The sound of it made him jump. His own voice. He touched his throat, feeling the little shakes as he spoke.
He threw his arms out wide, tipping his head back towards the unseen top of this endless space. A laugh, shaky with tears and disbelief, burst out of him. He didn't care if anything heard him. He just needed to let it out.
"I'M FINALLY FREE!" he yelled, pouring all the years of being stuck and all this sudden, huge joy into the shout.
His voice echoed, bouncing off invisible walls far away before slowly fading, pulled back into the heavy silence. No answer came. No sign that his shout had reached anything or anyone. The huge empty space stayed the same, not caring.
The amazing, happy feeling started to fade away, replaced by a creepy feeling of unease. The joy of being free was real, but free where? He took a careful step forward, the cold water circling around his ankles.
He could see the dark, smooth ground under the water right near him, but beyond that? Nothing. Just nothing.
"Where am I?" he mumbled again, his voice a little less rough now that he was using it.
He looked hard into the dark all around him,
He needed answers more than ever. The fear was still there, a cold tight feeling in his stomach, but the mystery was too interesting. He threw his arms out wide again, not happy this time, but daring.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" he shouted, his voice loud in the lit-up space, stronger now. "SHOW YOURSELF!"
Silence. The golden ball kept pulsing gently. The water rippled softly around his ankles. Nothing else changed.
Adam clenched his teeth, frustration coming back. Fine. If it wouldn't show itself...
"At least tell me where I am! WHAT IS THIS PLACE?!"
The air right in front of him shifting again. The light bent in a strange way.
Then, a rectangle of see-through blue light appeared out of nowhere, floating right at his eye level. It glowed softly, and strange, complicated symbols swirled across it. They quickly changed, turning into clear, easy-to-read words:
[I was created by the will of the Master.]
Adam automatically took a step back, his eyes glued to the glowing blue window. His mind struggled to understand it.
"Master?" Who was the Master? Was it the thing in charge of this place? Was it God? Or... something else?
Before he could even really think the questions, the words disappeared. The symbols vanished. Instead, a simple face appeared on the blue screen. It looked very basic, almost like a smiley face – two simple circles for eyes and a straight line for a mouth. It seemed to look right at him, not showing any feeling he could tell.
Then, it spoke. The voice wasn't like a person's. It was calm, made by a computer, but perfectly clear. It seemed to come right from the blue window itself.
"You created me, Master. Because you needed me."
Adam's breath caught in his throat. His eyes jumped from the simple face on the screen to the glowing ball above, then around at the empty, watery space. Me? I created this... thing? This place? Master?
His powers... had created this?
He didn't have any powers. He was just... Adam. A guy who had been paralyzed, who might have died, and who was now standing perfectly fine in the middle of nowhere, talking to a blue screen with a face.
He had absolutely no idea what any of this meant. The confusion was huge, like a thick fog in his mind. But under the confusion, under the fear that was still there, one simple, certain thing started to form.