Alive Again

After that oh so very strange dream, I found myself waking up in a very comfortable bed. The room it was in was small but well furnished with a lot of natural light. The bed was placed in the back corner of the room, which was about 10 feet by 7 feet. A window was placed in the centre of the back wall, next to the bed and directly opposite the door. There was a desk on the adjacent wall, opposite the bed, with a swivel chair and a laptop on it. Next to that was a wardrobe.

I got up, placing my feet on the ground and hearing a strange metallic sound. A literal clank. In a panic, I looked down and saw... right... yeah. That operation was real enough, the scars on my legs and the lack of organic matter on my feet was evidence enough.

I let out a large sigh and looked at my right arm, which was now mechanical too. It was sleek though and looked good. It was black with gold lines running down it. I took a second to move it, fingers, wrist, elbow and shoulder. It all worked like normal, but it felt a little strange. Almost as if it were too fast for its weight.

I got up and took a step towards the desk. What was the date? How long had I slept? Upon taking the step, I almost fell forward. My leg didn't feel like it was nearing the ground, like when you go to take a step on a staircase that isn't there.

This is going to take some getting used to. I managed to make it to the swivel chair and open the laptop. What I expected to see was some generic desktop with the date in the bottom corner. What I didn't expect is for the desktop to be displayed like a hologram in front of my eyes, no matter where I looked.

I almost fell out of my chair when this happened. A giant image of the city just appeared in front of me, with some apps and folders placed on it. I looked at the door and it followed my gaze. I eventually decided to try and press something, just a random folder, like you would with a touch screen.

It actually worked, the folder opened and displayed its content, being... case files? My case files. I guess this laptop was hooked up to the police systems or something. I decided to see how far it went back and to my surprise, it went back to my first case, which was just some petty shoplifting.

Right! Date! I took a look at the bottom, corner of the screen to see it was the second, at 9:32 AM. So I missed a whole day? Not as bad as I expected. I shut down the laptop and then noticed... the date and time were still there, in small white text. What else could I see? I mean... not much really. It was all standard apart from the date and time.

I went to the wardrobe and saw some clothes... I don't remember buying most of these, but if it's what I got. Going through the clothes I chose some simple blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt. I went to open the door but I stopped just before touching the doorknob. I could see some text. 'Room 782, The Recluse' is all it said. Context clues told me that the building I was in was called 'The Recluse' and the room was 782... obviously.

I then opened the door to a long corridor stretching for quite a while on either side. The carpet was red and the walls were some cream colour, not what I would've gone for but hey. Now... which way do I go? Left or right? Looking to my left some more text came up, listing off rooms, same with the right, the only difference being on the right there was a room labelled "male bathroom" and another female. Cool, I could freshen up.

Making my way down there I noticed I could read who the residents of most of these rooms were, they were mostly unoccupied, with only a few actually having people in them. I got to the bathroom and took a few minutes to do the whole bathroom routine.

Upon exiting the room I bumped into the woman who guided me to the operation room. She seemed to be more relaxed now, wearing a very similar outfit to me, jeans and a T-shirt. "Oh, you're up! Good." Ok, now that was just creepy, she didn't have the monotone voice I last heard she had.

Some text came up above her head. It read 'Juno Tilia', which I guess was her name. "Uh... yeah. Hi. Where am I?" I decided to ask the obvious question, as while 'The Recluse' was an answer, it didn't tell me anything.

"You haven't moved since your operation, you're still only a few minutes away from your old occupation." That was actually nice to hear... wait old?

"What do you mean old occupation? I haven't been fired to my knowledge." It was surprising to know I was out of a job like this.

"Yeah, old. You've been... moved to a more specialised force. I'm not the one to talk about it with though, even I'm not privy to that information." And now comes the obvious question.

"And who exactly are you, Juno?" A very deep question.

"How do you kn- nevermind. I'm apart of a specialised group who deal with more covert operations throughout Requiem. You should head back to your room and check your email, everything you need should be in there." Wait, could she not see all the bloody text everywhere? Either way, I nodded and left down the hallway.

As I thought about how annoying the text was, it just disappeared... ok hold on. I looked at a door and thought about it. 'Room 779' soon popped up but nothing else. Ok, that's useful.

I finally got into my room and sat down on the swivel chair again. sighing. So... Juno wasn't much help but apparently, my email would be. Good to know, let's get started.