Chapter 9: Awakening

March 28, 2024

I woke to a sterile hum in the background, my head throbbing and body feeling lighter than I remembered. The room around me was bright, filled with strange machinery that blinked softly, casting a faint glow across the walls. It was far too clean, far too advanced to be anywhere near the warehouse I'd been in last.

Pain still lingered in my bones, but as I sat up slowly, I realized something. I was alive. I shouldn't be. Not after what Zane had done to me.

The last thing I remembered was his fist, my body crashing into the wall, blood splattering from my mouth, and then... nothing. But here I was, sitting in some kind of medical bay, my body somehow whole, even though I remembered the feeling of my bones breaking. I rubbed my chest, expecting agony, but there was none. Just a faint numbness where pain should have been.

Before I could take in more of the room, the door hissed open, and a woman entered. She wore a white lab coat, her black hair pulled back into a loose bun. Her eyes, bright, a mixture of gold and brown, studied me with a mix of curiosity and recognition. Her skin was light black, a sharp contrast against the white of the room.

"Well, look at you," she said with a smile, stepping closer to my bed. She leaned in, peering at me like I was some kind of rare specimen. "You're awake. Faster than I expected, honestly."

I blinked, still groggy, my mind piecing together fragments. "Where… where am I?" I asked, my voice rough.

She straightened up, folding her arms. "You're in my lab. More importantly, you're alive, which is quite the miracle considering what we found back there."

I narrowed my eyes, trying to make sense of what she was saying. "Back where?"

The woman tilted her head slightly, an amused smile tugging at her lips. "You don't remember, do you? The warehouse? The bodies?"

My blood ran cold at the word bodies. I could barely remember the end of the fight with Zane, let alone anything after. "What happened?"

The woman didn't respond immediately. She turned to one of the hovering screens displaying my vitals and tapped it lightly, pulling up some information I couldn't decipher. She glanced back at me. "Let's just say, when we arrived, there wasn't much left of your friends in that warehouse. Limbs, heads… everything was scattered. It was quite the scene. But you? You were standing. Passed out, blood-soaked, holding someone's head in your hand."

I sat up straighter, my heart pounding. "What?"

"You heard me," she continued, turning to face me fully now. "The others were torn apart. The one with the gift of strength? You remember him, right? Well, he didn't look so strong by the time we found you. His body was... let's say, **deformed** in ways I didn't know were possible. And you..." she gestured to me, her eyes flashing with something akin to awe, "...were the only one still standing."

I felt the air leave my lungs as I tried to process her words. I remembered Zane, the fight, the pain... but the rest? It was a blur. There was no way I had... done all that. My fists clenched, knuckles whitening. I had fought hard, sure, but that? No. That wasn't me.

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice low.

She smiled again, this time softer, but with a sense of pride. "I'm Dr. Naari, and you're aboard my ship now. We found you, what was left of you, anyway, and brought you here after cleaning up the mess."

My head spun, and I leaned back slightly, trying to absorb the flood of information. "Your ship?"

She nodded. "We're agents. We clean up the messes others leave behind, and your little stunt at the warehouse? That needed cleaning up."

I couldn't stop the questions from spilling out. "Agents? You're not Ascendants, then?"

Her smile faded into something more serious. "Far from it. We hunt down organizations like the Ascendants. People who twist power and gifts for their own greed. We found you by chance, though I doubt that was purely luck."

I stared at her, my mind racing. "So, what now?"

Naari shrugged, though there was a knowing look in her eyes. "For now? You recover. You were in a state that shouldn't have been survivable, internal bleeding, shattered bones, wounds that even our medical tech couldn't guarantee we could fix. We used a healing serum on you, one that takes at least a month to fully regenerate normal beings. But here you are, awake and talking after three days." She leaned in, studying my face. "That's not normal."

"Three days?" I repeated, shocked. How was that even possible?

"Yes," she said with a raised eyebrow, clearly impressed. "Honestly, we weren't even sure you'd make it through the first night. But here you are, healed up as if nothing happened. It's almost like your body is made for this."

I ran a hand through my hair, the weight of her words sinking in. Something had happened in that warehouse, something I couldn't explain. But the fact that I was still alive, standing, even, meant whatever was inside me, whatever this so-called gift was, it had protected me.

I swallowed, looking back at Naari. "And the others? What did you do with the warehouse?"

She waved a hand dismissively. "We cleaned it up. Took what was valuable, destroyed the rest. Nobody will find a trace of what happened there. The Ascendants' operation on that planet is gone."

Gone. I was relieved and yet uneasy at the same time. I had somehow killed them, torn them apart, and now I was aboard a ship run by a group of agents who clearly saw me as something worth watching.

Naari turned toward the door, her movements deliberate and smooth. "Get some more rest. We'll talk later. You've still got some recovering to do." She paused, glancing over her shoulder. "And, Kane? You might want to start figuring out just what you're capable of. I have a feeling things are only going to get more complicated from here."

With that, she left, the door sliding shut behind her. I sat in the quiet room, staring at my hands. My fists clenched and unclenched as the memories of the fight flickered through my mind, but they were broken, incomplete. The pain, the fear, the fury… it was all a blur.

But one thing was clear.

I had survived, and now, I had to understand why.