Infernal Devices | Vincent Valentine (Final Fantasy VII)

Chapter I | World Regenesis Organisation

It was cold. That's the first thing you recognised when you came to. There was frost in your blood, in your bones, and petals of snow melting on your tongue. At least, that's what it felt like, those weird sensations in your body, the tingling, right under your flesh, where you couldn't reach.

Why was it so dark? You couldn't see anything. Were your eyes open or closed?

Darkness swaddled you like a surgical bandage, suffocating, crushing. Your lungs were filled with tar. Black, black tar, that bled into everything else. Was your blood tar too, slowly cementing your body.

Then something soft and delicate and cold breathed against your skin.

You slowly peeled open your eyes, a bit at a time. The light was harsh, your eyes began to water, and it took a few attempts for them to adjust to the sudden brightness. Focusing on the light, you began to pick out more details of your tunnelled vision - a filament light was suspended from the ceiling above you, its bulb naked, the cord swinging slightly, as if the ceiling had started to tilt. Or was that your head? White light poured through the glass, bathing your skin in what you imaged to be a sickly gleam, like porcelain. Smooth and cold, that's how you felt.

Your eyes moved down slowly, almost as if you were scared about what you would find. You were lying horizontally on a table, metal, like an operating table, with nothing but a thin white sheet covered your upper and lower torso. You could see the grooves and curves of your body beneath, and you shifted uncomfortably.

Your thoughts ran like ink.

Those cold breaths you had felt were tubes, thin and plastic, snaking around your wrists and arms, blood red. You squirmed, your stomach trembling with confusion and panic; the blood flow through the tubes increased.

Where the hell were you? What was going on?

Who the hell were you?

"She's waking up. Grab the sedative."

The voice sounded distant, unaligned with your vision, as if someone was talking to you through a glass, or from another room. You couldn't match it to your surroundings.

Shadows bruised the edges of your vision, hands reached out from the dark. Your legs gave a half-hearted thrash but something sharp had already pierced your arm, filling your veins with that black tar again.

Your eyes grew thick and heavy, began to shut out the light, then the intangible blur of shadows, or were they faces now, and the blood red tubes... and then darkness again.

Your dearest friend.

~

You were in a helicopter. That's what you could gather from the sounds, the static in your ears, the thrum of blades whipping the air like cream, the throb of engines below. All familiar sounds, but from where? You knew them. You didn't know them. It was as if the past was seeping into the present, dragging up memories, fragments of noises that related to something, some other world you weren't a part of.

You stirred from your cramped position, curling your legs under your stomach with a weak groan. Every joint in your body ached. Slowly testing each area of your body, you found that your hands had been bound behind your back, the material used was coarse and tight, chafing the skin around your wrists.

"Oi, you awake?"

You shuddered at the voice, grating against your delicate eardrums. It had come somewhere above you, directly above you.