OBLIVIOUS

CHAPTER 1 - The Awakening

My heart thumps in my ears. Blood flows through my veins. With each pump and pulse, my internal organs come on-line, intensifying by the second as I awaken.

But awaken from what? A long sleep? A coma? Or something else?

I don't know where I am or why I'm here. Don't even know who I am. I can't see because I haven't opened my eyes yet. I can only hear, smell, and feel. Besides the pounding of my heart, the raspy inhalation of air draws in through my nose and flutters out through my mouth. My chest rises and falls. The sterile whiff of sweet antiseptic lingers in the air, and something pinches my skin in the fold of my right arm.

I am alive. I don't know how I know this, but I do. It's like I was not, and now I am. I was unconscious or dead. I don't know which, but here I am, lying flat on my back.

A repetitive beep pierces my brain, irritating and begging me to open my eyes for the first time in who knows how long? A day or a week? Forever? It's like I've been born for the first time, but somehow, I doubt this.

My eyes flit open like butterfly wings. Lashes clasp and crash into each other as the dryness of my pupils and irises grows moist. My vision is the same in the center and in my peripheral. A cloudy fog hangs over me until I blink the whiteness away. Before it's gone, a translucent object shaped like an oval descends toward me and suctions around my face.

When my eyes clear, I realize the object is soft and continues to stick to my face, pressing around my nose and mouth. Air hisses through it. With the apparatus in place, my breathing improves. The strange device helps me stay alive, part of the reason I'm awake and aware of my surroundings.

I tilt my neck up and focus on the room. As a light shines above me, a figure backs away toward my feet. The head and body shifts in a blurry haze. Behind the person who put the breathing mask on my face is a long counter with smooth panel-like doors, above and below. As the figure materializes in front of me, the person, a man dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit, turns away and opens a cabinet door. When he faces me again, he moves to my side as if he's floating across the room. He reaches toward me with a cotton ball and a piece of white tape. His fingers graze over the sensitive skin on the bend of my arm. My neck strains to hold my head up as my eyes follow his hands.

He tears away the clear tube connected to the sharp piece of metal buried in my arm.

Needle pinpricks flare out, and I wince when a tiny crimson drop balloons up.

I hear my groan, muffled by the mask covering my face as he positions the cotton and bandage into place.

"Concentrate on your next breath." The man's icy-blue eyes stare down at me with a steely fortitude that calms me. "You're experiencing hypersensitivity. It's one of the side effects of stasis. But don't worry, you're going to be okay. I'm monitoring your vitals and you're stabilizing. Blood pressure and heart rate are rising into normal ranges. All I need to do now is remove the oxygen mask."

The man's lips flatten into a straight line, arching up at the corners. He portrays determination. Resolve. Confidence in what he's doing. I detect a hint of smugness in his expression too, or maybe it's a trait normal to his personality. Hard to tell.

His hand disappears at the edge of where I lie, and the cushion beneath me buzzes upward to a comfortable incline. "I think you're ready to get out of bed."

Behind the man, a glare from a rectangle window streaks across my vision. It's dark outside, and I glimpse a faint blue glow coming from the bottom of the frame, out of view.

The man steps in between me and the window. He helps me sit up and dangle my feet above the black floor. It's then I notice the boots he and I both wear. They're similar, but there are differences in our clothes. As opposed to his dark blue attire, my jumpsuit is gray and tight around my extremities.

"I'll explain everything in time, but first, let's get you on your feet."

He nudges me off the bed, and when my boots hit the floor, they lock into place. My head swims. I wobble, hands out for balance. I remember the man seeming to float a few minutes ago. Now he stands, anchored.

"You're wearing a gravity suit with boots that lock onto the floor. The designers laced the suit with metal fibers that react with the magnetic field emanating from the ark's base."

I glance up at the man's stoic gaze.

His eyes drill into me. "I have just the thing to help you adjust to your environment. It'll put everything into perspective."

Before I take a step, the words scrape over my throat and spill from my lips. "Who are you?"

"My name is Abraham."

"Who am I?"

"Your name is Noah Grey."

I peer up at Abraham, answers adding up in my head, but some of them don't give me the same confidence I see in him. He's an imposing figure with a granite chin and a solid frame. He's a few inches taller than me, with thin lines splintering out from the corners of the skin around his eyes.

"As you lift your feet, the boots sense you want to walk. They release and then lock into place as your foot touches the floor. Artificial gravity at its best, or worst, I'll let you be the judge of that."

My breath hitches in my throat as a tingling wave washes over me. "You said there was something that would put everything into perspective. What was that?"

Abraham grins for the first time. "Come here, I'll show you."

He guides me across the small room where we stop in front of the window. "Oh," I say.

"You'll have lots of questions, and I have access to the answers. We'll get to that after you've had a bite to eat."

His words fade away as I peer through the window and behold the curving blue circle of a planet hovering in space. Clouds drift high in the atmosphere, blanketing an enormous brown and green land mass.

"Earth is quite a place," Abraham says. "At least it is now."

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