Factory Reset

Chapter Thirty: The plan

B-64 wasn't used to darkness. He always had something to look at, to imagine or to see, even in his darkest or direst of situations, he always saw something, as his mind could never truly rest. This was the only time he had ever not seen.

The dark void he was in was oddly comforting if anything, it kept him from imagining what could possibly go wrong with what Ion was doing. Even without his knowledge on most things about Ion, he knew that he wasn't in the memory business.

Still, the lingering feeling of being watched and observed was ever present in his mind, even in whatever state he was in. He could feel something tugging in his mind, and he could barely string together a few words in his thoughts before being disjointed.

His body was rigid, he couldn't move anything and nor could he feel. He could only hear words, words that held no meaning to him because he didn't have the capacity to understand them at that time. It was oddly calming though, like even if he couldn't understand it, he knew it was nothing dangerous.

Consciousness for Protogens was oddly a rough spot for many civilizations, even his own. After all, their brains were technically organic, but still artificially created and modified since they were not an organic race.

All B-64 knew was that it was taking quite a long time to finish, and the longer it droned on, the more worried he got. Despite not having a good concept of time, B-64 could tell that he had been in there for around thirty minutes.

After ten minutes, a buzzing sound had erupted in his hearing sensors, the kind that always fills in for silence. In that black void, it was agonizing, as he always heard something, saw something, felt something.

Here, he felt alone.

Luckily, he wasn't in there for too much longer. He slowly regained his thoughts and intelligence, and he slowly began to understand the words being spoken around him, but only barely.

Soon, his vision slowly returned. An almost blinding light pierced the void, and since Protogen couldn't really close their eyes, he had to endure it until it receded.

He then began to feel his limbs again, and he flexed his claws just to be sure that he had them still. The more the light bled into the void around the edges of his eyes, the more color and actual uniformity began to begin.

Shapes and colors now began to take form, slowly forming into things that he remembered. A light bulb, tiled ceiling, red beneath the tile, blue beneath the red, white beneath the blue, and black beneath the white.

Then, everything came rushing back to him.

He felt everything around him to an almost painful degree. The ever so slight rise in temperature, the feeling of his fur moving through the air, and if he strained, the light hitting him.

Soon enough, the other two awoke as well, with Ion stumbling slightly backwards and Catalyst fidgeting arrogantly underneath the light. Ion's facial features switched a few times from curiosity, to shame, to curiosity and then to delight.

"Wonderful!" Ion said in English, clapping his claws together. Mason and his friends were both somewhat shocked as well as intrigued on how fast it worked, since the last time they saw it happen, it happened both fast, and the protogen could barely speak.

"This language is rather... Weird." Catalyst said, his Protenia accent somehow blending with the English language and creating an almost posh British accent. B-64 wasn't sure how that worked out.

"I must say, it is surprisingly easier to understand and speak than... Oh, how do you combine it again?" Ion turned to Catalyst with a vague, ill-defined emotional expression. Catalyst shrugged, his tiny little needles on his body shivering with some sort of indignation.