Chapter 1 - Remember Before You Begin; Look Before You Leap

You wipe your hands against the fogged glass as you lean forward. You don't put any weight on it, on the chance you risk triggering a seal. You start from the right and see a metal door. It has no handle but is recessed in the wall, and the frame looks like it has a sort of seal around the edges. There is a black square set in the wall beside the door. On it there are two green symbols. One is of a hook coming out of a square. The other is of two conjoined circles. The rest of the symbols are orange, or red, and the red light of the room makes them hard to focus on. 

The red light. Is something broken in the room itself? As your eyes continue to adjust you try and remember. You look at the hand that wiped the condensation away, the water running over it, and the red light tinting the water and your pale skin red.

BANG.

You're dying. You're on the ground, somewhere bright. You hear a scream. Like a bird's cry or a widow's wail it is wordless but full of pain. You look down and see yourself. Your wearing clothes, a uniform, armor? But the blood is coming over your fingers like a river and you feel the Cold. You're holding something, something heavy. You don't know. You look up.

BANG.

You're alive. You're in the tube. You're not wherever you were when you were shot. You were shot. You look down at your chest and see where you had held your chest in your memory. There's a patch of strange flesh there. Unlike the paler flesh around it, that is tinted red by the lights. This is black, almost like scabs.

How did you scab over a bullet wound? Someone had to have healed you, saved you. Put you in this tube, maybe while you recovered?

You look back outside the tube and now look to the ceiling. It's not fair away. Just above the tube across from yours, paneled and undecorated, the sheer metal's only feature are bundles of cords and a metal tube with a vented grate. A few tassels flutter sightly, tied to the grate, but they're glowing. You lean back and look around the tube's interior, suddenly questioning the quality of the air.

Above you, you see a small vent. The whisper of air a steady reminder of it's flow, and a single tassel hangs from the vent. It glows green.

You nod, perhaps to yourself, and look now at the floor, because who knows how far the ground is.

It's right there. Good. You see metal flooring and some kind of black, studded, material leading through the room from the door to, where? You cock your head and see an open door. There's something beyond it, and the lights are a yellowed white, instead of red. You're about to look for a lever or some kind of button when something flips into sight, between you and the doorway.

It's rectangular. It has a black face just like the screen by the door. That was a screen; a computer screen. This is a computer screen too, that makes sense. It displays a green circle and an arrow pointing up.  You look up. Nothing happens. You look back at the screen, and now it's pointing an arrow downwards. You look down and again nothing happens. When you look at the screen again it has another symbol. A bent line, with both ends pointing upward, but one much longer than the other.

A checkmark. You sigh at how your brain is struggling to warm up, but maybe there was more to your injuries than just a gunshot. You run a hand down your torso, and feel several, different, scabs; multiple gunshots.

You reach out toward the screen and tap at the glass; it seems to accept this as a queue to open the hatch. There is a sudden rush of air, as pneumatic locks release their pressure and the hatch begins to rise away from you. You shake your head, the word screen didn't register but pneumatics did? There's a ringing in your ears as something is making a steady loud noise. 

"Yjihf. Izfihwyj Sywkih Sifiqfis. Yefabojaf Waw-hidawdomi. Ivihkiwqu Bhafaqijd Ow Ittiqf." The garble of noise came from a speaker in the ceiling. You listen to it once, then after a few tones, the noise repeats. "Yjihf. Izfihwyj Sywkih Sifiqfis. Yefabojaf Waw-hidawdomi. Ivihkiwqu Bhafaqijd Ow Ittiqf." 

If those are words in a language you're supposed to know, your in worse shape than you first thought.

"I'm gonna need a shrink." Your voice is raspy and dry and your throat hurts to speak.

As you look around you see there are three pods besides yours, all empty. The machines are set into the walls and look very permanent. So wherever this is, must be close to where you were hurt. Or the hospital that you were brought to. Both maybe?

You pad toward the warmly lit doorway and are rewarded with a room smaller than the one you left, but of vital purpose.

It's a bathroom. Running your fingers over themselves you can tell you've got a layer of... something... over your skin, it doesn't smell bad, more like a disinfectant. There's also a number of glossy packages hanging from the wall. You grab one and after a moment of fiddling open it. Inside are strange, transparent, clothes. A  high neck shirt, with full sleeves and gloves, and pants with feet coverings attached. There's also something that looks like a hood. and all three objects have strange metallic edges around the openings.

You hold the objects in your hand, observe the toilet and feel no particular urge to use that. Instead your eyes are drawn to a sink and a tall reflecting panel. You're standing naked, but out of sight of the mirror, clothes in hand.

"Yjihf. Izfihwyj Sywkih Sifiqfis. Yefabojaf Waw-hidawdomi. Ivihkiwqu Bhafaqijd Ow Ittiqf." 

What do you do? Ignore the mirror? Take a shower?