The Hunter: 2072

1

A giant group of shelves containing millions of metal boxes containing thousands of small storage devices each stands in front of a group of 6 people; 2 researchers, 2 scientists, the best metaviringen in Terra. “Fredrick!” the metaviringen yells into the void of shelves, with a deep, commanding voice. A man of a height slightly shorter than average and wearing a slightly dusty lab coat, old denim jeans, and work boots shuffles up to the metaviringen.
"Yes, Geralt?" Fredrick responds.
“I’ve finally set up the  body. I need you to retrieve Derek’s MSD for me. Remember, Derek Thomas Smither, January 3rd 2072, 7:48:54 am ET. We can’t afford another incident. We’re already down to our last AlGud with funds.”
“Sounds good!” Fredrick walks off mumbling, “Derek Thomas Smith, 2022.” He walks up to Derik Justin Smith’s MSD. He takes it and walks back to Geralt. “Here you go, sir.”
Geralt takes the device and walks up to the biomechanical body and inserts the device, it starts unloading the data into the body. “This’ll take a while, there’s a lot of data in these things.” a few seconds pass. “Alright, it has transferred the data, start the conformation. The biomech body conforms to the shape of Derik’s body. “Wait, that’s not Derek!” Geralt yells in anger “Fredrick! Where the hell did you go!?”
“What happened?” Fredrick runs over.
“You gave me the wrong MSD! Again!” He yells at Fredrick.
“Oh no.” Fredrick says quietly
“This is the second time you’ve done this, I’m cutting your pay to $1.46 an hour!”
“But—”
“No ‘but’s! You put this on yourself!”
Suddenly, Derik’s eyes open, a second later there is a crash and he’s gone.
Great turns to Frederick, “Great, we’re gonna have to eliminate another one.”
“Sir, th—”
“Biomechs cost so much to make, and once they start forming to the person, they can’t be reused!”
“Sir.”
“What!?”
“It escaped.”
“WHAT!?” Geralt turns around. “Mother fucker.”
— — —
Thoughts and memories fill Derik’s head, his mind scrambled and dazed until suddenly it focuses on one thing: Sam. He looks around and sees he is in some run down and dimly lit hospital-like building, it would like something built in the 1920s if it weren’t for the metal and wires covering and surrounding faded transparent electronic screens displaying incomprehensible data, yet somehow it all made sense to him, or at least he could read it fluently not so much decipher it. MSD successfully inserted, low power supply, Biomechanical Body morphing 89% complete, and other odd lines of text are sprawled across the screen closest to him. There are 3 people standing near each other, they seem to be moving slowly for some unknown reason.

Paralyzing pain shoots all around his body, yet just as quickly as it came, it goes away. It doesn’t fizzle away slowly like pain should, but it just ceases like a car hitting a solid brick wall, in an instant it goes away. It lasted barely long enough to even perceive it yet the pain was worse than when he got the shattered piece of sword lodged into his leg. He hadn’t noticed that before the sharp pain he actually couldn’t feel anything, but now he could, and the main thing he felt is cold. He looks around at his body and realizes he is completely naked; he looks around for some clothes, but aside from the tattered clothing on the people, there are none around.

Instead of waiting around to see what the fuck is going on, and whether or not those people are going to hurt him, he runs to the door. The door seems to be locked, but suddenly the handle breaks in his hands with ease and he pushes the metal door open and it flies off of its hinges with a loud metallic crash. Quickly the world comes into focus and the world speeds up. It’s winter, and with no clothes it is freezing. The air smells like the polluted smog back in LN. Derik wonders if he’s having a dream, then he remembers how he tried to commit suicide and if maybe it  worked and he’s just on the floor of his jail cell and his brain is making this all up to preserve and test the functionality of itself. Maybe the pain he felt was from his neck snapping. It would make sense — but then how is he feeling all of this, and most importantly smelling all of it? He breathes in, and he almost gags… and how is he tasting it? It’s hard to tell what time it is, but Derik assumes it’s some time late in the day or night, somewhere between 10pm and 3am.

Suddenly, as quick as the sharp pain before, the cold went away. He felt warm and nice, he also remembers how this is similar to how hypothermia acts, yet somehow in the back of his mind he knows that it isn’t hypothermia, but something from within himself; though he’s not sure what it is. The thought of Sam comes back: he hadn’t realized the freezing cold suffocated it out of his mind, but it’s back and it’s all he could think about. He thought that by this time tears would be rolling down his face and he’d be on the ground by now, but some instinctual force makes him collapse to his side, just before an electronic gunshot-sounding noise bursts through the uncanny silence. The world slows down again as he looks to his side and sees a very small bullet-like object, still quickly, fly right through the area his head was just at. He looks back to where the gunshot originated. Standing in the broken doorway, there is one of the people that was standing around the other 2, pointing his finger in the direction of the bullet object. There is no gun to be seen. Derik starts running as fast as he can, which is surprisingly fast, toward the inner city. The same instinct-like feeling in the back of his mind tells him that he’s just on the outskirts of the capital of Multuvisas.