Undo

𝙰𝙽 𝙴𝙽𝙴𝙼𝚈 𝙱𝙰𝚃𝙷𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝙽 𝙻𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃

Continuous echoes of water droplets slowly awaken my numb senses. My eyes hardly opened as I tried to look around while laying flat on a cold hard ground. I'm in a glass enclosure; a glass cage. My whole body felt like it weighed tons that even lifting my arm was almost impossible. I tried to think but my dull senses couldn't communicate effectively with my brain.

So, I gave up and tried to go back to sleep despite of being in a very bizarre situation...

"Joe! You're alive! Thank God! Joe!"

I heard a faint call and faint knocks outside the cage.

I turned my attention to the voice's origin.

She looked familiar to me but my head's too blurry to remember. Too familiar actually that I asked...

"Do I know you, ma'am?"

As I tried my best to get up she answered me.

"What are you talking about?! It's me! Ariel!"

For a second, I didn't know what she was talking about until everything came rushing back in my mind.

"Ariel. Yes. I remember. Th-the war. Wh-why am I still alive?? Where's this place?" There were a lot of questions in my mind as I remembered the suit's draining power.

"You called for me, right!?" Ariel said. She was also in a similar transparent cage beside the cage that I was in.

"Really? The last thing I remember was me running out of oxygen in space and --" I said.

"I was watching the news when Cassandra notified--"

I interrupted her.

"Cass?? My suit, my suit! Where'd it go!?"

I couldn't hear cass anymore. My HB100 chip has been removed from my head and I'm no longer wearing my suit.

".. What the hell is going on?? Where are we??"

Finally, I regained the strength I needed to stand up and there we were; Imprisoned in cylindrical glass cages inside a dark and spacious room with spotlights pointed at us.

"No idea. I've been shouting here for days but no one's responding. How are you!? The world's looking for you since the war ended. I've been looking for you too..."

"...Cass sent me your possible crash area before you went offline. It was in the Celebes Sea near North Sulawesi, Indonesia. I called Ed immediately and we travelled to the exact location via a convoy of helicopters but--" She stopped.

"Hey, but what? what's wrong?" I asked.

"Our helicopters were attacked and ours crashed."

"The last thing I remember was we were crashing to the sea. And, I woke up here, alone. I don't know what happened to Ed. I'm sorry, Joe. This is my fault!" She sobbed.

Upon knowing the incident, I dropped to my knees. I got no tears to cry anymore. I just stared blankly at anything. A moment of deafening silence transpired.

"No. It's probably my fault."

She gazed towards my direction.

"I keep on losing everyone. It's almost like a curse I couldn't break."

𝘈 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘥.

I looked up to the cage's ceiling. Tears began falling from my eyes involuntarily. I was so tired of crying and whining that I just let them jump off my eyes, crawl down my cheeks, and onto the floor.