Ignite

Chapter One - An Unexpected Visit

My eyes flickered open from a dreamless sleep, immediately I noticed I was attached to a beeping machine, displaying my heart rate and body temperature. Apparently, my body temperature was 48°C, considering that the average human body temperature was 36°C that struck me as strange, I should've probably been dead if that machine was correct. What also struck me as strange was that I knew that information, but couldn't remember who I was, where I was or why I was there.

I was in what looked like a hospital room, which would be appropriate for I had a large, painful gash reaching from one side of my waist to the other.

Before my mind could wander anymore, a young lady walked into my spacious room, her golden hair twisted in a tight bun and her softened face curved into a smile. Blue eyes glistened like diamonds under her fringe.

'How are you feeling?' she asked me, pulling up a cushioned chair beside my bed and opening a silver clipboard.

'Fine,' I croaked, my throat stinging from lack of use. 'Where am I?'

'You are at St Marlo's Hospital.'

'Great,' I wheezed, lifting myself into a sitting position and wincing at my stinging waist. 'Who am I?'

She furrowed her brow.

'You really don't remember?' she asked. My mind might've tricked me, but I swear I could hear triumph in her voice.

I shook my head. I asked again but she ignored me and held up a large picture of a blonde woman with sparkling blue eyes smiling happily at me. The nurse looked at me as if she was expecting me to jump in shock or start blabbering about my life history.

'Do you know this woman?' she asked me.

'No.' I said simply as she shuffled through her stack of pictures staring at each of them with increased curiosity.

'This man?' She said, holding up a picture of a proud man in a blue tuxedo.

'No.'

She held up another.

'How about her?'

'No.'

This procedure was repeated about 6 times, each time I wondered if I actually knew these people once, and if I did, what kind of people they would be. At least half of them looked related to me (because, somehow, I remembered what I looked like) while the others were too old to be my childhood friends and too serious for me to imagine having an amusing conversation with them.

Lastly, the nurse held up a picture of a man in a black, buttoned trench coat and dark jeans. The image of a fiery red symbol glistened on his left shoulder, the angle the image was taken obstructed his face from view.

'And finally,' the woman sighed 'do you know this man?'

I looked intently at the man's attributes. The bizarre thing was, I didn't notice the man. I only recognised the symbol on his shoulder, which looked strangely like an unfinished spider's web. It had two large V's, both had a line sliced through its tip. One V faced upwards while the other faced down, loosely connected to the right-side of the other V.

'Yes,' I murmured my eyes still fixed upon the gleaming symbol on his arm.

The nurse widened her eyes in interest and wrote a note on her clipboard, not bothering to ask where I knew this person from.

Only recollection of dark-clothed man. Next to that, she scribbled a sloppy version of the symbol in shining red ink.

She noticed me looking at her notes and shut her clipboard immediately, scowling at me, her face filled with hatred.