Virtue

Chapter 1: Awakening

He opened his eyes to the dark cloak of tree branches and leaves that covered the sky. The sprinkled light that came from the canopy pierced his eyes like two needles and made his head began to throb. He was laid flat on the floor of a forest. The cold ground eased the pain ever so slightly of his massive headache. As he struggled to get up he could feel the pulsing from his head intensify making him move much slower. In a sitting position, he could see a there was a layer of leaves that covered most of the ground with a few twigs and branches scattered about. The trees that surrounding him were packed close together making it difficult to see past the forest.

Jinn stood up slowly weary of making any sudden head movements and instinctively checked his body for any other injuries. He patted and pressed on every part of his body until he reached his head where he was hesitant to touch. He was having a hard time collecting his thoughts due to the pain . To his surprise there was not much he could remember, the only thing that came to him right away was his name... or at least what he thought was his name, Jinn.

"What the hell? Where did this god damned headache come from?" He reached up to rub his temples with his fingers. In his confusion he hadn't noticed there were leather straps wrapped around his shoulders that connected to a bag of some sort on his back. It was a medium sized bag also made of leather, Jinn reached back and patted the bag to see if it contained anything, a few items could be felt through the leather and something seemed to be heavy enough to poke out of the bottom.

He decided to take it off to open and dump all its contents out onto the ground. Jinn set the bag down on the ground, next to it he pushed the leaves out of the way so he could clearly see the ground and there he emptied the contents of the backpack. The first thing he noticed was two pairs of small glass tubes. One pair was filled with a blue liquid and the other was filled with a red liquid. He inspected the two, colored tubes and noticed that there was a slight glow coming from them. "I hope that's not radiation." He thought as he stuffed them into his bag. Among the other items there were a few bandages, a canteen filled with water, a box filled with small bars labeled Quick Meal, and what looked to be a wrist watch except there was no visible way to tell time with it.

It was rectangular and was a dark grey color with two black bands coming out what he imagined was the top side and bottom side although there was no buckle or Velcro to attach the two. Jinn reached out to grab it, before his hand made contact it suddenly sprang to life. Jinn didn't even have time to react before the device latched onto his wrist with an iron grip the two straps somehow fused together to form one long strap across the bottom of his wrist. Jinn desperately tried to get it off by prying and pulling at it with his fingers, nothing seemed to work. The more he resisted the tighter its grip on him was. He got next to a nearby tree and tried smashing it against the trunk. In his attempt to break it, he only managed to hurt himself. He could feel a bruise starting to form on his arm under the device. No visible damage was done to the device, it seemed indestructible. Realizing that there was nothing he could do to take it off he let it continue to grip him. Not a second after he relaxed the iron grip of the device let up and began to slowly feel loose on him. It loosened enough not to hurt but was tight enough not to move around.

The face of the device lit-up with a white light. Jinn held out the device away from his face as the light intensified, then as if reacting to his movement the light began to compress from a rectangle to a line across the device's face. It then continued to change and condensed to a small dot in the center, to then completely vanish. For a few seconds, nothing happened, Jinn stood there looking at the device trying to figure out what had just happened. This time the device began to glow and was engulfed in an aura. A green glow came from the device, Jinn half expected it to blow up like a bomb but instead the aura began to grow onto the rest of his body, first his hand then the rest of his left arm until it completely covered his body. He did not feel pain or any other sort of stimulation for that matter while this was happening. After completely covering him the aura blinked and was gone as fast as it had appeared.