"Isaac! Isaac! Isaac! Can you hear me? Isaac!"
The distorted voice, a male voice, echoes louder and louder, like random noises passing through Isaac's head, like its coming from the bottom of a barrel, twirling around his brain until it stings him in the back of the head, ripple after ripple of pain-generating resonance hitting like a brick wave, breaking at the shores of his sanity.
Slowly, the waves start losing intensity and the sound of his name fades into clarity. Isaac opens his eyes and immediately feels like his retinas are burning from the artificial light. His head is heavy; he can barely keep it straight. He shuts his eyes for a few moments then opens them again and blinks rapidly, searching his surroundings as the man keeps calling his name. He wants to answer, but something is stopping him from doing so. He doesn't know why, but he can't seem to concentrate on anything.
There is a man, this he knows, but he can only make out the white coat he is wearing and a few facial features; he is a dark-haired man with small eyes. Everything else is just a blur.
Images of the Marker are flashing before his eyes and startle him. Unlike his surroundings, the images are crystal clear to him, even if he only sees them for a fraction of a second; he can see every symbol written on the Marker, like a lightning strike printing them on the back of his eyes with each passing flash. He shakes his head a few times and blinks rapidly. He takes a deep breath and notices that his vision is slowly improving.
"Isaac, Isaac Clarke, nod your head if you hear me", the voice goes again.
Isaac nods his head a few times, looking left and right, investigating his surroundings. He tries to lean forward, but he can't. He looks down and sees a thick metallic strap tied to the chair around his waist. He looks up at the man in front of him with indignation without saying a word. He still sees him behind a thick haze and cannot make out any facial expressions. He shuts his eyes for a few moments then lifts his hands from underneath the table, opens his palms and stares at them as if he is reading a book, fully emerged in the details of his palms.
After a few moments, he realises that his vision is not only back to normal, but also significantly improved. He can't remember the last time he saw everything in so much detail. He continues to scan the surface of his palms. He looks at all the lines, wrinkles, and corns that hardened his skin, especially the index finger, the trigger finger. His hands start to shake more and more violently as he stares at them. He tries to follow them with his eyes, but the quick motion sends him back into his past for a fraction of a second at a time.
He is rocking back and forward between his memories and the vision of his shaking hands. His heart starts pounding in his chest and his breathing accelerates as each flashback from his past becomes more and more violent, showing him images of mangled dead bodies, growling, scythe-wielding Necromorphs charging towards him, gunshots and explosions pounding in his head. His ears ring with a growing sharp noise, and he begins to hyperventilate as a sense of fear and helplessness grows inside of him. He sees himself running and shooting frantically through the dark, lighting up Necromorphs with the flashes from his rifle muzzle, when, suddenly, a bright red light engulfs his field of vision, a loud growl and a scythe whooshing through his neck snaps him back to reality, looking down at his hands, which are now both steady as rocks.
Gradually, he starts to feel all his senses coming back to him, overwhelming his brain with information about his surroundings. He feels a slight draft blowing gently against his skin, coming from an old rusty vent grill in a far corner of the room. The air is warm and stale: a clear sign that the scrubs haven't been serviced on time. Then he is startled by a water droplet hitting the metal floor behind the man in the white coat. He waits for another one to fall then starts counting the seconds in his head. He counts to seven before another one splashes down, then another and another, and then his breathing stops halfway through, inhaling as a thick, putrid smell chokes his airways. He exhales and forces himself to inhale again without chocking, taking in the heavy stench as if he were breathing through an old, thick blanket wrapped around a decaying corpse.
