Come To Life: Into The Outerworld: SAO After Alicization

1: Awake

AU Post Alicization Arc:

What if Rath was hiding a secret deeper than even Kirito knew? Bottom up AI may have been the final product of Project Alicization, but the doctors at Rath had been harboring another, darker experiment deep below the newest STL in the Ocean Turtle. Perhaps those Kirito had known in the Underworld met a different fate. Were Eugeo and Alice, his two best friends, just a figment of artificial fluctlights?

Or was there more to their existence than Kirito or even Rath themselves could fathom.

What if Eugeo and Alice were out there somewhere in the real world?

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Eugeo opened his eyes.

The room around him was blurry and dark with shadows. He couldn't make out anything but a grayish blur around him. Shutting his eyes again and pausing to focus he tried opening his eyes much more slowly. The same blur of shadow met his gaze and he blinked once, twice, and again in a vain effort to make out something among the grayness. At first, he thought maybe he really was dead, as even the memories of before started to grow hazy...the last fight...pain.

He shut his eyes tightly and urged his mind to remember, but there was an odd sensation, his thoughts went black as his vision. Why couldn't he remember? It was said that those who died had visions of their life and memories as they were ushered into the afterlife, but for him?

Nothing.

Just the gray blur and dark shadows closing in on the last fragments of color that hung in his mind.

He couldn't lose these.

One last time he willed himself to open his eyes and stared hard into the rush of shadows that met him. Then he blinked once, twice, and again, forcing himself each time to reopen his eyes and repeating over. Gradually he became aware to two things, his slow uneven breaths and the blur and shadows retreating from his eyes.

No he couldn't be dead.

The dead didn't breathe.

As his vision cleared, he was able to make out the walls around him, windowless and gray. The ceiling above was glowing with some dull square of light, just bright enough to illuminate his surroundings, which seemed to be quite sparse. It was at this moment he became aware of a thud in his chest...his heartbeat.

He wasn't dead.

He couldn't be dead.

At this realization his breaths became more shallow and quick with anxiety.

"Where am I?"

His eyes were now free from the glazey blur and he could clearly make out a single door at the end of his feet, which were covered in a plain white blanket. The gray walls came more into focus and he could see there were pieces of paper and what looked like charts hanging on either side of the door. Of course, the writing was too small for him to make out, so he let his eyes dart back and forth trying to gain some bearing on the room he was in. His right side was dark, but he could make out the shape of a table in the shadows that seemed to be covered in bottles of varying sizes, all the words hidden by the lack of light.

As his eyes went left, he noticed the first sound meet his ears, a low whirring followed by a small beep every few seconds. Straining his eyes as far left as he could, he found the source of the various noises that slowly met his ears. Machines, three or four of them, with various noises and sounds as well as small lights that blinked at first one, then two, three, and more colors that his eyes began to recognize...green, yellow, blue... red.

The one red light was the only one that didn't flash or blink and just next to it, Eugeo noticed multiple cords rising up beyond where he could move his eyes. Below the red light, the same cords continued down to the floor, but then rose up into his line of vision again. A few of these cords were attached to his arm.

"But why?"

Concentrating all his will power towards his left arm, Eugeo tried to move. First his fingers, which seemed both numb and weighed down by something, then his arm, which he was only able to move slightly before feeling that it was stuck. Trying again, he realized that his arm could possibly move but something, perhaps the mysterious cords were restraining him. Then he gradually become aware of the same feeling in his right arm, legs and feet. Panic rose up in his chest and he tried at last to move his head, which also seemed restrained in place. His eyes looked back to the left again and up as far as he could follow the cords until he saw part of a screen. In the bottom corner there were numbers rising and falling, following some sort of line that also rose and fell in jagged motion.

Eugeo's breaths became even more shallow and fast as his panic stricken body tried desperately to move. His heart had gone from a dull thump to a roaring beat in his chest and as he struggled to move and free his left arm from the cords, he felt a sharp pain shoot up his arm and into his chest. He continued to struggle, as the beeps of the machines grew alarmingly loud. Glancing down and feeling the panicked sweat on his forehead, he noticed tubes that seemed to be stuck up his nose. The sudden feeling of discomfort caused him to try and open his mouth and scream, only to realize that his throat too was restricted by some sort of tube. The pain in his chest rose and fell as quickly as his heart pounding, and he felt as though both it and his head would explode.

The door to the other side of the room flew open suddenly, and multiple figures in white coats and surgical masks rushed into the room murmuring loudly. The shadows whisked away as bright lights flew on and a rush of activity met Eugeo's frightened gaze. Two of the figures, women, were standing to the right of him pawing through bottles on the silver metal table and whispering to each other. At his feet, another woman stood with stack of papers in her hands yelling out something to the figures on his left...three men in long white coats. One was turned towards the machines frantically pressing buttons, the second was next to him, tapping away on the left side of the walls which had suddenly lit up with some strange glowing light. The third figure was beside him speaking the loudest. It was this man's voice that Eugeo could finally understand the words.

"HE'S CONSCIOUS! HEART RATE 160 AND CLIMBING! WE'RE LOSING HIM! NURSE!"

The other voices, at first a muddle of gibberish suddenly became understandable.

"DR. HIS HEART RATE IS CLIMBING TOO FAST"

"CHECK THAT MONITOR AGAIN"

"150 MILLIGRAMS. STAT!"

At this point Eugeo's mind was swimming, and he felt the pain in his chest move into his lungs as he gasped for air. The closest man leaned over him and Eugeo could finally make out the face of a serious, dark haired, middle-aged man. He shined a light into Eugeo's eyes, which didn't even blink in the brightness that had suddenly started to fade back into shadows.

"Stay with me, alright!"

The man's face became blurry as Eugeo's consciousness slipped away.

"NURSE! THE INJECTION! HURRY!"

Eugeo felt a sharp pain in his right arm followed by a tingling sensation that ran up and down his whole body, as it began to go numb. The voices of those around him faded and the sharp pain in his chest turned fuzzy. He struggled to keep his eyes open as an overwhelming sensation of dizzy sleepiness flooded over him. The doctor's face looked less worried, or was that just his vision going blurry? But he couldn't let his eyes close again; he wasn't going to fade into the darkness again.

"I'm not going to die"

The last words he could make out were those of the serious man's face, hovering above him, before he slipped into an unconscious stupor.

"GET THE OTHERS. QUICKLY NURSE!"