Time Traveler Part I (Feeling Like The World Forgot Me)

Chapter 1

"Beginning preliminary examinations of subject eighty three N. Human, young but matured, no visible augments, various scars but no other noticeable health defects."

"We'll see what the scans turn up."

Fuck, his body was heavy. His eyelids must have been welded shut and his thoughts felt sluggish, as if his head was filled with molten lead.

"Subject's systems are all okay. No abnormalities to report."

"No health defects or prior augments. They finally brought in a healthy clean slate."

Shit. They were talking about him.

"This one's not a regular. They caught him snooping around lab A six."

"Seriously? I don't know how to get in there and I can go almost anywhere. The security is fucking ridiculous."

Caught. Ben's tired thoughts latched onto the word, slowly putting it all together.

This was it, then. Even if someone figured out he'd been captured, no help would come in time. If he wasn't dead when everything he'd found on Project Zsashos was leaked and the station was shut down, there would be no coming back from whatever they'd do to him now.

It didn't matter. All of it would be worth it if the message got through.

He turned away from the creeping thoughts of the people he'd never say goodbye to, the voices of the researchers drifting away as he let himself slip back into unconsciousness.

His groggy thoughts didn't have much opportunity to rest before horrible, putrid tastes dragged him choking into awareness. His lungs burned as if filled with acid and they seemed unsure about whether they were desperate to breathe or cough themselves up.

Something pushed him down and he realised that he was lying in a fluid of some sort. Cryo oil, he realised as the taste flooded his mouth and nose.

Taking a breath and letting it fill his lungs, he forced himself to relax. Were they putting him under or bringing him back out? He couldn't make out what the muffled voices were saying, but he felt around and found a plastic sheet floating in the oil with him. They must've just taken him out of the preservation bag, then.

As if to confirm his theory, a violent tremor tore through his body and he wondered how he hadn't noticed how cold he was.

Hands slowly lifted him out of the oil and into a sitting position. This time aware of what was happening, Ben coughed up the oil in his lungs and wiped his eyes, surprised when someone pushed a strip of material into his hands to clean his face with. Why hadn't they restrained him yet?

Shock hit when he finally opened his eyes and found himself in some cramped, dimly lit storage room. This wasn't Zsashos V.

"You alright, mate? You must've been under a long time."

He looked at the person next to him, a bald human wearing a mask over their mouth and nose.

"They won't understand you," someone else said.

"Who are you?" Ben demanded. Or tried to. The words he spoke weren't his and it occurred to him that his wasn't familiar with the language these people spoke. He wondered when they'd given him a translator and touched his ear, confused to find no device there.

Wait. What the fuck was on his arm? He wiped away the red oil coating his skin and took in the mess of stitched up incisions. What did those fuckers do to him?

"Where are we?" he asked in a language he didn't know.

"An old lab on Zsashos Five," the human next to him replied, "The space station."

Ben shook his head. "Zsashos Five doesn't have any labs like this. It's not old enough."

The walls here were covered in rust and grime and in the semi darkness Ben could just make out the large tendrils of some massive creature curling out of bent panels in the walls and ceiling.

A human with a mess of dark hair falling over their eyes and augments covering the side of their head approached.

"Let's get you dry and warm," they said gently, "We'll figure everything out."