Chapter Text
A bloody, coughing mess limped his way over a grass covered hill.
He had seen lights in the distance, lights meant people, people meant… What, exactly? The planet was similar to home, but there was no way this was Earth. It lacked a certain, overgrown charm.
Pausing as he reached the crest, the poor man collapsed to his knees and stared out at the sparse grasslands. This time, the coughs came unhindered, forcing him to lean forward on his arms while expelling a thin spray of mucous and blood onto the grass.
As the fit subsided, he sat back on his heels, once again peering out at the lights in the distance. Fear and loneliness gnawed at the edge of his awareness, kept at bay by the knowledge that what had transpired to this moment had not been in vain.
And then it reached him. Or rather, it reached the night sky above him. A sudden blast of light, bright enough to literally turn night to day for several seconds, burned itself into his memory forever. The sounds of screeching tires and screams of fear echoed faintly from the town he’d been heading towards.
“Goodbye, Otis.” He sniffled, the smell of his own blood almost overpowering.
It took far more effort than he thought it should to push himself back to his feet. It took even more effort to command his legs to lift, one foot at a time, one step closer to civilization (as it were) on this planet.
The walk was interrupted by several more coughing fits, leaving the poor man weak and gasping for air before he reached the nearest building, a structure he recognized as a home. The lights were on, and he could hear the sound of people talking inside as he moved to the nearest door and knocked.
Or rather, raised his fist and dropped it weakly against the wood, hand sliding down with each hit of his sluggish arms. The door opened after the third hit, and time stopped for the man and the poor sand cat as their eyes met.
The cat screamed, and the poor man’s last conscious thought was how oddly pretty the voice was, and then blessed darkness as a bat swung from seemingly nowhere into his skull.
** **
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady sound of an EKG was the first sound to register. The second was the gentle whoosh of ventilation, and the rumble of fans. The third sound to reach his brain was the muffled roars and grunts of what sounded like two animals having a throw down.
The world was blurry at first, the harsh lights above him almost painful when his eyes opened. A hospital? Memories surfaced, one eerily similar to this situation triggered an old fear and suddenly the world was in perfect focus. Leaping from the bed, the monitoring patches and wires ripped free, setting off a slew of alarms in the small space.
The brief moment in the air gave him a lot of information, most notably the fact that he was stark naked, and that the floor looked over-polished. This last fact was proven as his feet touched down, sending him into a semi-controlled skid into the far wall, colliding with a painful grunt even as he took in more of his surroundings.
The room was surprising large for one hospital bed and its monitoring equipment, parallel to a wall inset with a mirrored window and a heavy metal door, and an intercom was set midway along the bottom of the window. The room was otherwise empty, except the commode visible in the far back corner, a thin cloth screen suspended before it.
Vertigo set in as his taxed mind tried to make heads or tails of where he was. Pitching sideways, he slumped to the floor, gasping for air as the hyper-awareness faded and left him with a severe headache. Head forward, he pressed his hands to his eyes and let loose a frustrated cry of pain.
How long he sat there was up for debate. Seconds? Minutes? An hour? Eventually the sound of voices broke through his support, drawing his gaze to the intercom. The words seemed guttural, like the growls of a large predator, but patterned in an unusual manner.
Between his headache, the incessant beeping of the medical alarms, and the repeating drone of the unknown voice in the speaker, something within him snapped.
“QUIET!!” He bellowed, and an eerie, unnatural silence filled the room. The medical equipment’s lights still flashed their warnings, but there were no sounds to accompany them. He could feel the gentle movement of the air around him, but the rumble of the fans had subsided.
Slowly he managed to push himself to his feet, back pressed against the wall for support as he slid up it. A moment to let the room stop spinning, and he padded over and stopped at the foot of the bed, eyes moving to the window as the noise of the room slowly began to return. He simply pointed at the blaring monitors and waited.
The sight of a naked man glaring and pointing at something was apparently good motivation. Less than a minute later, the heavy door to the room popped open with the hiss of rushing air, and a bizarre group of creatures in hazardous material suits entered. Half were armed with large rifles, which they leveled at him with unwavering stances. The rest, medical staff he assumed, slowly moved closer to the bed to begin collecting the wires and cables, and finally ending the cacophony of alarms.
Through this, the man remained still, despite his fight/flight response going crazy. The restraint largely came because they were clearly terrified of him, or at least the medical staff. Their hands were visibly shaking as they moved around him, one of them pausing to remove a few patches that had remained on his chest and side when the wires had been ripped free.
Completing their task, the group quickly departed the room, the door sealing with a mirrored hiss from its opening, and the sound of the airlock decontamination cycle could be heard. The man took a few deep breaths, not entirely sure he was willing to remain trapped in the room. His musings were broken when the airlock’s standard cycle sounded again, the inner door opening to reveal two creatures, still in hazmat suits, carrying his washed and neatly folded clothes.
“Well, how about that.” He muttered. The duo before him froze, and he noted neither was armed. Raising his arms in a (hopefully) placating manner, he remained at his spot near the foot of the bed. “Easy now…”
His clothes were then rapidly deposited next to him on the bed, and the pair practically ran back to the airlock. Eyes narrowed in mild confusion, he shrugged and slipped into his clothes and felt much better, not being exposed in his entirety to whoever was on the other side of the mirror.
The attire was simple; a medium grey jumpsuit, black boots and gloves, with a dark blue overcoat that reached his knees. Walking up to the mirror, he studied his own reflection in more detail; pale skin, brown hair, and hazel eyes that were a sharp contrast to the faint blue glow hidden deep within them.
The lack of any physical wounds was to be expected for him, rapid healing was just one facet of his, ah, ‘gifts’ from the void. “It would be nice to keep a scar for once.” He mused, rubbing his hairless chin and turned to sit on the bed, legs idly swinging. The aforementioned blue glow intensified slightly as he stared at the window, and nearly toppled off the bed with what he sensed on the other side of the glass.
Outside the quiet room, the observers and other staff were milling about and talking very animatedly, even as they watched his clearly demonstrated boredom. He’d expected there to be people out there. What he hadn’t expected was what those people were. Right outside the window was a bank of desks with computers on them, manned by what appeared to be various canid species and a cougar.
Behind the desks sat a large conference table, surrounded by chairs of various sizes. Two chairs were currently occupied. One by a uniform clad hyena that screamed ‘head honcho’, who was talking to the occupant of the other chair, a grey wolf wearing a long white coat.
Along the back and right wall hung numerous video screens, though their purpose was hard to guess as they were all off at the moment.
Looking to the speaker by the airlock door, his eyes narrowed and he slid to his feet, padding to the intercom and studying the buttons. The words were hardly legible to him, written in a script that was almost similar to some of the languages of old Earth.
“Well, here goes nothing.” He muttered and pressed the big red button right below the speaker. “Hello?”
His extended senses gave him a picture of chaos the instant his voice echoed into the room beyond. The wolf’s mad dash to the outside intercom was amusing, and the flustered animal began to speak, the growled words familiar from before.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” The man shook his head, tapping his right ear with a finger. “Is there any remote chance that you understand me at all?”
The wolf was clearly confused and a bit irritated, so it turned to the cougar at the nearest desk. The cougar shrugged, speaking something the intercom didn’t catch. This seemed to make the wolf even more irate, raising its arms out in front like it was yelling. The action also cut off the string of sounds. The cougar was clearly upset, teeth flashing with the reply.
The man perked as an idea struck him, and he pressed the intercom button, “Helloooo.”
All eyes were on him, and he pointed at the outside intercom, raising his right arm and opening and closing his hand like one would a sock puppet. The wolf hit the button and started speaking, but stopped when the man inside stepped back.
This time it was his turn to be irate, and he thumped the glass. “No you idiot, keep talking.” He then brought both hands up and with the puppeteer open/close gesture, made it look like his hands were talking to each other. Then he pointed at the cougar and wolf.
This garnered him a set of very confused looks from every animal present, and when no one spoke, he dropped his head forward into the glass with a thump, his defeated sigh inaudible to the outside room.
Closing his eyes, he missed the cougar pushing from its chair and standing at the intercom. That is, until it spoke. And the wolf spoke back. The two voices were a stark contrast to each other. The wolf was gruff and growly, whereas the cougar’s was smooth and graceful.
Turning his attention to the intercom, he began to meditate, pulling on the void to focus and clarify the sounds he was hearing. Language, no matter the origin, has a pattern; consonants and vowels, nouns and verbs, a (usually) consistent sentence structure, and an order of emphasis.
The conversation went on for over an hour, when finally, “…don’t need vending machines down here! This is a top secret facility, we can’t have people in and out all day to keep them stocked for all the diets present.”
“How else are we going to keep ourselves fed and sane on long shifts? We’re allowed food down here, just not when we have an active quarantine.” There was an odd inflection in the wolf’s voice at the end.
“It’s called a lunch box! You make a meal at home, and you scan it through security, and then you eat it when you’re hungry.” The cougar countered.
The bickering went back and forth like this for another few minutes, until the man couldn’t take it anymore and smashed the talk button on his side. “Alright, alright, will you two stop arguing about the vending machines?”
Dead silence followed. Slowly, the two animals who had been arguing turned to stare into the room at the man inside. Wide eyed, terrified, ears laid back, and jaws hanging open, the two animals couldn’t believe what they had just heard.
He would have laughed, had he not been focusing on their words. “Uh… You two still there? Hello?”
The cougar recovered first, “Uh, yes, we’re still here. You just caught us by surprise, is all.”
“Yeah, I tend to do that. All your talk about food is making me realize I haven’t eaten since, uh, I can’t remember when I ate last.”
“Right. Um… What can you eat?” The wolf spoke this time.
“I can eat almost anything. It’s not about what the food is made of, as much as how much energy I can get out of it. I could probably get enough energy from a pack of batteries.”
“How… I mean… Food, right, we’ll get on that.” The cougar and wolf both turned to look at the hyena, who was currently trying not to choke on its coffee after laughing at the pair’s dumfounded expressions. The outside talk button had been released, the short exchange lost through the window.
The sudden silence was a bit disturbing, and the man’s arms raised and dropped to smack on his legs in irritation. “Great talk, guys. Win big out there.” He muttered to himself.
** **
Food came in the form of a stack of granola and protein bars passed through the airlock, and it was eaten in a rather disturbing fashion to the animals observing. Instead of tearing apart the wrappers and chewing, like most would expect, the man simply placed his hand on the box and absorbed the useable energy straight into his arm.
The result was a pile of ash and indigestible materials. As it was removed from the room, the wolf’s voice came over the intercom. “Goodness, did you even taste anything?”
“No, but I was really hungry, so I just wolfed it down.” The thump of the wolf’s head against the glass made him laugh, “I thought you’d get a kick out of that.”
“No, but if you had said that out here, you would have gotten a kick out of it.”
“Well, thank goodness for six inches of solid glass and steel. I’m quaking in my boots here.”
The wolf rolled its eyes, “Since we’re on talking terms, the commander wants to have a formal briefing and introduction tomorrow morning.”
“What time is it now?”
“Eleven at night.”
“That’s, uh, helpful? I think? I need a reference for your time scale.”
“You’ve been up for a little over two hours now. It’ll be around another nine hours before everyone will be here and ready.”
Thinking on the times described, the man looked at the ceiling in thought. “So, alright, your time is about the same as back home. Shouldn’t be too hard to adapt to.”
Extending his senses again, the man peered into the room to find the wolf and cougar were the only two present. “How long was I unconscious?”
The two animals shared a brief glance, and then the cougar walked over. “You were brought in about midway through our shift this morning, so about sixteen hours, give or take a bit?”
“The last thing I remember is a terrified cat, and hurting all over.”
“Ah, yes. That cat’s mate hit you over the head with a bat. It looked pretty brutal until we realized you were slowly healing yourself.”
“A blow to the head, on top of the hell I’ve been through the last few days? Sixteen hours sounds a bit short, to be honest.” The man rubbed his chin, brow furrowed as he tried to figure out the foggy memories up until that cat. “I remember seeing the explosion from my ship, walking a long distance in tall grass. Ah hell, you didn’t happen to find a body out in that field did you?”
“A body? Uh, one moment.” The com went dead, and through the window the cougar and wolf could be seen getting into a surprisingly heated argument. At one point, they both gestured towards something to the left of the window.
Having released the intercom button, his eyes narrowed as he focused in that direction. Attempting to peer further through the walls and window proved to be more difficult than anticipated, and he had to stop before he could see the other quarantine room.
“I’m going to meditate until this meeting in the morning.” The man turned away from the window before they could see his bloody nose or the grimace from the headache his attempted snooping had caused.
The response was rather quick, “If you say so. Cath and I will be here all night, howl if you need anything.”
The man didn’t respond, and to the amazement of the two animals, took a cross-legged position about a foot above the ground and stayed there until morning.