Pandemonium, pandemonium surrounded me. Nearly every survivor knew that the segments that had tested past models had not always met with wonderful fates, but sitting on a three foot high mound of grey matter, bone, and blood is something that nobody was prepared for.
It took me a few minutes to regain my senses, but when I did, I understood why I heard gagging. I'm more accustomed to grey matter and such things, but this was just excessive. I have a steel stomach, but this disgusted me. Then I thought of the lives that were needed to create this and almost started crying. I'm accustomed to grey matter, but I still despise death.
Looking around, I saw most of my segment on this mound with me, crying, throwing up into their suits, pissing themselves, or doing something similar. I felt weak and simply collapsed, which I only recognized as a mistake after being stabbed in the thigh by a femur. FUCK, it hurts.
I'm on the ground and out of breath from the pain when I hear Thompson muttering, "Josiah, Josiah, Josiah…" It takes a minute, but I look up and see Thompson holding somebody's face. He hasn't stopped muttering, and the pain has made me irritable. I try to tell him to stop, but as I do, I slam my fist on the ground in anger and get a fistful of what I think are teeth. It hurts, but my thigh hurts more.
I've hauled myself over to a corner to nurse my wounds when I realize that infection is likely and that the foreign blood could have horrible consequences.
I have to go rinse it out, but as I think about the building outside of this room, I realize that somebody should have come to fetch us. Surely somebody is still alive. Now I feel sick and realize that I really need a restroom so that I can vomit and wash out my leg and hand.
I took off my hood, so I don't have to worry about throwing up in my suit, but I still need the restroom. I rush out of the door and I'm met with trees. I was trying to enter the suit room, but I was met with trees.
I open and close the door, check the room, and make sure that this is the door that should lead to the room that we suited up in, and it is. It should lead to the room we suited up in and the restroom, but it doesn't. It leads to a forest. I was on the verge of passing out before, and this influx of emotions pushed me over the edge.
I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke, most of the survivors had either passed out or gathered outside. There were 4 members in my segment aside from me, so there ought to be 7 of us counting Thompson, his assistant, and myself. I'm still in pain, but it's dulled down quite a bit.
Luckily, I landed on my back when I lost consciousness, so the bone that had pierced my skin had not been pushed further in when I fell. My leg looks much better than than I would have guessed. It is still very black, and there is a bit of puss in it, but it could be worse.
I don't think that it will bleed profusely if I remove the bone, but I'm better off safe than sorry. I look at the mound in the middle of the room and feel light-headed again. I can't look at it, so I focus my attention outside of the door that I'm just inside of.
Outside, I see Nuñez, Hansson, and more of my segment. I don't know when they left the room, but they're covered in blood as well. Luckily, though, I don't think that they're injured in any way. Nuñez is one of the only ones conscious, so I call her over. "Nuñez, help me up." She gets up slowly and comes over to me.
"You 'kay?"
"Yeah... No... Well, I got a part of somebody's thigh in mine, so no." She groans and looks a bit sick. "Sorry, are you squeamish?"
"No, it's... fine."
"'Aight, well help me up then." She relents in a small voice and helps me up. "D'you know what happened?"
"No, and I don't know where we are either."
"What do you mean 'where we are'?"
"The building's gone, and I don't recognize these trees."
"What? The buildi.." The words get caught in my throat as I look at the door I came out of and realize that she's right. The testing room and the partial remains of some of the walls of the neighboring rooms are all that remain of the building. The trees aren't the same either. They're not even the same kind as the ones near the facility.
I just manage to stutter, "... my god." So that's why she looks so despaired. We have a pile of bodies, the D.E.M.E.T.E.R. malfunctioned, and we're stranded somewhere. I nearly fall again, but she holds me up.
"Yeah, I know it's bad... We should get your leg patched up."
"Y-Yeah." It doesn't hurt very much anymore, but there is a dull pain, and I can't walk right.
"We can wash it off in the river over there..." She points in the direction directly opposite the door at a small knoll. "...but we shouldn't remove it until we have something to patch you up with."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." She helps me over the knoll and into a small creek where the water washes over my suit and washes away the blood and puss on it. I begin to tear off a small part of my bright orange suit so that I can see the injury itself, but it almost looks like I'm not injured.
The skin surrounding the area that the bone had pierced is white, but it still looks healthy. It's almost as if it hadn't torn at all. I'm no medical expert, but it still looks super abnormal.
"Good idea.", she says. I look up at her perplexed. "Use part of your suit to stem the flow of blood from your leg after we pull it out. There might be some first aid back there, but I'm not sure, and if there isn't, then we might not have any other option but to use it."
"Right, that's smart."
She takes a second to respond. "Can you remove it? I just don't... like doing that kind of thing."
"Yeah.", I say as I take hold of it. It feels slimy and disgusts me. I count to three in my head and pull it out. It hurt but only slightly. Nuñez tries to get rid of whatever the blood comes out, but the cloth remains orange. Other than the creek water, my leg is dry.
I looked at it in confusion. The only possible explanation is that My mind exaggerated the amount of pain that I was in when we got here and I was never really injured. But that doesn't make sense. The bone didn't fall when I stood up, and I was incapable of fully extending my leg, so it was genuinely inside of my skin, but I can't think of another explanation.
Actually, come to think of it, my hand has stopped hurting too. It looks just as it had when we were in the facility. Neither my hand nor my leg hurt anymore. I don't think that she noticed, though, since she has yet to remove the cloth from it. She took her hand away when she saw that there wasn't much blood coming out, and then I realized that part of the cloth was still in my leg, and that I am injured.
I thought that I had gone crazy. Imagine somebody healing that fast. She told me that she's going to go see if there's any kind of first aid nearby and left. I nodded and looked back at my leg that had stopped hurting.
I decided to take off the cloth to make sure that nothing had broken off inside, but my earlier suspicions were confirmed, and I was forced to face the truth: I can heal at an incredible rate.
I watch as the flesh flows together like water in a bathtub, just waiting for me to remove anything obstructing its path so that it can come together. It terrifies me.