The room filled with the sound of alarms blaring.
"Get up," the girl said, her voice strange and eerie.
"Who," Ananta said, his voice weak and rasping from decades of disuse, "Are you?"
"I'm here to help. Get up," she insisted, turning to leave.
"I," Ananta forced out, "Can't move."
She stared at him from under her hood, a strange glow illuminating her face. "Why not?"
"Dis… use?" he offered, and tried to push himself up, arms trembling. The girl stood for a moment, in disbelief? Anger? The glare of the lights behind her made everything fuzzy, sharp. "Who… are you?" he asked again when she said nothing, and fell back onto the nightstand, body shaking uncontrollably.
She stood for a moment more, silent, and lifted her hood.
There, on her forehead, was an eye - a third one, glittering and blinking in the doorway. Ananta had a sudden sense, a feeling of strange familiarity, and then - he was gone.
Back - [where?] somewhere new, but old, a room, but not, because a room could not contain something as incomprehensible, as infinite as -
And then the girl dropped her hood, covering the eye, and Ananta could see her face, eyes adjusting to the glaring light. "Let's go," was all she said, and Ananta dragged his way to the doorway. "You really can't walk?" Ananta shook his head. The girl cursed under her breath. "They said…" She cursed again and kneeled, offering her back to him. "I'll carry you."
He dragged his child's body across the floor, stirring clouds of dust, arms shaking with every pull. "Help," he whispered, and she turned to see his body, fallen pathetically on the ground - so different from what he used to be, from how he used to see it all, so far away from the worms and crawling animals and people -
Ah.
And then the girl was there, lifting his husk of a body onto her back, carrying him out. "Shit, you weigh nothing."
"Dis… use," he said again, sure of it this time. "Where… are we?"
"You don't remember?"
"No."
"Shit. You're supposed to…" she shook her head, sprinting faster down the hallway. "You'll remember eventually. It just takes time."
Ananta, with a strange confidence, one that seemed to predate everything he knew, shook his head. "No," he said, his voice a little stronger. "I won't."
"How do you know?" the girl asked, pointed, doubtful, and Ananta found himself wordless again, mouth struggling to form familiar sounds, familiar expressions.
"I… just do. Something…" he tapped his head, arm flailing as he did so. "Here. I… know."
She craned her neck to look at him, the faintest hint of a smile on her face. "That means there's a chance."
He laughed drily. "A… paradox."
"How so?" They were almost out.
"If I… do remember… it means… I'm wrong. If I don't, I'm right."
"Just because you're wrong doesn't mean you won't remember."
He shook his head. "I'm never… wrong."
She laughed as they came to a door, metal, covered in sensors and wires and technology. "He did say that." The door seemed to explode outwards, shattering slowly and covering the ground outside in sparks and pieces of metal. Sunlight touched Ananta's face for the first time, warm and gentle to the touch, and he smiled.
"Who?"
She looked back at Ananta, pointed to her hood, to the third eye on her forehead, faintly glowing. "Him." In front of them, a building exploded.