"Hans."
"Ciel."
"Cyra."
Zen was alone, back in his adult body. In the middle of nowhere, red rock stretched across the horizon as far as his vision allowed him. The memory he experienced was anything but pleasant, but he wasn't disappointed either. He could barely remember what Cyra, Hans and Ciel's faces looked like, a repressed memory, a childhood trauma.
If anything it was good to know he still remembered their faces, if only vaguely.
It only had to be ignored for a moment longer.
Zen looked down at his own body finding it significantly skinnier than when he was at the bottom of the mine. His former slight build was nowhere to be seen, as he could feel his ribs even through his now torn and tattered uniform.
'Wait. Bottom of mine, what was I doing there again?' Zen was genuinely perplexed. 'There were robots, swarming me like ants but.' Zen made a full circle, scanning the endless horizon for threats as good as his diminished state allowed him.
"They're gone." A frown appeared on his face, he was happy to find himself with at least a shallow pulse but the circumstances were just too weird.
"There must've been hundreds of them. They couldn't disappear just like that, I need to find them before they hurt someone else." His voice came out raspy, putting even the heaviest of smokers to shame.
looking down at his own footprints drawing an eerily straight line towards nothing in particular, As he sets his first step toward his previous path he falls to the ground almost immediately.
His senses were slowly returning to him as one sensation made him incapable of setting out what needed to be done, his feeling had returned. And with it, pain. A feeling of an all encompassing dizziness messed with his sense of balance, the feeling of his mind beginning to be clouded in a layer of fog surprised Zen as it made the final push to ground its host.
Zen let out a shocked yelp as he tumbled onto the hard rock, his legs burning up. It felt like a thousand needles were violently stabbing each and every inch, he failed to notice them when he wasn't moving but now they threatened to overwhelm his senses and rational thinking.
Zen feared a debilitating injury or worse. With the last bit of sense he had left he composed himself as he removed his shoes. Almost immediately after removing the first one a fluid rushed out of the now soaked shoe, not focusing on it he moved on to the second shoe soaked in the same fluid as the first.
His socks stuck to his skin like glue. It hurts to remove them but he must. It feels like ripping the bandaid of an open wound as Zen winces in pain, he is sure that with the socks some skin came with it. Drenched in the same fluid as the shoes he throws the socks to the side.
Gazing at his bare feet, Zen struggles to keep the contents of his stomach inside. He failed spectacularly as he rolled to face down as all that came out was the gal residing in the empty stomach.
The soles of both feet were covered from toe to heel in blisters and skin peeled like they were put on a grater for a long time. Blood was pouring out quite profusely. The foot itself looked like it was submerged for days at a time and was sticky to the touch.
Zen gags at the sight of mangled flesh that his feet have become, his shoes filled with pus and blood, his socks drenched in the same liquid and his feet severely wounded. He lets himself fall back breathing heavily, the pain is constant and nagging. But not debilitating just yet.
'How much blood did I lose? How long haven't I had water? I'm so fucking hungry. How, how long have I been out?' Zen looked at his shoes, at least a liter or two had accumulated inside the once trusty boot. Zen cursed but was starting to become too weak to properly put some energy behind it.
Zen remains sane enough to frantically search for his personal device, he feels his consciousness start to slip as he finds the device.
Somehow the device had some juice left in the tanks as it beeped to life. He almost falters as he barely manages to activate its emergency beacon by pressing the unlock button in rapid succession.
Zen has just enough energy to see that the signal has successfully been activated, the device beeps a couple times before the screen turns black without warning. Clicking the on button did nothing as the device indicated its battery life had ended. In the end the signal was active for a whole seven seconds.
Zen feels dread overtake his sense as everything fades to black, struggling against it uselessly in one final desperate assault.
Zen falls in a dreamlike state, he is somewhat aware of his circumstances but he knows he's not. He's standing over his own body looking down at his own sorry state, he had truly no clue as to how long he had been out of it. But it looked quite dire, perhaps he had been walking for days. Maybe weeks even.
He also had no clue how he had survived the stampede of robots, each one far superior in strength than himself. They were not easy to outrun, nor were they easy to fully destroy. Their tenaciousness was as powerful as one programmed it, and the chances of them being programmed to quickly give up were minimal at best.
Zen looked around but found only the horizon to greet his gaze, but out there in the distance a small spot was slowly getting bigger. A small dot to break the monotonous red rock and blue sky
'Rescue? Bandits? More Robots? Either way is a win, I'll either get salvation or a swift death, it could be worse.' Zen didn't feel his pain in his current out of body hallucination, nor did he desire to.
His body was merely filling in the blanks his senses were missing and projecting it as a hallucination, at least that was the only conclusion that made some sense even if remotely.
'I'm not dead yet at least, but I'd give myself an hour tops before I bleed out."
Zen knew his own thoughts were eerily morbid but he was in a strange aura of calm, some sort of acceptance maybe. Nobody could say for sure, if I'm dead for less than maybe five minutes I'm sure they could revive me but that came with extreme risks.
'Brain damage from oxygen deprivation to the brain, extreme muscle atrophy. Though I'm already suffering from that so I guess I don't need to bother with that. Hell some people even reported significant personality switches, let's just hope help comes five minutes early not late.'
The spot had grown exponentially in the meantime, it was approaching and fast. Too fast and direct in fact, it must be purposefully approaching because of the distress signal I send out. 'Still.' Zen looked down at his own almost lifeless body. 'My eyes are closed, big chance it's just my mind playing some sort of trick on me to keep me from giving up.'
As the spot got closer Zen could make the rough silhouette of the X3 rushing to the scene, its sleek design splitting the air in front of it like a hot knife through butter. It slowed down to below Mach 1 to not kill me with its sonic boom, god knows that a nudge in the wrong place could be the drop that would overflow the bucket.
Zen watched impartially as the craft made an extremely swift landing, the sound of the sonic boom it made earlier could not be heard but the pressure wave certainly could be seen.
A few familiar figures jumped out. Effy, Robert and Doc swiftly took their place by my side, their mouths moving but no sound could be heard. 'Seems my hearing is impaired, still how am I even seeing this? It would be very cruel of my subconscious to make me hallucinate my own rescue while I'm dying, but then again I wouldn't put it past it either.'
Doc jammed something in my side in a not so gentle fashion. My body gave no reaction, my breathing had slowed down to such a degree that at first glance I appeared dead.
'But if I was I wouldn't be standing here watching over myself… I think maybe this is purgatory, the afterlife. If so, it sucks.' Zen was pulled from his own thought as Effy finished attaching the life monitoring system to my wrist as it beeped to life, indicating a shallow but still present pulse.
"We've got a pulse!" Effy exclaimed. Zen felt his current form falter, apparently the thing jabbed in his side woke him up a little he was unable to hear until now. The sound of her voice filled Zen with something indescribable, he felt relieved if even slightly.
Doc crawled over my body and forcibly opened my eyelids, shining a bright light in both my eyes. He looked pleased, but not pleased enough. "Stimulant reaction is good, prepare for transfer." His voice held a certain urgency, the impatience of the entire ordeal emanated from the Doctor.
He could feel it ever so slightly as Doc and Robert lifted him on a stretcher, the feeling of pain was slowly becoming more and more pronounced. The comfort of his subconscious could only go so far.
In the final moments before Zen's out of body experience ended he faltered, a glimpse of something shiny over the horizon. A silhouette of a man, no a robot.
'Had they followed me? Are they going to attack the X3? Doubt it, the X3 can defend itself.' Zen tried to focus but with his consciousness returning to the discomfort of his own body he failed to focus in on the anomaly.
'Maybe I'm just seeing things. I should rest, I've done enough for today at least. I just want to close my eyes, only for a minute.' With that final fleeting thought Zen felt the darkness engulf him once more as he fell into another deep sleep. He was no stranger to dreamless sleep, he experienced it numerous times already. This one, the cryo sleep and one more, but Zen couldn't remember what or when it was.
All he knew was that the feeling was no longer foreign.