My bones are cold. My skin still embers lava. My arms turn obsidian with their collision, I'm stuck in place. It travels from my arms, wrapping around my chest like a vice. I couldn't remember where I was, how I got here, or why my head felt like it had been split open and Frankenstein back together. Breathe, I told myself. It was harder here, the air felt foreign, it didn't belong to me. I open my eyes in quick, the world coming into focus in bursts. Stone walls, dirt-streaked floors, the ugly scent of blood and smoke. My body is heavy and unresponsive, like a fish swimming in mud.
Why can't I remember?
The question stabbed through the haze in my mind, living dormant in the sickening void where my memories should've been. I reach for something—anything—familiar. A face. A name. A reason why my chest felt tight with dread.
Kach.
It was all I had. My name. The one thing that remained in the wreckage of my brain. My first name is the only thing that remains mine.
My thoughts fractured as a sound broke the stillness—a low moan, slowly growing. My eyes—free from paraplegia—shift as I see him. A man, not far in age from myself, lies feet away, his body twisted awkwardly against the debris. Blood trickled down his temple, his fingers twitching, collecting the blood like a storm drain. I don't know him. I didn't know anything. But as his eyes fluttered open and locked onto me, a primal sensation surged in my heart, like oil to machine, and my blood started pumping to prime me.
He moves first.
His hand shoots out, grasping a blade lying by his feet. The motion was sharp, deliberate, and without hesitation. The knife gleamed in the dim light, shimmering out symbols engraved on the side, just as alien as anything else I now know. He rises to his knees, transitioning to his feet. His stare is cold and calculated. But I cannot move.
Get up, my mind tortures me. Move. My heart listens, but my muscles fail me, made of obsidian, unyielding. My brain races through the fog of my mind, torn between the instinct to survive and the terrible confusion. The man takes a step closer, his legs limp, he rolls his right wrist, he is hurt. In his left hand, he awkwardly grips the knife. I can read his mind, his eyes held no secret. He didn't care who I was, I was alive, and that made me a threat.
Move.
I repeat this useless command until my fingers twitch. Too slow. He lunges at me.
Time fractures above me, his body closing the distance with terrifying speed, and my own finally responded. My arm shoots up, cracking the obsidian as it goes. I catch his knife in my hand, the pain remains void in my state. His strength drove me to the floor, the blade hovering inches from my throat. It looks as if I am trying to choke myself. The pressure cooker in my chest reaches its limit. His face twisted in fury, veins bulging as he pressed harder. I slowly lose consciousness as my body takes control of me.
My body moved like it remembered something I didn't. My hand balls to a fist stealing the knife, rotating it until he is pulling away from me. I don't let go. I slam my head with the force of a bull right into his nose, he feels it. He stumbles backward tripping over my legs, I follow through, driving my knee into his ribs until I reverse our situation.
He gasped, the air knocked out of him, but I didn't stop. The coldness of his gaze is gone, replaced by the primal eyes of a boy. Scared. Pain has started to resurface in my empty mind, it hurts. I need to finish quick. I now hold the blade in my left hand, non-dominate but still deadly. The blade is foreign in my grasp, but I hold it tight, my breath ragged as I level it at his throat. For a moment, neither of us moved.
What am I doing?
The question rings in my head, bouncing off the other unanswered that bring my sanity a new challenge. The eyes of a man I don't know flicked from the knife to my face, an expression wavering between anger, fear, and relief.
At that moment, I realized I was not sure which of us was more afraid.
The knife doesn't fit my hand. Its weight pulling at my resolve as much as my trembling fingers. The man's blood-smeared face stared at me, and for a fleeting second, I thought he looked human—more human than I expected. Fear conterted his features, his chest palpitations rivet his body, teaching me his fear and I ride his body.
"Don't move," I said, my voice hoarse and unsteady. My blade shakes inches from his throat. His lips twisted into something between a grin and a grimace. He tilts up his head, coming closer to my knife. Gravity pulls the blood from his forehead trickling down, filling his pores. The blood on his teeth darkening his smile. "You don't even understand why you're doing this?" he replies, genuinely baffled.
I froze. My grip tightened on the knife, showing him my resolve. He sees right through me, his eyes cut sharper than any knife as he exposes me.
"I don't—" I start at words, faltering at every syllable. The truth is raw, festing beneath my surface. I didn't know why I was here, why I was holding this blade, or why I hadn't already walked away. His pity leaves a strong impression on me.
He laughed—a low and wet sound. He doesn't speak but my brain fills in the gaps. Your're just fumbling in the dark, doing what your body tells you to do. Some instinct buried so deep you don't even know if it's yours.
"Shut up," I hissed, pressing the knife closer. His grin didn't waver, if anything it improved.
"You gonna do it, Captain?" he sneered, his tone mocking me. "Gonna kill me and prove you're just like me?"
My teeth clenched, my breaths coming fast. "I said shut up." His grin is now gone, replaced by a cold stare, sharp as knife. His eyes show pity. The word Captain send a jolt right through me. For just long enough for the tides to turn.
"You are not like me." He grits down on his teeth bringing the last of his strength out of him, in an instant his hands encounter mine. He has my wrist, the knife clatters to the ground as he twisted my arm and shoved me backward, as I had previously done to him. But I hit the floor harder, impact knicking the air out my system. My gears shift tightly. He is on me before I recover, his weight pressing down on my chest, he is heavier than before. His hands wrapping around my throat.
"See?" he growled, his face inches from mine, his breath hot and foul as his warm blood mixes homogenize with mine. He can't aford to talk, his tank is running low but… He finds it integral he prove himself to me. My vision is blurred as he squeezed the life from me, my view warping inward. I clawed at his arms, pealing his flesh off with my now jagged fingernails. It is not enough. My other hand reaches for a tool, the knife is out of reach, I grab a piece of broken chair. I hit him on his side as hard as I can. My mind racing as I gasped for air.
Move. Fight. The words thundered in my head, my body isn't as strong as my brain.
You're going to die if you don't kill him.
The thought hits harder than brick, cutting through the haze, my oxygen is focused on supporting this narrative in my last moments. My hands find his wrists, trying to pry them off me, but he only pressed harder, and my grip weaker. He is taunting me with words as his strength returns, I can't hear him. Maybe it's my body's last act of protecting me from the coward I am.
No.
A wave of desperation and fury surge inside me. My grip returns, and I managed to shift my weight, just enough to give me a sliver of leverage. My knee pushes him closer as I try to slide under him. His face shows panic, but it isn't enough. My mind screamed: Do it. Do it now.
And then, the weight vanished.
I think myself, dead. My mind gave up, following my body. But my vision cleared, I saw him—suspended in the air, his legs kicking weakly.
A man stands behind him. He is old and large, he stands well over 6 feet tall, full to the brim with muscles and fat that give him emence weight. His massive hand wrapped around the around my attackers skull. His expression was calm, almost bored, annoyed mostly, and if this required no effort at all.
"I see you need some help my friend." He laughs. Who the hell is this guy. My questioning stops there, the devil himself could have saved me and I would kill his ring. I am glad to be alive. I am reminded of that fact.
The old man's hand tensed. There was a sickening crack, and the mans body whet limp. Blood spared across the room in a thick gradient before his body is released to the ground. I can't care. I coughed, rolling onto my side, my throat raw. My chest heaving, hard in relief than distress. My gaze focuses on the corpse, the blood pooling beneath it, and then to the old man. He looms over me, his shadow captures my whole body in its wake.
"You looked like you needed a hand," he said, his voice as casual as if we were discussing the weather. My face looks at him in awe, confusion, and fear. His face twists in response to mind. "I'm sorry if you were all good, I don't mean to steal your kill."
This guy must be fucking crazy.
I tried to speak, my voice failing me. All I do could do was nod, mind still in a blur of adrenaline and disbelief.
The old man knelt, his massive hand, soaked in blood, gripping my should as soft as a one holds up the back head of a baby.
"Next time," he said, voice dropping low, "don't hesitate." This mans eyes move different. I turn off my mind and body.
"The name's Prime, and you are?" He smiles to me, as I sit dead-pan.
He walks away from me before I respond. He comes back holding a man by the neck, as a cat would so holding their kitty, covered in liters of blood, much more than any one human has, much less live without. The man breathes, barely.
"Wanna help me interrogate this guy?" Prime laughs. My mind clears and the fog disperse. And as if routine, I come back to the same question I held moments earlier.
Where the fuck am I?