First, there was silence.
Total, suffocating, almost sacred silence. I was back in a complete, perfect, frozen void.
Then a sensation, rhythmic, harmonious, simple.
My heart beat slowly, serenely, the sound reassuring, soothing. Each beat echoed in my ears like a thumping drum, as if my own body wanted to prove its existence to me.
And slowly the world began to exist, to take shape around me.
I felt the icy air pass through my nostrils and lungs and then over my skin, the almost imperceptible current passing through the room. This was new. It was too precise. As if the air had become more... dense. More real.
It was strangely pleasant.
Then came the light. A diffuse, pale glow that filtered through my closed eyelids.
My eyes opened slowly. The light hit me. Not painfully. No, it was something else. It seemed to vibrate. I could almost feel its texture, its color. Emerald clarity floated through the room, resonating within me.
I blinked. Once.
Twice.
The world came back in pieces, the table, the metal ceiling, the distant sound of a drip.
I was dizzy, disoriented, as if I'd just woken up from a very long dream - which, as it happened, I had.
I tried to move a finger. Nothing happened.
Then a hand.
Still nothing. My body refused to obey me. My mind seemed to float half out of me, like a consciousness escaped from a dream that had lasted too long.
Gradually, my other senses returned. Others less pleasant, cobbled-together, clumsy.
The smell of antiseptics, sweat and other bodily fluids invaded the room.
The touch of icy metal against my back.
The metallic taste of dried liquid on my lips.
A slight headache and fever. But it was nothing serious, I could bear it and above all it was proof that I was alive.
I moved my fingers and this time my body responded with the soft jingling of chains on my wrist.
I was still tied, but for some reason, these chains seemed so... futile.
I clenched my hand slightly and with a snap, one of the rings cracked.
My movement wasn't particularly worked out, I hadn't paid any more attention than I needed to move my arm, I just had the feeling that it would be enough, as if it were in my nature.
I broke the other chains.
The noise they made as they fell to the floor was deafening, as if coming from all directions at once.
I tried to stand up. This time, my arm moved.
Slowly, shakily. But it moved.
I raised myself on one elbow, then straightened up completely. Sweat beaded on the back of my neck, as cold as the room.
My body may have been fragile, but I felt lighter than ever and strangely stable.
I sat down and began to explore within myself when a sound of footsteps stopped me. It was discreet but confident, echoing down the corridor. They were approaching. The scientist.
I didn't even bother to move my head and waited quietly for him, revelling in the click of the lock and the metal handle. The door opened slowly. And in the frame, he appeared.
The man in the lab coat. Cool. Master of the situation. He stopped, visibly surprised to see me sitting free of my chains, but the surprise was short-lived. or was it just for me?
He didn't panic. He smiled, as if he knew it would happen. He smiled, as if he knew it would happen.
"Impressive, 37. It looks like you survived." His words seemed muffled, blocked, Something in me was strange.
I opened my mouth to speak but there was nothing to say nothing to do except, kill him.
I want to kill him
My vision blurred. My breath quickened.
And without understanding why, my body rose. All on its own.
My muscles moved without me. My gaze hardened. My back straight, my chin slightly up. It was as if...
I wasn't there anymore.
"You look... different," the man resumed, frowning slightly. "You look at me like... ."
I threw myself at him.
I felt no euphoria, no hatred, simply no emotion coloring my mind.
I stopped right in front of him and the next moment my voice resonated with macabre pain.
"You were right." The man didn't seem to understand, nor did I for that matter. The flash of incomprehension in the scientist's eyes was amusing.
He took a step back.
I took a step towards him.
My mouth opened.
"I really want to kill you right now."
He opened his mouth to speak and after a single sound, with a sharp crash, his throat broke.
My fist had shattered his throat and a golden light emanated from it.
My voice unfurled again in a solemn tone.
"And thanks to you, I can."
I watched his body fall limply, slowly. As if gravity hesitated to take him back.
His body hit the ground with a thud.
Then silence.
And then realization.
What had happened?
My body became heavy again, all my muscles trembling frantically.
It was as if, in that instant, the bubble blocking my emotions had burst.
I was coming to.
I've just killed someone.
My whole body seemed to freeze, my head felt like it was going to explode and yet I felt nothing, nothing.
Silence, once again, fell over the room. But this time, it wasn't a soothing silence. It was an abyss. Cold, sharp, inhuman.
I looked down at my hands.
They were trembling.
Drops of blood ran slowly down my knuckles, tracing red lines on my skin, this man's blood.
But why didn't I feel anything? No relief. No triumph. Not even fear.
Nothing but emptiness.
An unbearable emptiness and yet it wasn't the same, for a moment I wasn't the same person.
I stepped back, almost stumbling, as if the ground had changed beneath my feet. I put my hand against the cold wall, panting.
My throat tightened.
My head was spinning.
Blurred, incomprehensible memories danced at the edge of my consciousness, and the wall of repressed sensations flooded me in an instant.
Everything from fear to sadness, pain to despair, anger to pride.
All the emotions I no longer felt flowed freely in a masterful cacophony of emotions fighting each other and the void.
I fell to my knees, both physically and mentally, and let myself be devoured by this raging sea of thoughts.