More Eggpocalypse AU - Sam edition! (Took a lot of liberties with the lore)
Consciousness slips in and out in muddy waves of grey and green, the ebbing and flowing of burning marks press behind his eyes in twisted shapes.
There’s a staticky feel to it, this half consciousness, still mired in sleep and nightmares, just aware enough to know that something is deeply, terribly wrong.
If he still had a body he would say he was burning still, flesh a cold numbness like a heat so fierce that the nerves blanked out; but suspended for eternity. The feeling overwhelms every inch of him until nothing else gets through. If he has ears, he can’t twitch them. If he has eyes, he can’t open them.
He just floats, and slips, and thinks.
And just like that, Sam wakes again.
Memories circle in his head, whirlpools dragging him down and tumbling out of order, gripped with feelings that make his heart ache. It chips through the ice keeping his thoughts frozen.
The trap worked, the explosion caught him up in it. But the wounds followed him, like cursed marks, respawning on a bed already drenched with blood. He had stumbled, dizzy, a pool of crimson sticking to his bare feet as Sam dragged himself through the corridors towards… he’s not sure. An end.
He hadn’t made it. He was hurt too badly, bleeding too much, hidden underground where few would find him. Where fewer would help.
It makes no sense that he can feel anything, no matter how fragmented. He should be dead.
Perhaps instead this is limbo, to be suspended in a half sleep, on the edge of consciousness forever. Never reaching any conclusion, just having to sit with the… with the regret of it all.
But awareness comes in rising tides, now, inescapable. It feels like needles in his ears when he finally hears the high pitched whine ringing in them. Through the ringing Sam picks up a familiar low humming of powered redstone overhead, carrying charge to something. That implies a physical place existing around him, which means he is somewhere, which means: where is he?
Sam hopes vainly that he’s not back in the prison, but his hope is thin. The whole place is strung with redstone wire, and it seems inevitable that he’ll return back there someday, somehow. How long has it been? It feels like an eternity.
How long has Fran been alone?
The thought circles around in his head like a hungry wolf, clawing at his brain. If he stays like this he’ll never know if Ponk kept her alive. If they freed her after Sam died. How long she wondered when he was coming back.
His vision swims and distorts like warped glass, tinted and gelatinous; after a moment, Sam realises he is seeing through some kind of translucent fluid and a thick layer of glass.
Outside, there’s what looks like a standard laboratory. The floor is clean grey tile and the walls are white, lit from below by dim emergency lights, giving him a view of an empty glass tube glinting opposite him. He must be suspended in something similar.
The place tickles him with a strange familiarity, prying open a box in the back of his mind where dark, long forgotten memories start to surface.
His lab. Of course, how could he have forgotten? When had he forgotten that he had stored his original body down here, an extra measure to keep himself safe, wasn’t that the point of making clones in the first place?
Sam knows where he is, now. He knows how to get out. But first, he has to move.
Part of his brain still screams that he should be dead; the part that still feels the phantom hook of a pickaxe in his jaw, and now burn marks branded on his skin, and wounds sliced through flesh dripping blood into matted fur.
He manages a twitch, barely a weak convulsion of his fingers, this body feeling… not lived in. A glove a size too big. But he moves. And it thaws the ice that had been keeping him frozen inside, enough that he starts to slowly, painstakingly raise his arm, reaching up towards the release switch.
When he finally touches it, the click is as loud as thunder, and the hum of the machine shakes through him as it whirrs to life. There is a hiss of decompression, the grate opens and the suspension fluid starts to drain, his feet touching hard metal for the first time in… decades?
He begins to fall under the force of gravity again, first his feet, then his knees, then his shoulder pressed against the glass wall of the stasis tube, slumping limply under his own weight.
He’ll get up in a moment. Just a moment.
He doesn’t get more than a moment; the glass wall slides open, spilling him over the tiles. As he falls something yanks harshly off his face, jerking his head as his hands and knees hit cold, hard tile. Sam sees the oxygen mask dangling from the top of the tube, bouncing with the force of being pulled off. Just looking at it, his lungs burn, taking in a breath of stale air that smells of dust and neglect and old science.
The lights flare on and Sam squeezes his eyes shut with a hiss. Gooseflesh rises on his arms, wet fur puffs up, the cold air and evaporating liquid sapping him of heat.
Slowly and painfully, Sam gets to his feet. His eyes don’t quite adjust, but if he squints hard enough he can block it out, he just has to try not to stumble into everything in his path with how he hasn’t quite connected to his body yet. It takes him a few moments to realise he has his depth perception back.
Limping to the desk, Sam feels twinges of pain, disused muscles reminding him of wounds still fresh in his mind. But there is nothing there when he runs his hands over the skin, not even a scar. This body has never felt the pain he’s lived through. It’s not a comfort.
The display screen is thick with dust that he wipes off with one hand, pulling a disgusted face.
[Chamber 1 empty. Welcome back!]
He swallows a bitter smile and taps at the stiff keyboard.
[Chamber 1 empty. No subject detected inside. Seal anyway?]
He staggers away from the screen and opens the door of the lab, finding that the redstone still works smoothly after all this time.
Out in the corridors, some of the lights are out, degraded and broken. It’s fine. Sam isn’t here to fix the place, he can’t even really remember what’s down here. But he might know the way out. He hopes so anyway. His feet lead him to a set of stairs that will take him up to the surface.
Should have installed an elevator, he thinks dryly.
The fluid drenching him makes the climb slippery and treacherous, but Sam clings to the railing with all his might and starts to make his way up.
He doesn’t stop to rest when he reaches the top, even though his body protests and aches, making every step tingle with pins and needles. Sam fumbles around until he finds the button embedded in the wall, hitting it with a click.
The vault door unlocks in pieces, pistons releasing, and he leans forward before the door is even open to try and catch a breath from the outside, something that isn’t stale, dead air.
The last of the iron blocks fall away, and he steps out on the threshold.
… outside is a nightmare.
The sky is the hellish red of a permanent dusk, clouds hanging thick and heavy overhead, choking out the sun. When he takes a breath, the air tastes strongly of rotten sweetness, cloying on his tongue and so familiar that Sam gags, clamping a hand over his mouth. It burns in his throat. What had once been fields of green grass were withering and dry, turning sickly yellow and brown.
The smell, the rot, he recognises it. The vile perfume of the crimson.
The others failed. The Egg is free.
Sam stares up at the crimson sky as his legs give out.
