Déjà Vu

Chapter 1: Déjà Vu

***

All was dark.

There was nothing.

Nothing but the impending blackness, the silence. The void of unknown.

The darkness was murderous, the silence deafening. The nothingness was filled with so much; it would explode at any second. It was maddening – what lay beyond it? What was it? Where was it? Why was the darkness, the silence, the void – the nothingness – here?

Just as it rose to the point beyond being bearable, just as the intoxicating lack of substance, volume – anything – grew to the point of burning curiosity and its very existence – the silence was shattered like the fragile, intricate glass of a church window.

“…it seems to have worked…”

“…victory for the corporation…”

“…should be fully functional in a few…”

Like a thick, damp morning mist, voices drifted in through the edges of consciousness, defining the boundaries of the void…and gradually demolishing them. They grew louder, louder, louder still; they were soon deafening – though, oddly, not painful.

Then all became clear.

The lights above were astonishingly bright, glaring down through his eyelids furiously. He opened his eyes slowly, and ended up having to close them again hastily when they were met with nothing but searing white. Slowly, surely, as the voices cooed and soothed him, convincing him it was alright, he was safe, there was nothing to worry about, he opened his eyes again, cautious of the blinding white.

As he stared up, squinting through the obnoxious brightness, he saw people standing over him, staring at him from every direction above him, encompassing him. They all seemed interested at the very least, intrigued by his every movement. It was them he noticed. With every movement he made – clenching and unclenching a fist, blinking, moving his head about – there was no sensation.

He couldn’t feel a thing at all.

After a moment he sat up effortlessly, letting the images of his surroundings seep in as the dark imprints from the lights slowly faded from his vision. This place was familiar. He was sitting on an operating bench, surrounded by men and women in white trench-coats, in a large room littered with unnecessarily large amounts of scientific apparatus. He took a deep breath to discover what it smelled like – only to find that, along with his sensation, his sense of smell apparently wasn’t working either. He frowned. What was wrong with him?

A rather excited scientist rudely entered his field of vision, babbling in an elevated pitch. “Mr Mishima, welcome back! We’re so relieved to see you’ve regained consciousness! We didn’t think we’d be able to bring you out of it this time…but you’re here, and everything is working perfectly!”

He scowled more. “No it’s not, I can’t feel or smell a thing! It’s like I’m half-dead.”

Everyone exchanged glances, and suddenly, he felt incredibly nervous. He’d already observed some of himself from the corner of his eye; he’d seen his lower legs quickly – blue slacks, black shoes – and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He felt alright, though his literal sense of touch seemed not to work. Again, he closed and flexed a fist, only this time, he looked down at it.

His eyes widened.

His hands were metal. Solid, shiny, cold metal. Every digit had been carefully constructed to be a perfect, metallic representation of his hands. No wonder he couldn’t feel a thing.

He looked down over his arms, and pressed a hand to his chest. Metal. Metal, metal, metal. The reflection of his face against a nearby window revealed some level of relief – he looked the same as he remembered before; mildly aged face, slightly receded hairline, dark widow’s peak, the segmented scar across his cheeks. But below his neck, his body was completely mechanised. He could see, beneath the blue pinstriped t-shirt, that every detail was perfect; but this wasn’t his body. This wasn’t his body.

Confused, concerned, on the verge of panic, he whipped his attention back to the man that first addressed him. He needed answers. Now.