1 The Awakenings

Prologue:

Awakening was unfailingly hellish. Lyric Blu woke up gasping, as always. His heartbeat too fast and too loud. He curled like a fetus, feeble and helpless. When his body calmed and readjusted, he looked around. The room appeared well lit, though he had never Awakened to a bright space before. The flow of blood returned to his limbs. He sat up, still in a state of dizziness, then turned to inspect the rest of the room. The walls were blue, or cyan, perhaps. The bed was how it had always been: a solid platform upon which rested a mattress made of strange textile. The whole thing was deceptively comfortable. Across the room was a door to what seemed like a bathroom. He was usually given a bathroom. Once he had not been and was left with no choice but to choose a corner in a room without doors or windows.

At an earlier Awakening, he had decided that whatever he sensed, whatever he felt, was real in the fabric of existence. It had crossed his mind many times that he might be insane or drugged, terminally ill. It hardly mattered. It could not matter while he was held captive in this fashion, kept alone and oblivious. He went to the door, opened and looked through and was pleased that he did, indeed, have a bathroom. This one had not only a sink, and a toilet, but a bathtub. A petite luxury in a melancholic prison.

What else did he have?

There was a bedside cabinet with drawers. Over the cabinet was the usual potato flavoured soup, contained in a dried leafy edible bowl. The first drawer was empty. The second had clothes! A folded black t-shirt and a pair of denim trousers. He grabbed it, dropped it in his excitement, grabbed it again and started putting it on. The clothes fit him perfectly. He had not been allowed to wear any garments since his first Awakening until now. He had begged for it, but his captors neglected him. Dressed now in an earthly attire, he felt more protected and comfortable in his confinement. It was a false comfort he knew, but he had cultivated a sense to relish any luxury, capturing any form of uplift to his self-worth that he could.

Finally, he sat on the bed and had his soup, consuming the bowl as well, more for the differing texture than to fulfil any remnant hunger. Then he began the oldest and most impractical of his exercises: He called out to his captors. He had done this at every Awakening. At his first Awakening, receiving no answer, he had hollered, then cried, then cursed until his voice went missing. He had pounded the walls until his hands bled and became severely swollen.

His captors did not show themselves at all and spoke when they were ready. He remained sealed in his room and their voices came to him from the ceiling. It felt like the whole ceiling was talking to him.

They had asked him questions. Easy ones in the beginning.

How old was he?

Twenty-three, he thought silently. Was he still only twenty-three? How long had they held him captive? They would not answer.

Did he have any family?

A father, long dead, a mother, probably dead, a sister, probably dead.

Did he remember the war?

Foolish question. How could anyone forget the war? Half of the human population had died. He had, through sheer fate, lived through and survived--only to be abducted by god knew who and imprisoned. He had proposed, to answer their questions if they let him out of his room. They denied.

He suggested exchanging his answers for theirs: Who were they? Why did they hold him? Where was he? Answer for an answer. Again, they denied.

Food continued to show up inexplicably when he napped. Water still gushed from the bathroom valves. The light was evident. But apart from that, there was nothing, no one, no sound unless he made it, no object with which to entertain himself. He spent hours futilely trying to solve the problem of how he might sabotage them. This was one of the activities that helped keep him somewhat sane.

He napped a lot and was thankful to his body for reacting to his varying emotions of monotony and dread by nodding off frequently.

He sang Coldplay songs and thought of the books he had read, movies and television shows he had seen.

More time passed. He continued by not speaking directly to his captors except to curse them. He offered no cooperation. There were instances when he did not understand why he resisted. What would he forego if he answered his captors' queries? What did he have to lose beyond despair, solitude, and silence? Yet he resisted.

There came a point when he could not stop talking to himself, every thought that occurred to him must be spoken out loud. He would make hopeless efforts to be quiet but somehow the words blurted out of his mouth again. He thought he would lose his sanity; had already begun to lose it. He began to cry, curled in a fetal position and eventually fell asleep.

At his next Awakening, he woke up to a dimly lit room. He sat on the bed, tired, hollow and helpless. It had nothing to do with bodily weariness. Some time or other, someone would speak to him, he thought. He waited long, almost asleep again when a voice spoke to him.

"Lyric?" The usual, calm, androgynous voice.

"What?" he asked drowsily. But as he spoke, he realized the voice had not come from the ceiling as it always had before. He sat up immediately and looked around. In a corner, he found the dark, shadowy figure. A thin slender silhouette of what looked like a strange woman.

Was she the reason for the clothing, then? She appeared to be wearing a similar outfit.

"I think," he said softly, "that you might be the last nail in the coffin."

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said. "I'm here to take you outside."

Now he stood up, staring hard at her. Was she pranking? Laughing at him?

"Outside?"

"To the beginning of a new life."

He went closer to her, then stopped. She scared him somehow. He was petrified. "Something isn't right," he said. "Who are you?"

"And what am I?" she said.

It sent a chill down his spine because that was what he had almost said.

"I'm not a woman," she said. "I'm not a human being."

He moved back against the wall, feeling nervous and fearful. "Tell me what you are."

"I will tell you … and show you. Would you look at me now? The light will change when you're ready."

"Are you from some other world?"

"I belong to many other worlds. You're among the few earthlings who never considered that he might be in the hands of unearthly beings."

"I did think of it," Lyric mumbled. "Coupled with the possibility that I might be in a mental asylum, in the hands of the Mossad, the KGB, or the FBI. The latter seemed narrowly less absurd."

The extraterrestrial said nothing. It stood completely still in its corner, and he knew from his many Awakenings that it would not converse with him again until he did what it wanted—until he said he was ready to look at it. These creatures, whatever they were, were unbelievably good at waiting. He made this one wait for half an hour, and not only was it soundless and reserved, it never moved a muscle. Discipline or anatomy?

He had gotten over being terrified by "hideous" faces long before his capture. The unknown scared him.

"All right," he said. "Show yourself."

The room lit up as he had assumed it would, and what had seemed to be a tall, woman was still humanoid. Her skin, grey. Her hair, blue and long and a third eye of the matching colour on her forehead.

Lyric looked at the humanoid body, wondering how humanlike it actually was. "I don't mean any offence," he said, "but are you female or male?"

"It's wrong to assume that I must be a gender that's known to you," it said, "but as it happens, I'm female."

Relief. "It" could become "She" again. Less awkward.

"Come closer and look," she said.

He did not want to be any closer to her. Her dissimilarity, her literal unearthliness held him back. He could not move even an inch closer to her.

"No!" he said with great vehemence.

"I'll only talk to you, Lyric, if you look at me."

To divert her, "What's your name?" he asked.

"Asinore Ozemorith Elyna Odyrin."

He stared at her, then sighed, and shook his head.

"Elyna," she said. "That is me. The rest is my ancestry and other things."

He nodded.

"Is there anything left on Earth?" he asked softly. "Any form of life, I mean."

"Oh, certainly. It was hard to recover in the wake of war, but time and our efforts have been restoring it."

"How do you know all this? And how can you restore a broken planet?"

"My people, the Nurrumoth, are known for their healing masteries. We don't belong to any planet. We fix the wrecked and the ruined."

This was too much for Lyric to comprehend.

"How long have I slept?" he asked after a minute of silence.

"About…hundred of your years."

"What?!" Why? Why have you done this? What do you want of me?" he asked anxiously.

"We want you to work with us."

"What sort of work do you expect me to do?"

"Blood work, mostly."

It was the Gregorian year 2121.