1 Chapter 1: Awaken

Cold. alone. That was how he woke up - Cold and alone. It was dark, too, the disorientation this caused Austin had him gasping for air on the verge of a panic attack. Where was he? Why doesn't he remember where he was?

He almost suffocated from the flare of panic when he realised he had no memory of where he was, why he was there, or anything about himself or his past, including who he was. The sudden amnesia had him panting to breathe.

'No,' a voice from within ordered so loud and commanding that it took him a few minutes to realise the voice was from his mind. 'You need to focus. You need to calm down and take in your environment. Do NOT give in to fear and panic. You need to find a way to escape!'

Somehow, he knew this voice was real, and that it was not his own. Maybe his intuition? Whoever 𑁋 or whatever 𑁋 it belonged to he had a hard time believing it was his. But, as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he did as the Voice said and chose to remain calm, taking in his surroundings - Or what little of his surroundings he could give the obscurity of the darkness encasing the vision of his environment.

He laid on a hard floor as hard as steel with no bed, but a single, small sink and a toilet along one side of the room. Along another side were stacks of boxes and containers, each made if what he guessed were some kind of grey metal 𑁋 steel, maybe 𑁋 but when he tried to open them, they wouldn't even budge an inch. He didn't see a lock on the outside, so he assumed they were locked from the inside, and, seeing as there weren't even a key around nearby or even a keyhole for a key to open the container, he had given up trying to force the containers open.

Back at the sink, there was a square mirror, however, it was too dark at the moment to properly see his reflection. There were no windows or doors in his cell, but there was a steel, tube-like thing that came out of the wall behind him, barely big enough to fit a textbook through. And that was all - His circular, windowless, doorless, concrete walls of his cell had no entrances, no exits, not even a bed.

There was no way out. He wanted to panic. He wanted to cry. He was so alone. He was trapped, inside a concrete somewhere with no memory of how he got there - no memory, period, and the darkness and loneliness was getting to him already. And the fact that his memories were inaccessible was not helping him maintain his composure.

'Do not panic,' the Voice returned. Seeing as the voice wasn't his own but he had no name for it, he subconsciously settled on The Voice as a name for it. 'Do not give in to sorrow. To panic. To fear. Maintain your stability.'

"How am I to do that?!" he yelled aloud, but he somehow sensed the Voice's absence of presence. "Great, now I'm talking to myself and imagining a fictitious voice in my head." But he did follow through with the order, as if, however, by some deep and knowing instinct.

He calmed down enough to ask "Who are you?" But, by then, he knew the Voice's absence of presence meant the voice had left him; even as he spoke, he 'sensed' it's absence somehow.

Once his eyes finally adjusted to the thick darkness, the boy had realized something: He can remember his name...Austin. Yes! That must be his name, Austin thought, feeling the memory more than anything. But, when he tried to remember how he could know his name when he couldn't remember anything else, he heard a high pitch ringing and it felt like someone was actively and repetitively slamming a jackhammer to his skull. The migraine only lasted for what must have been only a few seconds, but the ringing in his ear and the migraine itself were both so great, it seemed to have lasted even longer.

Finally, ringing gone and migraine faded, Austin, trying to remember where the memory of his name had come from, tried again, certain that the ringing and pain to only be coincidence, tried again. This time, the migraine definitely lasted longer; the pain was greater.

"What the hell?" Austin said aloud, but he'd already come with a theory, by this time, for what was happening to him.