Chapter 1: Awakening

The man is breathing.

A flutter of conscious thought; weightlessness, nausea, cramping, disorientation. His body spasmed and jerked as a mild electrical shock coursed through his nerves and muscles. Curiously it doesn’t hurt, just a small tingle through his fingers and toes.  A hand reaching up to find the source came in contact with wires and plastic tubing. Eyelids fluttered open; blurry, murky images and a flashing light through a dark tunnel are all he sees.

A single thought crossed through his barely aware mind, “I’m alive.”

A burning sensation in his arm followed by what feels like a sledgehammer beating against the inside of his chest wall and suddenly he is almost fully alert. His eyes are better able to focus. He looks down, through bluish liquid and sees a naked male body floating in a suspension harness.
“Me?” he thought to himself. This is not a sensation he is accustomed to and he finds it quite disconcerting.

Squinting, he concentrates harder; intravenous tubes with colored fluid coursing through them, wires, and electrodes pockmark the pale flesh of his arms. His muffled hearing becomes clearer, his vision sharper. Through the pounding in his chest he hears a mechanical voice

“Alert-alert. All personnel to Cryochamber 1. Alert-alert. All personnel to Cryochamber 1. Reactor offline, power failure in main bus. Secondary systems: Offline. Backup power generator: offline. Emergency sequence initiated. Please stand-by.”

The man winces and feels a burning sensation in his other arm. A sudden hyper-awareness floods through him for a split second and is gone. The voice returns, louder and clearer this time, “Stimulant injection complete. Diagnostics initiated. Error; negative life signs detected from chamber 5. Activating emergency resuscitation measures.”

A rushing sound and the sudden feelings of weightlessness are gone. His eyes clear and his feet come to rest on a smooth metallic surface. Through a small window he sees part of a room bathed in darkness, punctuated only by flashing of some kind of emergency beacon. A rush of flashing images – faces, names, geographic locations – flood through his mind.

“Oh hell,” he thinks to himself. With a hiss the cover of his chamber recedes into the floor and a rush of cold, stale air washes over him. The lights in his chamber go from blue to yellow.
The mechanical voice returns, “Awakening subroutines complete. Backup power at 30 percent and falling.”
Dripping wet with the cryogenic fluid, he steps out of his chamber onto the cold cement floor. He shivers lightly and looks to the right to see a ceiling-length locker emblazoned with a name: Trask, Nicholas J.; his name. He opens it and pulls out an olive drab shirt and pair of shorts.

Suddenly the silence is broken by a coughing and spluttering sound. Trask looks over quickly and sees an unfamiliar young man on falling to his knees in front of a cryo-tube.
He opens his mouth and is surprised to hear how raspy he sounds, “It’s okay, you’re coming out of cryostasis. What you’re feeling is the residue of the drugs. The feeling will pass. Just rest there. Don’t try and rush; your muscles haven’t been used in a long time.” Slowly he walks over and puts his hand on the naked young man’s shoulder and handed him a towel to cover himself with.

“What… what happened?” said another voice. Nick turned toward the tube next to his to see another male figure stepping onto the concrete. His round face marred only by a scar running across one eyebrow and continuing down his cheekbone. As soon as the figure stepped out of the coolant vapors, Nick recognized the face of Lieutenant Colonel Chad Newbick immediately. “Where is everyone? And why do I feel like I’ve been run over by a train?”

Nick looked around the room some more, “I’m not sure. I thought we were supposed to be awoken over a matter of hours. It seemed like only a few minutes for me.”
“Me too,” said Newbick, “it was like being jerked awake by an explosion. Most disconcerting damn thing I’ve ever felt.” He was gingerly pulling the IV needles from his arm and disconnecting the electrodes from his slimy skin.

A loud hiss followed by sounds of wretching and a wet splatter on the floor made Trask and Newbick whip around in alarm. Both blinked rapidly as they underwent a small bout of vertigo. When their vision cleared they saw another member of their team stagger forward, wiping his mouth.
“Doctor Springs,” said Newbick, “it’s okay.”

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Booth said, his voice hoarse. “What in bloody blue hell is going on…” He stopped abruptly and looked toward the fifth cryogenic chamber. “Oh hell, Marty!” He stepped forward gingerly and put his hand on the dark tube.
Trask walked over to Springs and put a hand on his shoulder, “It’s empty, don’t worry.”
Turning, Springs asked, “Where is he then? We were all supposed to wake up together.”
“I don’t know, Doctor Spring,” shrugged Nick. “I was the first awakened. I remember hearing that one tube had no life signs. When I got out I saw it was empty.”
“Stop calling me Doctor Spring. That was my father’s name. I told you before, call me Booth. Well then, where is everyone?  Shouldn’t we have a team of white coats starring us in the face or something?”
“That’s what I was told when they brought me here,” said an unrecognized voice. Trask looked over and saw the young man standing up, wrapping the towel around his waist.
“Who are you?” asked Newbick.

“Uh… well, I’m not military if that’s what you mean Colonel. I sort of… well, paid to get in here. My real name is Chris Closson, but you can call me Youth.”

“Oh god, you’re that neo-emo pop singer.”
Youth fixed him with a confused stare. “You listened to my music?”

“No, but my daughter does. Well, did I guess. Five years is a long time in the music world.”
“True. Thankfully I pre-reordered a bunch of albums to release over time. I didn’t want to fade away. I told everyone I was going in seclusion. Speaking of, what is the date anyway? I should phone my agent.”

Trask turned away from a consol on the wall and looked at the boy. He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not exactly sure, but something tells me it’s a little longer than five years. The reactor in this place was supposed to last over 30 years. This says we’re running on emergency batteries. It’s why we were awoken.”

“Well how long were we under, then?” asked Booth.

Trask looked down at the floor and back up, squinting. “Thirty-eight years.”

Youth, who had been fixing the towel around his waist, dropped it in shock.

“Well shit.”

Chapter 2