I could not remember how long I had been asleep.
All I knew was that when the last traces of liquid nitrogen had finally drained away, when my body began to thaw and the first warmth from the outside world seeped into my skin, my heavy eyelids lifted and I drew in a fragile breath.
A sharp pain struck my chest. I could not tell whether it was because I had not breathed for too long, or because the air outside was thick with fine dust scraping against my lungs, or perhaps it was both.
The first coherent thought that surfaced once my mind began moving smoothly again was simple. I have been saved.
Science must have advanced. The malignant cancer devouring me must now have a cure. That was why they had woken me from this endless cryogenic sleep.
Yet the ones who greeted me were not scientists in clean white coats, nor the rhythmic hum of advanced machinery.
The laboratory had collapsed into ruin. Darkness pooled in every corner, and every device around me was silent and dead. The only light in that fragile underground chamber came from a jagged crack in the ceiling above, where murky droplets slipped through and fell onto the floor, each drop echoing with an icy loneliness in the otherwise muted world.
The sky beyond the broken ceiling was a dull, ashen grey, carrying a metallic tang of rust that clung stubbornly to my newly reawakened senses. I grimaced and wrinkled my nose.
Why is this place so ravaged? Were we attacked?
The laboratory had been hidden beneath the outskirts of the city, far from the public eye. Before I went into stasis, we had been developing a biological weapon for the government.
Enemies would have had every reason to infiltrate us.
I needed to get out first.
My body was stiff as stone. I pushed myself upright and stepped out of the glass pod, my muscles trembling under my own weight. They had not atrophied thanks to the injections prepared beforehand, but they felt foreign, like they belonged to someone else.
My eyes drifted to the claw marks gouged across the surface of the pod. I frowned. They resembled those of a wild beast. The pod material was stronger than bulletproof glass, and that sturdiness had saved my life.
But the gouges were large. Too large for wolves or tigers.
This place is no longer safe, I thought. I must return to the city as soon as possible.
The power was long gone, so the elevator was useless. I forced my stiff legs up the emergency stairwell, gripping the cracked walls for support. Moss coated the damp concrete, and my palms slipped again and again, nearly sending me tumbling backward.
One question kept clawing at me. Why did they leave me here alone? Even if they had been attacked, the government should have returned to investigate and retrieve important documents. Among all the assets stored here, I was the most valuable.
I was their genius scientist. It was the government that had proposed cryosleep to preserve my brain after my cancer reached stage three, waiting until medicine advanced far enough to treat me. Then I would continue contributing to their empire.
So why abandon me? Had they forgotten I existed? Or had the world progressed so far that my brilliant mind had already been replaced by artificial intelligence?
Too many questions swirled in my still-foggy consciousness. But when I opened the bunker door and walked into the world outside, the answer seemed to rise on its own.
It was not only the underground lab that had fallen into ruin. Everything around me had turned to desolation.
Buildings had collapsed into heaps of rubble. Vehicles lay shattered and overturned across the asphalt. The wind chased clouds of dust across the wasteland, the shrill whistle slicing into my nerves.
No people. Not even animals. The only living presence left was vegetation crawling over broken walls, thick vines weaving through shattered windows. Towering trees had burst out from piles of concrete as though claiming dominion over a world abandoned by humankind.
Confusion tightened my brow until it ached. What happened to my country? Was there a war?
No. War alone would not do this.
It looked as if human civilization had been wiped out entirely.
I needed to find someone. Anyone. To ask what had happened.
I bent to pick up a thick branch and used it as a walking stick. My eyes darted around for threats while my feet dragged along the ruined highway, hoping desperately to encounter another human being.
Anyone, as long as they were human.
My bare feet split and bled on the broken asphalt, yet the pain sharpened my senses, reminding me with stark clarity that I was alive. Just not in the world I once knew.
Rustle.
Through the howling wind, a faint sound brushed my left ear. I jerked my head toward it and caught a quick glimpse of a figure pulling back behind a collapsed wall.
My heart, which had forgotten its rhythm for who knew how long, slammed violently against my chest. Fear and hope tightened inside me until I could scarcely breathe. Beast or human?
"W–who…"
My voice cracked, as if my throat had forgotten speech. I cleared it several times before managing to speak again.
"Who's there?" I raised my makeshift staff defensively, afraid whatever hid there would leap at me.
The shadow behind the wall peeked out again, hesitating. The harsh sunlight revealed half of its face.
A human.
Relief flooded me so quickly that my knees weakened. I stepped forward without thinking. Good or bad, hostile or friendly, I just wanted proof that I was not the only survivor of this wasteland.
"Hello?"
As I approached, the figure recoiled, shrinking deeper into the shade. I hurried to reassure them. "It's alright, I won't hurt you."
I stopped walking, dropped my makeshift weapon and raised my hands to show I meant no harm.
"I just want to ask a few things. Can you come out?" My voice softened as much as it could.
Silence pressed between us. Dust drifted through the wind and into my nose. I waited patiently.
After a long moment, sensing perhaps that I posed no threat, the figure began to emerge.
Joy pushed me a step forward, a smile already pulling at my lips.
"Do you know—"
The rest of my words died in my dry throat as the person stepped fully into the sunlight, and I instinctively backed away.
He was human, yes, a man, perhaps in his thirties.
But he wore nothing. His blank expression tilted toward me with eyes that flickered between curiosity and something disturbingly hungry.
He was not standing. Not even kneeling. He crawled across the ground like an animal, inching toward me with a growing intensity in his gaze. A low, guttural sound rumbled from his throat, something no human voice should ever resemble.
What horrified me most, however, was the swollen, swaying length hanging between his legs.
Every instinct in my body screamed a warning.
Something was terribly wrong with the world I had awakened into.
***