Rex did not wake gradually. There was no slow drift from the abyss of unconsciousness, no hazy transition from the realm of dreams to the waking world.
Instead, he burst into consciousness the way a diver breaks the surface of a dark, pressurized ocean at terminal velocity, the air hitting his lungs before his brain had even realized it was thirsty.
For a frantic, agonizing three seconds, his nervous system revolted. His body underwent a violent, involuntary spasm, a reflexive twitch of a man who had been physically dismantled and reassembled by a cosmic sledgehammer.
It was the visceral, shuddering reaction of a predator whose cells were still screaming from the trauma, a delayed reaction of the Infinite Regeneration attempting to patch the microscopic tears in his muscle fibers and the bruising of his very soul before his mind could even grasp his location.
