Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (3 page)

Faint wisps of smoke rise toward the ceiling but I can’t smell it, can’t intake breath to even try. I begin to count in my mind to keep calm but don’t reach twenty before the odd man stops.

“Okay, try again,” he says.

I concentrate on opening my lips but no words come out.

“Not your lips,” he says. “Focus on using your voice from within your throat. Now say something.”

“Something,” another voice says.

It takes a second to realize the voice is mine… kind of. Though I feel my lips parted, the voice doesn’t come from my mouth, instead emanating from my throat. The sound reminds me of when I put my face close to a box fan when I was a kid and began to talk. My voice is garbled, robotic, unnatural. I think this should be cause for concern but the man’s strange eyes seem to smile beneath his shroud.

“This is truly a relief, you are doing excellent,” he says. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done this sort of work. I was really beginning to doubt my abilities.”

The man steps away and reaches for something just out of view. Moments later, the glass dome lowers back over my head, for reasons that I still don’t know.

“Can you say anything else?” the man asks.

Questions race in my mind but I force them to slow down, try to focus on which is most important. One thought emerges from the rest, delivered to my brain by the tiny voice from my lone memory.

             
“Is… this place…” I begin, my voice laden with the same mechanical tone. “…Heaven?”

             
The smile in the man’s eyes vanishes and he slowly shakes his head beneath the shroud.

             
“I’m sorry but it’s the farthest place from.”

CHAPTER THREE

             
“Do you remember your name?”

             
I lie completely still and close my eyes halfway; this helps me think. My brain doesn’t feel quite so bogged down but my past is still shrouded as much as the man’s head. The only memory I can access has become much clearer and that brief snippet might give me the answer to the man’s question.

             
“I don’t know… for sure,” I say. “But I remember somebody once calling me Daddy.”

             
The man’s eyebrows turn down. I suppose I’ve given him the wrong answer.

             
“Do you remember
how
you got here? Or when you’re from?”

             
I concentrate intently, trying to remember anything else from my life. Frustration sets in quickly and the clanging metal returns momentarily. I have a bad feeling failure is something I’ll have to get used to.

             
“I remember nothing,” I say. “At least nothing that helps me remember anything significant.”

             
“Hmm,” the man says. “Long-term memory affected. That may be the most difficult – and dangerous – to retrieve. But that no longer matter. In fact, it might be best if you don’t have it.”

             
Regardless of the man’s assurances, having no memory does
not
sound right to me. I feel my lips turn down.

             
“Why doesn’t it matter?” I ask, my mechanical voice becoming stronger with each word I say. “Why is it best that I don’t remember?”

             
My mind flashes once again to the image of the young boy. This time, he’s running and smiling and giggling. I’m confused about what’s happening in the memory but it
feels
important that I hold onto it.

             
“I don’t know when you’re from but I have a feeling this world is a much different place,” he says. “It’s better to forget a time that no longer exists and look to the future… together. You are truly an incredible specimen to have survived.”

             
“You… saved me?” I ask.

             
The smile returns to the man’s eyes and he nods proudly.

             
“Yes,” he says. “But hopefully we end up saving each other. By surviving this… process, you’ve already made me feel better than I have in a long time; I never expected to feel happiness again. The odds of us finding each other – of us both living to reach
this
place in
this
time – were incredibly long. But we’ve done it, together.”

             
The man’s answers raise more questions in my mind but I don’t know where to begin asking. Any information I’ll get will be from him so there’s one logical question to start with.

             
“What is
your
name?”

             
The man looks confused for a moment but then snorts beneath his shroud.

             
“Nobody’s asked me that for a long time,” he says. “I am ENG-1023. You may call me E; nobody else here to get confused with. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Daddy.”

Hearing him call me Daddy doesn’t quite have the same impact as the little boy from my memory.

“Now we shake hands?” I ask, recalling the social graces of a past life.

I think about raising my arm to extend my hand but feel nothing except the motion of movement. Mechanical whirring begins again as well as the metallic shaking beneath me. This time I don’t stop moving as the noises grow in intensity. The ping of snapping metal explodes nearby and I see a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, a metallic rod that must be part of the medical machinery. The rod suddenly stops moving when I look at it.

“Amazing,” E says breathlessly as he hurries to my side where the rod moved. “You possess extraordinary functioning motor skills already. I can’t believe you can raise your arm.”

Not for the first time – and I have a bad feeling it won’t be the last – I think something is not quite right.

“I didn’t move my… I don’t feel anything…”

But that’s not totally true. I
do
feel a sense of movement, though it’s a disconnected sensation I’ve never before experienced, more of a general shift in my equilibrium.

“Don’t think,” E says. “Just do as I say. Move your arm.”

“But I’m… paralyzed… or something, right?”

E points to the metal rod sticking up at the side of my body.

“Move that,” he says.

I quietly shake my head, confused. “Move it with what? I – ”

“Move it,” he snaps, the gurgling more pronounced as he raises his voice.

He may as well be asking me to walk on water. I have no idea how moving that rod has anything to do with moving my arm but I guess I’ll give it a try –

The rod suddenly shifts to the side.
Move arm
, I tell myself silently and watch as the rod shifts again. I think of moving it back and forth, up and down, side to side; it responds exactly to my thoughts every time, even bending at the elbow-like joint in the middle. My mind races so quickly at the implications that I hardly notice the light whirring noise created by each movement. When I think of raising my other arm, I turn my head to the other side and see a second slab of metal slowly rise. It also does exactly as I command and I make my movements quicker, stronger. A thick metal chain snaps off me and shoots toward E, missing him by inches. His eyes go wide and I immediately stop moving.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not exactly sure what I’m sorry for.

“No, no, no, don’t be sorry for anything. This is very exciting,” he says. “But if we’re going to do this now, why hold back? Just give me one moment.”

E circles around me, struggling to pull away more thick metal chains draped across my body. He rushes over to the wall, where I see him push a large button. Metallic grinding starts again but sounds much more labored this time, like something is jammed into the gears of a machine trying to revolve.

“Let me help with that,” E says as he rushes behind me. I hear him grunt before a piece of metal snaps and the grinding noise becomes much less violent. My equilibrium begins to shift again but this time I feel my entire body moved, being raised into a sitting position. “This thing worked much smoother before all your thrashing.”

The metallic bed transforms into more of a chair. Within seconds I’m in an upright position though my body is still slightly reclined, a good thing since I’m so dizzy and off balanced that I’d probably tip over in an actual chair. My neck is weak from the dome and I open my mouth to ask why E insists that I wear it.

The words never escape my mouth. My eyes are slow to focus on what’s in front of me but when they do, my brain quickly registers the word for what I’m looking at: mirror. But it’s what I notice
in
the mirror’s reflection that’s more confusing than anything I’ve seen since waking. A reflection of some sort of metal robot-like machine. It must be somewhere between me and the mirror, blocking the view of my body, because I only see a view of my head just above it.

Something’s not right. I nearly ask about the strange robot when I realize the robot isn’t anywhere in front of me. I shake my head, watching the glass dome move side to side in the mirror. I’m terrified to think about lifting my arm but when I do, I see the reflection of the robot’s rod-like arm raise toward the ceiling. I wish my mind were still sluggish because then the enormity of the situation wouldn’t slam into me like a ton of bricks.

“No,” I whisper, the sound of my robotic voice further evidence of what I don’t want to admit, of what I can’t admit if I hope to keep my sanity. I continue to shake my head, even when I notice E stepping next to me, craning his neck to look up. He’s more than a foot shorter than me and I’m still sitting down. He must see the shock on my face within the glass dome, my blue-tinged human face sitting inexplicably atop the robot body, the rest of my human parts nowhere to be found. “No, no, no.”

“I realize this might be a shock to you, Daddy,” E says slowly. “Especially since I’m unsure about the level of artificial intelligence and robotics in the world when you were – ”

I don’t wait to hear the end of what he’s saying. The realization of what I’ve become – what I’ve been
turned into
– explodes in my mind, instantly transforming overwhelming confusion into uncontrollable anger. I leap out of the chair, my metallic feet –
robotic
feet – pounding so hard against the floor that I hear cracking. I extend to my full height and tower above E, who puts up his hands, urging me to relax and sit back down. My instinct is to listen to him but I refuse to do that; I’m not sure I could control my body enough to sit anyway.

I wobble around like a man who’s had too much to drink but somehow remain on my feet. I stumble forward, inadvertently crashing into the mirror, smashing it into thousands of tiny shards. The fact that I don’t have to worry about cutting my metallic body on the glass only enrages me further. E dives out of the way as I keep staggering out of control. My glass dome finally whacks against the wall and I hear it crack, see the glass spiderweb in front of my vision.

“Please, you must calm down,” E calls out. “You don’t want to damage yourself.”

People have to worry about hurting themselves;
things
have to worry about becoming damaged. I turn to E, enraged at what he’s done to me. For a moment I control my heavy metal body and look down at the tiny man, whose entire body is covered in the same strange garbs as his head. I finally come to the realization that he is no doctor. I no longer know what to think of him but still can’t consider hurting him. That doesn’t mean I won’t destroy something else.

             
I raise my arm and smash it down on the twisted metal table, easily cleaving it in half. I’m surprised by my strength, my destructive ability, but discovering my raw power does nothing to calm me. I turn clumsily and find the door, stumble my way toward it. With each step I take, I feel a little more comfortable, a little steadier, a little less likely to fall flat on my face. Instinctively, I reach for the handle with my claw-like hand, which consists of five ‘fingers’ that look more like metallic insect pincers. I try to grab the handle but the pincers slip off, reminding me of those arcade claw machines that always wrapped around stuffed toys but never quite held on. This makes me feel like an even clumsier oaf and certainly doesn’t help ease my rage.

             
I bust through the door with ease, nearly knocking it off its hinge. The whirring is louder and faster as I move, the sound spurring me forward. I enter a hallway, the cinderblock walls plain white and sterile-looking though it’s hard to tell since everything is bathed in the dim red glow of emergency lighting. It’s harder to see out here than in the last room. With E pleading behind me, I look down both ends of the hallway, neither providing an idea where to go. I choose right – for no particular reason – and stomp away.

             
There are no windows and very few nondescript doors. I feel trapped, nervous energy turning my anger more intense. Though I look for any sign of where I’m being held – where I’ve been turned into this… this
thing
– I barely pay attention to smaller details of my surroundings. I spot several cracks along the walls and ceilings – some of them pretty wide and deep – but don’t give the general deterioration a second thought. The only thing that really draws my attention is a large sign in big block letters that adorns the wall. Most of the letters at the beginning have crumbled or completely fallen away but the end of the sign remains intact, even if significantly corroded: FOR PRESERVATION OF LIFE.

             
“Please, let me at least fix your helmet,” E calls out down the hall. He rushes toward me without fear, needing to take three steps to equal the distance of one of mine. “It’s not as sterile out here and I don’t know the effects on your exposed skin. We can sit down and talk about what’s bothering you.”

             
“What’s
bothering
me?” I yell, the robotic tone of my voice failing to exude the kind of anger I’m feeling.

             
I continue to stomp away before he catches up, the words from the sign already fading from my short-term memory. I stumble and crash into several walls but feel no pain, not even when I take large chunks of cinderblock with me. Just when I think the hallway might never end, a single functioning fluorescent bulb blinks just down the way, illuminating a set of doors larger than any I’ve passed so far. I hope this leads to an exit or at the very least somewhere important enough to give me answers.

             
I slip and crash to the floor ten feet in front of the doors. Standing would be difficult under the best conditions but the floor in this area is covered with water. The puddles grow bigger closer to the door. Worry finally interrupts anger long enough for me to wonder what the hell can be in there, if maybe I should heed the warnings E continues to call from down the hallway.