Unsure of his existence, hearing was his first experience he was aware of—thin, distant, unreliable.
Sound was his only anchor to reality.
The pain came next.
A white glare filled his vision. For several disorienting seconds, he could not tell where his body ended and the world began, or whether "front" and "back" meant anything at all. As his eyesight started to slowly return, the the initial glare slowly receded, leaving behind a blurred silhouette of blue-and-white framed by lifeless gray.
Smoke and dust drifted through the charred wreckage. The acrid smell of burned metal filled every breath he struggled to take. As the fog clouding his head began to thin, the silhouette sharpened into more comprehensible shape: a girl.
Young. Brunette. Blue-eyed. Ash streaked her cheeks, and her expression was severe with concentration.
She was bent over him, frantically heaving twisted scraps of metal off his body. She shoved aside loose debris, kicked away anything that threatened to collapse, and checked the wreckage above him for anything that might fall. Only when she was certain he would not be crushed did she grab a small rectangular device from her waist.
"BA-01 down! BA-01 down! BA-01 down! Please respond!"
What she took was small radio. She was shouting into it, desperately trying to communicate to anyone who could be online.. It was the first language he had heard since opening his eyes—and, somehow, he understood it.
"We have been shot down! BA-01 down! BA-01…!" After an apparent lack of answer from anyone, her voice grew more desperate "Useless piece of…"
"We have been shot down! BA-01 down! BA-01…!"
No answer came from anyone. Static. Only static noice answered her. Her desperation grew and sharpened into frustration.
"Useless piece of—"
She didn't finish the sentence, but the frustration in her voice said enough.
Maybe the explosion had fried the communications. Maybe they have fallen out of radio's range. Or… maybe there was simply no one willing to answer. Whatever the reason, one thing was certain: right now, they could count only on themselves.
His vision began to whiten again. The world receded, every sound growing muffled and distant.
"Commander! I can't get through to the Ark!" reported the girl after cursing the radio.
Commander…? Who is… the Commander?
There was silence from his end. He didn't even know he was supposed to answer or what kind of answer she expected from him.
"…Commander?"
Since he did not answer her, she must have noticed that something was wrong. Her voice dropped.
A moment later, it broke into panic.
"…!! No! You're going into cardiac arrest…!"
He barely understood the words, but her tone cut straight through the haze.
"A… AED…! AED!"
She scrambled away, overturning cases and kicking through scattered equipment, searching with the frantic energy of someone who knew exactly how bad their situation was. Panic began to set in her voice. She was worried and had every reason to be.
They were alone in hostile territory, with no communication, no backup, transportation, or no proper medical supplies and their transport vehicle just blew up.
Her only hope was that, if anything of use survived the explosion, it would be the device she needed right now. Otherwise, there would be nothing she could really do.
Then she found a small portable defibrillator, and she really did not know who she should thank for it.
Hopefully, she just might avoid the darkest scenario. At least for now…
"Charging…!" Her trembling voice steadied. "Clear!"
Thump!
The world went white.
A brutal electric shock tore through his chest, painfully kickstarting his heart with all the subtlety of a horse's kick—if the horse had been made of pure voltage. He came awake with a ragged cry as his back was wrenched into arch, air tearing into his lungs in a muffled shout, like someone had forcefully punched it in. Yet helped him to come back to himself even if in very painful way.
"Gaha!!"
"Commander! Are you okay?! Can you hear me? Smile if you can hear me!"
Still dazed and with no understanding of how dire their situation was, he obeyed. What appeared on his face was less a smile than a strained grin.
"Finally! All right then, up and at 'em. Rise your arms up."
As the shock and pain faded, he managed to lift both arms.
"Okay. STR cleared!" she declared. "Great…! Everything is normal! Commander, can you hear me? Can you tell me which section are you from?
"Section?" he echoed his saviour.
The word struck a blank wall in his mind and bounced off. He could not understand what did she mean. Section. Did he belong to any section? Wait… Where he was to begin with? What was he doing here? How did he get here? Or… what was his—
i̸̘͛͆d̴̤͙̓̿e̸͇̫̔̀̂͜n̷̮̑͋t̶̮̀͊ͅḯ̷̺̗͗ẗ̵̨́y̷̫̺͈̆͒͠?
"I… don't know…" he admitted at last, in the only way he could.
"You don't know…?" A moment of concern softened her eyes. "Your mind is probably still hazy after the explosion. No. That does not matter right now."
She reached for the submachine gun resting against her side, held there by a sling.
"Commander," she said, voice tightening into a report. "We were attacked en route to our destination. The transport ship is down. Any Rapture within a hundred mile radius must have heard that explosion and is headed our way. I… realize this is all a bit sudden but I am now under your command. You're giving the orders. Can you do it?"
Raptures? What were these "Raptures"? Under my command?! I'm a Commander?! Under my command?! I'm giving the orders?! HOW?!
None of it made sense, but the steady, expectant way she watched him made one thing perfectly clear, however: this was not the time to argue.
Before he had a chance to ask anything, a low rumble rolled through the air. Metal groaned somewhere far beyond the wreckage. A faint vibration passed through the ground beneath him and grew stronger by the second.
The answer to this question decided to come to them itself.
Whatever "Raptures" were… he had the feeling he was about to find out.
"…It seems I don't have much of a choice," he said, forcing the words past the ache in his chest. "I'll… give it a try."
Given how little he understood about the situation he currently was—despite her brief explanation—this was the only answer he could give.
"Yes, Commander! Time to get to work. Keep your head down. Please don't worry. I will protect you no matter what happens," she said, as she reached her waist and started readying her gun.
Her eyes glitched faintly, a translucent wash of red passing over them like a targeting display coming online. She brought her submachine gun around, checked it, and chambered a round.
"Marian, activating combat mode," she said, almost like a reminder to him as much as to herself.
Beyond the torn hull, something heavy shifted. The rumbling grew louder with every beat of his newly restarted heart.
"…Encounter!"