Years: Chapter 2-The Darkness

Everything faded. Like the darkness right before you fall asleep.

There was simply nothing.

Cold and unforgiving dread filled my heart, if I even had one. Was this it? Was the question I had spent my life pondering, really answered so abruptly. How long would I have left? Rumour says you have 7 minutes of brain activity left after you die, is this my 7 minutes? I couldn't help thinking that I would have liked to spend it reminiscing over my life, but what the hell, this was it, so who cares how I spend it.

That thought left as soon as it came. Because feeling was returning to me, I could feel something, something familiar, but couldn't place it.

I could feel.

I could hear.

I could.....

I couldn't breathe!

I finally placed that feeling. Water filled my throat and nose, threatening to explode my skull. The pressure was unbearable, every part of me felt like it was on fire. And then I opened my eyes.

Water flushed into them, making them burn even more but I pushed away the pain as I saw something. In front of me, through the water I could see... a tank, it was a water tank, human sized, with a young boy -barley seven- floating inside of it. His unruly blonde hair was floating around his face, like smoke billowing out of him. His body was rested in a position that looked like he had been clawing at the seal above him, but his face was the picture of calm, of peace. Shock threatened to tear me apart when a saw the huge metal cables attached to his upper back and the back of his thighs.

I gasped, inhaling more water, but I didn't care, I realised that I was inside of a twin tank, the cables holding me in place.

The shock continued to break me apart as I realised I was surrounded, thousands upon thousands of tanks just like mine littered the floor and ceiling, reaching passed my range of sight.

We were in a warehouse of some kind, a lab.

And everyone else was asleep.