Chapter Text
It was a Sunday.
Wumpa Island was dark and surprisingly cold. You and your fellow researchers had just gotten off of that huge expensive steamliner the day before, brimming with excitement to catalogue what your employer described as a whole menagerie of heavily genetically modified animals living off the coast of Australia. If your team was the first to describe them, you could possibly make scientific history, an accolade a young biologist like you had always dreamed of, but never thought to be in reach so soon.
You were ready to face the world head-on in all of its mystery, no matter what challenges lie before you. Or so you told yourself. The doubt started seeping in the same night you landed—you were supposed to begin the search the next day, but you and your bunkmates (or tent-mates, as that was your current housing) were full of adrenaline, full of certainty that the search must begin as soon as it could. You found yourselves lost in your excitement, lost in the middle of a swampy woodland, dusk quickly escaping below the trees.
Wading in gunk to your ankles was an annoyance, sure, but having the gluey substance rise to your waist reminded you that you were mortal. You turned back to your crew and decided to go back, to go towards where your compass said was north. After all the struggles in turning and walking that came with the reduced mobility, it seemed that the swamp wasn’t getting any more shallow. In your desperation to be correct you continued. Not paying any mind to muscles which would surely ache later you pressed on, faster, faster, until some sort of drop off in the path caught your ankle off guard. Your yell of shock was quickly cut off by gurgling as your mouth was forced under.
This couldn’t be the end. You were so close to finding something, so close to being something, It couldn’t end with a death so slow it could have been quicksand.
Wait.
Quicksand.
You reached your arm as far up as it could go, groping for something, anything. At first, all you could feel was the humid, soupy air, and then what you presumed were dead leaves. Using strength generated purely out of fear, you pushed down with both arms, freeing the top quarter of your body just long enough to spot the nearest brand and grab ahold of it. Your instincts acted so quickly, you barely had time to process the gash it had scraped on your arm. All you could think about was how you could finally breathe. And once you took those breaths, you looked up to your teammates.
They were running away.
All you could do was yell. Yell until they looked back, eyes vaguely glowing in the distance, seeing you, hearing you, but still running away. Knowing you were alive, but still running away.
You heard a snap. You began to sink. You closed your eyes. And that was it.
~~~
You wake up feeling like you're in bed, except the bed is concrete, and your pillow is TV static, and, in fact, it's not a bed, but an operating table, and there’s no pillow at all. You're too dazed to scream and too dazed for critical thinking, but not too dazed to observe. If this is a hospital room, it sure wasn’t following any codes. There's a huge screen in front of you with some sort of technical diagram you can’t decipher. An obnoxiously long panel of buttons you can only associate with those mad scientist labs in cartoons sits in front of it. The walls were… cinder blocks?
When you try to sit up, you immediately recognize the restraints holding your wrist down. Or, at least, what used to be your wrist. Now it was a sort of bionic watch. You weren't sure, but you had a feeling there was no actual wrist under there, despite your phantom limb disagreeing. Was your hand even your hand? You tried to close it, and couldn't, not for lack of trying, but for complete lack of ability. There was no feeling there.
This is when you scream.
Just then, a very short man immediately runs into the room. He’s wearing a white lab coat, atop of which is a ginger head with bulging eyes, covered partially by a metal implant. His completely wild appearance is so confusing it shocks you into silence.
Holy shit, you think, I actually went to hell.
"Uh…..uh… stay still!" the little man commands with a vague European accent, "please, don't move!"
“What the fuck is going on here?" you ask him. His already timid stature grows smaller.
"Ah…. Oh… oh jeez… Doctor Cortex! Doctor Cortex, she's awake! Oh god, she's…"
"What is it, you blubbering buffoon?" you hear another voice echo from afar, as if these hallways are caverns. They might as well be.
Through the door appeared another scientist, this time more humanlike, but not by much. The so-called Dr. Cortex was slender but not necessarily lanky, probably due to the fact he was also rather short. His already brooding eyes were pushed further into obscurity by the circles of tiredness around them and his large, black eyebrows. The small mouth framed by his beard was pulled into a tout frown. This man was not about to be friendly with you. He walked in with an almost-angry strut and, finally, could be seen looking down at you on the table.
"What is the meaning of this," he asks.
"Where am I," is all you can manage.
"See, N. Gin,” he turns to the smaller man, smirking, “she's already no good, answering my question with a question."
N. Gin only stares back nervously. Cortex, still amused by his own joke, looks back at you.
"You're on Wumpa Island," he finally answers, although somewhat mockingly.
"Oh.”
"Is that what you were screaming about?" he asks, "or were you screaming about the fact that you don't have an arm anymore?"
He seems to revel in this interrogation—you weren't sure whether to be intrigued or offended. I mean, God knows how long you've been here, who he is, and if he's even telling the truth.
"The second one," you reply.
"Well, it's better than having no arm at all, isn't it?" he asks. You suppose.
"When you were in that swamp, you were exposed to necrotizing fasciitis through the cuts on your skin, leading to an infection… oh, right, my apologies—necrotizing fasciitis is basically a flesh-eating bacteria, which—”
"I have a masters degree in biology,” you snap, “I know what Necrotizing fasciitis is."
This obviously takes him aback, which was your intention, but the minute you stop talking you realize that you hadn’t planned your reaction this far.
Then, to your shock and relief, a large, ne'er do well grin spreads across his face.
"Perfect," he says to himself, low. "What perfect assets to your resume."