AT FIRST THERE WAS only the blackness, as silent and total as anything he had ever known.
“He’s coming to,” said a voice, a female, confident, clearly in charge, adding, “Mind your monitors.”
“I’ve got him,” said another, his voice eager, alert. “He’s lighting up like a Christmas tree.”
“Heart-rate normal, blood pressure good,” said another, also female, but younger, less confident.
He stirred against his restraints. Where was he? How long had he been here? He remembered a prison made of flesh and bone; a prison he had lived in for a very long time (but which had been compromised suddenly and violently), as well as a kind of rising ... so that he had found himself looking down upon the body of a man—a very old man—who lay with his face in a small pond in a clearing which was as wide as
