Darkness. Swirling all around. Nothing but utter black, save a very faint red light from what seemed miles away, slowly glowing in and fading out of sight again. It was a slow pulsing of light down a long corridor. Though she strained to see, Serine could make out nothing more than that amidst the black. Wherever she was at present, she could not remember in the slightest. Much less how she had wound up here. Or, for that matter, why it was she felt ache all throughout her canine frame.

Head foggy, she still tried to search through the dark. Save the glow from the light that seemed to erupt dimly forth every minute or so for about five seconds, there was nothing. She was obviously in a building, but there was no way of knowing whether it was night or day here. Even were it dark, surely moonlight would have shone in from somewhere nearby were it able. Was she underground, perhaps? Or maybe high up in some windowless structure? The only way she was going to learn anything at all was if she were to get up and find it out for herself.

With what seemed rather grueling effort, she managed to push up from the wall she had found herself leaned against. As she did so, she felt a cool dampness upon her chest, and her left arm seemed almost entirely unresponsive. Just what the Hell had happened prior to her waking? She couldn't shake the thought from her mind. As she leaned, partially slumped against the wall yet, she looked around once more. She could feel that the room was of decent size, but if there were doors in the blackness, she would never be able to make them out. Indeed her only hope seemed to be in the direction of that distant light; a thought that caused her seemingly battered body to ache instinctively. Every inch of her told her she would never make it that far in this beaten state, and every time she went to push herself off the wall, she found her body tense... and then nothing. No push. The daunting distance was psyching her out, it seemed.

Several minutes into her personal struggle, one of her ears flicked at a noise. One nearby at that, and coming from her left. It did not take her long to realize what that sound was between her keen ears, and the taste and smell she found upon her still apparently quite undamaged nose and muzzle; it was dripping blood, and from the sound of such closeness, it simply had to be hers. From that damaged arm no doubt. Of course, this only added to her troubles. She did not think she was bleeding when she woke, so she must have opened up a fresh wound as she was struggling and tensing. One she could not feel in the slightest. Probably a good thing from the sound of the steady drip, though this was hardly a pleasant moment. To add to her physical aches and mental blocks, she was now faced with the threat of blood loss. Still, she did not find the usual terror in the thought that she would die alone in some unknown place. Perhaps it was the surrealism of the whole thing that had simply broken her; and in short order to boot. On top of simply bleeding, the numbness of her arm prevented her from knowing exactly WHERE she was bleeding from. She relied on her sense of touch instead, taking her good arm and traveling it slowly across the damp arm. Her eyes had closed, heightening her sense of touch ever so slightly more as she sought out the wound a bit reluctantly. She hoped it wasn't serious, but the knot in the bottom of her stomach told her otherwise.

It was mortifying, feeling all that dampness in her arm. Obviously some of it was blood, but she couldn't tell if all of it was, or if it was even hers. So many worries. She soon found a gash along her bicep. It did not appear particularly deep, but was, indeed, bleeding from it all the same. To remedy the situation, she reached down with her good arm and tore off a solid strip from her shirt, exposing her torso. Though that was hardly a concern of hers in this utter blackness. With a skill that even surprised herself to some degree, she took the torn cloth, wrapped it around the wound tightly, and tied it off using her muzzle and good hand. With a sigh of relief and something of a cynical laugh, she opened her eyes to the black and spotted the light in it's slow flicker once again, "One problem down... gods know how many to go..." She said in a voice that was a clear mixture of exhausted and groggy. Not a mixture that was bound to serve her well as she traveled, but she had little choice in all of this. The next challenge? Getting off the wall and to that damnable light on the black horizon.

Serine struggled several long minutes trying to get up the will to move, frustrated that she could not get her body to cooperate as she wished it to. Growing thoroughly frustrated, and panting a bit from her exertions, she decided it was do or die. If she didn't move, she was going to die in this place and that was seeming less and less a welcome idea. Perhaps all this effort was shaking Death's grip on her some. She did not feel as close to death as she did when she woke, but her body still felt like it had been through the wringer.

She looked up to the dimly glowing light in the distance that begged her forward, and steeled herself at last, placing the palm of her good hand against the wall, body tightening, and then giving a good shove. Her body was finally in motion after what felt easily like an hour or two, even if it was only about twenty minutes in the seemingly endless black. The push gave her some small measure of momentum and, though she stumbled a couple times, a thought that filled her with dread at not being able to catch herself if she did so, she managed to remain upright. Her pace was quite steady for one so wounded at first, but it began to slow as she was nearly halfway to the light, the feeling of exhaustion beginning to overwhelm her body once more. She couldn't help but think that perhaps she had lost an overly significant amount of blood while she had been there on the floor from whatever had happened that led to this. Maybe that was why she was so weak. Her legs felt a bit bruised, perhaps, but by no means broken or bleeding. her torso was in a similar state. The worst of it seemed to be whatever damage had been done to her left arm. She decided that, if nothing else, she needed to reach that light so she could properly examine her wounds. This spurred her on a bit more as she continued to trudge to the light in a straight path, panting heavily from fatigue.

As she continued, she had nearly made it to the light, her eyes never leaving the sight of it, even when it fell dark, keeping it squarely in her center of vision. However, her lack of focus and attention to her surroundings in the dark caused her leg to catch on something and for her to subsequently tumble face-first, a feeling which drew what little life she had back into her body as she attempted to brace herself with the good arm. She feared it might snap under the strain, especially if it was more wounded than she felt it was. However, as she fell, she collapsed on something soft... ish. It was a light thud at best and she hurt nothing more than it already was, but the position of lying down began to make her drowsy, her exhaustion catching up with her now and her eyes feeling heavy.

Still, she was close enough now to the light to get a look at herself and slowly opened her eyes, soon recognizing the feeling that was against her cheek as her entire body lurched some. It was a dead body beneath her. Lifeless and stiff. She had collapsed atop a couple of them, in fact. It had softened her fall thankfully, but she did not much care for the new element in her dark room. She closed her eyes again, trying to put it out of her mind. At the very least, this body's lower half was un-damaged, so she did not have to bathe in another's blood. She couldn't see what had ended them in the darkness, though admittedly she did not try very hard. Instead, she rolled off the pile that she soon discovered was three bodies, though she did not care to see the features to determine gender. Instead, she lay on her back now on the cool floor, some manner of smooth concrete. Since it had not seen light, presumably since it's installation, it was a deeply soothing and comforting sort of cold.

With a hefty sigh, Serine decided it was time to get a look at her arm. She waited until the light dimmed back on, bathing her body in a crimson color which was, of course, reminiscent of blood. 'Go figure...' she thought to herself for the moment. The light faded again while she was in thought, but she got to looking at and feeling her injured arm while she awaited the light, feeling the cloth, now damp with her blood, that was once a part of her shirt, now concealing the gash in her arm. She took a careful feel about her arm, noting small patches of missing fur and even more nicks and minor cuts beneath the fur in various places. 'What the Hell...? Did I use my arm as a shield or something?' She thought quietly to herself as she lay there. As the light dipped back across her body again and she examined the arm, she did not see much more than what she had already learned by touch. However, she WAS able to determine that it did not appear broken. As she lifted the lifeless arm with her good hand, it bent appropriately, so she simply could not figure out what had happened to it.

With a sigh that soon evolved into a groan, she gave up looking at it after the light bathed her a couple more times. With great effort, she managed to get herself into a seated position on the floor, only noticing in another soft glow that there were a couple more bodies nearby. Counting the three she landed on top of earlier, that made five. That she could see. The thought of being around them, and the dulled scent of death filling her nostrils, convinced her it was time to go, lest she join their number, along with those likely still hiding in the black.

She carefully positioned herself near the body pile and, using her good arm she leaned onto the pile and pushed herself up with great effort from her legs which felt like jelly once she was standing on them once more. Again, she could not help but focus on the heavy fatigue wracking her body, but she needed to press on. She gently shook her head and trudged over each body she was now aware of, making sure to look forward as the light emitted for any others that would cross her path, needing to maneuver over a couple more bodies along the way so as not to trip again, but, after another ten minutes of slow but steady travel, the light shone overhead. Her journey to it had ended as she sighed heavily in bliss. As she looked around, she found another light off in the distance glowing in the same fashion and to the same beat as the one overhead. Fortunately, it was not so very far, but as both lights faded, she noticed the traces of a solid, consistent light coming from the hall this second light presided over. It seemed there was still a distance to be traveled, but perhaps she could figure things out if she made it to the room ahead. She had to. As with everything that had happened since she woke, if she wished to go on living, she wold need to make it to this next goal. That was her plan; follow the lights to her freedom.

The journey to the new light did not take near the time it did to reach the first, and she could not see, feel, or smell the death that had surrounded her in the room prior. Perhaps it was that she was assumed just another dead body? Was that room, perhaps, a room for casting off the dead? It was a thought that crossed her mind more than once since her tumble, but she finally put away the thought after remembering that the dead seemed freshly there, whatever the case may be. Of course, that had her wondering if, perhaps, she had somehow been the cause of all that chaos. It was deeply troubling, this amnesia she seemed to be suffering. She was certain she could have so many more answers if only her memory would return. However, with no leads to go by regarding her life prior to waking in the least, she feared that her memory might never return. Just best to live for the now, she figured as she finally stumbled her way under this second red light, sighing deeply as she took a breather in it's faint glow and looking around for where that previously faint light had come from.

Not at all to her surprise, there was, indeed, a lit room not far from where she had managed to drag her damaged body. What was more was that she could hear faint voices coming from that direction as well. 'More living!?' She thought to herself with a start. Sure, she had expected to find a room, possibly with provisions of some kind, but other people!? She could not make out the conversation the voices were holding, but she had to go and see for herself what was going on. She pushed off the wall and made for the lit room with as much speed as she could muster.

The worrisome thought of enemies in that room had, indeed, crossed her mind. It could be anyone in there, after all. But it was all she had to go by, so she had to at least look, and her excitement at the thought of another life-form of any kind simply could not be dampened. Her footwear, apparently some manner of combat boots, thumped across the ground as she made her way swiftly down the passage. The voices stopped, no doubt in concern of her approaching footsteps, and as the light of the room began to engulf her body, she found herself temporarily blinded, drawing an arm up over her eyes a moment as the cocking of a firearm could be heard. Moments after, a startled, uncertain voice called out, "And who the Hell are you!? You one of 'them'!?" The voice was that of a male, and as Serine's eyes began to regain focus, she saw the rather battered human cyborg before her, holding a rather interesting-looking firearm indeed. The likes of which she had not seen in the past. Even so, the question was posed, and she was to answer it. And quickly at that, it seemed, as his finger quivered on the trigger.

"I... I'm Serine..." She responded in a tone still befitting the grogginess and fatigue that was weighing on her yet. "And I... I don't know who... who 'them' are... err... who 'they' are, I guess. I... I woke up what feels like hours ago down the passage back there. I... I honestly can't remember a thing prior to my waking." She said, feeling honesty would serve her best at the moment.

The man's arm wavered a bit longer before the sturdily built gator he shared the room with reached out one of his thick arms and pushed the gun barrel down a bit, "She's one of us..." He said simply, believing her tale.

With the flick of his wrist, the man with the gun drew the weapon back into his body; an even greater surprise than the weapon itself, which only expanded upon the mystery of them both, though the gator appeared normal enough save his size, easily standing seven feet tall, probably a bit more. "Tell me, how'd you get here... Serine?" Asked the man with a bit of a sneer.

She was a bit startled by the question, but without the presence of a firearm in her face, she was able to think a bit more clearly and quickly. "How did I... get here...?" She asked herself before responding moments after, "I followed the red lights. It was all I could see when I woke..."

This seemed to further intrigue the cyborg, his expression telling that he wished to make heads and tails of all of this. After a few seemingly endless moments, he shot back, "Red lights, huh? Mine were yellow... and Bross had blue ones. Can't say I saw red OR blue lights on my way here." He shrugged it off, however, having apparently been the only one in the room to think anything more if it than simple hall-specfic lighting. "Even so... timetable's about right. Bross and I have been here for about twenty minutes is all. Seems like forever ago we all woke up, but no idea as to why. And what's more is that none of us remembers a damn thing aside from our names... mine being Brenner, by the way." He paused a moment, looking them both over a few moments before looking back to Serine, "You know... I must not have seen any of you 'anthro's before today... you're just... shocking to look at, to say the least. Even so... Bross told me you guys are hardly rarities." He snickered. "Just a couple hours ago, I apparently had never seen one of ya before in my life, and now I've seen three." He confessed.

"Three?" Serine asked back, looking around the room, only to then notice a shadowed, more stoic figure in the corner. It was another male from the looks, and this one an anthro just like Serine and Bross. Save that this one was a jet black jaguar with emerald eyes shining beneath a cloak of sorts, though he made no effort to introduce himself. Brenner merely shook his head as he joined Serine in her gaze to him. "He hasn't said a word since I found him. He was a short distance from where I was when I woke. Even so... maybe his vocal chords are cut? Can't say for sure... he made sure to keep a distance between us the whole time. Something of a solitary sort, I guess." He then looked back to Serine, the hooded figure drooping the hood even lower to further obscure himself. "Doesn't seem to be an enemy though, otherwise I imagine we'd be dead already."

Bross finally piped up again with a low grumble of his voice, "You humans sure do like to talk... are all quite like you?" He asked rhetorically. Brenner merely gave him a cold look in response, but it passed and he let out a heavy sigh. "At any rate... got no idea how we got here... or how to get out of here, either. Aside from this room, the whole place might as well be night."

Serine frowned a bit, not appreciating the disheartening news. "Well... where's left to look? Where did you guys come from?" She asked, looking and noticing four entrances to the room, including her own. And since Brenner had come to the room with the mystery man, it only left one other route to take. Of course, it almost seemed as though that was the plan, based on how the room was designed. And it was no surprise when Brenner revealed all the three passages clustered in one corner of the room were where they had come from, while the forth passage stood apart from the others.

"Think it's a trap?" Serine asked Brenner.

"This whole thing's been fishy from the start... even if it IS a trap... what other options do we have? I mean... at least now we have numbers... right?" He suggested, though not sounding any more confident about the plan than she was.

It was not until that point that Brenner's eyes caught Serine's limp arm and he piped up, motioning toward it, "Get in a fight on the way here or summin?" He asked curiously, be it his business or not.

Serine looked to her arm, grasping it gently with the good one as she examined it and shook her head, "No... it's been like this since I woke up. It... doesn't appear to be broken. But it's not working either. It's just... there..." She said with a heavy sigh.

Brenner took the chance to move in a bit closer and get a look at it, noting the wrap and unraveling it to see the gash, examining it a bit. "You know... if I didn't know any better, I'd say this was a surgical job of some sort. Could be someone carefully cut the nerves and tendons and such. I mean... I don't know much about anatomy, of course... but... bein' a cyborg, I've seen my share of careful, flesh-slicing, procedures. This... this wasn't no battle scar. Whatever happened to your arm... it was intentional. And surgical at that."

Serine frowned deeply at the thought, looking from the wound to Brenner and back again, "Is there anything we can do?" She asked, a bit worriedly, "Not unless we get out of here and find you a doctor. And even then... it's almost impossible to say. If I DID know anything about how to fix you, it was lost in the amnesia. Only reason I remember about the surgical cuts is because my body remembers. Just seeing it brought my mind back to surgeries in the past... though I can't say what kind or for what purpose." Brenner offered his own heavy sigh now. "Guess only time'll tell if we'll be getting anything back of our pasts any time soon. For now though... the bleeding seems to have stopped. Might not hurt to let it get a bit of air." He said simply. To which Serine nodded, tossing away the bloody scrap that was once of her top.

"Waitin' around here'll get us nowhere, though. Best to get movin' down this tunnel here. Just keep your wits about ya, I imagine." Brenner then looked back over his shoulder and beckoned their silent companion on, "You coming along? Would hate to leave you here after the trip this far..." He confessed. The figure sat there a few long moments in contemplation before rising to hi feet, but making sure to remain a god ten feet behind the others. The room didn't seem to hold anything of value in it, unfortunately, so they wasted no time in lingering. Instead, they began their march down yet another shadowy passage where, with luck, some answers might soon be waiting.

---

I had broken this up into a couple sections over the expanse of a couple nights, but I've read through it all again to make sure everything is spelled alright and that there's continuity to the story. I BELIEVE everything looks good, but by all means, should any of you that happen to read this find anything amiss, by all means, let me know. :3

Thank you again for taking the time to read this, and know that I fully intend on doing more writing soon, I just have no set date, as I tend to write this only when the inspiration strikes me. x3 Anywhos, hope you all enjoyed it. even if it IS one of the few stories not sex-oriented. xP

Story and characters ©  setzan