There was nothing quite like finding out that not only were your limbs physically bound, but that your entire body seemed to be in some sort of containment, to bring you into full awareness. This realisation hits Ziun like a freight truck, and then comes the pain.

God, the pain. 

It’s cold and biting, entirely unforgiving on his frayed nerves. An uncomfortably viscous liquid coats him which makes Ziun too afraid to open his eyes because what is it and what if he goes blind? But then there's a small part of him that doesn’t even want to open them. 

What awaits him? Another lie or the first truth? He’s already been tricked twice and he was tired. Of the deceit, the falsities. But even more so, Ziun is tired at how he never stops trying again, again and again. 

Because surely there would be an end to it all? That behind the stormy clouds and turbulent seas lay a land of green, green grass and a vibrant rainbow?

He hates the small part of him that still holds on to that hope.

Ziun would've very much liked to scream or cry to vent his frustration. Unfortunately though, that wasn't currently possible. Because in his mouth sits an obstruction. A tube that doesn't deform no matter how hard he bites down. 

A breathing tube! Of course! 

How else would he be breathing..? Now made aware of that though, Ziun has to make a conscious effort not to breathe. Which is next to impossible, so even if the outcome means he's somehow left worse off; he still moves.

Perhaps making such blatent movements  wasn't the smartest thing to do. In such a restless state, Ziun cared little for caution. Not only was there an unknown strength rising in his body that gave him the confidence to be bold, but something about the way he shifts and flexes just feels.. right. His ‘soul’ slots into this body like he’s finally come home, like reuniting with an old friend or something just as sappy.

It feels good. So good in fact, that the restraints fall apart with ease in his excitement. 

One down, one more to go.

Ziun feels a little shameful at the way he willingly pulls his legs apart to free his ankles. They’re tighter bound though so it needed more effort to snap off than his wrists did, but then there’s a burst of energy running through his legs and he instinctively kicks—

The glass shatters on impact. It wasn’t quite what he expected to happen but damn if he wasn’t giddy that it did.

A blaring alarm reaches his ears just as the liquid quickly drains from the new hole. The lack of liquid means that he's no longer suspended, and after a few seconds Ziun's feet brush against the bottoms of this tank. Shortly after the liquid drains away down to his chest; the breathing apparatus is removed.

It retracts without a sound, smooth on its way out that suggests an autonomous precision. With a gasp, Ziun greedily sucks in the air his body wasn’t used to manually breathing. Being fed air and physically inhaling it were two different things; it made him feel alive in ways he can’t even begin to describe.

When the liquid finally finishes draining completely, Ziun is, unsurprisingly, left wet and shivering. There’s strength in his body that makes it so that he doesn’t collapse, but Ziun is still apprehensive about taking even a single step forward. 

What if he trips and lands head first into the glass? It was easy enough for him to kick a hole in, and with how solid this new body of his is — Ziun is pretty sure him tumbling into the glass would be too much pressure for it to handle.

Putting that on the back burner for now, Ziun goes to open his eyes, only to instantly close them again with a hiss. It was so damn bright! His now-free hands rub at his eyelids to abate the unexpected sting. His face is ridiculously slimy, and there seems to be a sticky quality to it when he rubs his hand down his face.

Flicking the residue from his hands, he slowly attempts to open his eyes again. 

This time he's learnt to tilt his head down and away from the light he’d noticed originated from somewhere up high. The ceiling, most likely. It's still painfully bright, however, and there's nothing he can do but adjust. So Ziun spends a good few seconds just standing there periodically blinking.

After feeling comfortable enough to leave his eyes open a normal amount of time, his toes curl in satisfaction and—they’re metal grates he’s standing on, of all things. More than likely, these grates are where the liquid had disappeared into, and not leaked out of the hole he’d made in the glass. It had seemingly drained too quickly for it to be the latter.

The actual hole in question is at the height of his calf — which makes him do a double take. It appears that Ziun wasn’t all that far from the ground; if he had just stretched out his legs then perhaps he could’ve given himself stable footing.

Fuck, whatever.

Instead of focusing on what was on the other side of this clear container, Ziun set himself the task of breaking through it. Because although the draining and subsequent removal of the breathing apparatus had suggested there was an automatic system in place that reacted to his awakening; no such thing as the glass walls falling or in any way opening up had happened.

Was he being monitored? Was there someone around waiting for him to show more of a response to gauge his intent? It was definitely something he needed to take into consideration. But more importantly — this glass needs to go. 

Wherever the breathing tube had retracted back in to made Ziun question what else this tank was outfitted with, and it makes a stone sink to the pit of his stomach. 

Could they gas him? What was stopping them from interchanging that tube with a needle and injecting him with something poisonous— or a kind of sleeping agent?

Absolutely nothing. So he rears back his leg and aims for the area around the hole in the glass. 

Instantly spiderweb cracks crawled up the sides of the enclosure and it breaks apart almost as soon as Ziun kicks it a second time. For the next few seconds, all that sounds throughout the room is this scene: Light tinkling of falling glass. It settles outside Ziun’s immediate vicinity, resting on the metal ground that was at a lower height to the enclosure. Ziun pauses for a split second before throwing caution to the wind and taking a step down directly onto the glass.

The pain is instantaneous and Ziun both hates and appreciates at how it gives him clarity. His eyes widen almost comically at the many sensations that travel up his leg originating from the sole of his feet. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt before and realer than smelling lit incense in his home hub; than being chained up and drugged in a certain basement.

How the hell had he only just noticed the  dullness of everything before..? And then over the sudden sound of his blood thundering in his veins, Ziun hears a command crackle across the space. 

[“Set your phasers to stun. The patient is ... not a threat.”]

The sound had probably come from a speaker— which explains a lot, really. When he’d first woken up, beneath the sobering cold and the chuff of restraints; a feeling of being watched had passed through him. Ziun won’t deny being paranoid, but his intuition has yet to fail him, instincts yet to be wrong for him to second guess himself.

’Patient? Am I in a hospital?’  

Now that he was relatively free, Ziun turned his attention to the room as a whole.

The walls, the floor, and everywhere he looked was encased in a sheen of metal. It looked like a sterile environment, and a quick look up showed the ceiling was that same stark white he had seen earlier. The brightness had brought around a migraine that had been quietly simmering at the back of his mind, and the lights didn’t help his vision that still hadn’t fully cleared. When he tears his sight away from this brightness, the sensitivity still in his eyes meant that he caught the small red, subtle light flashing in the corners of the room.

Ziun didn’t doubt that these weren’t cameras. He had already guessed there was someone watching him; monitoring his every move. It still brought a cold sweat to his back though.

”Don’t move.”

Not only was there cameras recording and watching him, but so were the people physically in the room with him. There were.. five of them? They were similarly dressed, all dark clothing and obscured faces.

“Who—” Ziun cuts off his own sentence. Something was climbing its way up his throat, and he bent over to rest his hands on his knees, coughing out a glob of… slime? It hit the floor with a wet slap, and he peered down at it through his sticky lashes. Despite wiping his face of the majority of it, it still clung to certain places.

It wasn’t— the glob he spat out ended up being nothing. Just a piece of jelly-like phlegm that shone clear from where it sat before it started to evaporate. He ran his tongue over his teeth, swiping slimy residue off the top of them and gathered it in his cheeks before he spat that out too.

When he straightens up, Ziun abruptly finds himself staring right down the barrel of a gun. There were attachments on it that he didn’t recognise, an advanced model he wasn’t familiar with, but he could still make out that it was a rifle of some kind.

How many bullets could it hold? What was the reload time? If it didn’t shoot bullets but something else, then could he, hypothetically, dodge the shot? 

Well. That last one was pure speculation. No matter what was in the barrel, the speed at which a projectile would go means he wouldn’t be dodging anything without some kind of supernatural ability.

Ziun shuffles, notices the nuzzle follows his every movement and kicks some of the glass out from under his feet before he raises an eyebrow with the confidence of a newborn fawn to croak out the following:

“Who the hell are you?”