Coming out of long-term, tech-sustained hibernation can be quite a terrifying experience. In the old days, before the war when the technology was still being developed, testers would say coming out of the sleep was like pulling your conscious self together, piece by piece, always afraid you might lose your grip and dissolve back into the vast empty embrace of oblivion. Others though, simply woke up stiff and sore and nauseous. Myrio was granted the good fortune of waking relatively without issue, only pained by the aching of his bones and the throbbing of his head. It was the last bit of good fortune he would have for a while.

As soon as his vision returned to him and he was able to think coherent thoughts, he knew something was wrong. The pod he was in was damaged. A large metal rebar had smashed halfway through the length of the machine, missing Myrio’s body by only several inches. This had broken the pod, ending Myrio’s hibernation and releasing the seal on the door of the container.

Myrio, once he had gathered himself together enough to command his frail withered arms to work, pushed on the door to free himself. It took significant effort, the lead in the door’s construction was not light, and Myrio had not been strong even before hibernation. He felt even weaker now, like a corpse whose muscles had long rotted away. Getting the door open enough to exit the chamber was his first ordeal. He was gasping for breath, clinging to the exterior of the pod for support.

Confusion, fear, and panic began to take hold of him as he observed his surroundings. He had just re-entered the land of the living and it was ominously devoid of life.

The bunker was decrepit, filled with sand and rust. The ceiling had been damaged, sunlight shown through jagged holes here and there, metal rebar hung loosely in various places, threatening to fall at any moment. There was little in the room besides a couple dozen other pods, most open and empty, some crushed by the collapsing building. None appeared to contain life. Myrio was alone. A whimper escaped his lips as his brain, still retrieving ancient memories, struggled to comprehend his situation.

He remembered being chosen for this pod. A medical test... he had passed, something about his impressive durability. They’d chosen him for the program... then he'd started living in the compound. He had been prepared for hibernation. He’d been told he would awake to a peaceful new world. He would sleep and the problems of the world would work themselves out. Looking around the desolate bunker now, he feared they had done just that, though not in the way anyone would have hoped.

His legs gained just a bit more strength and he was able to take his first shaky steps outside of the bunker in centuries. His bare feet met the hard cracked dirt of the earth outside and the sun beat down on his pale body like a weapon. It burned. He gasped at the intensity of it, almost believing he’d suddenly combusted. But the heat, though powerful, was not deadly. He adjusted slowly to the dry air and scorching rays, forcing his legs to take steps across the vast red dirt desert, in which he could see no end on the horizon. He did not know where he was going or why he was even leaving at all. It was a dumb impulsive reaction to finding himself in an unfamiliar place, like a child who wanders aimlessly in search of the parent they’ve been separated from. Perhaps somewhere there was someone who could explain this, if he could find them.

But as the bunker became nothing more than a metallic gleam in the distance behind him, his conscious brain fully returned to life and reality set in.

It was not difficult to figure out. The world was dead. The war was never meant to go this far, but war has a voracious will beyond its creators. He was one of those put away in hibernation to await the end of the destruction and to inherit a new world in its wake. But there was no new world, just the dry bones of the old. Myrio’s misfortune was that he had not died peacefully in his pod like the others, but survived just long enough to reenter this hellish landscape. He stopped walking now, his naked body covered in red dust, standing alone in an endless plain. The only things around for miles that he could make out were sparse waist-high shrubs and sickly skeletal trees. Nothing to indicate civilization. Fully awake now, Myrio uttered his first words in centuries, “No, God please. Please...”

It was a prayer that he might wake up from this and find himself among others once again. “Please!” he cried out, voice ringing out in stale desert air, yielding no reply. “Please... I don’t want be here. What am I supposed to do?” He whimpered, jaw clenching and hands shaking. He knew he was crying, but his tears had dried up decades earlier.

“Oh God... I’m going to die here. I have to die here.” Death was inevitable. What else was there to do? But the pod had cruelly left the task to him. He collapsed into the earth, pulling his knees to his chest and heaving as the ghost of tears rolled down his face. He tried to return to sleep, but his panicked mind was only becoming more alert as the effects of hibernation melted away.

All he could do was lay still and moan pathetically, defeated and alone. Like a prey animal injured in the den of the beast.

It was only a matter of time until the predators came along. Though Myrio did not know it, he was not truly alone. In fact, company was on its way to him right at that moment. Gliding across the red dessert on its many pointed legs, towards the scent of a warm body.