The world didn't come back all at once. It arrived in fragments, disjointed and slow.
First came sound.
Faint. Hollow.
A steady beep, repeating itself like a question he didn't know how to answer.
Beep... beep... beep.
Then, heaviness settling not on his chest, but behind his eyes, like his skull had been packed with wet sand. When he tried to breathe, it felt unfamiliar. Like his lungs were out of practice. His mouth was dry, his tongue rough and thick, dragging across the roof like paper across stone.
The air was cold and sterile. It tasted of bleach and something sharp. Hospital.
Not just clean but emptied.
Too quiet to be peaceful.
It felt like time had paused and left him behind.
Kairo Lancaster opened his eyes.
The ceiling stared back, white and unfamiliar, broken into plastic tiles that looked too clean to belong to anywhere but a hospital. A fan circled lazily above him, its blades moving with no urgency, no rhythm, as if the room had forgotten how to care whether he lived or not.
Then came pain.
Not as a flood, but as a slow climb, a buzz in his nerves that gradually sharpened until it became unmistakable. His back ached. His legs felt foreign, like limbs borrowed from another man. Even his arms felt disconnected, lifeless and heavy at his sides.
He blinked again.
This time, more came into focus:
A half-drawn curtain.
A metal tray with gauze and a capped syringe.
An IV pole standing like a sentry beside his bed, feeding him through a clear tube.
The monitor beside him blinked. Beeped. Counted his heartbeat like it was watching him prove something.
I'm alive, he thought.
But something was wrong.
He tried to speak.
Nothing came.
Just a dry rasp that burned the back of his throat, more air than voice.
Panic stirred.
Not the kind that screamed. Not yet.
This was quieter. Slower.
Like his mind knew it should be afraid but couldn't remember why.
A voice answered him calmly. Female.
"Mr. Lancaster?"
Soft footsteps. A figure.
And then a woman in scrubs stepped into view, her voice clipped and practiced, but not unkind.
"You're awake," she said, reaching toward his bed controls. "You're at King's Point Medical. London. You were in an accident."
He squinted at her, the words catching behind the wall of fog in his brain.
"Accident?" His voice cracked like dry wood.
She nodded. "A plane crash. You've been in a medically induced coma for two months. We weren't sure you'd…"
She didn't finish.
Two months.
The number floated in the air between them, impossible and heavy.
Two months.
Gone.
It hit him in waves, not just the time, but everything that might have lived inside it. All the days, the hours, the moments that had slipped away without asking his permission.
His heart monitor picked up speed.
"Easy," the nurse said, her hand gently pressing against his arm. "You're safe. You're okay."
But safe wasn't how it felt.
It felt like waking up in the middle of someone else's story.
She adjusted the bed, helping him sit up slowly. The shift sent a bolt of pressure down his spine. His body groaned in protest. It didn't recognize him yet.
"You've lost weight," she said. "Muscle memory will come back with therapy. What matters now is that you're awake. That's your first victory."
Kairo gave a small, tired sound. Almost a laugh.
A breath with too much bitterness to be anything else.
He didn't feel victorious.
"I remember… my name," he murmured. "Kairo. Kairo Lancaster."
The nurse nodded, her smile reassuring. "That's good. That's a strong sign. Cognition, recall, it's all there."
But even as she smiled, he felt the knot forming in his chest.
Because that was all he remembered.
Just a name.
No stories. No faces. No voices echoing in his mind, no arms wrapped around him in memory. Nothing warm. Nothing human.
Only structure.
Lancaster Dominion. A logo. Glass towers. Conference tables. Numbers and strategy and ambition. That part came back like muscle memory.
But where were the people?
He turned his gaze toward the window. The blinds were drawn, but a strip of light slid between the slats, golden and patient, like the world outside was waiting for him to remember it.
"There's…" he started, then stopped.
The nurse tilted her head. "Yes?"
"There's something… missing."
She hesitated. "What do you mean?"
He swallowed, his throat still dry, but his voice steadier this time.
"I don't know," he said. "But I feel like… I lost someone."
The nurse gave a sympathetic smile, soft, and practiced. But her eyes didn't quite match.
"That's normal," she said. "Coma patients often wake up disoriented. It's the brain's way of piecing itself back together. It doesn't necessarily mean something's been lost."
But it did.
He knew it.
This wasn't confusion.
This was grief.
A hollow ache, deep in his chest. Not sharp like a wound but constant, like a song that had been playing when he fell asleep and now haunted the edge of his silence.
He turned his face toward the sunlight bleeding in.
Somewhere beyond that window…
Someone had mattered.
Maybe they still did.
Maybe they were waiting.
Maybe he had loved them or been loved by them.
But now?
Now there was only the noise of machines.
The sterile smell of bleach.
The mechanical voice of recovery.
And a silence too loud to be anything but loss.