When William Hawke's consciousness returned, or perhaps awakened for the first time, it came without any memory. Only the sudden and terrifying sensation of being trapped.
His fingers groped in the dark, finding rough, cold surfaces pressing from all sides. Above, below, on the sides. The space was shaped like a coffin, or perhaps a storage chamber, or some other kind of machine he couldn't identify. It was made of some kind of metal, too cramped for an adult body.
Metal. Metal everywhere.
'What the hell is this? Where am I?'
The first thought came more as a visceral sensation than as words. Panic began to permeate every part of the man. The space was too small, too cramped. He could barely turn around, impossible to fully extend his arms.
He tried to remember how he had ended up there.
Nothing.
He tried to remember the previous day.
In vain.
He tried to remember anything, a name, a face, a place, a feeling, any fragment whatsoever.
Absolutely nothing.
It was like waking up for the first time in his life. Only instead of a soft cradle, he was in a metal tomb.
'Was I buried alive?'
Searching for answers at that moment didn't help at all. The air was getting heavy; in fact, he wasn't sure if there was any air there at all. Perhaps only now would he notice its absence; each breath he tried was less satisfying than the last. Nothing truly filled his lungs. Each gulp of air seemed thinner, more insufficient.
How long can a person endure in such a confined space? A few minutes? Less?
'I don't want to find out.'
His hands pushed against the surface. Unsuccessful. It was like trying to move a wall. He tried again, putting in more force. The muscles in his arms trembled with the effort, but the slab didn't move even half a centimeter.
'Shit!'
He bent his legs as far as he could in that cramped space, his knees hitting his face, an uncomfortable position that made his spine protest. Then he kicked.
THUD.
Nothing. But... he had felt something different there. The top part wasn't solid like the sides. He felt a slight tremor, a minimal yielding that indicated it could come loose. It felt like a lid mounted on top, not a continuation of metal.
He repositioned his legs, ignoring the discomfort. He kicked again.
CRACK.
That sound. That damn beautiful sound of something breaking.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The kicks became a frenzy. Who cared about the discomfort of positioning himself at that angle when the air he so desperately needed was nonexistent? That crack was his only chance. His legs pounded like pistons, the adrenaline masked the pain of his feet against the stone.
Then it happened.
A ray of light pierced the darkness.
Sunlight. Absolutely comforting. And along with it, fresh air, that kind of air that warms the lungs, that fills every part like water wetting dry earth.
The man gave a great sigh, pulling in as much as he could. He had been almost suffocating moments ago, and now he lay there, panting, catching his breath. Each breath was a small part of life that seemed to recover.
His legs kicked with renewed force. Pieces of stone began to fall to the sides. The opening grew. More light and more air became available.
CRASH.
The lid flew through the air.
He didn't waste any time. He grabbed the jagged edges and pulled himself out, rolling on the damp earth like a castaway reaching the shore. He lay there on his side, his cheek sunk into the soft ground, just breathing.
Air had never tasted so good. Air is life.
He was still panting, of course, he had gone through moments of tension and panic, but eventually his breathing calmed down. The fear vanished, replaced by a profound exhaustion that seemed to emanate from his very bones. And then came the curiosity.
He opened his eyes. His vision was still blurry, the light bothered him after the total darkness, but it didn't take long for it to regulate.
"Holy shit. What the hell is this?"
The words came out in a hoarse whisper.
Trees.
No, they weren't just trees. They were the tallest and thickest he could imagine, right there in front of him, defying any notion of proportion that his empty brain might still contain. They were colossal. Some had trunks so thick that it would take about twenty men holding hands to encircle them. They rose so high that the tops were lost up there, in the middle of a green sea of foliage that blocked part of the sky.
The roots in the ground were as thick as bridges, intertwined to form natural tunnels where a person could walk without even bending their head. Ferns taller than a man grew everywhere, their leaves opening like green umbrellas. A nearby mushroom was about knee-high, and it looked healthy and alive, an integral part of the landscape.
'Something's wrong.'
The thought came automatically, instinctively. Trees don't grow like that. That's unnatural. But... how the hell did he know that? He had no memory of the size trees should be, but something like an intuition told him that the trees he had known weren't like that.
It was as if his brain wanted to remember something. To know that trees should be smaller. That plants should have different proportions. That this here, all of this, was wrong in some fundamental way.
But it also seemed right. It wasn't something unreal or fantastical, it was... he searched his mind for the term: ancestral. Primitive. As if the world had gone back millions of years in time, to an era before the very idea of civilization.
He sat up slowly, still a little dizzy. His head was spinning slightly. He looked at the hole he had come out of. Shallow, less than a meter deep. Just a crude chamber carved into limestone, with some strange dust at the bottom, something that looked like... rust? Reddish stains on the stone walls, as if some metal object had been there for a long time. The metal lid that covered him was now broken into three pieces around him.
Why was he there? How did he get there?
Doubts still permeated his mind, but without answers. In a way, he realized that he knew some words and their meanings intuitively, "rust," "limestone," "chamber." That was something. Maybe it was a matter of time before his memories fully returned. Maybe the shock had temporarily blocked everything.
He looked at his own hands. Abrasions on his knuckles from punching metal so much, dirt under his fingernails. He inspected his body; he was completely naked, he realized now, without any piece of clothing or adornment.
'It's okay. I'm whole, at least.'
He stood up, feeling the soft earth under his bare feet. He leaned on a nearby root to steady his balance and took a few steps exploring the clearing where he had emerged.
That's when it appeared.