First it was the continuing blackness. Thought had stopped for some reason, frozen, but Michael wasn't even aware of this. His mind stopped existing, at least for the next unknown period of time. Like a corpse. Some would say that he was dead at that moment, lacking all of the vital signs such as a heartbeat, brain activity, breathing and body heat. Cold as a stone.
Michael had experienced and saw this plenty of times, looking at the old cryo pods that housed delicate biological cargo inside of them and having been in one at least once.
While in those things, time, space and everything else ended. You're like a corpse that has not a care in the world, just like Michael currently.
Until...
Waking from cryogenic sleep was always an ordeal. Your lungs are full of cryogenic fluid that stopped your heart and breathing, your eyes are unfocused and blurry while your whole body feels like it is going to shatter and yet burning for air. Michael's chest heaved, slowly rolling onto his side while the food he had eaten for lunch and other fluids dribbled and flowed past his blue lips.
There was dizziness as well, hearing the fast and tired beating of a heart forced back to life. Blackness surrounded his vision but he could see the blue glow of the other pods in front of him through the narrow ring his eyes gave him.
Whomever woke him up didn't wait for him to regain his faculties or to recover as firm and strong pairs of hands grabbed his arms and pulled him out of the pod, all blue and naked.
His legs wouldn't work and slipped on the slippery floor. The cold metal floor would've been his next stop had it not been for the same strong pairs of hands keeping him up and dragging him away.
The cool air made it almost impossible to catch his breath, his body convulsing from both the need for heat and because it was ever so slowly coming back to life. Michael will consider himself lucky if he survives this, but his mind was just a fog and nothing else.
They carried him like a piece of meat to...somewhere. Michael couldn't really know or think at the moment, his higher brain functions still booting up like an old computer. If he could think, he'd think that brains were just outdated computers at this point.
Those hands continued to carry him. His toes were tingling with reawakening nerves and each time they bumped against the floor or a gap in height, his legs twitched on reflex but that was as far as his limbs currently functioned.
Michael could recognise the cool sanitised air filling his lungs. It was the air of a spaceship. His spaceship. Who was dragging him like this without doing the proper cryo reawakening procedures first?
That was as far as he could slowly think when his nearly-deaf ears heard the hiss of the outer door opening and being blinded by the intense light shining in from the outside. All he could do is close his weary eyelids and suffer the light still pouring in through the the thin flesh.
Warm, moist air now washed over him like a godsend, warming his skin and letting him breathe just a bit easier without convulsing like a freeze victim that he was.
He heard sounds, voices, but they were all as if spoken through a bunch of cloth. He couldn't understand any of it. What he did understand is the intense strain on his shoulders from the way he was being carried, his arms up and the only thing held at the moment.
They lifted him further upwards, making him groan, until his feet were flat on the ground and providing little support in him standing. The hands holding him were really warm, no gloves, and then another hand touched his face.
He tried to open his eyes but they were tired now and had no intention in listening to him. The light got dim a bit, assumedly because there was another person now in front of him and quite tall for that matter.
More talking while the hand did deliberate movements across his numb skin. Across the bridge of his nose, tracing down his manly jawline and around his thin blue lips. Short, wet hair clung to the rest of his head when the hand grabbed it and turned his head left and right roughly.
He thought his neck would snap from how much she was bending it. After that, he couldn't stop his head from hanging forward. After a bit, the hands started dragging him away again. Somewhere warm but dry and less bright.
The cryofluid that clung to him dried into small clumps, making his tingling skin tight and uncomfortable. Which wouldn't have happened had they dried him...
His journey ended with another dull hiss of an automated door and into pitch blackness. When they dropped him, he fell onto something soft and felt-like face-first. Where the hands went, he didn't know and didn't care for. All he could do is let himself drift away and pass out.
++++++++++++++
Michael dreamed of nothing. A dreamless sleep brought on by immense fatigue, but soon he was woken up by the intense hunger and pain in his gut and head. The blows he'd been dealt didn't have the chance of recovery and his stomach was empty.
There was only darkness that awaited him. He could feel the soft felt texture of what he thought to be a microfiber blanket that he0d just drooled all over when he realised his cheek was wet.
"Fuck me..." He groaned out amidst the pain that could wait a little. He had to figure out where in the blazes he was. The events prior to arriving here were still foggy but he was certain they had woken him up out of cryo and did little to help him transition back to life. It was a miracle he'd survived!
"Fuck...me...?" Came a female voice, her intonations suggesting she didn't understand what the sounds she was repeating meant.
Michael sluggishly jumped onto his knees on what he assumed was a bed, a very large one, and looked around in the darkness. It was pitch black and the voice sounded like it came from somewhere up above.
Then he was blinded by a screen turning on the wall above the bed, illuminating the room in its harsh blue light. Michael shielded his eyes but the light was already burned in his retinas and the splitting headache only got worse.
