Sometimes, one has to leave oneself for a while to really understand why they fought to come back and also who fought with them.

Allie awoke, but she wasn’t sure if she really was awake at first,because everything around her was dark, but she sensed her eyes were open. She tried to speak, but her throat would not produce any sound. She felt herself lying on a hard mattress. Her arms were lying next to her, limp.

She could hear noise coming from somewhere far away, not from the room she was in. She tried to move but couldn’t, after many minutes, she became exhausted and fell back asleep, but a different kind of sleep, a fitful sleep, not like the many years of nothingness she had experienced before.

Allie woke up again; this time she could see a little light in the room that illuminated a face looking down at the ground. She recognized who this was; her very own cousin!

“Linsey?” she said, surprised that her voice actually worked.

The face looked up from the floor, eyes widening in disbelief.

“Am I dreaming? Are you actually awake?”

With that, she ran over to Allie, wrapping her arms around her.

“A-aren’t you dead?” Allie stuttered, still only half awake.

“I’ll explain later; I need to tell Doctor Meyers that you’re awake. Wait there!”

With that, Allie’s cousin ran out of the room, leaving her in almost total darkness again, apart from the little light that her cousin had dropped on the floor earlier.

Allie lay there for a couple of minutes, head aching, drifting in and out of sleep.

Until finally the door burst open, and an old-looking man with a long white beard, wearing a white jacket entered the room, followed by her cousin.

“Allie, how do you feel? Nausea, headache, dizzy?” He asked while bustling around the room, flicking all kinds of switches.

He then lit a bright lamp that illuminated the room brightly. Allie blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the light.

“I—I have a headache, and I feel dizzy…” Allie muttered.

“Okay, I’m just going to run a couple of tests on you.”

Then, without warning, he stuck a needle into Allie’s arm, taking a blood-sample.

“Oh Allie, I’m so glad you’re okay!” her cousin said.

“Y-you’re alive? What’s going on?” Allie muttered, her mind reeling.

“Yes, of course I am, but don’t worry about that now; I’ll explain everything later.”

Allie wanted to know everything right now, but she couldn’t think straight, as Doctor Meyers was running all kinds of tests on her, murmuring and mumbling constantly.

Allie’s next few days were a blur: waking up, getting injections and whatnot, falling back asleep, her cousin talking to her, drinking some kind of sweet water that was supposed to help her heal but only made her feel dizzy, and going back to sleep again.

Until, on the third day, as she was lying in her bed, wondering where all the loud swishing and whooshing noises came from. Forher cousin had talked to her a lot, but only about unimportant things like how she felt, that she was happy, she was okay, etc. Then Doctor Meyers entered her room and said, “I think you’re strong enough to get a little to

ur of where we are.”

So the next thing she knew, she was seated in a wheelchair, about to find out where she actually even was.

“Okay, are you ready?” her cousin Linsey said, smiling at Allie with her annoyingly pretty face.

“Depends,” Allie says.

Linsey chose to ignore this instead opening a door

to a hallway, with many people walking around, some in suits, some in white jackets. There were also many windows that have a view of…. Black. It must be nighttime, Allie decided, as she had completely lost her sense of time while she was in her dark, hospital-like room.

They went down the hallway with many doors and rooms that on the outside  looked  similar to hers, until they reached a big metal door.

“Okay, listen, I have no idea how to even begin to explain this…. But we’re kind of…Let me just show you.” Linsey said.

They entered a large, glass dome, and what she saw made her scream. They were underwater, deep black water surrounded them, and she could just see the surface above, which was just a deeper black, with stars in the sky, but the thing that actually made her scream was a pair of large glowing red eyes, staring at her, with a mouth full of sharp teeth. “W-what is that…” she said, pointing to the face staring at her from outside the dome.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, there are some hybrid creatures in these waters, but this is only a small one, and they can’t break through the glass.” She said in the most casual voice. “B-but, isn’t it going to kill us?” Allie stuttered.

“I thought you came from the great pine; aren’t there serpents and other horrible creatures there? I thought Devilish Creatures was your middle name!” Linsey said.

“W-well, I mean, I’ve never seen one like this, and I’m anyway terrified of anything to do with deep, dark, black water.” Allie said, eyeing the creature wearily.

“Okay, sure, well anyway, let’s move on.” And with that Linsey pushed Allie and her wheelchair along, down a hallway surrounded by black water.

“Okay, let’s sit down for a little bit, oh wait you’re already sitting” Linsey sniggered.

So she walked over to a little white bench with a plant next to it. The place looked so tidy and neat that it was almost eerie. Allie sat there in her wheelchair awaiting what Linsey was about to tell her.

“So, you’re probably wondering, what the hell is going on? Well, after you got captured by the HLSMPO, Gregor robots took over most of our planet, terrorizing us all, turning everything they could see into one of them, until there was an error in the whole system and every single robot malfunctioned, including the people that were in the process of turning into Gregor robots, you included. You probably lay there in the abandoned, Felestofile-filled laboratory for months until some survivors found you along with a handful of other people. It’s a wonder you didn’t die of Felest or get eaten by somebody from the mad marshes, as they had broken in just a couple of days before they found you.” Linsey paused to take a breath.

“What in the world?” Allie said, stunned.

“I’m not finished yet.” Linsey said.

“Then, they took you to the city, and we weren’t sure if you were going to make it; your heart was constantly beating unsteadily because of the electric shock, and God knows what you had to endure during the time you were in that lab.”

Linsey paused for a moment, seeming to remember something.

“Meanwhile, the Felestofile was spreading rapidly; we lost 90% of our civilization; even President Ku died. So we decided to leave Earth for at least 30 years, until the Felestofile should be 95% gone.” Linsey said.

“Then we had a couple of complications with the engine and ended up here, in some kind of ocean in the middle of space, but luckily they’ve found a way to get the engine going again and we’re leaving in a fortnight.”

Allie just sat there, her brain trying to understand what Linsey had just said.

“What?” was all that she could utter for a long time, forgetting for a moment about the hybrid creatures that were apparently swimming around them right now as she tried to process everything.

“Okay, let’s move on.” Linsey said casually.

“No, no, no, wait!” Allie said before Linsey could tell her anything else. Because she was afraid she might literally go back in a coma, which honestly didn’t sound too bad given what she’d just heard.

“S-so, we’re in an ocean in outer space right now?” Allie asked.

But before Linsey could reply, a young man of about 20 with black curly hair and a neatly shaven beard barged into the room, speaking rapidly.

“Oh mio Dio, come facciamo a farlo? Voglio dire che ci rimangono solo 14 giorni e abbiamo solo il 25% del nostro carburante pronto; abbiamo bisogno di almeno un altro mese!” He said in an angry tone.

“Excuse me?” Linsey said.

“Chi è lei?! Cosa sta facendo qui? Oh aspetti, certo, Linsey, la figlia del capo, le mie scuse.”, he said.

“Um…. Sorry, we don’t speak Italian.” Linsey said, looking uncomfortable. ”

To this, the man just looked confused.

“Um… scusa, ehm, non parlo Italiano…” Linsey said it in what sounded like the worst accent ever.

The man looked confused for a second, but then he replied:

“Oh, scusa scusa!”

He then said in English, in an equally bad accent, “Err, my name… is Domenico Atanasio; I do a job for your dad!”

 “Oh right, of course, Domenico!” Linsey replied, sounding like she had no idea who the guy was. ”

“Va bene, va bene, I’ll see you around, Carina!”

With that, he hurried along down the hallway and into a side door.

“Who was that?”Allie asked.

“Honestly no idea.” Linsey said. “Allie added with a smirk, even though she was still shocked at what Linsey had told her a couple of minutes ago.

“Okay, I think it’s time for you to go back to your room, doctor Meyers said you mustn’t get too overwhelmed.”

Linsey said, to which Allie protested:

“But I still have so many questions!” “We’ll talk again tomorrow.” Linsey said firmly.

So,they walked along the long hallway again, people in white jackets and space-suits walking around everywhere, the blinding, bright white light making Allie and Linsey blink rapidly.

Linsey opened the door to her room and said that they would talk again tomorrow.

So there Allie sat, in her bed in her dark room, the only light coming from a screen that monitored her heartbeather mind aching as she tried to piece together everything Linsey had told her, while also sulking about why they couldn’t afford any lighting in her room but tons for in the hallway. Also, did that weird Italian guy say Linsey’s dad was the boss? Eventually she did fall asleep, and she dreamt about weird fish that swim in the sky, cursing to her in Italian.