Precipice Chapter I: The Fall

The first thing Avery Thompson could recall was her body falling through a violent, stormy sky.

Below her was nothing but the roiling waves of a disturbed ocean and the shadows cast by each peak and trough. The air was bitterly frigid - slices of cold lanced her cheeks, chest and arms and tangled into her jacket and hiking pants.

From this height, she should be screaming, but her fear stayed stuck in a stranglehold in her throat like a cornered animal, refusing to burst forth even as Avery beheld the grand distance between herself and the waves far below.

However, there were screams around her. They echoed hauntingly between patches of thick cloud and rain, while other screams pierced her ear drums as if people were racing past her down to the ocean surface.

One loud panicked cry in particular made her look forward, her neck muscles straining. A middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her hair tumbled head over foot, her limbs waving wildly as she fought to right herself. Avery thought it was strange how many layers of skirts she wore and the overly dramatic threading of a corset hugging her drenched ribs.

Suddenly, as the woman was rolling back up, her eyes locked onto the sky above them and her terrified demeanor turned horrified. Her screams went silent, and her carefully powdered cheeks could not hide the blood that drained from her face. Within mere moments her irises vanished into the back of her skull and she passed out, her limbs losing tension as her muscles relaxed.

Avery wanted to turn herself to look too, but instinct told her not to and instead she tried reaching out to the unconscious woman. Her efforts were too little too late, however, as the waves were already within spitting distance. Really, there had been no time to grab the woman, let alone come to terms with the death that Avery was surely going to experience.

She just wished she could remember how she got here. That thought was all that was left as Avery’s body shattered upon the waves.

____________________________

Darkness became blinding lights, then silence became a low humming buzz zipping in and out of Avery’s ears.

Her senses couldn’t process all the information flooding her nerves. Just a moment ago the waves had devoured her, but now she found herself lying partially elevated on a stiff mattress. Was she dead?

No - everything felt, smelled and looked sanitized - clean to the point of sparkling, comfortable to the point of suffocating. A thin glass screen on the wall displayed names and times, while a plastic-looking cart held dozens of tiny drawers labeled meticulously in black ink.

The setting stirred faint images in her brain of being in a similar room. It was all familiar enough to be recognizable, but it took a few moments until she could put a name to her surroundings.

Hospital…this is a hospital room.

Avery tried to sit up, but her body felt wrong. Parts of herself that should be connected were not. Her entire left side prickled and hummed as she tried to move her fingers and toes. She saw the sheets on her right side shift and crumple - proof that she was indeed alive and not in some crazy afterlife.

As she tried to sit up further, something tugged on the back of her skull. Heart racing, she slowly reached up with her right arm - still intact - and grabbed at whatever was holding her down.

Her fingertips met thick, cold wires and cords. Again, images tried to flood her brain. An elderly woman wrapped in white sheets. The insistent beeping of a machine counting in time to a familiar heartbeat. Lines of words on a page. It felt disjointed and fragmented, but once more she took a few moments to digest the provided clues.

Life support machines. Yes, she knew what those were. But, from the feel of the tubes under her hand, there seemed to be an abnormal amount. She wondered how many must have been used to prevent her death. Surely now that she was awake these could be removed?

But there was nothing to remove, as to her horror as her hands traveled farther down and onto her head, she found that the cables were attached directly under her skull and further still into parts of herself that had no business being exposed to open air.

This isn’t normal. This isn't right.

Breathing became difficult for Avery as she quickly lowered her arm and frantically pulled at her sheets.

“Damn. Nurse! Nurse, she’s awake!”

A blurry figure stood up next to her bed. She hadn’t noticed them in her preliminary peek around the room. Were they a friend? Family? Did she have a family?

Why can’t I remember?

Cold, firm hands seized her arms. She struggled, weak pathetic cries escaping her lips. The cords embedded into her brain tugged sickeningly, making her spine crawl and her fingers curl.

She had to know what was done to her. She had to see what was left.

“Let me see - let me see!”

“Miss, please! You’ve never had an implantation done before. It can be a traumatic experience for adults who never went through the procedure at birth.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Avery yelled at the nurse, her voice wobbling and shaking.

Another pair of hands much warmer and gentler than the others pushed down on her shoulders and a deep, rumbling voice spoke.

“It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

The voice calmed her somewhat, but the sheets had been moved around enough that her eyes could see the extent of the hospital’s tampering. The unmistakable glint of metal called to her where her left leg and arm, the left side of her ribcage and hip should be. Many red and blue tubes stuck out of her side, slowly contracting and releasing as they pumped fluids and whatever else into and out of her body.

She was going to be sick.

A tiny pinch pierced into her arm, and darkness quickly consumed her. She welcomed oblivion with open arms.

________________________

Avery felt like she was in darkness for a long time. It felt abnormal being aware of time passing when she should be knocked out. She didn’t hear, smell, or feel anything in particular, instead it was a kind of spatial acknowledgement of time passing beyond her.

In this darkness she could still dream, though her dreams were just like her memories: fragmented.

There were flashes of green and brown - a trail and a pair of boots walking at a steady pace. She saw pages of a book with fantastical sketches of some horrid creature, and a smiling teenager who pointed excitedly to its pages. Then, that old woman again, except instead of being strapped to a hospital bed, she held a little girl in her lap as she read to her.

But, all too soon, she was awake again. This time, her senses all came in slowly and one at a time until she could take in her room and her surroundings without being overwhelmed.

A flicker of movement next to her bed made her tilt her head to the side on her pillow until she held the face of a peculiar man in her sights.

He was severe looking - pale and a little haggard with a 5-o’clock shadow darkening his chin and jawline. Little strips of metal parted his skin on his face and neck, and a glowing blue wire seemed to snake underneath his skin up to his ear that was hidden by his dark hair.

His gray eyes watched her carefully as the nurses came in and slowly leaned her hospital bed forward into a more upright position, being careful not to disturb the cables delivering chemicals, blood and oxygen to her brain and body. They quickly explained that this was standard procedure for every person who goes through the ‘implantation process’. They didn’t bother to explain what that meant when she asked more about it, or why they acted like she should know.

The man beside her adjusted his knee-length coat, then pulled out a thin, nearly transparent pad that was full of small text and images. Glinting on either side were his fingers that had strips of exposed metal that clicked and whirred. “Good afternoon, ma’m,” he said.

Immediately Avery recognized that deep voice. “You were there…when I woke up.”

His brow lifted slightly at her observation. “Yes, ma’m. I was the one who rescued you from the sea wall. The name is Nikolai. I’ve been checking in on you since you arrived last week.”

The week-long timeline really should bother Avery more, but for some reason the mention of the sea wall stole her attention. “You found me…on a sea wall?”

Waves and screams. Wind and laughter. But there had been bodies too. Bodies beside her in the sun, sitting on a steel railing.

Bodies around her, broken and bleeding. Crying.

A voice shouting. “Come on, stay with me!”

Nikolai nodded, his pupils narrowing like tiny camera lenses. “Yes, the one that surrounds the harbor. Unfortunately by the time I found you, you were dying. I had to resuscitate you in order to get you breathing again.”

Avery nodded woodenly, not quite sure how to take in this new information. Her head throbbed; her memories scattered like the bodies on the ocean.

What about the others? What about that woman?

“The others?”

“By others, do you mean the other people who were washed up by the storm with you? I haven’t kept track, but there were a few who were lucky like you.”

Avery locked her fingers together and lowered her eyes to them. The metal of her right hand felt cold and alien in the warmth of her left. It was still so strange that she could feel everything on her right side - the cool shift of the sheets, the tug of wires, the cold hands of the nurses. With metal replacements, she had expected to be numb.

Still, she didn’t know why she expected such things. Nothing in her mess of memories was like this.

“Lucky me,” she muttered.

There was a small sigh from Niklolai and a shift of his chair next to her hospital bed. He carefully reached out and took her metal hand, holding it gingerly like he was handling a porcelain doll.

“I know all of this must be very overwhelming,” he said. “I want to ask you a few questions, but I will understand if you’d rather wait until you feel more ready.”

Avery’s lips thinned. She was grateful to Nikolai; beyond words. Not only had he rescued her, but he had checked in on her while she had been recovering. Yet, there were other problems besides ‘being ready’ that she had.

“Depends on what you want to ask,” she replied, her fingers fluttering without input in his hand. She was still learning how to control her new arm and leg. It was getting better, but it was a painfully slow process.

Nikolai nodded, giving her fingers a little shake in return. “Firstly, I think it would be prudent to ask you your name.”

Thankfully, I can remember that.

“Avery. Avery Thompson.”

“Thompson, huh?” There was a brief pause - Nikolai’s eyes whirring and adjusting before he continued.

“Secondly, I want to ask you where you're from. We couldn’t find any ID chips on you, and the brand names on the clothes you were wearing don’t exist here in TRUEcit, or in any of our current databases. There’s a lot of blanks -”

It was like a gunshot had gone off in her brain - a sudden surge of clarity bursting forth through the smoke and mirrors inside her skull at the mention of her clothes. She remembered something. “A forest,” she said.

Nikolai’s head jerked up, meeting her gaze with a shocked expression. “Excuse me?”

Avery tore her eyes from his and stared at the digital board across from her bed, watching as it glitched on and off, the time stamps being replaced by evergreen branches and hanging berries. She swore she could feel the crunch of pine needles beneath sturdy boots, and the soft, plush insides of a winter jacket hugging her shoulders.

This isn’t real. The screen wouldn’t change like that. I’m hallucinating. Did the nurses say this was a side effect?

“The last clear memory, before the fall,” she said. “I was in a forest. And then…”

“And then?”

Her hallucination transitioned. The screen cracked and blackened, the beautiful forest fading into nothing. Ink like blood flowed onto the pristine white floor.

“And then there was a shadow looming over me. That’s all I remember.”

_____________________

CHAPTER II BY IAN READ:

Also, if you missed the announcement, you can get in the grove by listening to the playlist we put together for the story. (: