Safehouse 53
an excerpt

THEY HAD TOLD him and the other test subjects that they wouldn’t have dreams – but it wasn’t true. In his cryonic sleep, Gaius Bruno dreamt simple dreams, of fields of gold grain and green grass, of snow-capped peaks and lush forests, of blue skies and white clouds and gentle winds. He never saw people in his dreams, only such views of landscapes and nature. They were a reflection of the peacefulness of the deep sleep he had been induced into, and his total separation from the world around him.
One day, the dreams stopped.
And Gaius woke into a nightmare.

FOR THE FIRST time since he had been induced into the cryogenic sleep, Gaius heard voices in his dreams.
“Hey, Sarge, take a look at this,” a male voice said. “You ain’t gonna believe it.”
A pause. “Well, shit,” a husky female voice – Sarge, apparently - spoke. “We’ve really hit the jackpot here. A survivor.”
“What is that piece of tech he’s in?” a deeper male voice said.
“Looks like a really old unit – cryo, I think,” the first man said.
“Cryo?” the deep-voiced man asked.
“Cyrogenics. It’s a late 21st century tech. Freezing people to preserve them; and then waking up in the future. Kinda like time travel, but, you know, for real.”
“Who’d want to freeze themselves?”
“This guy, apparently. And those poor bastards in the others.”
The unconscious state of the Gaius’s cryo-sleep began to wear off and the voices became clearer. He opened his eyes slowly, anticipating the harsh lights of the cryo-lab but only seeing the barest illumination.
Beyond the frosted glass of the cryo-chamber, Gaius could make out a human figure. Focusing his blurred vision through the glass, Gaius could see a dark-skinned man with a lean frame and a black jumpsuit tinkering with the controls of the cyro-chamber. He held a strange-looking, rectangular device, about six inches wide, and it seemed as if he was trying to connect it to the chamber’s systems. He took off a pair of aviator goggles and wiped the lenses on his jumpsuit, though it didn’t seem to get any of the grime off of them.
Gaius had no idea who these people were, and why they were here, but he needed to find out. Though his movement was constrained by the tiny confines of the chamber, Gaius managed to bang on the glass of the chamber.
“Woah, looks like our mystery man is awake,” the wiry, dark-skinned man said, tapping a finger on his left temple. “These damn machines aren’t telling me jack. They coulda warned me that this guy was alive.”
“Well, talk to ‘em more, Sparky. That is what you do,” said a female voice, this one softer than the husky one he had heard earlier as he awoke to consciousness.
“Who…who are you?” Gaius tried to ask. The wiry man, who Gaius guessed was the one named Sparky, shook his head and put his hand to his ear. Gaius remembered that the cryogenic chambers were completely sealed – from sound as well as from particles.
“The…the release,” Gaius said, doing his best to move his arm to point towards the release mechanism on the outside.
“Sarge?” Sparky asked.
“Do it. We need to figure out what this guy is doing here. And besides that, another survivor isn’t something we get every day. I can’t even remember the last time we found one.”
Sparky hit the release, and after the ‘de-thawing’ process completed, several minutes later, the cryogenic chamber’s door opened with a hiss of cold air hitting warm. Gaius tried to take a step out of the chamber, but, his legs still weak and unsure after the long sleep, he stumbled and nearly fell. Sparky caught him and propped it up.
“Woah there, mystery man. Don’t want you to fall and die after we go to all the trouble to rescue you.”
As Gaius tried to shake off the effects of the early revival, he saw three other figures along with Sparky – a powerfully built man with tanned skin, a shaved head and scraggly beard; a vaguely Asiatic-looking woman with the body of a gymnast and black hair pulled into a pony-tail; and a well-muscled woman with fair skin and short-cut amber hair. All wore plain black jump-suits like that of Sparky’s, with no insignia or markings of any kind, and all cradled black-matte rifles of an unfamiliar design.
“What’s happening?” Gaius managed to ask between deep breaths as he adjusted to the sudden awakening into consciousness.
“Far as I can tell, this is the only system that was still active. The other ones, ka-plooey. Shorted out, a while ago, I’d say,” Sparky said. “From what I can tell – and I’m not sure what these machines are telling me, truth be told – these were bleeding power, and they were all gonna shut off. So the machines shunted all the power to your pod, so at least one of ya would survive.”
“It’s a safeguard system. It chooses the cryo-chamber to transfer power to at random,” Gaius said, groggy and dazed. “We never thought it’d be necessary. We have people to look after all of this. Where are they?”
“You’re the only one left.” Sparky said.
“The other chambers? The system should have revived them when the power was transferred.”
“Sorry, mystery man, but something must of went wrong. No one else survived,” Sparky said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Or really damn unlucky,” the man with the shaved head said. “Some’d say better to be dead than in this hell.”
“This hell? What are you talking about?” Gaius asked. “And who are you, and what are you doing in a government facility?”
The four men and women looked at him with blank stares, except Sparky, who looked more curious than anything.
“Answer me!”
“Ah, ah, I see. You’ve been asleep a long while, I’m guessing,” Sparky said, speaking with a tone of scientific interest that Gaius was familiar with. “This isn’t a government facility anymore. There isn’t a government anymore, even.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“Talk time later,” the amber-haired woman said, cutting off the conversation. Judging by her voice, this was the one called ‘Sarge’ – and as her name suggested, she seemed to be the leader. “Ace, Brute, did you get the gear?”
“As much as we can carry,” the dark-haired woman said, shrugging her shoulders to indicate the large pack on her back. “Med supplies, some spare gear, some ammo…and a few guns, even. We can even carry a little more with our new friend here.”
“It’s a good haul,” the burly man said. “Might even be worth the trip.”
“Good. We need to get movin’ before the Imps make our position,” Sarge said.
“The Imps? What are you talking about?” Gaius demanded.
“Do you know how to use a weapon?” Sarge asked him, ignoring his demand.
“I…I used to go to the firing ranges when I was younger…”
“Good enough. Ace, gimme one of the weapons you found,” Sarge said. The dark-haired woman, Ace, handed her a strange, bulky pistol. Some sort of semi-transparent plastic ribbing lined an indentation along the top of the weapons, under which a dull blue light glowed, much like the rifles Sarge and the others carried, Gaius noticed. “This is your standard pulse pistol. Trigger here, safety here. Point-and-shoot, nothing complicated.”
“Pulse pistol?”
“Point-and-shoot. All you need to remember. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to use it. Though I stopped counting on luck a while ago.”
“What is going on, and why do I need a weapon?”
“No questions now. If you value your life, you’ll follow my lead. Do everything my buddies and I tell you, and be ready to use that weapon, and you might just live to see another sunset.”
Bewildered and more than a little frightened, Gaius saw no alternative. He simply nodded in assent and gripped his pistol tighter.
“Good. Now let’s move out.”