Chapter 3: Familiar

"Hey, dude with the mask…" Oh, they all had masks, "Why am I still alive? Not to be rude but I think after all that experience any person would be on their way to the afterlife, so why didn't you kill me properly? Did you want me suffering until, I don't know, my last breath?"

I figured, why not rant and keep a conversation if it was going to be my last? I looked back to see their faces contort into something indescribable.

They remained silent as it took time to register what I said. Maybe it did. 

As a fictional enthusiast, I had to say that, the chances of such a situation happening were mostly during the dawn of the rise of a zombie apocalypse. Maybe I was a zombie, the very first version.

A zombie could probably survive this, right?

But I digress.

It was after a while that they looked at me as if they had seen a ghost.

I wasn't a ghost, that much was obvious, so what could they possibly be on about? 

The guy who had gone back came back with a syringe filled with a purple substance. He slowly approached me with a face as if he was facing off against the devil.

"Relax, I don't bite~"

It seemed trying to make the atmosphere more lively was doing the exact opposite. 

He froze on his step and glanced at another man in a mask. I guess I have figured out the leader of this operation. He looked at me and then nodded at the young surgeon to proceed. I watched curiously, I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

They had failed at killing me, they had failed at anesthetizing me and now I wondered if whatever liquid was in that syringe had any effect on me. 

Maybe it is, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. 

I felt a prick which was less than even a scratch given the amount of pain I was in. I mean, I felt it, but I could ignore it if necessary.

I felt like screaming and grabbing my hair and pulling it out. Maybe shitting myself in the process but my rational side knew neither of these actions would give me any salvation from this torture.

Why waste the energy?

Plus I was tied, a complete waste of effort even if I tried. I don't think I ever shed a tear over pain in my life. I mean I could cry, don't get me wrong, on command, since crying got you whatever you wanted as a child. But that tactic didn't work out so well for a grown man. 

The young surgeon sighed with relief and walked away. They stared at me and me at them. I wondered what they were waiting for to happen but it didn't seem like anything was happening. Except a sheer increase of burning in my blood veins and body. It was very painful, like instead of having salt rubbed at my wound, I had it all over including the inside and it was slowly eating me up inside. 

But as I said, I didn't shed a tear. I just bit my lip and dealt with it. 

I felt very sleepy and I closed my eyes to sleep and everything went black. I did get to see their expression of relief when I was dozing off.

Ah, now I was sure I was dead-dead. 

It was cold and serene and peaceful but it filled one with dread and loneliness. A lightheaded feeling like the burden was uplifted and nothing mattered anymore. It was like the embrace of the depths of the ocean. 

I guess this is death.

Nothing existed but me, nothing mattered anymore, no feelings of regret or lingering fear or happiness for that account. Nothing at all.

A bottomless void of emptiness.

I drifted into this feeling for a long while before I opened my eyes to a peculiar sight. 

Yep, nothing was beating this in the peculiar things.

My first thought was,

'I'm alive!'

Well, yes, I died and now I live, hurray me.

Surely, I must have reincarnated. As a dedicated otaku, at least, partially, this was something I could conclude quite easily.

I thought it was a certified thing that those brought forward by Truck-kun could get this special offer. Oh well, maybe I surpassed the screening somehow. 

Now, to describe what I would simply call a carnage…

Bloody stains were all over the pristine white tiled marble floor. Broken glass with fallen pieces. Some eyeballs lying about and some things I couldn't quite figure out. I mean, I am no biologist.

Severed limbs with missing bodies and bodies with severed limbs. Some decapitated heads and some twisted bones sorely sticking out. 

I wouldn't count the number of people but five heads were lying around if that was a number. I would assume the number of people dead was five.

The white floor was painted red and more of the flowing blood stained its surface.

My hands had blood on them. I wasn't surprised. It would be weird not to have a drop of blood in such a situation.

But why did my lips taste like iron and steel?

A few moments of trying to assess what had happened with no luck left me confused. 

It was about then I felt a sharp pain in my temple. That and the memories suddenly drilling into my soul rather than my brain, since this brain already had them. Lots and lots of unfamiliar yet familiar memories. 

This wasn't my life, that for sure I knew, but this body was now mine, so what was the present? It seemed like those transmigration novels I read quite often about weren't mere fantasy. 

I was somehow looking forward to this… except, now I knew what happened here. 

This was a familiar situation. I had heard of it somewhere, where someone who was experimented on turned went in a rage and killed everyone including himself. This was exactly what happened to the body I was in.

I glanced around to more for clues, surely there would be a sign.

I saw the flat stone slab table. One with broken iron bars to hold someone down. That was probably where this body had been, given that there was a stinging pain in the wrists and ankles. 

There were some tables with clean familiar surgical equipment and liquids and bandages and cleansing ointments. 

Oh, he was treated with the least bit of decency at least. 

I unconsciously touched my stomach to feel if it was open and ready to spill whatever it had in a mess.