There was nothing.

And then suddenly, he was cold. Freezing cold, mind-numbingly cold. He coughed, instinctively, trying to biologically expel foreign substances that suddenly didn't mix with him. Coughing, a lung-racking cough, coughing up some kind of, again, freezing cold liquid out. He detected a slight swooosh!, and suddenly he was even colder, as if it was possible. But now whatever was holding him up stopped doing so- he felt a slight tingle, an absence of something he hadn't really known was there, and suddenly he fell forward.

His knees slammed into metal, slippery from the strange liquid. Moments later, he recovered enough to wipe his eyes of the fluid, and take his first sight that he has had in over fifty years. He coughed up the last of the fluid from his system, and finally took a deep, sweet breath of the cold recycled air. Moments later, he heard something start up deeper in the ship, and suddenly warm air was pumping through vents, warming the room from its previous cold.

He sat up, taking deep breaths- then showerheads on the walls turned on, and dunked him in blessedly hot water, washing away the fluid and phlegm.

And then he remembered- everything. And he turned his head just in time to see the glass-doored pod adjacent to his slide open, and a similar-dressed, though very much female figure, drop out of it, much in the same way he did. He let himself be soaked as he took in the coughing, retching figure in a reenactment of his earlier distress, noting that they were both wearing bland, gray underclothes, and nothing else.

Getting to his feet, unsteadily, the black-haired, average-height man stepped forward, reaching down for the woman's shoulder, helping her sit up a bit more, military-refined muscles straining from the strain of cryogenic stasis, normally-tanned skin now pale.

Darkness. Cold. Nothing. Those where the three words that had described the last fifty years in her solitary confinement.

The plan was supposed to be flawless. A movement so swift, and so effortless, the government ought to not have seen it coming. But no. They broke down her door that day so many years ago, invading her house, her privacy and seized her notes. Everything that she had ever worked for -no, everything that her father, herself and her fellow friends had came up with- had been seized. Her life was in those notes. Her being. Her need to keep moving forward. She was brought into the interrogation room, cold, metal and sterile. Upon giving no information, that was when she would be sedated and put into one of the governments infamous cryochambers. And now here she was, memories surfacing through her mind so quick and vividly that it was a overflow of emotion. Anger, pain, and most of all the cold metal that now surrounded her as she could do nothing but cough the fluid from her lungs until the fresh air had room to finally come through.

On her hands and knees, taking in the sight of the room as she rubbed the fluid from her own eyes, a sudden wave of warmth rushing through her body as she did her best to stand up, hearing the sound of water over head. Almost stumbling back to the floor, she would find a reassuring grab of her shoulder, finally gaining the least bit of control back of her legs.

Looking up at the masculine figure before her, her blonde hair now soaked, appearing darker against her deathly pale skin, she would realize she was an easy 4 to 5 inches shorter than the man. Doing her best to speak, her lips would move, but no sound would come out. Taking one more deep breath, she would try again, licking her chapped lips.

"Wh-who are you," she asked, her voice raspy.

He helped her to her feet, both of them soon relying on each other for balance, taking such a romantic, cryogenic-released shower. He turned away to cough a bit more, and then answered in an equally crappy voice, "Grey. Sanders." He gave her a grim, this-is-shit smile, before turning towards the doorway to the room.

The room was, in comparison to the average college dorm room, tiny. It was probably long enough for him to lay down fully stretched out, and wide enough for him and a man half as tall to stretch out, toes to toes. Not the most ideal place, but it'd have to do. He leaned against the wall, and slowly moved towards the door in the middle of the wall, opposite of the two cryogenic stasis pods. Roughly slamming his hand against the small pad, the door slid open. At the same moment, the water shut off, leaving him feeling surprisingly clean, even though he was clean to begin with. He just didn't have the best of stuff in his lungs.

So he stepped through the doorway into an equally large room, again, with a door at the far end. Embedded in the walls are lockers- presumably with their uniforms and survival kit. He stumbled over to one, leaving the other woman to herself to recover, and slammed his fist against the closest locker. He stared at the suit, and sighed, almost in desperation.

He glanced back at the woman, before sighing, pulling a towel out of a small slot at the topmost section of the locker, and drying himself off. Tossing it aside, he got dressed.

The girl nodded her head at the sound of his name. "Lilith Matthews," she would respond. What else was there to say? The girl would follow him into the next room, slightly surprised at the sudden shut off of the water. It had provided her with warmth, and now, there was nothing but what little body heat that she could regain in the process of all of this. A room full of lockers is where the two figures ended up, relative size. Not to big, not to small. Cozy, a tad crowded. Lilith now knew what was to come. As what always happened with the disobeying of the government. Suit up, be shipped out -no wait, that part had already been done, the last fifty years of her life stripped from her- study whatever new planet that was needed and do your best to survive, perhaps even get back home.

With a sigh, she would look at the suit, disappointed. It was large, bulky, and in all reality, a little something that could be considered overkill in her opinion. Nonetheless, she pulled out her own towel, wringing her hair dry to the best of her ability and drying off herself. She tossed it into the floor. If the government wanted it back, they could pick it up themselves and see to it in their own way.

Lilith would start with the shirt like part, the pants, then the gloves, adding all of the extra's as she went, not bothering with the helmet until it was officially time for what her gut told her was time to leave.

"Let's do this," she mumbled.

Turning back to Lillith, Grey watched her slowly struggle into the suit. He speeded up the process by stepping up and helping her, showing her the little knick-knacks that set the suit apart, making sure it was sealed and ready to go. He coughed experimentally a few times, glad that he didn't have to have the helmet on yet. He made sure his voice was cleared, and then told her, "I helped design the ship we're on, and the pods that we'll be going down on, and the suits we're wearing. I just happened to also designed weaponized versions for a third party; NASA, NSA, and the CIA didn't like that much."

After helping her into her suit, he crossed his arms and looked her up and down, a mirror image except in height and bulkiness, and for the face. "Damn, I made them look good. Okay- the majority of the ship doesn't have artifical gravity- that's what the suits are for. We're only awake for a day before we're going down into the planet, which is currently unnamed- if we live, it'll likely be named after a combination of our two names, last name or first name. Anyhow, outside this room is zero-gravity- artificial gravity is costly. Expect to be unbalanced. Likewise, the hallways will be curving downward- we're technically on the outside of the ship. In Deep Space, it's unlikely to hit anything, but now, the chances of something piercing the rooms that we're in are increasing tenfold- thus, our helmet could save our lives in case of decompression. Once we're done on the planet, we can make sure that we'll be safe from the atmosphere, and then see how likely we'll make it through the night, and then go from there."

He gave the stranger that his life now depended on a smile, and slowly started putting on his own helmet, taking his time, making sure it was sealed and ready to go.

Lilith felt the need to shove his hands away, until he started talking. If he actually did design the suit, it was best for him to help instead of her breaking something. "So.. basically," she cleared her throat one last time. "Is that you helped the government put us here in a way, all while planning to over throw them?" That was the only plausible explanation. After all, what other reason would he be here? So they had no oxygen outside of the ship. Pretty much no gravity at all, they were out in the middle of no where and anything could smash their skulls at any given time for any given reason. Good, great, excellent. Lilith slipped her own helmet on.

"So, do we just walk around and explore, or stand here forever?"

He snorted, inside his suit. The sound came through loud and clear- if anything, it was amplified slightly. "I helped the government, but the government was screwing me over. Barely had enough money to pay for my apartment- a private company wanted to design their own spaceships, and become a PMC for the government by providing unconventional orbital warfare. Supersonic missiles launched from space, railguns, et cetera. They gave me the specs of their weapons- I redesigned the ships to use them effectively. I wasn't betraying- I never entered into a contract locking me from using my designs for other people. The government just didn't want my militarized designs getting out, so here I am!"

He clapped his hands together, and flexed his fingers in the suit. "And what'd you do to get sent out to exile?" He pointed towards his locker, on the other side of the room, and clenched his fist. The towel he had balled up and tossed inside lifted and flew straight for his fist. It stopped, though, hovering half a foot from his hand, a slight blue haze stretching from suit to towel. "See, kinesis too. Advanced stuff, it is. Real bloody advanced." He opened his hand, and the towel dropped. "Only works on inanimate objects, so don't try to pick me up."

So the man was to smart for his own good. On the other hand, it was a good thing that one of them knew what the ship was, how it worked and all of that jazz. She set her jaw in a firm motion, grinding her teeth as the male spoke, her face now covered by a helmet of her own. It sound likes something the government would do, really. After all, it was just a bunch of asshat's in corporate offices, now wasn't it? Anyways, moving along. Grey had asked her why she was here. In all reality, the girl didn't open up to anyone. Didn't bother with the simplicity of saying that she didn't feel like talking about it. In fact, the way that Lilith seen things, it was better to have things in the open.

"It uh.. It started before I was born, really, the reason I'm here, I mean," she said, flexing her own fingers. "My father worked for the government from the time he was thirty until his death a few years back, about the age of seventy. He worked for them, gathered information. You know, the great Daniel Hathor? That was him. Anyways, after his death, I got the chance to add my own spin on the operation. Long story short, there was a traitor in the bunch and the government came in and seized everything that I, my father and the people we thought of as our closes friends, had ever worked on..."

The girl watched as he brought up the subject of kinesis. She rolled her eyes. "Oh please, I know about kinesis, Grey." Although it would only work on inanimate objects, it could -and most likely would- be a useful weapon.

He just shrugged, and replied, "Sorry for bringing it up. I'll assume you know about the other suit functions, too, then." She wouldn't be able to tell his emotions from the helmet- she'd just have to guess whether he was annoyed, kidding, sarcastic, or uncaring. And in the meantime, he pondered over her "Daniel" person- he had never heard of him.

Either way, he tapped the side of his helmet, kickstarting the helmet's HUD to include Lilith's. After scrolling through her systems and reading that it was fine, he glanced at her, gave her two thumbs up, and hit the pad on the wall.

The next door opened up- the most immediate, obvious thing that one could see was a bright sphere the size of a golfball, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. Over the suit's speakers, he said to his pointed finger, "Our prison for as long as we live." He took a step forward, through the doorway, through a shimmering barrier. His feet made no sound when the magnetics engaged, and his feet stomped against the zero-gravity, zero-atmosphere magnetic walkway on the surface of the pod. Taking it slow, he stepped away from the locker room, head to a little hub to their right, where a small sign on it showed a fork, a knife on one side of a slash- on the other side, it had a bed. The Mess Hall and dormatory, for them. He didn't wait for Lilith- he trudged onwards, keeping it slow so that Newton wouldn't toss his ass into space.

After a minute of magnetic walking, he reached the doorway. Asking the ship to open the door within his helmet, using the onboard AI's voice regonition, the door opened without a problem, and he stepped through the barrier again. Turning in normal gravity, with atmosphere, he waved at the Lilith that was following him.

"No big deal. You asked, I answered. Common curtsey." She wished she could see his face through the helmet. After all, she had been reading people all of her life, seeing their emotions and the like. It only made her frustrated. Tapping the side of her helmet as well, she proceeded to add Grey's HUD. Judging by the thumbs up that he had given towards her, his systems were fine. She did the same, checking hers and finding all was well.

Lilith followed him through the door, having no atmosphere or gravity was a total new concept. Well, technically it was two major concepts that had been in her life for as long as she had lived, now taken away. But that was beside the point. Giving a brief hesitation of leaving the locker room, Lilith quickly over came her fear. She had to get used to seeing new things sooner or later. After all, the girl was in the middle of know where. Having the slightest difficulty walking down the corridors, doing her best to hide it, she would follow Grey, examining things as she went. Mess Hall and dormitory? Check. Also pretty basic and standard. Then again, the ship was designed for people to live on them for a certain amount of time.

Lilith had only thought the suit was bulky before now. Having no gravity helped, but it was still tricky maneuvering around the ship. This is definitely going to take some getting used to, she thought.

At least the guy knew how to open doors. That was more than she could give herself. She knew how to collect data and snap someone neck as well as design things, but as far as operating them went, zero. Nope. Nada. Continuing to walk forward by the motion of Grey's wave, she would find herself back in a place with normal gravity as well as atmosphere. That was good.

"So.. what is this place, exactly," she asked.

He waved vaguely at their surroundings, moving easily in his suit. "We're on the ship. See, the point of this was to put resources and crap on the planet. Then they found out that I had actually designed it for a small crew to be inside. They didn't like that- had me remove it, and I had to redesign it to be smaller and more cost efficient. And then they found that the chances of automated construction 'bots working correctly after all this time would be very little, and looked to their two great uncertains for help. And so we're now sitting in the tacked on mess hall, complete with flavored nutrient paste, and a single bunk bed. I have the bottom bunk, by the way. I have a problem with... heights."

He grimaced inside the suit, even though it was completely unseen, and that the bunkbed's lower bed wasn't even a foot off the flower, and the upper bed was only five feet above that. Next to it was the nutrient paste machine- a small touchpad screen, with a nozzle underneath, and a small dispenser that had small plastic cups, and a hole to put used cups into for recycling. Next to that was a table. In the middle of the room were three different multi-purpose workout machines, and on the opposite side of the bunk bed is a single stall for showering, and a stall next to it for going to be the bathroom

Surveying this, all in this small room, he said, "Hope sweet home, for about two days."

So he had designed -or at least helped design- the whole ship? Did the government want the compartment after they had found out about it? Surely. Otherwise they would have abolished it. Made enough sense. Looking around Lilith would see the bunkbed, the paste machine, all of the things that they needed to survive for the next couple of days. "Cozy," she mumbled sarcastically. So, she was to be in a compartment with a stranger on a ship in the middle of nowhere heading to well, nowhere. Just peachy. Hearing his response about heights, she would smirk, completely unseen thanks to the helmet. "No big deal. I love 'em. Heights, I mean."

It was true. Back home -especially when she was a little girl- Lilith would climb practically anything. Being a curious child way back then, she just couldn't help herself. It was obvious that the two of them would be living off of the past for the next two days. Then again, what could you expect out in the middle of space? The work-out machines were nice. It would give her something to do. "So you pretty much designed the whole ship?"