[I]Dreaming...he was [b]actually dreaming[/b], for the first time in a hundred years images of parents, lovers and victims entered formerly sparse landscape of the Beasts mind; from scenes of a happy childhood, to others of bloody massacres seen done by his own two hands. Faces and voices swam about in his brain, and for just a moment he was content, until his mind began to question itself - why had he suddenly began dreaming? What had changed now? Something had changed, even without being fully awake or opening his eyes he knew it...

"Hemi!" Came the voice, the face of his father floating before his minds eye, "Hemi, you stupid fucker, wake the fuck up boy."

"I-I can't move, Pa. Why can't I move?"

"Open yer damn eyes boy," the form of the elder Munro stalked toward his dream self, arms outstretched as if to choke the life from him, "wake up!"[/i]

Air, fresh air! His lungs flickered into life within him, his other organs soon following suit, his senses once more acting as his guides - for his eyes would still not open, not just yet - so that he could hear the wails, screams and moans of others, could feel the frigid touch of metal at his wrists and ankles. The restraint that was supposed to be at his neck must have come loose, for he could not feel it constricting him in any way, twisting his neck and smiling to himself at the sound of popping, taking in another deep breath through his diaphragm...but this time there was something different.

[B]Smoke[/b]

Only now did his eyes open, taking in his surroundings with surprising speed, his entire body tensing against the padding of the wall and straining against the restraints which still bound him in place within the cell; his sweeping and increasingly frantic gaze did not miss the pertinent fact that the entirety of the front of his cell was now a gaping wound void of the glass front through which he surmised the guards must have monitored him during his incarceration. Oddly enough, it was probably this very piece of of the cell, doubly thick as it was, that had protected him from being annihilated simply by the initial fall of the station.

Just outside in the corridor, where warning lights illuminated the shadows with there flickering beams, and sirens proceeded to deafen him with there incessant noise, he could make out what looked like bodies, bodies veiled by the darkness that seemed to have engulfed his section of the cells. Perhaps the power had been damaged somehow? He thought to himself, though the power and lightning within his cell continued to work, as did that of the cell across the corridor from his own, a corpse dangling in its restraints with the unmoving figures head at too awkward an angle for the neck not to be broken and the cause of death.

Slowly but surely he began to panic, sweat coating what remained of his torn standard-issue overalls, his head twisting this way and that and increasingly violent attempts being made to wrench either himself or the restraints free from the padded wall. Time and time again he tried, veins bulging in his neck and limbs as he thrashed back and forth again and again, grunts and agonised cries like that of a trapped animal emitted from his throat, his mouth clacking open and shut and his eyes wide.

At long last, tired from his exertions and unwilling to shake himself to pieces without taking a short pause, he was rewarded with a slight loosening of the restraints and some small glimmer of victory - as luck would have it, it was also the same moment that another convicted soul, probably attracted by the base noises coming from the cell, decided to investigate.

"What do we have here then?" It hissed in his direction, a clear Liverpool lisp on the tongue of the man, "well fuck me if it ain't a genuine Maori! Got a couple of tats like that myself," as he, for it was a man, drew closer it was then that Hemi could pick out the details of the gaunt face, the yellowed teeth, and the constant twitching of the skeletal man as he got closer. Here was an addict if he had ever seen one, needle marks still plainly visible on the arms of the armed fellon - a piece of metal piping gripped unsteadily in one quivering hand - beneath the mock Maori markings, quite the fashion at the time of his incarceration. 

One thing that did catch the eye of the slow but cunning New Zealander was the bracelet-type band about the wrist of the prisoner, a date and time that could not possibly be correct blinking silently but repeatedly before his very eyes.

"Kai hamuti! Kai kurakura." He managed to cough, spitting toward the man for good measure, calming himself down to the point that he now slowly began to apply more pressure to the loosening straps, hoping that this wretch wouldn't be able to tell.

"You what, mate?!" Cackled the Scouse in disbelief, gesturing toward him with the piping and allowing a look of annoyance to make itself known on his skull-like face, "look, I dunno what you're playing at, but I got the focking pipe see! So no more of your ooga-booga language, you twat." As if to emphasise his point, spittle already flying quite freely from his ruined mouth, the drug fiend slammed the pipe into the wall right next to the head of the taller and broader man.

It would be his first and last mistake.

Cornered animals, as anyone with any sense knows, are the worst animals; they will fight you, they will tear at you, and they will not cease until they are dead. Hemi was surely one such animal at that moment, seeing in the man's eyes that he would gladly butcher the Maori for no other reason than he could, he was a man without morals, without honour, without a soul. Whatever mistakes he had made in his life, the life before he was imprisoned, no longer mattered! It would all come to a head in the next few moments.

With a roar like a loosed tiger the restraints finally gave way, leaving the wall with a load screech of tortured metal, Hemi using the momentum of his own body weight being freed to launch himself at the antagonist - if he had not been about to tear him apart, fuelled by artificially dimmed bloodlust and aggression as he was, Hemi might have laughed at the look on the man''s face but, as it was, he simply did what he had intended to do from the moment this shit had entered the room and bite his fucking face off.

"Oh fu-!"

The words never left the mouth of the Englishman, not even a sound emerging as he flailed about with his improvised, but in his hands useless, weapon in an attempt to survive. It was not to be, the teeth of the Maori sinking deep into his neck, a twisting of that thick neck tearing off a gobbet of muscle, nerves and blood vessels which was spat out so that he could go back for three more bites; by the time he had finished, the pipe fell from nerveless fingers, blood pooled about the carcass of what had once been a form of man, and Hemi took up the pipe before slipping out into the darkened corridor.

Somehow he had become accustomed to the smoke by now, the scent of it not longer worrying him, overpowered perhaps by the warm but metallic taste of blood in his mouth, every movement he now made - every placement of his foot, every flaring sniff of his nostrils, every glance of his adjusting eyes - like that of some hulking predatory animal deep within the bowels of the station.

It did not matter to him, inspecting for the first time the blood-smeared device on his own wrist, that he had been incarcerated for over a hundred years - he could not give a shit! He was still the same age as he had been when he entered the Apox, remaining in good health throughout that period, and now was free in a world which he correctly guessed would have changed astronomically during his time in the black world of induced unconsciousness he had become accustomed to. 

Oh yes, he [b]liked[/b] this...

He silently swore to find a way out of the clearly decimated station - unconcerned as to how or why it was now how it was - fully capable and willing to carve through anyone that tried to impede his progress, and once he reached the hopefully fresh air of the world outside and whatever awaited him, he would adapt and he would do what beasts did best. 

It was survival of the fittest now, and he did not intend to see that eternal blackness again for a very, very, long time.