There were echoes of beaten metal drums making uneven rhythms around her when she woke up. It was dark and cold and strangely comfortable for a moment before she opened her eyes. Before she took a breath and started to cough—sudden noise bouncing off too close walls—rolled over, sat up and almost hit her head. That’s when she found her first question. 

[i]What?[/i]

The small space was as unfamiliar as the hand she raised to press against the wall, sliding her fingers lightly over smooth contours absently. Letting touch tell her what dim light and obscure shadows could not. Definitely a tight fit. So, where…? The second question was much easier to answer. Her mind stopped searching as soon as her fingers closed around the latch and, without thinking it through, forced it forward, sharp and fast and inconsiderate of the mechanisms involved. She’d found the door. 

It groaned and hissed complaints, but slid jarringly out of the way, and she found herself squinting in the half-light, blinking at the chilling sensation of water on her skin, catching at her hair and rolling down her cheeks. Fracturing the yellow glow from outside. Stepping slowly out of the small space into the large, she hung onto the edge of the doorway. For balance, but also because its smooth and constant chill seemed less daunting than the wide open space she found upon following the brighter light with her eyes and looking up, up, up against the rain.

A vast, murky weight overhead. And… simple susurrations of wind and water striking metal and stone and dirt and pooling puddles and glass. It [i]felt[/i] empty though. It [i]looked[/i] deserted, disturbingly so, though she wasn’t sure why it bothered her. Something about the stillness unsettled her. For several breaths, all she could do was wonder why. And she stood like that, green glints shining off her shoulders, arm still stretched between her and the pod, dark hair flat to her skull and catching itself on her mask as she turned her head, looking from the pod, with its dull sheen and simple siding, to the buildings and cars she didn’t recognize. There weren’t any familiar landmarks whatsoever, but… She couldn’t think of anything that [i]would[/i] have been familiar. 

The same question, but on a much broader scale, came back to her then. [i]Where is this?[/i] And when a new noise made her start into a spin, dropping to crouch beside the pod and stare across the street at another one just like it, new questions followed. She couldn’t recognize the person who stepped out either. Yet, unlike their surroundings, she… they, they were both more familiar, somehow. Like she was supposed to know them, and if she waited long enough, she’d be able to-to… To what? Name them? She couldn’t even name herself! 

….

Couldn’t… name… herself?

“I-” Eyes wide and white as that revelation struck her out of her daze, the woman’s voice crackled unpleasantly from behind the mask, and she winced instinctively, closing her teeth against the words. A hand automatically reached up to retract the mask, but she wasn’t really thinking about that. Too busy trying to understand the rest of this situation. But there wasn’t any answer in her head, or anywhere she looked. Not outside, but, maybe-? 

She disappeared back into her pod in an ungainly scramble. There had to be something, right?