Standard Entry
Day 0 | — | A cryo tube | No air you can trust | Dark | Dark in the field
It is hard to open your eyelids. They are frozen shut.
Something is wrong. You are not supposed to feel this.
A glaring beeping is going off somewhere close, over and over, and then — from behind you — a warm rush of liquid, enveloping, filling the tube like an embrace. Feeling comes back first as sharp needles picking at your toes, then your feet, then it turns into a cramp that locks your whole calf into a fist and holds it there — and then all the pain lets go at once.
You are fully submerged. You realise you are intubated: a line through your nose and down into your throat. Heavy discomfort. Your chest wants to cough and cannot.
And somehow, from nowhere, you remember: there is an emergency latch. To your right.
You find it by feel and pull.
The fluid drains out around you with a sound like a bath going, and you open your eyes.
You are in a cryo tube. Aboard a ship. You cannot remember anything — not your name, not this ship, not how you came to be inside it.
The glass, the frame and all, unlocks and ejects forward and falls onto the floor with a flat, heavy sound. Tempered. It does not shatter.
Around you: a dark room. Cold air moving against wet skin. And more tubes — rows of them, receding into the dark, glass frosted, every one of them black.
Nothing answers. Nothing hums. Somewhere far off in the hull a single piece of metal ticks as it cools.
What do you do?
[Your identity: confirm it and make your first move.]