Chapter Text
Tom awoke to pain.
He gasped for breath, trying to get the air to fill his lungs. But something was wrong, they wouldn’t fill properly. It reminded him of growing up by the chemical plant, of being trapped, of being shut in a train while it filled with flame and smoke.
He gasped faster and faster, trying to catch his breath, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and his breath came ever faster.
Tom swiped at his eyes, eyes that ached against harsh light. His arms, his hands, his fingers, his nails were sore, felt stretched, felt wrong.
They looked wrong too. Something…something…
He retched once, twice, then began to choke on sick. He desperately tried to turn his weak head to the side, to save himself. But he kept gasping, gasping between retches, sucking sick back into himself, coughing…
He was vaguely aware of a commotion around him, of a tube in his throat, of someone yelling with authority, of a needle pricking at his arm. Then of coolness rushing through his veins, of calmness that didn’t belong to him, of sleep.
In his last thought before he lost consciousness, Tom wondered why his hands looked blue.
When he woke next, stirring slightly from sleep, he felt steady. He knew the feeling didn’t stem from him, Tom had been drugged often enough to know what it felt like. He’d been sedated plenty of times when brain mapping for the…for the…
The thought drifted away.
He lifted a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose, trying to will the blurriness out of his eyes. He froze when his hand crossed his line of sight.
He stared at the skin there, at the shaded blue bands that stretched across unfamiliar fingers.
It was wrong.
And it wasn’t just the strange skin; the scar he’d gotten in undergrad was gone, as was the mole that had been on his thumb as long as he could remember.
These weren’t his hands.
And yet he wasn’t fully shocked by this. These weren’t his hands. And that wasn’t unexpected because…because…
The thought crystalized. Because of the Avatar program.
Because he was going to study. He was going somewhere…far away. Another planet. No, a moon. Pandora, that was it. He was going to study, and to be a diplomatic bridge with the locals, so he needed a body, a body like theirs.
More and more of it came back to Tom, a kind of relief flooding in. There was nothing wrong, nothing horrifying, nothing like he’d feared. He’d just gotten a shock when waking in this body, he’d been warned that could happen. They had contingencies for it.
But then he frowned. The contingencies involved waking him up in his real body, not sedating him. So why was he strapped to a hospital bed?
Tom tried to cast around his memory, think through the events that had led to this moment. He’d been…he’d been…
A door opened. A woman in a lab coat walked in, staring down at a clipboard in hand.
“Ex-excuse me?” Tom asked, voice hoarse and muffled by a breathing mask. “What’s going on? What happened?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“I’m not trying to - I’m sorry for bothering you. I’m just trying to piece things together.”
She was checking some dials across the room. She still did not answer.
Tom’s eyebrows knit together. “Hello? Hello can you hear me? Please tell me what’s going on. Please.”
The woman moved towards him, but only to check his IV bag.
“Please, please talk to me. Please. Is something wrong? I just want to know what’s happening.”
Her hand brushed his to check the needle where the IV was connected. He reached out and touched her fingers.
For the first time she paused, meeting his eyes. She quickly looked away.
“I can’t talk to you without my supervisor present,” she murmured.
“But wait, I-”
The woman turned another dial, and rapidly Tom felt himself losing consciousness once more.
He tried to cling to himself, tried to force his eyes open, clenched his palm tight hoping pain would keep him alert. But he lost the fight quickly, and found himself drifting away.
When Tom struggled to consciousness once more, he made out the blurry figures of people. Lots of people.
He startled, tried to push himself up in bed. But he was lashed down too tightly for his arms to move much.
“Good morning,” one of the people greeted. “How are you feeling?”
Tom tried to answer, but the breathing mask was now too constricting, he couldn’t form words. With a mounting panic, he realized there was a new tube stuck up his nostrils as well, making it harder to breathe.
He could feel his heart hammering, heard some beeping nearby get louder and louder.
The person who had spoken looked annoyed. “Clara, get that off him. That should have been done before we woke him up.”
“Of course, Doctor Andrews,” said a voice, and suddenly there were hands on him, pulling the tubes out, loosening the mask, making it easier to breathe. Tom licked his lips. They were dry, chapped.
“Please,” Tom gasped out. “What’s happening? Please.”
The lead here, Doctor Andrews, looked at Tom assesingly. “I am going to ask you a series of questions. These questions are meant to get a sense of your current mental functions. Do you understand?”
Tom nodded. “And then you’ll tell me what happened?”
Doctor Andrews looked down at a tablet. “What is your name?”
Tom swallowed. “Thomas Patrick Sully.”
“What is your birth date?”
“August 24, 2126.”
“How old are you?”
“21.”
At this, the doctor paused and noted something on the tablet. “Where were you born?”
“Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Dorchester, Massachusetts.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“I did my undergrad and masters at Harvard, then got a PhD in alien biology at the University of Cassini.”
“Have you spent time living off-world?”
“I just told you I went to the University of-”
“Just answer the questions in a straightforward way.”
Tom huffed. “I lived for 18 months on the Lunar southern pole while studying at the University of Cassini.”
“Do you have any living family?”
“My brother, Jake.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last year, at our grandfather’s funeral.”
“Please state that year, for the record.”
“Why do I need to-”
“Please state that year.”
“2147.”
Doctor Andrews made another note. “Where does your brother live?”
“I’m…I’m not sure, he’s drifted around since he lost the use of his legs. Last I heard he was in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“Who were your legal guardians growing up?”
“Our grandparents, Liam and Patricia Sully.”
“What happened to your parents?”
Tom paused. “That’s a bit of a personal question, don’t you think?”
“Just answer the question as asked.”
“I mean, I don’t really feel comfortable answering in front of all these-”
“Answer the question.”
Tom decided it wasn’t worth it to fight it. “My father died in a chemical plant accident when we were six. My mother was sentenced to a mining colony in the asteroid belt after she was convicted of felony theft. We got word she died there when we were about fifteen.”
Doctor Andrews nodded. “What would you say is your most traumatic memory?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you need me to repeat the question?”
“I’m not answering that. You have no right to ask me-”
“Mr. Sully. These questions are designed for a scientific purpose, and if I reveal to you the nature of that purpose, it may affect your answers. As a scientist, I would expect you know that an experiment cannot be sacrificed simply to appease individual curiosity.”
Tom bit down on his dry lip. His teeth caught a bit of skin, worried at it.
“Fine. When I was a kid, I was caught underground in a train fire near Park Street Station. I almost didn’t make it out alive.”
“Does this memory have any lingering effects?”
Tom peeled the bit of skin off his inner lip with his teeth. He tasted the barest amount of blood. It tasted slightly wrong, not quite coppery enough.
“Claustrophobia, pyrophobia. Pretty typical.”
“Where are you currently living?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
“Why?”
“I’m studying at the biolab mockup there, preparing for my next project.”
“And what is that project?”
He gestured, as best he could with his arms bound, to his blue hands. “I’ve been accepted into the RDA’s Avatar program, as a contributor to their zoology and botany team.”
“Who accepted you?”
“I believe I’m meant to be working for Dr. Grace Augustine. Is she here?”
“When was your last training session?”
“It was…” Tom paused, trailed off. He suddenly wasn’t sure. “I think…I think it might have been last week sometime? We were going over brain mapping, preparing to go into an fMRI.”
But no, that wasn’t right. “Wait, no, I think I actually did go into the fMRI, but that was…that was a later appointment…when…”
“Let’s try something else. What do you and your brother have most in common?”
“Well, we’re both stubborn I guess.”
“If you had to say your brother had a weakness, what would it be?”
“I mean, he can be kind of impulsive? What is this about?”
“Would you say you and your brother have a good relationship?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Tell me a good memory you have of him.”
“Um…we used to love going to old Fenway with Grandma when we were kids.”
“Tell me something you said to each other the last time you saw him.”
He huffed. “I’d prefer another line of questioning, please.”
“Answer the-”
“No. I already told you it was a funeral, I don’t want to relive that. I can tell you something else.”
Doctor Andrews raised his eyebrows. “Fine. Can you tell me what today’s date is?”
And then Tom was left wandering again. “I…I’m not…I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me what month it is?”
“It’s…it’s February I think? No…wait no St. Patrick’s Day happened, I went out for that. Maybe it's April? Maybe?”
“And what year is it?”
“It’s 2148. I’m sure of that.”
Doctor Andrews nodded. “Just one more question. What is the last thing you remember?”
He tried to cast his mind back, tried to find a specific spot where everything ended. But it was all scattered, every time he tried to think of his last memory he thought of a later one, of an earlier one. His mind twisted like a spiderweb caught in the wind, trying to find an answer.
Doctor Andrews was noting down his mindless sputters as if he’d given an actual answer. “Clara, adjust the IV drip please. 20 additional cc’s.”
Panic seized him. “Wait, no, I don’t want to go back to sleep. Can you tell me what happened? I know I’m in an Avatar body, but why? What don’t I remember?”
Doctor Andrews left the room without another word. His team filled out behind him as Tom’s eyesight faded.
He drifted in and out of consciousness for a long while. When he was awake, he tried to beg the techs and nurses attending to him for answers.
They never spoke to him. And he was never kept awake for long.
It was disorienting, frightening. What could the purpose of keeping him in the dark possibly be? Why couldn’t he remember what happened? If he was in an Avatar body, he must be on Pandora. But he couldn’t remember medical prep, boarding the spacecraft, entering cryo, none of it.
Something must have gone wrong. But then why hide it from him? Why go to such lengths to keep him in the dark? He could think of no good reason for it. He’d been clear on the parameters when he’d signed his RDA contract, and nothing like this had been buried in the fine print.
Something was wrong. Really, truly wrong.
He needed to have time to think, to get his head together.
But for that, he needed to be awake for more than a few minutes.
So Tom picked at the IV on his arm, pulled out the needle as quickly as he could. He had to strain to reach it with his arms strapped down, and pulling it out was painful. But he didn’t make a sound, made sure no one heard him.
It bled, a little, when he pulled the needle out, though not as much as he feared. Still, he couldn’t leave an obvious mess for the nursing staff to find.
So he leaned over, reached as far as he could, and lapped up the blood with his rough tongue. It was truly, deeply disgusting. But still, he’d happily exchange disgust for a little bit of knowledge.
When his arm was relatively clean, he put the tape back over it, taped the needle on the top of his skin rather than within it.
He leaned back, relaxed in bed. And slowly, he felt his mind begin to clear.
A few things became obvious right away. One, this was not the lab he’d been told he’d be working in. He didn’t recognize any of the personnel, even though he’d been briefed on the entire staff of the program. And the technology looked different, somehow more updated than anything he’d seen. Which made little sense since the RDA had the best of everything but…still. He hadn’t even known holograms of such high resolution were possible.
Tom cast his eyes around, trying to take in what he could. The look of the room was distinctly military, from the vaguely green blankets on the other beds to the stenciled lettering above the doors. There was a small spinning medical hologram of what looked like his own Avatar body on the far side of the room. The brain was highlighted and enlarged for visual study, specifically the equivalents of the hippocampus, neo-cortex and amygdala.
He bent down a bit to brush a hand to his forehead. There were accompanying sensors plastered to his skin.
Someone entered the room. He kept his eyes hooded, half closed, hoping his wakefulness wouldn’t be noticed.
Luckily, the tech didn’t seem to notice the medical hologram. Instead, she went to a computer nearby, seemingly preparing a new piece of equipment.
The computer readout came to life, bringing up a desktop. There was a date on the upper right corner. When he saw it, Tom bit down on a scream.
The date read May 5, 2171.