[AgentZero]

Mwahahahahahaaaaaa!



Darkness. Confusion. Pain. A shrill, skull numbing shriek. Silence. A dull rumble. The sensation of movement. And then, light. Bright, white, all consuming light. A low groan. Movement within the light, black shapes moving about. Then, colour. A splash of red resolved into a tousled mop of hair, pale skin, sparkling green eyes, a smiling mouth.
“Rise and shine, sleepy head!” The words, spoken cheerfully, at first had no significance. Their meaning came slowly, dripping one syllable at a time into his consciousness. When the whole sentence had been properly digested, he groaned loudly and pulled himself into a seated position. He looked about slowly, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. To his right there was the girl, he was sure her name would come to him eventually. To his left, there was a body on a slab. Beyond that, more bodies. He looked back over to his right, beyond the girl was an empty slab, beyond that, a human shape crumpled on the ground, and beyond it, more bodies on slabs. He too, he realized suddenly was seated on a slab. And more to the point-
“I'm naked,” he said, his tongue thick in his mouth.
“Me too,” the girl- Alice, his mind informed him belatedly- replied cheerfully.
He took a proper look at her, noting that she was indeed naked, but far more noticeable was her pale, colourless flesh, even her lips lacked any sort of colour.
“You look awful pale,” he told her.
“I know,” she said with a small frown. “It's distressing. And I feel tingly. Do you feel tingly?”
Kagan flexed his hands slowly and grimaced at the pins-and-needles sensation that shot up and down his arms. He shifted slightly and gasped as the sensation exploded all over his body.
“Blimey,” he muttered. “Yeah, I feel... tingly, all right. Who's the fella on the floor?”
Alice glanced over at the body lying near her feet. “Dunno,” she said with a shrug. “I opened my eyes just as he was about to slice me open with a great big saw. I told him I'd really appreciate it if he didn't, and well, he didn't handle it too well and toppled over.”
“Huh,” was all Kagan could manage, his mind still sluggish, his body still not feeling as though it belonged to him. “What... happened?” he asked a few minutes later.
“How do you mean?” Alice called back, having wandered off to explore the room.
“You... I... Died. Didn't we?”
“I'm absolutely sure and certain we did. Dead as door nails we were. And now we're not. Don't think about it too much or it'll make your head hurt. At least, it sure made mine hurt.” She emphasized her last statement by stopping to rub her temples and then slowly turned back towards Kagan, having explored as far as she could in that direction. Kagan slowly swung his legs off the slab and managed to rise shakily to his feet. He grabbed the white sheet that had been covering him and wrapped it around him, partly out of modesty, partly to help ward off the intense cold he was feeling.
“Aren't you cold?” he asked Alice.
“Freezing,” she replied, then stopped and stared at him for a long moment. “Good idea,” she said finally, grabbing her own sheet and wrapping it around herself. “Here I was wasting all kinds of time trying to find my clothes.”
Kagan pushed the slab back into it's rack, popped open a small door underneath it and pulled out a box. He opened the lid and pulled out a pair of trousers.
“These look familiar,” he said dryly before putting them on. As he struggled to free his boots from the box, Alice bounded happily over to her slab, gave it a good shove to get it closed and bent down to open the cupboard underneath it. Unfortunately, it soon emerged that she had given her slab far too hard a shove and it rebounded and caught her square in the forehead, sending her sprawling onto the floor.
“Well I sure didn't need that,” she said irritably. “Wait! I remembered something. No, wait. I didn't. Forget I said anything.”
“Done,” Kagan said, deciding it was best to completely ignore her ramblings at this juncture in favour of utilizing his limited brainpower for extraditing his other boot. Having finally accomplished this, he discovered his socks beneath his boot and proceeded to put them on, followed by his boots. Alice, for her part, gently replaced the slab into it's rack, then opened the cupboard beneath it and pulled out her box. The first thing she lifted from the box was her shirt, which she held aloft and looked at Kagan through the scorched hole that ran through both sides of the shirt.
“Yup,” she said gravely. “Definitely deaders.”
Kagan stared at the shirt long after Alice had dropped it to one side in favour of other articles of clothing. He tried vainly to bring back some sort of memory of the day they had apparently died, but his mind stubbornly refused to part with anything pertaining to that day. The last thing he could remember was docking his ship at the Zellund shipyards, then lying on the street with his life leaking out of him. And then- nothing. He reached the bottom of his box and pulled his shirt out, to the front of it marred by a large scorched hole. Alice was right, he knew. No one could have survived the injuries that were evidenced by the holes in his garment, let alone Alice's, and yet here they were, certainly the worse for wear, but undeniably alive. He looked at her and couldn't help wonder, as he watched her happily putting on her clothes as if trying them on for the first time, what manner of creature he had been sharing his bed with. He pushed the thought out of his mind as quickly as it had entered. After all, he had survived too, hadn't he? But still, a nagging doubt remained. After all, his injuries would have been far less than hers, it was possible he could have survived, but she'd had a hole blown clean through her, and yet-
“There,” Alice pronounced, satisfied. She was fully dressed, if one was willing to overlook the topless issue. “That's much better, but you'll need something to cover up those,” she told him, pointing at the guns he had strapped to his belt.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “And what about those?” he asked, nodding in her direction.
She stared back at him in puzzlement for a moment, then followed his gaze and dropped her eyes downwards. “Ah, yes,” she said, not looking up. “Well...” he eyes wandered over to the unconscious doctor on the floor. “You take his coat, I'll take his shirt. I'm sure he won't mind.”
Between them, they managed to remove the doctor's coat and shirt, and then placed him up on one of the slabs upon Alice's insistence that he'd be more comfortable there. Kagan found the doctor's coat to be a perfect fit, and though the shirt was much too big, Alice was obviously pleased with it's silky fabric.
“So, what's the plan?” she inquired.
“Well,” Kagan said slowly. “I was rather planning on just strolling out of here, finding the nearest exit and trying to get back to the ship from there.”
“Hmm,” Alice pondered. “And if something goes wrong with the ingenious plan?”
“Well,” Kagan replied, patting his two concealed pistols. “Then things around here are just gonna get all kinds of violent.”
“Works for me,” she replied happily, giving him a big smile. Kagan noticed a touch of pink to her lips, and tugged open the snap-buttoned shirt to reveal skin that was beginning to show mottled colour.
“Starting to warm up?” he asked.
“A little,” she replied, looking down at herself. “Sure don't look too nice right about now though.”
Kagan had to admit that the returning colour gave Alice a blotchy, bruised appearance, which he wouldn't admit aloud, wasn't entirely pleasant.
“You look lovely,” he told her. “Now lets get moving.”
They made their way out of the room and entered a brightly lit corridor. There seemed to be no one around, and they strode quickly up the hall, eager to put as much distance between them and the morgue as they could. They soon realized they were in a very large complex as one identical hallway after another branched off, each one stretching off into the distance. Just as they were beginning to despair ever escaping, they rounded a corner and banged into a rather surprised looking man whose name tag identified him as Doctor Gwenllyn.
“Good evening,” Kagan greeted him cheerfully.
“Err, good evening,” the doctor replied slowly. “Might I ask what you are doing here?”
“Well,” Kagan replied. “We're rather new here-”
“It's our first day,” Alice piped up.
“-yes, our first day,” agreed Kagan. “And we got a little bit turned around trying to find the exit and all, because-”
“There are many corners,” Alice informed the doctor gravely.
“-yes, many corners,” Kagan echoed.
“I... see,” Dr. Gwenllyn said, giving the two of them a look that left no illusions as to what he thought they'd really been up to. “Well, if you follow this corridor to the end, then take your first right, and the second left after that, you'll be in main reception, and I'm sure you can make your way out from there.”
“Great!” Alice exclaimed happily. “Thanks, doc!”
“Of course,” Dr. Gwenllyn replied with a gracious nod. He watched the two hurry off, waiting until they'd gotten about halfway down the hall before tapping a few commands into his wrist controller. As Kagan and Alice passed through the next doorway, there was a pop and a crackle, and the two collapsed into a motionless pile. Gwenllyn shook his head ruefully. Honestly, he wondered. Who had they thought they were fooling?