The first thing Cale Bishop heard when he woke up from a stupor was a hiss. Then the sharp cold hit him. A shiver racked his body and his first breath was a misty cloud. He did not remember how he got here.

  He did not remember much at all. But he knew a lot of things.

  He knew his name was Cale. He knew he was in a cryopod, designed to put his body in a frozen stasis. He knew what a house cat was. He knew what a chocolate chip cookie was. But what Cale did not know was where he was and how he got here.

  And that filled him with dread.

  Feeling a mounting sense of urgency, Cale struggled up. His limbs felt weak, uncoordinated. When he tried to stand, his knees buckled, and he caught himself against the cryopod's edge.

  How long was I frozen…?

  Cale forced himself upright through sheer will, each movement a goddamn battle with a body that had forgotten how to work properly. He leaned against the cryopod and caught his breath.

  “Hello?” he croaked. It hurt to talk. Cale cleared his throat, coughed a little and swallowed. It all hurt, but he could manage. He had bigger fish to fry than a little sore throat. He knew the throat would sort itself out.

  Turns out I know all kinds of things. Why is it that I can't remember things? And where in the hell am I?

  With lethargic movements Cale crawled out of the cryopod. The steel edge of the pod pressed into his fingers as he leveraged himself out. A stinging cold.

  His heartbeat was slow and so was his mind. Cale looked around, taking in his surroundings. The room was round with a single door leading into a corridor. There was a dim white light that emanated from the ceiling, but Cale could not make out where the light was coming from.

  He was in something of a tomb. The walls were high and made of well cut stone. There were some crumbled murals carved into some of the walls, but time had eaten at them in such a manner that Cale suspected he had been in his pod for a very long time. The floor was made from large cobblestones, the seams filled with a fine petrified sand. All of it covered in a thick layer of dust.

  Cale looked to his right. There were other pods, five in total. His was the leftmost one from the door over yonder. Cale walked over to them. All of them opened, all of them empty. Cale turned to look for further clues in the story to still his racing mind. His unease grew.

  Why am I here?

  On the floor were two skeletons. Human skeletons. One of them was curled up into a fetal position, while the other one had been reaching for something, crawling on the floor. Cale wondered what had been their last thoughts.

  Cale knew those were human bones. From the looks of them the skeletons were mostly intact, but on that particular knowledge Cale’s knowledge was shoddy at best.

  Cale knelt beside the curled skeleton, reaching out but stopping short of touching it. Who had this been? A friend? A brother? Had they been afraid at the end? Alone, like he was now? A lump formed in his throat.

  "Whoever you were," he whispered, "I'm sorry."

  He straightened up, pushing down the hollow feeling in his chest. He was VERY acutely aware that the skeleton on the ground could have easily been him. Unease mixed with the sympathy.

  No time for that. Not if he wanted to avoid joining them. Cale looked around for the next puzzle piece. Even though it fit like a glove, he did not like what he saw.

  The skeletons were next to a machine.

  It was the size of a large dog. Laying on its side, it had two stubby hind legs, a short body, and two over-long arms, like a gorilla’s, which ended in eight nasty claws, still gleaming and sharp as if crafted yesterday. Its face was but a snout with a lens. One of the machine’s long arms was dislocated and it lay a few yards away from the rest of it.

  The machine has a lighter layer of dust on it than the floor. Was there a fight here?

  The other people in the cryopods had been woken from their slumber. But at least two of them had faced this machine while it was still powered and they had died right then and there.

  They were like me… Only, their journey never started.

  A pang of sadness touched Cale. He would have felt much better if he had woken up with someone. Someone to share the confusion and fear with. But he was the last. Last of what, he didn’t know.

  Cale wasn’t sure what was going on, but the stakes were clear. His life was in danger. He needed to do something.

  Cale immediately shook the grogginess out of him as adrenaline started rushing in his veins. His senses sharpened and he looked around and listened. His muscles started getting warmer. His heartbeat, earlier a slow, steady pump, was now beating like a frantic drum.

  He listened and moved carefully looking around in the corners and over yonder at the door which revealed nothing but a dark passageway.

  Am I in immediate danger?

  There was no clear answer. There was only darkness and silence.

  This could have happened a year ago or a hundred years ago. I don’t know how fast a corpse decomposes.

  Cale took another look at the murderbot. It looked like the sort you made hundreds of in an assembly line. How did he know what an assembly line was? Great question.

  Cale breathed out slowly, trying to control his fear of the unknown. He needed to move to the dark passageway away from this room. Maybe he would get answers to his many questions there, maybe he would die.

  It’s not like I have a lot to lose at the end of the day.

  He did the smart thing and picked up the arm of the murderbot. It was heavy and he was frail. He did a few test swings with the arm. It was made of gleaming, well polished metal, with faint blue wiring visible at the joints. It must have weighed at least four pounds, making it an unwieldy, floppy mace. But it was better than nothing.

  Cale took a last wistful look at the chamber. Dark and gloomy, with nothing but a faint light above the cryopods illuminating it. He didn’t know who he was or where he was, let alone why. The creeping dread of those thoughts ran a chill from neck to base of spine.

  Cale looked at the skeleton again. It looked like it had been trying to reach something. Not being able to had cost it everything. Cale wished he wasn’t alone.

  I have to move. I have to go forward. Get out of this tomb.

  With his makeshift weapon brandished, Cale took another deep breath and walked out of the chamber.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The passageway led promptly to another chamber. Therein in the middle of the room were large control panels with black screens. There was an u-shaped interface on a dais in front of those panels and thin screens of glass. Cale felt some unconscious tug of his mind urge him towards the control panel. He recognized something about this panel. He knew things. That it was there for him. It was a good thing.

  Walking the narrow and dark corridor with seamless stone floor and walls, Cale carefully crept forward, clutching the mechanical arm, watching the shadows. Nothing attacked him, and Cale felt relief. He stepped on the dais and put the murderbot arm down.

  Immediately when he stepped on the dais, lights in the room lit up. The screens flashed alive and strange symbols ran down from top to bottom, like a stream of meaningful nonsense. The whole complex setup started humming and the U-shaped interface in front of Cale lit up with bright blue light.

  “Hello,” a serene feminine voice called from nowhere. “Would you like to initiate protocol?”

  “Wh-what?” Cale stammered. “What is this? Who are you?”

  “Please initiate protocol to proceed,” the voice only answered. “Place your hands on the panel to scan your biological signature.”

  “My… wh— are you conscious? Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer. The machine voice only repeated its request to initiate protocol. But Cale’s attention was torn behind him. There was a groaning sound coming from the room with the cryopods. And the distinct screech of metal scratching stone.

  “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.”

  It didn’t take a genius to understand that the damned murderbot had just woken up when this facility had surged up with power. Cale was too frantically searching for an answer to wonder how the two were connected.

  Cale turned toward the sound of metal scraping against stone. Moments passed, but soon he saw the shadow of a shape shambling down the corridor towards him.

  His heart sank as he saw the murderbot dragging itself into the passageway. Its snout-lens glowed a faint red, scanning left and right, and its remaining arm clawed the ground like a wounded predator. A determined predator.

  Then the red lens locked in on him and the machine stopped in its tracks. Cale felt a flush of cold sweat on his back. His mind went into overdrive as it realized mortal danger.

  There was a moment of silence. Then the machine let out a groan and charged at Cale. It clawed towards him in a ravenous rush. Sparks flew from the claw in the machine’s burst of movement.

  His makeshift weapon—a dismembered arm of the same machine—suddenly felt utterly useless. Cale discarded it and scrambled backwards, his hands bumping on the interface behind him.

  The feminine voice returned, calm as ever. “Biological signature detected. Cale Bishop. Do you consent to system integration?”

  “Consent? What—no! Wait! Stop!” he shouted, panicked.

  The murderbot screeched, its body lurching forward. The sound of its claws tearing through stone filled the chamber. Every claw forward left deep gashes in the stone floor. It would reach him in seconds.

  “Consent required to proceed,” the voice repeated, clearly oblivious to the frantically crawling death approaching Cale.

  Cale’s fingers curled around the edge of the U-shaped panel. His fight-or-flight instincts screamed at him to do something. He threw a desperate glance at the murderbot, its claws raised for a strike, and then back at the glowing interface.

  “I consent!”

  The voice changed, growing softer, almost intimate.

  “Integration commencing. Please remain still.”

  The next moment pain lanced through his skull and it felt like a thousand needles stabbing into his brain all at once. After that the pain crawled down his spine like lightning, spreading throughout his body. Cale screamed, completely forgetting the danger surging at him. He tried to pull away, but his body locked in place, rigid and unresponsive, as if captured by a current of electricity.

  The murderbot lunged. Cale watched it screech and leap into the air paralyzed by the interface. He couldn’t even close his eyes as the eight pronged claw came down like judgement’s hammer.

  But it was stopped mid air by an iridescent wall of something. It swirled around in the air, like lightly blue oil on water. The murderbot fell, scrambled up, and attacked again. The claw met the strange substance in the air. The machine tried different angles, but it found no angle for attack.

  The murderbot paused outside the shimmering barrier, the red glow of its lens flickering faintly. It tilted its snout, claws scraping lightly against the stone floor. Then it lunged forward, striking the barrier with a sharp, deliberate jab. The iridescent wall rippled but held firm.

  It didn’t attack again immediately. Instead, it began to pace in a slow skulk, claws clicking against the floor in a rhythmic pattern. Occasionally, it struck the barrier again, testing it. Waiting. Watching.

  “Please do not interrupt the integration process,” the feminine voice said serenely, admonishing the murderbot.

  The pain was no longer mounting, but it was still a bitch to endure. Cale managed to get a breath in, which helped. The bizarreness of the situation continued for a while. The murderbot attacked him uselessly while a whole-body-pain surged through him in pulses.

  Gradually the pain waned, and then the feminine voice spoke. But this time Cale didn’t hear it. It was inside his mind.

  “Hello,” the voice said. It was feminine, soft and serene, with an inquisitive lilt to it. “I am A.U.R-A//0005—Adaptive Unification Resonance Algorithm.”

  Cale took in a breath and tried to relax. The murderbot outside the strange shimmering barrier seemed to have calmed down and was now skulking around, waiting for the barrier to go down.

  “Hey,” Cale croaked. “That’s a bit long. How about I just call you Aura?”

  “That is a delightful designation, thank you. And who am I designated to?”

  “I’m Cale. Uh… What are you? What happened? What did I integrate with?”

  “Hmm… That is a complicated question, and frankly, I do not have all of the relevant data. I am a multimodular utility tool. The nanobots in which I reside in are my conduit to physical reality, mainly your body. I am mainly a Mana adapter and a conductor, but as you have noticed I also have the distinct advantage of having a mind, so I can be utilized by storing and recalling information, as well as providing feedback.”

  Cale glanced at the murderbot. The situation seemed stable now. He had SO many questions.

  “Who made you? Why was I in cryosleep? Where am I and what am I supposed to do?”

  “Hmm…” the upbeat, feminine voice in Cale’s head pondered. “I do not have access to all of this information. I seem to have blanks in my database. You were left in a cryopod by a civilization called Nevani. You are a failsafe, but I do not know to what. As for me, I was created for the sole purpose of helping you become said failsafe.”’

  “Okay… Let’s circle back to that…” Cale said, his mind spinning. “You mentioned Mana. Like magic?”

  “Complicated, complicated. Yes, I am essentially a magic conductor. See that machine with the claws over there. It is also fueled by Mana. When you turned on this facility, the dormant ambient Mana was stirred, and the machine was able to siphon enough of it.”

  “You know what that is?” Cale said gesturing towards the murderbot. “Was it made by whoever made you and the cryopods?”

  “I do know what that is!” Aura said, positively delighted with herself. “This is a design made by the entity that led to the destruction of Nevani civilization. This is a Tier-1 unit. It was made to kill cultivators. Low level ones, such as yourself.”

  “Tier-1?” Cale asked. “You mean there’s more of these things?”

  “Oh, yes,” Aura replied cheerfully. “There are many tiers.”

  “Great…” Cale muttered. “Next topic. Cultivation?”

  “Look.” Aura said and a cyan rectangle materialized in the air in front of Cale.

  [Mana Cultivation Power Level: 0]

  [Mana Pool: N/A]

  [Advancement Stage: Body Tempering 1]

  [A.U.R.A Skills: N/A]

  There were plenty of other stats that made no sense to Cale, and he told Aura that much.

  “Understandable,” Aura said, but Cale swore he heard a disappointed sniff in his mind. “You will learn. The reality of Mana Cultivation is a fairly complex topic, and the three primary ways of measuring it are displayed at the top of the interface. This is merely my method of keeping track of your progression, you need not worry about it overmuch.”

  “How about I worry about it when the timing is better,” Cale said and nudged his head towards the murderbot, which was prowling a few yards away.

  “Yes, about that,” Aura said. “The protective barrier that prevented intervention during integration is going to dissipate in fifteen seconds. I suggest you prepare yourself to drain this machine of its Mana.”

  “Fifteen se— Wait, I can do that? I don’t know how to do that!”

  “Then you will die.”

  Cale's hands trembled against the interface. He'd just woken up. Just started to exist again. And now he had to fight for the right to keep existing.

  "Tell me what to do," Cale said, alarmed. "How do I survive this?”

  The barrier flickered. The murderbot tensed, metal joints creaking as it prepared to lunge.

  Ten seconds…

  “Hmph, fine,” Aura said, as if peeved. “Here is what you will do…”