Chapter Two: The Awakened
His name hadn't been revealed yet, but he knew the truth now. The man sat before the computer screen, the information he'd just read piercing his consciousness with a force greater than any physical pain. The screen displayed file after file, like a digital tombstone for the world that had passed. The reflection of his pale face on the dark glass mingled with the words of the article, which bore a grim title: "The Awakening of Ruin."
His heart skipped a beat at the opening sentence: "The first awakenings began... but they weren't what we expected. They weren't a cure."
The reports resembled war reports. The first recorded case: a hospital in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 163 days prior. A doctor and a nurse stood beside a sleeping patient. His vital signs suddenly spiked. His eyes opened... the doctor discovered two human eyes consumed by a dark, ominous void. Then the body began to tremble, as if something strange were boiling inside. Black veins, like poisonous roots, burst beneath the skin and branched out like a network of toxic ink. The changes began: abnormal swelling, skeletal deformities, bony protrusions sprung from the back like thorns, rows of extra teeth appearing in the throat, a long, forked tongue, and a third eye opening on the left cheek.
There was no resistance. The medical team was torn apart first, then the patients in the adjacent rooms, then the babies in the maternity ward… The screams were brief. From the outside, it sounded like a family mourning a loss, but the reality was far more gruesome. The creature emerged onto Maréchal Tito Avenue, the main thoroughfare. Ordinary bullets ricocheted as if hitting a living shield. It took a massive military intervention: an Mi-24 attack helicopter, 12.7mm heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles. The mutilated body was burned after leaving behind 214 human corpses, shattering the records of any serial killer in recorded history in just 43 hours.
Two hundred and fourteen. The man clutched his forehead. The tremor that shook his body wasn't from a headache this time. He remembered—against his will—the distorted face he'd encountered in the darkness: Were his human eyes still visible beneath that blackness? Was there a last vestige of humanity left? The being he'd sliced with his primitive sword... wasn't a monster. It was a human being. A man or woman who had once slept, dreamed, and somehow failed, transforming into this terrifying form.
"I killed someone..." he whispered hoarsely. He looked at his hands on the keyboard, hands that had killed. The suffocation he felt in his chest was more intense than any wound.
He glanced at the exact date: the incident had occurred on March 15—exactly five months and three days earlier. That is, 31 days after his own personal date of sleep. He continued reading with growing disbelief: the subsequent cases were no better. They began appearing in scattered locations, with utter randomness: a student in Shanghai, a housewife in Berlin, a construction worker in Mexico City. With no clear epidemiological link. The epidemic was morphing into existential chaos. Later articles described how fear had become politics. Some leaders, generals, and even desperate doctors began advocating and then implementing a "preemptive solution": eliminating the sleeping patients in hospitals before they awoke. The devastation he saw from his window was no longer a mystery; it was the inevitable result of systematic mass panic.
Then, amidst all this darkness, a single glimmer of light appeared. A more recent article titled: "The First to Wake: A Miracle from Mostaganem."
Mohamed Boudiaf University Hospital, Algeria, 127 days ago. A sleeping patient named Baraa. The same alarming signs appear on the monitors. A doctor, gripped by fear, holds a scalpel. Baraa opens his eyes… with clear, human eyes. He moves with incredible speed, grabs the doctor by the neck while he is still lying down, and lifts him off the floor with astonishing force… Then he sees the stethoscope, the identification card, the terror in the man's eyes. The doctor falls to the floor. Baraa groans from a slight headache; his veins glow with a faint blue pattern beneath his skin, but he does not move. He seemed more focused, more powerful, more... present. He asked for the day and date. He was back.
Because of Baraa, the systematic killing machine had stopped. The "Universal Sleeper Protection Protocol - Article 7" was implemented: transferring them to fortified military guard posts (Points of Hope), monitoring them around the clock. Hope was being redefined: not every sleeper was destined to transform.
But one question kept nagging at the man: "Why am I here? Why haven't I transformed?" He looked down at his soiled shirt and found a strip of cloth attached to a hook: "Name: Raed. Serial Number: 8957A-Σ. Species: B+. Date of entering hibernation: 216 days ago. Guard Status: Disconnected." He was just a number in the pandemic's giant database. Where had he been all this time? At which "Point of Hope" had he slept? How had he ended up here? He realized that the blow to his head had slightly affected his short-term memory, and that this isolated computer wouldn't give him any more answers. He turned off the screen. He decided: He would head to the nearest military compound he could find. There he might find protection, or answers, or perhaps... a purpose.
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Same time – four months earlier – Special Operations Room, Fortified Sector 7
In a fortified room within a building in a heavily fortified barracks, a miniature Doomsday Court had convened. Civilian leaders with weary faces, generals in full uniform with steely eyes, scientists with pale complexions and hands trembling from lack of sleep. The air was heavy with tension and ozone from the filtration systems. The generals exchanged quick glances when the "final solution" was mentioned in the preliminary reports, while the scientists tried to maintain neutral expressions, but their eyes betrayed the same fear.
Amidst this solemnity, Baraa stood with apparent composure. His back to the others, he gazed through the 30-centimeter-thick fortified window at the pale, golden sunlight that tried to pierce the clouds and caressed his face. The light brought back memories; he seemed to long for this world despite the tension and fear that gripped everyone.
"Mr. Baraa... we need to understand," the head of the delegation began, his voice trembling. His gaze caught a faint nod of approval from the general seated to his right before he continued. "What happened to you there? How did it begin?"
Baraa didn't turn around. His posture was calm, his hands behind his back, devoid of the panic that colored the air of the room. He looked more like a man carrying a heavy secret than a victim.
"I'm the first to wake up, huh?" he asked, his voice more certain than questioning.
"Yes. You're the first recorded case of full wakefulness without... transformation," replied the head of the delegation.
Baraa sighed, a long, deep sigh, as if it came from the depths of another time. "There was... another world. It wasn't a dream. It was real in a way."
Everyone leaned forward at once, as if pulled by an invisible force. This was the first time they had heard a description from within the storm.
"I remember before I fell asleep," Baraa continued, "days of nightmares. Strange waking dreams, meaningless visions. I didn't sleep for a day or two." Suddenly, I felt as if my body was demanding sleep, screaming for it. Then the moment came... as if a dam had broken.
This description was new to those present. One of the scientists, Dr. Liang, jumped up, breaking the protocol of silence: "So there were early symptoms! Warning signs! We must issue a warning. Mr. Baraa, tell us in detail, what did you see next?"
Before Baraa could reply, a security advisor whispered to a general: "This makes it sound like a mental contagion. Damn. Should we spread another panic?" But Dr. Liang insisted: "We don't have the luxury of silence. If there are signs, people should know about them. If someone starts with strange visions and then insomnia, they could be next. At least their family won't be surprised..." A tacit agreement fell. The cold calculations of science were stronger than political concerns.
"The beginning was emptiness, like the void," Baraa returned, delving into his memory. "Then the light changed to a white background, no color, no sound, no heat. Nothing. Then… a voice appeared. Feminine, angelic, pure as crystal, it came from nowhere, yet it came from everywhere and nowhere." He paused, as if listening to it again. "It said to me: 'Welcome, dreamer, to your first nightmare. The simulation begins now. You must solve the riddle.' Then I suddenly found myself in a different place… a harsh nature, a copper-colored sky, and I knew—with an essential knowledge—that I had to stay alive, and solve the riddle, or… in a strange world, and I was a stranger to it…"
"Or what?" the older general blurted out, his face etched with wrinkles and difficult decisions.
"Or I will stay there forever, or perish," Baraa said with a chilling calm, "or something else will control me." And when I succeeded—when I understood the riddle—the voice returned: "Congratulations on your success. The simulation is over. The awakening has begun." Then it spoke of things… I don't think I fully understand yet. Because of the pain…
A heavy silence fell over the room, a silence of utter astonishment. Then the general himself burst out: "So! The transformation we saw in Bosnia and elsewhere… is failure? These people failed the test of their dreams? Is our fate as humanity dependent on millions of people solving riddles in their sleep?" The idea was terrifying in its simplicity: extinction decided by failing an imaginary test.
One of the civilians said, moved: "So to survive, you have to get through the nightmare. To survive the transformation… you have to succeed…"
But Baraa shook his head slowly, a strange sadness in his eyes. "No…" His reply was full of a complexity no one understood yet.
They all looked at him, their faces etched with bewilderment. "What do you mean?" He answered, and his answer would change the course of the game now and forever. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, the balance of power, and a glimmer of hope, lay with humanity. His response was:
"Even I… have undergone a transformation… a transformation of some kind… toward something else…"
At that moment, the simplistic classification they had constructed over months crumbled: sleepers, transformed, and awake. Another type emerged, represented by Baraa, and it embodied all the questions, dangers, and hopes combined.
Then he uttered the words that shattered all assumptions:
"It's not a matter of 'success' versus 'failure'… it's more complex than that…"
Outside, the pale sun had disappeared completely behind dark clouds, leaving the room in a cold, artificial light that illuminated pale faces that had just realized that the devastation they knew might be just the beginning.
AUTHOR IG : hm_7_ms3oud