As soon as it started, it stopped. I lay still, the aftershocks still vibrating through my body and affecting me like echoes in an enclosed cave. My heart wasn't beating, I wasn't breathing and my mind wasn't working. But yet I was still alive. How did I know? Simply because I just did. Slowly, my senses started working again, my heart sputtered out some feeble attempts at pumping out blood but it wasn't enough to send them to my brain and make me think again. I took some shallow breaths through my nose before I stopped after finding it too tiring to even breathe. My ears were ringing, like a constant twang of something metal. I heard the lid over me being pushed up with a slight 'whoosh' and cold air stung my paralyzed face. A burnt smell reached my nostrils and diffused into my lungs. If I wasn't paralysed then, I would've coughed it out but instead, I just lay still, feeling like my body was in a lock.

 

I heard movements around me and several people muttering what sounded like garbled words to me. It was too much for my sensitive ears and it hurt so bad. My ears were still ringing. I felt a hand crawl up to my chest, placed above an area where my heart was supposed to be. It was still for a moment, trying to comprehend the unsteady rhythm my heart was making. A man spoke something and the hand was retracted. 

 

Two cold and metallic objects were pressed against my chest, one the same area where the hand had rested on just a few moments ago. All of a sudden, a jolt of electricity bolted from the metal plate into my heart and my chest flew up. For a few seconds, it pounded strong and hard before giving away to small, exhausted squeezes. The metal things were placed on my heart again and another wave entered it, startling my heart up to pound like normal for longer this time before settling back to it's feeble attempts. A third time, and my heart gave in, it's wall of muscles contracting and relaxing strongly this time, pushing out the oxygenated blood to the rest of my body. Instantly, my mind became clear and air gushed into my lungs. 

 

My heartbeat was still weak but it was much stronger than before. Frantically rising and dropping in speed, the uneven pounds took some time to steady out. Something that was attached to me started beeping and my chest heaved in and out as I drew breath as much as I could. I could breathe again. A finger twitched and I tried to open my eyes. They fluttered open but I shut them back as blood rushed to my head and I felt giddy. My vision was blurred and shaky.

 

"Don't open your eyes yet," a distant faraway voice reached my ears. It was soft and muffled but it still hurt my eardrums. "Try not to move as much as you can. Your senses are a little cut off right now but don't worry, they'll come back soon, though it'll take some time."

 

I wished that man would stop talking. Didn't he know the amount of pain he was inflicting on my ears? Not to mention the reflected throb it caused on my skull. It was like having an earthquake shake up your brain. Too distracted in my tortured self, I didn't realize that they had lifted me out of the capsule and placed me on a trolley. It wasn't until the sounds of the wheels screeching across the floor and the feeling of being moved did I realize that they were relocating me. I tried to move but I couldn't and I felt confused. I was alive and breathing but why couldn't I move? Was I paralyzed? I'd seen many patients being delivered to recover in a ward motionlessly but I only thought it was because they were tired. However, I wasn't feeling tired at all. In fact, it hardly felt like I'd just gotten 20 mA of electricity.

 

I had stopped moving and they were hooking me up to the IV. After that, they lingered around for a while, doing God knows what before leaving me alone in the ward. Everything went eerily quiet after they left and I preferred it that way. It was soothing to my ears which were now pounding. I got bored after a couple of minutes, I couldn't even get to sleep, so I tried to move my body, testing every part and trying to move them. It seemed like I could only get my right index finger to shift slightly. The jerk wasn't even obvious and no one would've even known it moved. I tried to get frustrated at it but failed and let out a mental sigh. I should've known this was coming.

 

It surprised me that I was fully unprepared for the effects of doing this, even though I'd watched countless people being treated the same way. It seemed as though I had underestimated them but of course, underestimating PI, Pain Institute, would only lead to major shocks. 

 

PI. The only place I'd lived at since I was born. It was also the only place on the entire planet that I knew of. Since birth, I'd never taken a step out of this confined place and neither had I ever had the inclination to. I never knew much of the world outside and judging from what they taught me, it wasn't something to be proud of knowing.

 

The Earth, they said, was a round planet comprised of 70% water. It inhabited all kinds of different species, the most dominant of course, being humans. They also mentioned how humans had taken to greedy and selfish means to live on this earth, how they were mercilessly using up all the resources of the earth just so they could live. And that was why, they said, humans needed to be gotten rid of, starting from those top-notch people. And the only way they could succeed was by getting humans to do the job themselves, humans who were trained right from birth, those who had been taught to lie as soon as they could speak, those who were taught to assassinate as soon as they could walk and those who were taught to capture fellow humans before bringing them back to the Institute, to drug them and knock them out before containing them in cells filled with a certain chemical and later on, these people would be sent to be brainwashed, creating an army of the anti-human race.

 

Those people, those assassinators, those spies and those manipulators, they were like me, trained, taught and bred to carry out their missions, to be sent to families and kill off the useless members before bringing the useful ones back to the Institute. We were perfectly made, moulded in such a way that we were the best anyone could hope for, the only obstacle being our emotions and therefore, the Institute had come up with a way to cut off these emotions away from the person forever.

 

And as I stared up at my ceiling, the growing blankness inside of me grew more apparent, more obvious as I searched deep inside of me for any trace of emotion. I found none. 

 

I lay there, motionless and blank, my mind felt weird, to be thinking without emotions. Like I was a computer, progressing facts and information instead of thoughts. It was undoubtedly endeavouring, having to lie so still, fighting against the urge to move because I just couldn't.

 

Two hours or so passed and I could feel my touch sense begin to regain itself. My right arm was feeling the cold wind from the fan blowing against it. It felt good, to be able to touch again. I never knew how being deprived of your senses and of movement could make you seem so pathetic and useless. 

 

And hour more passed and slowly, I could move my arms and legs. I was starting to gain control of my own body again. As I was testing out my elbow joints, the door opened and a man entered the ward. I instantly recognized him as Mr Kim Taewon, my Commander and the man in charge of me and my mission.

 

He moved over to my bed and sat down beside it, scrutinizing me up. 

 

After a few minutes of staring, he finally asked, "How are you feeling?"

 

I looked at him blankly. 

 

"That is a highly illogical question sir, and I am not sure how I am supposed to answer that," I answered in a monotonous voice which was slightly hoarse.

 

The Commander gave me a half smile and nodded, "Of course. I was just testing."

 

He then got up and walked over to the door in a robot fashion, before he exited, he turned to me one last time and said, "I expect you to start your mission in two days time. Report to me in my office and I will give you the details of your trip and the procedure. Study your mission carefully in the meantime since you have nothing to do in the hospital. You will leave PI on the 28th of July and arrive at your designation on the 29th. Do I make myself clear?"

 

I nodded my head firmly, ignoring the ache I felt in my brain soon after. "Yes sir."

 

"Very good. Take care D431705."

 

The Commander left the ward and I was there left all by myself again. I rested my head against the soft pillows and immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.