The first thing her mind registered was noise. 

Impeccably consistent beeping; loud and irritating. The artificial hum of whirring machinery. An irregular drip of a tap in the background. The distant, low murmur of voices. 

The second thing her mind registered was the fact that she couldn’t pinpoint the origin of said noises. Everything was pitch black. No… that wasn't exactly accurate. Patterns slowly morphed in the darkness – patches and swirls of lighter colour as though it were... 

As though it were the back of her eyelids. Right, her very own eyelids which she should be able to open... 

Excruciatingly slowly, they blinked open, like her brain had forgotten how to perform the most basic of human functions. 

Light flooded her blurry vision and the shapes around the room focused and unfocused for a long time before she could finally start to identify objects. Everything seemed familiar yet foreign at the same time, in a way that was disconcerting to say the least. Words floated into her head of their own accord. 

Walls… 

Tubes... 

Screen... 

Machine... 

She was in what appeared to be a hospital room, yet everything around was so alien-looking she couldn't be certain. The blindingly white walls were painful to look at, to which she then realised she was seeing everything with shocking, newfound clarity. Like some ultra-HD switch had been in her pupils. Had edges always looked this sharp, had curves always looked this smooth?  

Gradually, more slivers of recognition clicked in her brain, as though it was still in the process of re-calibrating. Pieces fell into place and she gained the consciousness to question: Where am I...and why? 

There was no time to ponder the answer however, because the strange, spherical, robot-like object that had been slowly circling above her head until now, released an awful screeching in a hollow, metallic voice. 

“ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! SUBJECT P-072 HAS AWOKEN!” 

Instinctively, her hands rose up to cover her ears from the assaulting noise, but froze halfway when her (abnormally precise) peripheral vision suddenly caught sight of wisps of black smoke materialising in the corner of the room. A second later, a man appeared with a soft puff. 

Her brain was now conscious enough to decide that yep, she definitely hadn’t actually ‘woken up’ at all. This had to be a strange and disoriented dream. 

Then, amidst the blasting siren and the increasingly louder pounding of footsteps, she heard an exasperated sigh followed by a playful, almost familiar voice, "Goddammit Baekhyun, thought you’d recalibrated this stupid thing."