​“Patient Number Zero, wake up.”​​
 

​​Dim light burns through your eyelids as you try to adjust to the damp cement cell that feels like home. You look down at your hands, filthy but strong. Questions flood your mind as you will yourself to your feet.
​
Whose voice was that? It sounded familiar, yet unnatural.​
​​
Where am I? An empty room, with nothing more than a slip of fabric to lie on. The crumbling walls are adorned with what could be thousands of tally marks. Each of them etched into the stone with tedious precision. These aren’t normal tally marks though. The fifth line of each is dark red. Goosebumps run up your arms. A brief shimmer reflects off a mirror over your right shoulder.
​​
As you turn around, you see yourself for what feels like the first time. Ten, maybe eleven years old. Skinny, yet fiercely strong. The clothes that hang off your body seem to be some sort of white uniform.​
Then you see it… The nameplate on your left sleeve reads “Number 0″.
​
Suddenly, the voice is back. “Patient Number Zero, welcome to the living. Let’s get something straight, if I created you, I most certainly can delete you…”
​​
The ground beneath your feet begins to vibrate violently back and forth. One of the sealed cement walls begins to slide open, revealing a long dark corridor. A corridor lit only by the random on-off flickering of a red emergency light halfway down the length.
Something inside you pulls you toward it. Toward the unknown. Toward your new beginning. Toward your destiny. Your eyes are finally truly open, the blue eyes of Patient Number Zero.​