Chapter Text
In the vastness of space, the Runeterra galaxy is one of the most overfilling with life. From the water world of the planet Bilgewater orbiting the Blue Flame to the mysterious and dangerous cluster of exoplanets known as Void, life seemed to find a place to thrive in every corner of the galaxy.
It’s from one of the oldest of these, the desert planet Shurima, that a hundred spaceships are set to carry an entire nation of proud men and women towards their new home following their declaration of independence. Each of the hundred ships carries five thousand upper-class members and five thousand working-class members.
The rich and the powerful, members of honourable families and men and women of good pedigree would set their new home on the lush planet Piltover, a paradise of ocean, rivers, and rich mountains, and create an epicentre of culture, art, progress and trade, as the planet was a perfectly strategic place to become a hub of the galaxy.
Meanwhile the less fortunate would travel to Piltover’s moon, Zaun, where they would begin a trade of their manual skills. There were no radiant cities, shimmering rivers, and bustling harbours waiting for them there—only mines, factories, assembly lines and warehouses.
Each and every one of the thousand ships features the upper deck, accessible to the future Piltovans - a stunning place of entertainment and luxury, and the lower deck, where the soon-to-be workers would learn their skills. This, however, wouldn’t come to reality any sooner than in a hundred and twenty years when the spaceship Janna W-23 would be only four years away from reaching the end of her journey. Then, the Zaunites would wake up from their cryosleep, leave their pods, and man the ship until the Piltovans woke up four months prior to the landing.
With only a quarter of the road on the odometer, it would be quite some time before Janna comes to life.
*
Vander has had some bad nights and worse mornings though the thirty-two years of his life. Some were filled with a throbbing migraine and a taste of bile in his mouth after a night fueled by alcohol, on some others it was a persistent pain in a busted lip and the flavour of blood after a fight that woke him up. Sometimes he’d awake to a stranger cradling his large torso, more often to the coldness of his empty flat.
Oh, he knew what bad mornings were, alright.
But none prepared him for this one.
First, there is the cold and the stiffness. It's immense and overwhelming, making Vander's entire body clench. The dryness in his mouth, it's so intense it burns. He can't see, no more than a newborn. Everything is but blurry shapes and blinking light turn into astigmatic rays.
"Worker WW-268, Vander." A distorted, robotic voice penetrates his ears like a needle made of hot sound.
"What-" he rasps, his own voice foreign and resonating through the aching ribcage. He heaves.
"Remain calm. You have just woken up from cryosleep," the robotic voice answers flatly his inquiry, "you might be experiencing a number of post-somatic symptoms, such as xerostomia, DES, confusion, fatigue, temporary memory loss, muscle spasms, diarrhoea, constipation, nausea-”
Vander stops listening, leans over the side of the pod, and retches.
He barely hears the robot keep listing other, more grotesque and intricate symptoms as he stares at his lower body and hands, trying hard to regain his vision in the dim lights of the soma chamber. He’s wearing nothing but the cryoskin - a full-body, skin-tight suit, covering him neck to toe, full of sensors and microneedles that were stimulating his muscles to prevent atrophy, and pumping his veins with needed nutrients, liquids, preserving drugs, and oxygen.
Despite the pulsating stimuli the cryoskin provided him with, Vander is feeling weak and fragile, his legs and arms seem thinner than he remembers, by quite a lot. He was always a big man, sturdy, his mother used to say, but now he can see clearly the bone protruding the side of his wrists, and the outline of the fibula in his shin.
“-to please exit your pod as soon as possible, form lines and do not crowd.” The automatized guide reminds Vander. All he can do is huff a moan in response. Crowd? No, no crowding. Because he needs to find a bathroom, as soon as possible.
He ignores the instructing voice for the most part, only catching and storing the most essential information.
"-to your cabin, corridor 5, row 12, number Z46. Your luggage will be delivered to you by the automatic communication system shortly. Please, resume your rest until post-somatic symptoms disappear. Visit the infirmary centre if any of the following prevails longer than 24 hours: shortness of breath, DES-"
His feet, covered in the cryoskin one-piece suit, feel wrong on the anti-slippery floor. The soles are numb, the ankles weak, and the toes insensitive.
Vander takes a deep breath and rises, steadying himself on the open lid of his pod and groaning as his vision shortly blurs out and darkens again.
-No. Do not faint, Vander. You don't want a concussion on your first day alive again. Slowly now…
He shuffles carefully, step by step, reaching for the walls and doorways that automatically open in front of him. It’s so very dark on the lower deck. Dark and quiet. Not that Vander minds, the last thing he needs right now is other people bumping into him and cutting in line. All he wants is to reach his cabin and crash onto an actual bed to sleep.
Really sleep, like a person, not getting pumped with who knows what while his muscles are subdued to micro shocks of electricity.
Here it is, Z46. The door opens wide, sliding into the wall with a smooth ‘whoosh’. The inside is dimly lit by stripes of LED lights alongside the walls textured by lines of masked circuits and outlines of pipes. Two pairs of bunk beds line the sides, beddings pressed under the sheath of protective transparent foil.
The robotic voice, seemingly following Vander the entire time, keeps flooding him with information about who will be his roommates and when is the introduction meeting with his squad. Vander filters its blabbering out. None of that is of any interest to him now. At this very moment, the only thing he can focus on is ripping the foil over the bed apart. His fingers, numbed by 120 years of artificial sleep, are stupid and his blunt fingernails covered by the cryoskin can’t rip through the thin plastic.
Vander moans and gives up, crashing down on the unpacked bed followed by the Polyethylene squeaking. So be it. His roommates are about to first meet Vander sleeping on a plastic cover like a dying man. And really, he does feel like one too.
He starts dozing off before he even fully shuts his eyes, letting out a long breath and allowing his body to sink into a natural sleep.
What wonders does a hundred-and-twenty years in suspended animation do to a healthy, thirty-two years old individual.
*
Quiet and dark.
The initial awakening is pleasant, except for the unexpected heat.
Shurima was a decently hot planet and Vander doesn’t mind warmth, but this is a different type of thereof. Sticky and clammy, the cryo suit glued to his skin, cold with moisture on his chest and back, pooling with hot sweat at the joints and folds of his body; the general sensation is insufferable and Vander lets out a frustrated whine as he pulls on the synthetic fabric in an attempt to free himself from his claustrophobic, skin-tight prison.
To no avail.
True to his hot-headed nature, Vander shoots up into a seated position and tears at his neckline, cussing profoundly. Finally then, the cryoskin gives in and rips. Vander keeps pulling, teeth bared, and eyebrows furrowed with the effort, lower and lower, slipping out his arms and torso, lower yet to free his legs and feet as the sensory discomfort becomes too much for him until he stands bare in the dark cabin.
It’s then, when he stands in a form far too reminiscent of his simian ancestor, legs spread wide and arms in a grappling position, fully naked body glistening with sweat he accumulated through the hours of sleep, that he realizes that his introduction to his roommates is about to become even more interesting.
He covers his crotch with both hands swiftly and looks around, half expecting a snicker or a chuckle.
Nothing. The cabin remains quiet and dark. It’s empty.
“The hell?” Vander huffs. Didn’t the computer voice inform him that he was about to share space with two and more people? Did he oversleep? Did none of them think to wake him up? Not very friendly of them. On the side, he has to subconsciously appreciate the sound insulation in the cabins. Not only had he slept hard but even now, there are no audible sounds coming from the corridor. This will come in handy after long and physically exhausting training.
Then he notices the clear plastic still covering not just his cot, but the other three as well. Either all of them crashed much like Vander or, and that was much more likely, Vander overheard the computer and was actually lucky to get his own cabin. He was tired enough to hallucinate half what has been told to him in the parade of unnecessary information, listings of terrible symptoms, and itinerary he had no chance to remember.
He won’t complain, of course. Four years ahead and he has his own room instead of crowding with three other people? How lucky can he get? Perhaps he could acquire some roommates once he meets some fresh and friendly people, and form his own little crew. And if not, he’ll be able to host the best parties on the lower deck.
At least his luggage was delivered. A trio of beaten, army green duffel bags with stencilled bar code on the side. He checks the tag to make sure they’re really his, drags them out and sets them on the free bed. He desperately craves a long shower, a good breakfast, and a stretch of legs.
Vander confusedly rummages through his bags, searching for the one that contains his crew uniform and boots, then fishes for his hygienic bag. If there is one thing he wants more than a cup of joe, it’s to brush his teeth.
At last, with a pyramid of clothes, underwear, boots, towels, and other needed objects partially shielding his vision, Vander, temporarily dressed in an old bathrobe and worn slippers, waves his leg to activate the door’s motion sensor and open.
And…it’s quiet and dark.
Quiet and dark. Dark and quiet.
Vander frowns, turning his head left to right and taking in the eerie silence of the empty corridor. He would have expected bustling activity. People running up and down, chattering and meeting each other, studying the floor plans confusedly, and asking equally lost compatriots for directions to the initial meetings.
However, the outside of his cabin is just as devoid of life as the inside.
It is disconcerting a tad. Vander starts experiencing that nasty feeling of distant guilt and anxiety he'd often get as a child the moment his father came home. The vague notion that he's done something wrong.
And yet, there must be an easy explanation for this. Lacking any roommates, he either slept in too much or simply woke up too early and everyone is, therefore, either already present at their prospective seminars, or still asleep.
Either way, it suits Vander well. He can take a shower in the communal bathrooms without bickering with several other men and women, enjoy all the water he wants, and finally set his mind at ease.
And if he's late to his introductory seminar, so what? They’ll kick him off the ship?
The most they can do is to penalize his credits, and what’re a few cogs for a nice and relaxing shower, anyway?
*
It certainly feels worth every cog in his account when the hot water begins beating into Vander's shoulders and hair and steam fills the room.
He moans hedonistically and slides his fingers through his rich brown hair. He feels now as though he lived every second of that ninety-year lasting sleep, and finally can wash it all off. It’s like touching his body for the first time, every hair on his chest feels foreign, every mole new, every scar unknown.
Vander can see and feel, just from observing his body under the trickling water, that he indeed lost some weight. Not just a little bit, but quite a lot. And that is confusing and worrisome because the cryopods are meant to preserve their occupants just as they are, freeze them in time and release them as though they only took a little nap. But here, Vander feels ribs under his skin, his previously bulging pot belly is hanging in a flap of skin, and the collarbones are clearly visible around the dip of his chest.
Then, for the first time, he notices his right forearm.
His eyes narrow and the fingers of his left hand carefully ghost the ugly wound crossing his right lower arm just above the wrist.
At first, he thinks that perhaps he’s experiencing the aforementioned temporary memory loss the robotic voice warned him about and that this ugly, pink and purple scar on his arm is a scar he acquired some time in the past, but try as he might, he cannot place even the slightest memory of it. Not even a hint.
It’s hideous. A deep crevice of an ember-coloured line is surrounded by a mountain range or grey and odd pink scar tissue rising above his tendons and veins. He sees prickle points of mauve in it, like thousands of poorly placed tattoo dots. The grey spreads in uneven patches up and down the soft skin of his forearm, abruptly cut off by the natural colour of his skin, previously sporting a golden tan, now ghastly pale.
It doesn’t look like any scar he’s ever seen.
Vander dares to touch it.
It’s tender and soft like a fresh scar would be. It doesn’t hurt in any way but there is a strange sensation he can’t categorize. It’s like…it feels almost like…
-Like it’s numb.
His frown deepens when he stops the water and takes his towel to faintly press the corner of the rough fabric to the scar, only to tickle it. He runs it up and down his arm and, sure enough, he feels the towel’s touch ordinarily as long as he’s sliding over his regular skin but once it runs over the grey patches, the feeling disappears completely. It’s only when he presses on the scar that he can get a very mild, faint sensation of pressure.
The nerves are fried.
Slightly concerned, Vander dries himself and steps out. He’d better take this to the infirmary. He isn’t sure but the combination of his mysteriously lost pounds and the weird scar on his arm are enough of an abnormal post-somatic symptom that he thinks he should get it treated.
He gets dressed, dries his hair and brushes his teeth in a hurry. Really, the anticipated shower is mostly ruined for him now anyway and even breakfast will have to wait. It might still be the sleeping period but the infirmary must have a full-cycle service, right?
*
Vander marches through the empty corridors of the dark lower-class deck, stopping only briefly a few times to figure out the floor plan. He’s beginning to really hate this situation, the whole vast emptiness of the place is giving him chills.
Something is immensely wrong. All the cabins are dark and quiet, all the corridors devoid of any sort of life, it feels unnatural and borderline scary. Vander’s anxiety is slowly raising alarms in the back of his mind but he doesn’t know what to do to calm them.
The infirmary is a priority now. He can ask the staff there, for sure. They will now. The staff and the crew, they must have been woken up prior to the passengers, right? Even the lower-class workers. None of them knows how to operate the ship, even on autopilot, the crew was meant to wake up months before the passengers, they must be-
The infirmary is empty. Quiet. And dark.
The light turns on automatically as the door opens for Vander, and a robotic voice welcomes him flatly.
“Welcome to the infirmary. Please, use the automatic sorting system to report your medical issues and you will be given a waiting number.” A monitor on the wall by the entrance lights up, ready to scan Vander. His frown deepens, and he feels his heart racing now. While the sensor scans him for any problems, Vander leans to see deeper into the infirmary. But there is no one. The rotary chairs for the staff are empty and pushed to the desks, the computers off. Not a thing out of place.
“What the…”
“Detectable issues: Mild malnutrition, non-detrimental traces of infection. Please, take the suspended medicine and drink plenty of water. Consult your eating habits with a nutritionist.” Two small, wax-coated pills clink into the dish below the sensor, and a paper cup extended from the wall fills with water. Vander slowly reaches for both. He’s feeling dazed, his anxiety is now spiking up the roof and forcing his breath to tremble.
“What the fuck is going on…”
*
Vander stops outside the infirmary. The corridor ahead is…
Quiet and dark.
He starts walking, stops by the first cabin door and stares at it. He waves his arm. The door opens.
Empty.
Another cabin. Empty again. Vander’s steps speed up as he walks down the corridor that should be full of people like him. He opens door after door and finds each and every cabin dark, quiet, and empty.
Dark, quiet. And empty.
He’s running now, breath rustling on his lungs from the still prevailing dehydration.
All the workers’ cabins. Empty.
All the crew cabins. Empty.
Every single seminar room, every corridor, the cafeteria, the library, the IT centre.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
Vander partially collapses, catching on the corner of an intersection. He heaves, gasping. He sobs.
Empty.
He’s tracing, rushing through the halls and corridors, slamming into corners and walls, hollering and screaming for anyone to answer. Anyone.
It was a joke. A good one. They got him! They got him good, they can all laugh about it together now, just as soon as they fucking come out.
Empty.
Vander falls. Evenly spread bumps of an anti-slippery floor are pressing hard into his hands and knees.
He looks up. He’s back in the cryo chamber.
He isn’t sure how he got here. He isn’t sure he wants to be here.
Yet, he climbs to his feet.
Every single one of the pods is closed, each and every one hosting a single human being. All with their eyes closed and motionless, stuck in time where even dreams can’t reach them.
All but one.
*
“Where are we?” Vander’s voice sounds foreign to him. It’s hollow and flat, much like the robotic voice that replies to him as he stands by the screen of the infostation.
“Spaceship Janna W-23, the twenty-third ship out of hundred belonging to the independent Piltovan travel agency, is on a transit between planet Shurima and planet Piltover.”
“Where…is everyone?”
“Spaceship Janna W-23, the twenty-third ship out of-” Vander waves the voice off, interrupting it. He needs to focus and reword. He doesn’t want to say it out loud.
“When do the passengers wake up?”
“The Working class passengers of Janna W-23 are to be awakened from their cryosleep four years prior to reaching their destination, the Zaun moon, to learn all their needed skills and assist the crew.”
Vander nods slowly, biting on his bottom lip.
“Okay. And how far are we now?”
“For your convenience, I’ll convert the distance into time. We are currently ninety years away from our destination.”
The time stops. Vander’s breath freezes in his throat. He must have heard wrong.
“What?”
“We are currently ninety years away from our destination.”
“That’s not possible,” He breathes out, feeling his hands beginning to tremble, “How…far away from Shurima are we?”
“We are currently, thirty years away from Shurima.”
“But…I’m awake!” Vander’s voice breaks.
“Please, repeat or re-formulate your inquiry.”
“Why am I the only one awake?”
“Please, repeat or re-formulate your inquiry.”
Vander shoots to his feet, terror swelling in his chest.
“WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE AWAKE?”
“Please, repeat or re-”
He can’t hear anymore. He heaves, gasps for air, stumbles and falls, struggles to his feet and staggers.
Away. Anywhere. Anywhere else. He needs to breathe.
And all he can comprehend is the overwhelming feeling that everywhere around, there is just the dark and quiet emptiness.
*
A piece of toast breaks off and falls down to the floor. Vander's eyes, the colour of the storm, now dull and half-lidded, follow it.
A small group of cleaning robots, plate-sized disks propelled by whirling wheels, excitedly leave their station and hum through the dimly lit, low-ceiling cafeteria to clean the mess. Vander doesn't move, only watching their joyous, automatized process with idle, passing interest.
The crumble disappears in the swirling brushes of one of the cleaning robots and the squad hums away, their departure resonating through the void.
Vander stares after them for a while, then slowly resumes eating. Powder scrambled eggs and over-toasted white bread. The cup of creamless coffee in a white cup reflects the buzzing light above like a glistening black eye. None of it tastes like anything.
*
It's been two days.
Two days since Vander became the sole awoken occupant of Janna W-23. Two days since the first day of his utter despair.
He ran infostation to infostation, repeating his progressively hysterical question over and over. He asked every computer he could access. He opened every door he could and banged on every door that was inaccessible to him. He screamed and cried and begged but the answer was only one of the two each time.
Either silence was all he was given or the premise of ninety years among the sleeping crew.
Out of breath and hysterical, he laid down in his empty and cold cryopod and cried himself to sleep, hoping, praying that it was just a bad dream.
He woke up without a voice and with eyes bloodshot and swollen back into the nightmare.
As if sleepwalking, he stumbled for hours then, dull and in shock, trying to make some sense out of everything, and it wasn’t until he reached the crew cryo-chamber that he snapped out of his stupor.
He banged at the door until he skinned his hand, kicked at it, and pressed every button and every option on the access panel but the door wouldn’t open for him.
Cussing and threatening, Vander stormed off to retrieve some hard machinery tools and break in. They have to help him. Have to. It’s their responsibility.
He found the contact centre during his search. A room segmented into small booths, each with a rotary chair and a computer. Vander mounted one, for a moment hesitant as though what to do but the screen lit up automatically.
“Hello, welcome to the Communication centre. All fees will be billed to your credit account. Please, insert your passenger card.”
Vander frowned, frozen in confusion for a moment. Then he gathered his bearings and reached for the plastic card attached on a telescopic tendril to his breast pocket. He inserted it into a slot that lit up beside the screen, and the monitor blinked and loaded his personal information.
“Worker WW-268, Vander. Who would you like to contact today?”
“I…need to speak to customer service.” He stammered. The screen loaded the coordinates and then showed Vander his image, recorded by the camera above the screen.
“Please, begin your recording.”
Vander watched himself on the screen, pale and much thinner than he’s ever been, hair tousled and greasy with sweat, a beginning of stubble darkening the lower part of his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and appeared unusually light as illuminated with the camera light. Momentarily, he didn’t know where to start.
“Hello. I’m…Vander. WW-268. I’m on the spaceship Janna W23, in transit between Shurima and Piltover. I…” He ran out of words then, slacked-mouthed and scowling at the total absence of his mind. Vander stroked his growing stubble, leaned back and continued after a time he could not recognize.
"It's year thirty of the journey. I woke up. I'm…the only one awake. My cryopod is broken, I think. We have ninety years to go, so I'd…I'd appreciate any and all assistance. Because otherwise, I'll die here. Thank you."
He breathed for a moment. Saying those words was easier than he thought it would be and yet, even now they felt distant and liquid as if their significance still didn't carve its mark into his mind.
He pressed the blinking button 'Touch to send' and watched a circle rotate in the pleasantly warm brown desktop of the application until the robotic voice returned.
"Your message has been sent. It will take twenty-eight years to reach Shurima."
Vander froze.
"Twenty-"
"Earliest reply is to be expected in seventy-six years."
"What…"
"Thank you for using our service. 500% of your wage will be deducted from your credit for fees."
Vander grabbed the sides of the monitor. His spit hit the screen.
"WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?"
"Please, come back anytime. Would you like to send another-"
Vander ripped the screen out of the panel and threw it to the floor, screaming.
*
Now he sits in the cafeteria, watching little mindless robots go after their predestined business and eating his first meal since he woke up.
He barely cares what it tastes like, too narrowmindedly focused on forming a plan.
He won't give up. Not now, not yet. There must be a thousand and one things he didn’t try yet and he won’t accept his fate until he tries each and every one of them back to back several times. Not until he knows, for a cold two hundred per cent certainty, that he’s truly, really, absolutely, and profoundly fucked.
And it all starts with figuring out his options.
*
MY LIST OF OPTIONS:
MapFind the crew access cards
- Map the entire deck and write down where everything is. Note down tools, machinery, crew cabins,
tools, panels, mining gauntlets, everything you think you can use later.
- Find the cryopod maintenance manuals.
- Try to do a pod analysis in the analytic panel.
- Try to get into the crew cryo chamber. You can try access cards, access codes, or breaking in with manual tools or machinery.
- Break into the upper deck, rinse and repeat.
- Send more messages to the helpline.
Each and every bullet point of the list is checked with a trembling line of red pencil. The machine oil print of a thumb smudges the bottom left corner. Some are checked several times, some are scratched out entirely.
Below them all, on the bottom of the page, is an eighth point, clearly added significantly later and with a shaking hand:
- Find something fun to do.