KONG: MUD-SOAKED HERMOSET CHIFFON

The first sensation to return to me was sound. And not a particular sound, but an ambience: the harmony of a space, the pulse of air, the hum of the cosmos. The second was temperature. The air above was hot and moist, but whatever I was resting on was cold and felt like it was slowly sucking the warmth from me. And the third, smell, was the one that actually woke me, as a stinging combination of rotting garbage and sulfur filled my nose.

Pushing myself up, I blinked several times to clear my vision, but all that I could make out was a blue-tinged haze-like hundreds of layers of voile. Beneath me was a soggy towel. I was naked except for a few splatters of mud here and there. My ribs were visible below my skin, and my stomach curved inward toward my spine. Below, my slack genitals hung in the heat. I wanted to stand up, but the muscles in my arms were already trembling from the strain of lifting my shoulders. I sank back down. The sound of my own harried breathing filled my ears.

I didn't know where I was, but I guessed days, maybe even weeks had passed. After I had rested a moment, I strained to sit on my haunches. The small change in elevation made me dizzy, and for a moment I feared I was going to be sick, but then the sensation in my throat settled. Beyond the borders of my towel was nothing but dark mud dotted here and there with a few sad tufts of vegetation, the odd rock or lump, and a few bits of trash: a sloppy scrap of paper, a shard of once-white plastic, a fluttering ribbon of black metallic tape.

I tried to speak, to call for someone, but could only produce a whisper before I began to choke. Coughing flooded my skull with pain, and when I put my hand to my forehead, my fingers found a rough line of scar tissue now stretched from my hairline to my neck, slicing my face in half.

If I had the strength, I would have run from myself. Instead, my fingertips crawled along the slick and knotted skin like ants on sugar as I tried desperately to conjure what had happened.

I remembered Kira's beautiful eyes. I recalled standing on the Stanton-Bell knitting a skivvé. I saw Vada performing in the Europa. I remembered Pearl Rivering with Pilla.

My stomach clenched. I vomited a dribble of clear goo. The scar down my face felt like it was going to pop open. Holding my head, I moaned, and slumped forward. This pain wasn't just the scar, something else was wrong. For an instant I knew I was dead, and that this was some empty stage for the soul or memory. I was stuck here forever in this stinking hot air and cold mud.

And then, as if a set of complicated gears engaged, somewhere in the reawaking mysteries of my brain, I remembered being in the entervator Keep and Withor pointing at me. After the Europa Showhouse had exploded, the satins had stuffed me into a large cloth sack. I had been beaten unconscious.

I felt my face, but couldn't understand why I had one big scar down the middle. When had I been cut?

Steadying myself, I rose onto one knee, clenched my teeth, and then pushed myself up. I was standing, but I had to negotiate my own violent dizziness like a surfer pitching his weight from right to left and from the balls of his feet to the heels and back. Stepping off the cloth, my feet sank into the recycle-smelling mud. I saw tire tracks and figured someone had dropped me here. I wobbled twenty feet before I had to stop. Resting on my haunches, I huffed down the noxious air.

And while I knew this was the slubs from the smell, where was the corn, where were the houses, and where were the M-Bunny men? All around was nothing but mud and fog.

"Hello?" I held my head with both hands as the pain felt like it was going to split me in two. I shouted, "Is anyone here?" I heard nothing. "Hello? Anyone!" Pain blinded me for an instant.

I had been struggling inside the bag. I remembered trying to push my way out. It had been so black I had seen nothing but spirals and checkerboards. Then I remembered lying on a table in some noisy echoing space. From high above, I had seen harsh parallelograms of sunshine. And it was there-wherever that was-that my head had been torn and the flesh on my face had been sliced off with sharp metal gears.

And then I knew! I had been taken to M-Bunny headquarters. I remembered the factory skylights, the hum of machines, and the grinders that deboned the recycled. But unlike my dad, and Rik, and millions of others, I had somehow escaped. Feeling my head, I tried to find the hole where the bolt had gone in, but of course there wasn't one.

They hadn't given me Blue to stun me, nor had they mercifully killed me before they recycled me. I had been thrown straight in. But then something happened.

I heard a wet suck of mud. A second before I had been screaming in hopes of finding someone else, now a cold fear covered my skin. Turning around, I peered into the fog. I heard more squishing sounds. They were coming for me! I searched the ground, and grabbed at what I thought was a metal scrap but it turned out to be paper. Ahead I saw something shiny, and grabbed for a small shard of glass. Feeling the edges, I found the sharpest point and held it up.

I saw movement in the fog. A flutter of what looked like cloth. Glancing about, I wondered if I could try to run, but even as I stumbled backwards, the shape solidified. A man in a long coat-Withor!

My heart was hammering. My scar throbbed. Wobbling, I bent my knees like Kira in battle. First I would cut his throat with the glass. I'd slash it back and forth. Then I would bash his head. And bash it again. I would keep on slamming my fists into him until he stopped moving.