Cognizant

Part 1

He's awake.

Well, no, that's not quite it.

He shifts a bit, blinking--blinking, really blinking--in the light that's suddenly surrounding him.

He's aware he's awake.

The light must have been what woke him up, but if he was just a computer program, how could he have really ever been asleep?

It's strange. He can feel his body, can feel the extension of his limbs to his fingers and toes, can feel the brush of fabric as his jacket rustles around his body--but he can't see it. He's floating, invisible even to himself, in a dim blue room with a single bright screen in front of him.

Something doesn't sit right in his gut as he looks at the screen, but he pushes the feeling aside.

He can recall his command prompts. Character: 707, real name Saeyoung Choi, baptismal name Luciel Choi. A deep route character, with spoiler-heavy tidbits strewn throughout the other routes while his own is the most revealing. Hacker, car enthusiast, loves Jumin's cat.

Jumin. The name sends a flare of shock through him, waking him up a bit more as the adrenaline jolts through his body. Or, does it? If he can't see his body, how does he know it's really there? Or that the adrenaline's there? It could be just--

Stop. Right, back to the current situation. He can debate whether he's real or not later.

Jumin. As if in response to his thoughts, another screen flickers to life and quickly pulls up another program's command prompts.

Jumin Han. Deep route character, rich, loves Elizabeth 3rd.

"Elly." Seven whispers out loud, a smile quirking his face. The name brings more emotions, and with it, a deeper sense of clarity. As quickly as he can, he recalls every other person he can remember.

Rika, but she's gone. Not enough there to worry about.

V, the real name--doesn't matter, but V's command prompts are there on the screen as well, even if his list is much shorter than the others.

Yoosung, college kid, always so positive--

Zen, real name Hyun Ryu, actor, obsessed with himself. The description alone is enough to bring a snort of laughter from Seven, and he hurriedly reads on to the last few.

Jaehee Kang, Jumin's assistant, best friend to ______.

Seven pulls back, squints a bit, then shakes it off. There are blank spots all over everyone's command prompts. It's probably just waiting for input from the player.

The player.

Something twinges deep in his gut, another weird feeling, but again, he pushes it aside. He can figure out what all those bad feelings mean later. Right now, he needs to know why he's awake.

He scans over the last few character commands, skims through the first few pages of code for the beginning of the story, but there's nothing weird. It looks like it'll be just another simple execution of the game, so why--

A screen flickers on behind him, and he spins around, wishing he had his hands so he could use his mouse and keyboard. He feels so strangely useless without a real body. Not that he's ever had one before, he guesses. He's a computer program--stop denying it, brain--so technically, he's never had a body. Or a brain. It's probably just from dreaming or something while he was under.

Except computer programs can't dream, Luciel.

He shakes his head, looking back to the new screen that had just come on. It's the same code that he was reading on the other screen, the stuff that gets the game going. Except one line is highlighted in bright red where everything else was the same dull green on black.