Neo's eyes opened. The first thing he saw was the face of a Bizarro and he screamed. All his muscles geared into action, and he sprang up, ready to summon his needle.
In that moment, Neo realized two things.
The first thing was that there was actually no Bizarro and he was in a clean, spacious room. The second thing he noticed was that his needle didn't materialize on command.
And a third thing happened.
Neo's head throbbed with extreme pain and his limbs lost all power, causing him to crash on the neat white tiles.
Neo's embarrassing fall seemed to trigger a thought train in his head.
'I'm alive.'
He could breathe, feel, think. How could this be? The last thing Neo remembered was going against a horde of Bizarros. He couldn't remember if he took them out or if they took him out instead.
The latter sounded unreasonable now that he was alive and kicking. And the air he was breathing was fresh without a heavy mixture of toxic gases.
He was back on Mars.
"Aha! Ahaha! Hahaha!" Neo laughed out loud, enjoying the feel of coming out alive despite the many odds that had been against him.
"Mr Slater?" A matured female voice called out. "Is that you?" It was filled with caution.
Neo stopped laughing and tightened his facial muscles. He lifted his head from the floor to look at the person.
A woman dressed in a white coat. Her hair was in a tight bun and she was wearing a pair of boxy glasses. A name tag on her white coat read Dr Kenzie.
Three other people stood behind her; two men and another woman. They were dressed in purple scrubs. Neo's eyes thinned as faint enlightenment came over him.
"It's me." He concurred.
"My god…" Dr Kenzie's face was painted in awe. So were her three companions. But she recovered from her initial surprise in seconds.
"Quick, help him back to the bed. Inform them that he's awake." Dr Kenzie ordered and her companions snapped into action.
The two men rushed to Neo and lifted him off the floor, then placed him on the bed in a sitting position with pillows cushioned around him. The other woman left the room without a word.
"Mr Slater, I never thought you would wake- ahem, it is an honor to meet you." Dr Kenzie awkwardly came forward, and Neo noticed a dazed look in her eyes as she looked at him. The male nurses were the same.
"This is Mars, right?" Neo asked for confirmation, since they were staring at him too strangely.
Dr Kenzie nodded her head.
"The SS-Class Dungeon. What happened to it? Is it cleared? Did the mission fail or…?" Neo couldn't bring himself to complete his sentence as dark memories surfaced in his mind.
Bodies. Bodies. Bodies.
"You cleared it." Dr Kenzie answered.
"What?" Neo's eyebrows furrowed.
"Ten years ago, you cleared the SS-Class Dungeon on Earth and saved Mars from total destruction."
Neo: "???"
•••
The SS-Class Gate that appeared on the 5th of May in 2806 had only two survivors. A hundred and nineteen people had died inside the Dungeon.
The first survivor, Alexander Wright, escaped from the Dungeon through an artificial gate. He claimed to have lost his memories of the things that happened in the Dungeon and couldn't give any valuable information about it.
The Federation had been in complete panic of what to do about the Dungeon, until a week later when another survivor came out from the original Gate and it closed like it was never there, signifying that the greatest threat to mankind was dealt with.
The second survivor was Neo Slater, and he had cleared the SS-Class Dungeon by killing all the Bizarros inside. But he slipped into a coma right after.
The coma was brought about by extreme exhaustion of the body and mind. Neo came out of the dungeon half a corpse.
No Restorer could replenish his damaged body, mind, and soul.
The only other thing that could be done for him was to treat him with the power of his sync partners.
Having supernatural gifts was not the only strange thing that came along with the human mutation in Mars.
Humans also expressed the ability to reproduce like never before as well as being able to 'sync'.
To accommodate the changes in mankind, sub-gender tags were given: male alpha, female alpha, male beta, female beta, male omega, and female omega.
And with that, each human had the capacity to 'sync'. Every human had someone(s) whom their brain and genetic wavelengths matched completely on a superior level.
Once a person was able to sync with those they matched with, they could unlock their truest potential and final form.
To save Neo, his blood was tested to find his sync partner(s). With the help of constant contact and energy flow from them, Neo's condition was able to stabilize. But it wasn't enough to pull him out of his coma.
Without completing the final step of synchronization, Neo could only remain a breathing vegetable. Until he suddenly woke up.
•••
"So, you're saying that I've been in a coma for ten years after clearing the dungeon?" Neo asked slowly as he studied his face from a hand mirror he asked for moments ago.
"Yes. A few have been praying for your recovery, but most believe that you died in the dungeon and the government is lying about your being in a coma." Dr Kenzie explained.
"If that's so, then why do I look the same? Shouldn't I have aged?" Neo stared at his youthful face. "It's really been ten years, hasn't it?"
Neo had to ask since he still looked nineteen. He should look like a man pushing his thirties now.
"Ahh, that. Though time has passed in the outside world, your internal environment and its functions were cut off a long time ago. You've lived off energy flow and sync strength for ten years. Your body system has not been aware that you are alive for ten years."
"What?" Neo put down the mirror. "So I've been a living corpse?"
"Yes, if you put it that way."
Neo sucked in a deep breath. The amount of shocking information that Neo had received in the short time he'd woken up from his coma was enough to send him right back.
But he was a trained Hunter who had excelled in having one of strongest mental fortitudes in his generation. If he couldn't handle these bits of information, he wouldn't have the face to call himself the strongest Hunter who ever lived.
"What about my family? Do they know about all of this?" Neo asked. The faces of his mother, father, and sister formed in his mind.
"They do. They visit occasionally to check on you." Dr Kenzie smiled a bit sadly.
"I want to see them. Can you help me contact them? I want to go home." Neo steeled his mind, preparing himself to see the people he thought he would never see again.
"... I can't do that." Dr Kenzie shifted her gaze to her feet.
"Excuse me?"
"They don't have permission to see you yet or take you with them. They need to get authorization before doing so." The doctor explained awkwardly.
"Authorization? From who?" Neo snapped, unable to wrap his head around the fact that he couldn't see his family without permission.
"Me."