His memories start here: with the cold. The freezing, numbing, burning, biting cold that turns his flesh black and deadens his nerves. His sluggish brain asks him why he's still alive, but the only answer is the silent scream of pain locked behind his sealed lips.

His vision goes in and out of focus. He hears clinical voices tonelessly discuss his injuries, sees white-masked doctors hover over him, shining lights and asking questions he's too cold to answer. He hears a high-pitched whizz, and something like pain touches his arm to the very bone, but it's hardly noticeable on top of the agony he's already in.

These are his first weeks of life. Sometimes he's conscious; sometimes he finds in hazy dreamscapes what he grasps for in real life. The dreams slip away from him the moment he wakes up, replaced by pain. So much pain. He doesn't remember anything else. He doesn't know anything else.

Slowly, he becomes more aware. He recognizes the eyes of the doctors who treat him. He identifies the color of his bedsheets and walls. In his head, he repeats back the language they speak to him in and compares it with his own, differentiating between the two. He categorizes-Italian, German, English.

Something's missing. He's not quite conscious of it yet.

He learns. He learns the whole world over again, how it works, why it works; it's explained to him in detail by a man with pale hair.

"And what about me?" he asks, in the raspy language they taught him. "How do I work?"

The man smiles, and gleefully tells him his place.