For Chris, the shift from absolute darkness to absolute light was instantaneous. Chris scraped his dry tongue across his cracked lips. Formless shapes slowly drifted into view all around him. As the world painfully sharpened into focus, a woman with flowing blonde hair leaned in close. He tried to speak but all that came out of his parched throat was a guttural cackling sound.

The woman cradled his head in her hand and lifted the water bottle to his lips. Chris greedily slurped at the water and let it spill all over the front of his shirt.

The blonde tilted back the water bottle. "Slowly now, you've been asleep for over thirty-six hours."

Slowly she tilted the bottle forward and Chris gulped the water down more steadily.

He was starting to feel normal again. A little more human with each swallow.

And as his body recovered from the drugs, the pain in his groin increased.

"Umm..."

The blonde smiled. "Name's Alexia."

"Alexia," Chris looked around, unsure of how to say it. Finally, the pain was too much to bear. "I really gotta pee."

Alexia motioned over her shoulder into the dense jungle. "The little boy's tree is over there."

Chris jumped up and ran over to the tree Alexia had pointed to. Or at least he thought that was the one she had pointed to.

"Don't pee on anything that looks like it's filled with ants or termites," Alexia called as he ran.

Chris stared around the base of the tree, his body feeling like it was about to explode. He had no idea what he was looking out for.

"Screw it," he muttered to himself and unzipped his pants.

Chris felt much better and wandered back towards Alexia. So much for a civilized introductory period.

Chris walked back up to Alexia who had started packing her own gear. He guessed from the numerous medical instruments arranged on the blanket around her that if anyone asked if there was a doctor in the house, she would be the one to answer.

Despite having only been awake for less than five minutes, she was the only person he felt he knew here. "Where's Liz?"

Alexia looked at him while packing her medical tools into a bag. "Don't know of anyone on the team named Liz."

"She's my sister. She was in the other box."

"Yours was the only box that arrived."

A sudden dread filled Chris. He didn't really know what to expect when he drank the sedative laced tea, but he at least figured that he and Liz would be together.

Chris looked around him at the others in the camp all busying themselves with packing up. "Where's Nathan?"

Alexia stopped packing her medical instruments. "Ah, I see."

Chris looked at her harshly. "What do you see?"

"You were told what you wanted to hear to get you into that box."

"You mean I was lied to."

Alexia shrugged her shoulders. "Get used to it."

"What do you mean?"

"The jungle is full of lies and bugs. I'm just never sure which outnumbers the other out here."

Chris finally looked around him for the first time at the dense jungle in every direction, taking everything in. It suddenly occurred to him that traveling in a coffin while under a drug induced sleep was a sure way to become completely disoriented.

"Where am I."

"The middle of the Amazon rain forest. Exactly where we are on a map, I couldn't say." Alexia yanked her freshly packed rucksack off the ground and hefted it onto her back. She looked at Chris, no apology or remorse reflected in her eyes. "You weren't the only one who arrived here in a box."