Being fully aware that he's fighting to breathe would have been liberating perhaps, given that wasn't the first thing to come back fully aware to in a while. No sedative slightly clouding him, no light glaring down, and not even a cold table underneath him. In fact, he feels like he's in a pressure cooker and his first instinct's out, out out.

And as if the world suddenly decided to be kind to him, there's a wheeze as the door of the pod opens about the same time the life support systems kick in and he gasps, blinking at the burning brightness of the sky and he might have been more focused on that feeling that he'd been suffocating. Except there's a shadow lingering over his and first instinct's to grab whoever was stupid enough to let him out of the tube without sedating him beforehand.

Only after the fact does Zack actually register the voice through the heated panic and utters out in complete shock, "...Cloud?"