At
one point she was trying to outrun somebody or something, but her
feet were sluggish and unresponsive. The unknown pursuer was quickly
making up the distance between them. However, a stab of pain in her
sinuses, like a headache but a hundred times worse, started to take
over her subconscious thought until she was no longer visualising
anything except a large ball of pure white hot energy which seemed to
burn her. It was this that caused her to slip back into the physical
realm with a jolt.
Susan
had rolled off the surface she was laying on and landed on the floor
face first, causing her to hit her forehead on the solid ground.
Forcing herself to turn to her side so she could attend to it, she
suddenly realised that she felt different. Opening her eyes, it
suddenly made sense. Instead of the difficult conditions of the
outside, she was now inside a room, barely furnished and rather
primitive. Her suit had been removed and she had been dressed in some
kind of overalls.
“What
the hell?” She couldn’t help blurt out upon taking all of it in.
She
sat up, briefly surprised again at the pain she discovered behind her
eyes, before observing her new surroundings properly. Three walls
were simply bare stone with no windows, but the fourth had a door
with a small hatch towards the top. She had been lying on the only
piece of furniture in the room, a rickety metal-framed bed with a
large panel of wood serving as the mattress. Behind it she saw a
bucket, her mind repulsed by what she was probably expected to do
with it.
Her
last real memory, the jump, had been a suicide attempt. She certainly
didn’t expect to survive, and considering the height of the drop
she’d taken, her condition was remarkably substantial. She ran her
arms all over various parts of her body to check for injuries, or
perhaps treatment, but found nothing immediately obvious except the
stabbing shoots of the migraine or whatever it was.
Carefully
she stood up, worried in case she had feeble bones or tore something,
but once on her feet she realised she was fine apart from a sore
back, likely caused by the most uncomfortable bed she’d ever seen.
Susan calmly walked over to the door. There was no handle on this
side, but she tried poking the latch. It didn’t budge. Susan
sighed.
What
was going on? Somehow she’d escaped certain death and now was
imprisoned in a completely mystery location.
Maybe
this was all a test, that was her first thought. Crutch could have
given her this task to test her loyalty to the mission, to The Trust,
and everything since the Sending had been a simulation. Unlikely, but
not impossible. She’d been inside a suit the entire time, and it
could have been programmed with some sort of ultra realistic
simulation in which she saw everything as completely real. That could
even mean that Selena was still all right and Rashad wasn’t really
a traitor…
There
was no way that was true though. If it had been, she wouldn’t
currently be in a prison cell, she would instead have woken up in a
hospital, a scientific lab or something like that. Besides, she knew
that everything she had been through was as real as the cold stone
floor she stood upon barefoot. There was no technology in the world
that was that powerful, and she would know if there was thanks to her
position.
The
other possibility was that she had misremembered exactly what
happened when she arrived in Kadira. Her brain was clearly distressed
as she’d never experienced such a bad headache before, but she
still felt that she could trust her own memory.
And
so the only other likely possibility was that she had genuinely made
the leap off the cliff edge, as she was sure she did, and something
or maybe just complete luck had spared her from serious harm.
Somebody had found her when she was out cold, probably one of Rogan’s
men, and imprisoned her. It didn’t feel warm enough in here to be
in the base she was supposed to infiltrate, but as she had been
briefed before the mission, there was very limited intelligence for
inside the building and so she had no way of telling.
Somewhere,
a distinct sound of footsteps could be heard clicking on the
concrete-like floor outside her room, and getting closer. Susan
backed away from the door, not knowing what to do. If they came in,
how would, or rather should,
she approach the situation? Her training was difficult to recall as
it was many years ago and she was not a field agent, and the pain
caused chaos in her head, making it difficult to focus.
The
footsteps grew louder and stopped, just as she hoped they wouldn’t,
just outside her door. The latch was unbolted, and a pair of eyes
appeared on the other side. They were blue, but belonged to an older
man, somebody she didn’t recognise.
“Prisoner
is awake.” Came the voice. “Seems stable. Alert number one.”
Susan
stared at the eyes and they stared back. For a good few seconds of
silence, neither of them diverted their gaze.
“Are
you hungry?” Asked Blue Eyes.
Susan
wasn’t sure if this was genuine concern by the man or an
exploratory question, but she did feel like she hadn’t eaten for
weeks. A gentle nod was all she offered him in response.
“Then
a meal will be provided.” Blue Eyes then waved his arm to a man
next to him, or at least that seemed to be what happened as she
couldn’t see his body, only his face. Then footsteps made off in
the same direction.
“If
you’re thirsty, there is water in that bucket.”
Susan
felt somewhat relieved.
Blue
Eyes looked down for a second and seemed to sigh a little. Suddenly,
before she had a chance to think about this, the footsteps could be
heard coming back and shortly afterwards Blue Eyes left his hatch,
and in his place suddenly appeared a loaf of bread and a bowl of
broth. Susan didn’t take any steps to get them though.
“I
understand it’s normal to be sceptical in this situation, of
accepting food from a stranger, but rest assured if there was any
danger of us trying to harm you, we’d have done it by now.”
There
was no way she was going to eat that stuff she decided, especially
not in front of this stranger. She wasn’t some performing creature
at a circus.
“Fine,
we’ll leave” Said Blue Eyes as if reading her thoughts. “But
I’m not leaving you in your room with the hatch open.”
She
sensed interestingly how he chose not to use the word prison or cell.
“Have
it your way.”
The
hatch instantly lifted shut with a slam, which sent the bowl of broth
crashing to the floor, smashing the ceramic into a hundred pieces or
more and hurling splotches of the clear liquid all around the room.
Susan
sighed and dropped to the floor, her back and head both giving her
cause for concern, and trying to plan her next move or how to get
herself out of this ‘room’.
She
had nothing.
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