"Hello?"
Echoes ricochet off walls to infinity. A single fluorescent light shines steadily against an onslaught of threatening void.
"Hello?!"
The increased intensity offers a more violent series of echoes ultimately silencing themselves as they find no ears but their owner's.
Dana mentally notes the pointlessness of shouting. Her supervisor never said this could happen. She deduces the facility must be underground; no level of surveillance detected any complex this large. However large it might be. None of the reports, neither her own nor Carla's, had offered any insight to hidden facilities. The words "Just a check up, not an invasion" stir her stream of consciousness to a raging rapid, repeating themselves again and again until—is the light getting dimmer?
Anger. Rage, even. Stoked by fear and fanned by—what? What was this feeling? Why was it so intense? It felt right, good even. Like the five minutes after an act of true, immature revenge before guilt comes to surface.
A bellow erupts: "Hello!?" The echoes continue on for a long time. The light dims further, until the void surrounds Dana's vision, body, mind. A familiar whisper just makes it through before complete release, "hello."
…
The antithesis of void is difficult to describe. One possible description—which Dana herself crafted on the slightly reflective, body-temperature surface she found herself upon—was infinitely bothersome. Bright, annoying light pierced her eyelids on what she had recently declared an exceptionally rude awakening. Beeps marched on, completely disregarding her recent arousal from a long, albeit uneventful, slumber.
The light steadily became slightly less annoying, as a face came into focus. Eyes daring all about them to see more than they had peered into Dana's own, flickering hurriedly about the room to the chorus of beeps biding for attention.
No pain, head's as clear as it could be for the way she woke up, and she knew she still had everything she remembers having on her body including her clothing. So this wasn't a hospital.
Memories of the dark corridor slowly sneak back from where they had hidden themselves away. Was this the next level of torture? Why? What had she done?
The all-knowing eyes lingered from time to time. Each stare seemed slightly longer, before a hand raised up to reach for something behind Dana's head.
A click sounded, followed by complete silence. The eye's accompanying maw stretched into a proud grin, wrinkles finding familiar places and settling comfortably in.
A whir picks up volume from below Dana. A tingle grows with it at the base of her neck. The sterile blank of the room intensifies, filling her vision again with an ever-increasing anti-void. She did not struggle. What would be the point? A glint of light brighter than everything else caught her eye just a moment before she melted into the anti-void—the everything. The universe.