Disclaimer: Terra Nova does not belong to me.
AN: Consider this an expansion of "Harsher Population Control" from the "Ways the Story Didn't Go" collection, but reading it first is not necessary.
The hallway leaves her feeling strangely agoraphobic as she trails after Dr. Yibbets. It is not particularly wide, but it must lead somewhere. The feeling that there is somewhere to go is strangely unsettling (and exhilarating as well) in the wake of her recent confinement. She tries very hard not to let any unease (or even something like hope) that she might be feeling manifest itself in her posture or on her face. The woman in front of her is chattering in her normal manner, but Rowle is following closely behind them (enough so that she is certain that he would step on her heels if she came to an abrupt stop). He is, as always, watching her closely - waiting for there to be something he can use against her. That has not changed; she is fairly certain that it never well. She does not think it will matter how much time she spends here - she will always be on her guard, and he will always be watching for a place of weakness in her armor.
Maddy is not certain what day (or night as she really has no way to be sure of the difference either) it is now that they have demanded that she follow them out of the door. It is the first time (to her knowledge) that they have extracted her from her cell. She only calls it that in her head of course. She does not have any reason to refer to the space out loud - the majority of the conversations to which she is exposed are decidedly one sided.
Both Rowle and Dr. Yibbets refer to the place as her room. The former does so in a sarcastic and somewhat snide manner designed to remind her that she is ultimately a prisoner in this place no matter the arrangements that are made or the niceties of the pretenses at which they play. The latter calls the place her room in a sickeningly sincere manner as if all teenage girls opt to dwell inside cubicles which have no handles on the interior of the door. This bothers her far more than any cutting verbal attempts at putting her in her place ever will.
She has had a lifetime of disgruntled peers to inoculate her against that sort of an attack. There is very little Rowle can say to provoke a reaction from her, but he seems the type that never grows bored with trying. They (the mysterious they that she is convinced is watching and pulling the strings behind the scenes) chose well when they set him up to play the part of "bad cop" in this scenario.
She brushes the fingers of her right hand across the mostly healed bruise on her left arm as she takes in the details of the hallway down which they are walking as best she can without making a show of turning her head. It reminds her that they are willing to be flexible to a point in how they arrive at their destination, but they intend to arrive there all the same. They have never told her what they gave her when she was unconscious. They have never mentioned that she was unconscious at all. She pieced it together herself from the clues of suddenly waking clear-headed when she knew that she had been far too muddled for sleep alone to have reversed the situation and the bruise on her arm that her extensive reading of medical texts both modern and archaic (brought on by a compulsion to understand what her mother did every day) told her was likely caused by the placement of an IV. She would have remembered a piece of plastic tubing inhabiting her vein if she had been aware for any part of it. The only thing outside of herself that had been different in her cell was the disappearance of the little plastic cup of pills that had been waiting for her in front of the slot in the door.
She might be overreaching (desperately grasping at something to make her feel as if she had some semblance of control over some minute part of the situation) to consider the disappearance of the pills as a battle won, but she did. The they on the other side of the door had wanted her to take them, and she had run out the clock on their willingness to wait for her to do so. They could have given her any number of things while that line had been in her, but she did not think that they had. They had wanted her to choose the pills. In the absence of her acquiescence, she had been confident that they would try something else (or as confident as a girl locked in a holding cell with no real idea of what was happening was capable of being). She had been allowed plenty of time for confidence to fade while she was left waiting. She spent her time wondering how similar her situation was likely to be to that of the rest of her family.
Her mother would be eligible for a cell in an actual prison for her violation of the population law protocols (if they sent people who had been erased from the system to prison - she was more convinced than ever that that was why there had never been any information about families who were caught having more than four members to find). Her dad would be doubly so - assault against an officer from the population control division was an offense with harsh penalties even without an actual infraction against the laws they were enforcing.
She wondered about Josh and whether wherever he was shared the same monotonous gray walls that filled her vision each time that she opened her eyes. Did the garish poster featuring the "A Family Is Four" slogan provide the only exception to the sameness of color where he was? Did he have to fight to keep his gaze off of it while he wondered what had become of the rest of them? She worried about Josh - he had their father's short fuse. Was it getting him in even more trouble than they already were?
Her thoughts and questions had plenty of time to cycle endlessly back to where they always returned - what had happened (was happening) to Zoe? She had waited and wondered while the cup of pills' place on the floor became home to a succession of what she called meals for lack of anything more appropriate to call them. She had thought it over and decided there was nothing of substance to be gained by refusing them. She had continued to wait. She had continued to wonder.
The next change to occur had been the opening of the door.