Darkness.
Seeping under her closed eyelids.
Streaming into her gaping mouth.
Her scream muffled by the towering stone walls on either side of her fragile body.
Her despair – evident.
Her mind – cracking.
Ghastly memories were pressing down on the edges of her mind and they hurt.
The pain was unbearable.
Then, quite out of the blue, it was gone.
For now.
The blackness drifted away and the light returned.
Heavenly.
Maya gripped onto the welcoming reality and stumbled forward through the alley searching desperately for a door,
an entrance, a way in.
She had been informed that her saviour, some sort of doctor, would be prepared to take away the pain.
He would know how to rid her mind of insanity.
Doctor Marcevikz.
The shady alleyway opened up into a dead end but Maya was running for the rusty door stained a faint orange.
Her hands fumbled for the handle and she began desperately pulling the door, sweat dripping off her brow.
A click sounded, louder than Maya had anticipated, followed by a slow whirring that gradually got louder and louder,
threatening to rupture Maya's eardrums. She screamed half delirious, "Shit! The alarm! The alarm!"
A mechanical buzzing sounded behind her, startling her.
A drone was conducting a search of the alley she had just left – if she was caught…
Terror racked through Maya's body and she frantically looked for an escape.
Without thinking she ran to the nearest wall, her fingers clutching for loose gaps in the bricks with which to cling to,
her feet constantly boosting her up.
It seems adrenaline must have kicked in because Maya, bruised and flustered, had scrambled up the wall
before the drone had investigated more than a few metres of the alley – dare she move?
Would the drone notice her?
As the drone drifted into the opening, Maya, tears pouring down her cheeks with fear, rotated and ran as fast as her injured body would permit.