"I don't own *********** and if I did I'd treat them a hell of a lot better"
Her breaths were coming in short gasps now. Panic was flooding her system.
"Dammit! Get a hold of yourself girl!", she screamed in her head.
"The rules… must remember the rules…", she thought while trying to bring her
Raven whipped her head around looking for anything that she could use as a weapon.
The staccato of suppressed gunfire.
All around her countless woodchips flew, each one biting into her bruised and sweaty skin like a mosquito. She had stood still too long. She felt it before she heard it.
A hard thump in her chest. A dull thud rang in her ears.
Instinctively she grasped where she'd been hit and tried to run.
It was getting harder to breath.
She tried to keep moving but it felt like she was walking on sponges.
She saw the world suddenly tilt to the side.
She could feel her face sticky and wet with what she dimly realized was her blood.
She was so tired.
She felt her bladder fail burning shame into what lucidity she had left.
She was so tired.
She saw the world getting dark and struggled to keep her eyes open not realizing that they were.
Raven lay dead on the cold forest floor.
"Simulation ending.", a woman's voice said in a calm monotone.
Raven lay naked shivering in a tube filled with a pink liquid. Electrodes and tubes ran into her body, assuming any bodily function that would require her to leave the chamber. Arrayed in a perfect circle around the tube was a flowing river of quicksilver with glowing runes floating on it all glowing with eldritch fire. At each of the Five Points sat a man in white robes muttering words that seemed to hang in the air like a dense fog but slipped the mind like a forgotten dream.
A man in a mask with one eye clicked on a microphone.
"Raven. Raven can you hear me? You lasted three whole days. Doesn't that make you feel better?"
Raven felt her blood run cold at the sound of the voice. She remembered it and would never forget it as long as she lived.
Slade.
"Raven. I saw you tried to play by your own rules. Remember, this is my game and we will play it as long as you want."
Raven rasped into the mask that was feeding her oxygen.
"What was that? Is there something you want to tell me. Do you want to help me now?"
"K-k-ill you…" she rasped.
"No. No Raven that won't be happening… I think you need another round."
Raven tried but she couldn't hold in a muted sob. Whimpering she knew what was coming.
She arched her back as white-hot ice picks stabbed into her head. She thrashed against her restraints in the tube so violently the straps cut into her skin, lightly tinting the pink fluid a darker red.
Just as suddenly she stopped. Fully immersed in the world Slade made for her.
A/N - I always liked mind frag movies like Memento. I figured