CHAPTER TWO: CONTACT
You wake up in cold sweat and you swear that just a few moments ago, you felt flames licking at your skin.
Your senses are on high alert, but you don't mind the darkness or the silence or the breeze blowing softly through the open window.
Deep, even breaths.
The air tastes like ice and you wonder how that's even possible because ice doesn't really taste much like anything at all. Besides, it doesn't help slow the drumming in your chest; the harried beating of your heart.
Is this a panic attack? You're not really sure, but you do know that you have to calm down and soon.
"…144, 233, 377, 610, 987," you hear from the next room.
The Fibonnaci sequence. Counting. Numbers. Olivia. Oh god, Olivia.
It was a dream, just a dream. It wasn't in any way real. But deep down you know that next to blurring the lines between realities, anything is just about possible.
You lie back down and try not to drown in possibilities.
"…46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811," Walter drones on.
You move your hand over your eyes to block out the early morning sunlight. Funny, you didn't even notice that the sun had risen.
Now you have to make a choice: get up and prove that your dream was just a dream, or stay in bed and continue to bask in the contented bliss you've found since you returned from the other universe with the woman you belonged with.
Decisions, decisions.
In the end it was Walter who decided for you. There was just something too pressing at the lab to be ignored any longer.
You finally leave the bed and your nightmare becomes all too real. You inspect yourself at the mirror to make sure.
Yes, those are definitely scorch marks on the pristine wifebeater you put on the night before.
…..
It's the sound that makes it predictable.
Beep. Beep. Click.
Then the door slides open as they approach you, needle in hand. The last images you see are glimpses of the long hallway before you wake up in your cell just like nothing happened.
Maybe nothing does happen and you just make it all up in your mind. The inactivity is making you still-crazy.
Then again, during the first few times you tried to put up a fight. It was all for naught. Damn them and their advanced technology. You don't even know what they do to you during those times because they leave no evidence on your body; not a single scar or even a scratch. You've checked. Every single time you regained consciousness.
That uncertainty irks you more than anything.
The only indication of the passage of time is the slow change in gradient of your hair color. In your tiny cell you see your reflection off a polished metal plate. They wouldn't use real mirrors, those were too dangerous.
The only people you see are Walter and his masked henchmen. You wonder idly if you're alone or if Walter, and Peter, and William Bell share the same fate.
You knew that something like this would happen. In your crusade to save Peter, you knew that there were risks. You just never expected this. You can't even describe what this is because this is essentially nothing.
Now all you do is think. Never about yourself – because you don't even want to begin to understand what you're going through – but of everyone else you left behind. Rachel, Ella. Walter, Astrid. Peter. Always Peter. And at one point, your emotions were enough to create a spark of fire; but it was gone as soon as it appeared.
Did that happen too? Or was it another figment of your overworked imagination?
Walter did say that the Cortexiphan in your system would alter your perception. You were made to be a soldier. Your fear made your mind a formidable weapon.
And as of now, you're sure as hell that you've never been more scared in your entire life.
