I open my eyes expecting to see the same woman who greeted me just moments ago. Dressed in a sleeveless gray shirt riddled with bullet holes and stained red-brown with dried blood. Hints of a mixed past. Dauntless and Abnegation and something else, too. Something farther back than that. It's there but I can't reach it. Just hints. Hints of a person I barely knew. A person I'd just begun to discover. She had come to meet with me. My mother. Where is she?
I blink my eyes rapidly, trying to focus. But everything is still blurry. And bright. Too bright. Garishly bright. I try to focus again. I don't see her. And then I realize why. My eyes finally process the vision before me, above me. A light, directly overhead. I close my eyes to escape it but it burns through my eyelids and I see orange instead of black.
Where am I? I am not where I expected to be. I know that much.
I test my limbs, starting with my fingers and toes. I have sensation in my skin but dull numbness in the extremities themselves. I can't move. At all. So I focus on what I can feel. Something cold and hard beneath me. Cool air against bare arms and legs. A material skimming my thighs.
More, there must be more.
I push myself. Something rigid digging into my ankles. And my wrists. I command myself to strain against it, but nothing happens. I can feel my pulse pick up as my frustration rises. I try again, and nothing. This is no simulation. A simulation cannot hold me. Too many have tried—and failed. This is something else entirely. My mind cannot be trapped—but my body can.
Anger now. I hear a loud beeping, matching the mad rhythm of my racing heart, screaming for freedom. Answers.
I hear more. Movement. A scraping on the floor. And then a low, excited voice calling out, "She's awake."
