Chapter 2:
You know that split second of feeling just plain peaceful and happy right before you fully wake up? Right between asleep and awake? Yea, I didn't get that when I woke up.
My eyes snapped open and took in my surroundings, horror sliding through my veins like ice. I was on my back on what looked like an operating table and my hands and ankles were in leather restraints. An IV had been inserted into my hand and securely taped. And I was hooked up to at least three machines. Yet it looked like the operating room I was in was in the back of some old apartment. The fear that clutched my chest was so strong it felt like I was going to pass out.
So I screamed as loud as I could, knowing, deep down, that it wouldn't do any good.
What were they going to do to me? Why was I in an operating room? Why was I in restraints? I started panicking as the endless possibilities, each increasingly painful, raced through my mind. This wasn't a normal kidnapping; there was something seriously wrong here.
It seemed like an eternity before the door swung open and two men concealed behind white doctor's coats walked in.
"Start the procedure," one murmured to another.
"What are you doing?" I cried, jerking at the restraints. "Let me out of here!"
"Please stay calm," the same doctor told me as the second went into a drawer and took out a syringe and removed the cap. "This will all be over soon."
"She shouldn't have woken up at all," one doctor said to the other, as if I wasn't there.
The man didn't respond, just glanced over to the second doctor, and, feeling a numbing sensation, I looked to my arm and suddenly realized that the machine that was hooked up to the inside of my right elbow had started taking my blood.
I wracked my brain for what they could possibly need to operate on me to gain. Nothing came to mind. Were they some sort of organization that was going to torture me for information? What information could I possibly have? And, hell, they didn't need to torture me. I'd sing like a canary! They had to know that!
"Please," I begged, yanking desperately at the restraints, "please, let me go…please…."
The world started to go blurry and my arm felt paralyzed and pained from the blood loss. My breathing grew shallow and my eyes started to close. I lost track of time passing. After a while, I felt the doctor on my left take my other arm and inject me with something. I was too tired to resist, unable to even keep my eyes open anymore.
Suddenly, the door swung open and the man who had entered slammed it behind himself, sprinting over to me.
"The project's been scrapped," he snapped. The words flowed through my head like there was water in my ears.
"What?" the doctor exclaimed, stunned at the change of plans. "We've already injected her. She—."
"Get the hell out of here, now," the man spat at him. "Take only what's necessary. We've been compromised."
A few seconds later, only half conscious, I vaguely felt myself being freed from the restraints and machines.
I tried to take advantage of my freedom, but I couldn't move. How much blood had I lost? I felt barely alive. Two sets of footsteps darted through the room and a door opened and slammed shut.
I tried to figure out what was going on. Why the man was panicking. Compromised…. As his last word echoed through my head, my consciousness grabbed onto it and realized what it meant: someone must be coming to get me the hell out of there. I knew they must already be there or were damn close. Hope blossomed inside me.
Just don't fall asleep again, I told myself as firmly as possible. Don't fall asleep again. Yet my thoughts started to become misty.
I suddenly heard two shots from the other room. The man growled, "Dammit," and his arms went under my arms and legs, picking me up. Agony echoed through me from the blood loss, like my entire body had fallen asleep and I had just slammed into something. A foot smashed into the door to the room twice, cracking it and swinging it open.
"Stop!" yelled the figure in the doorway. "Put her down!"
The man suddenly let me down, swinging his arm tightly around my neck, and putting his gun to my head. I was dizzy, painfully weak, and now I couldn't freaking breathe. "Drop it," the man told the blurry figure in the doorway. He didn't move. His arm tightened around my neck and I choked for air. "Now!" he yelled.
The last thing I heard was a gunshot before the world turned upside down and all the pain went away when everything mercifully blurred into blackness.