She gasped, waking up and rolling off her bed onto the hard ground. The soreness she felt from her collision was unnoticed in her relief that it had simply been a dream. She cried out in relief.
It was torn away when she realized that she couldn't hear her own voice. Reality forced itself upon her as she realized that she was in the whitewashed chamber. She wanted to scream, but she refused to give her captors the satisfaction. Instead, she lay back on the capsule. Her eye tingled. In the corner of her mind's eye were two numbers, 100 and 2. A thought hit her like lightning. Had she been hit by an electroblade?
Cautiously, she pulled at her jumpsuit. It came apart at the waist easily. She pulled it up and angled her neck to look at it. The irremovable static scar that marked electroblade cuts was nowhere to be seen. She exhaled in relief, but still pondered. Was it a dream? Why did it seem so real? Could it have been real?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the flat voice.
"Good morning, Miss Aran," it intoned. "Please stand up."
` Grimacing, she stood up.
"Excellent. Please walk around the room exactly once."
She paced around the chamber, surreptitiously examining each wall for any seam of any sort. They were seamless. The crisp white of the walls made them blend into each other. Without walking around the room, it was impossible to classify its shape.
"Excellent. Process complete. Now running diagnostics…."
She waited several minutes, twiddling her thumbs and wondering what was in store for her.
"Diagnostics complete. All brain wave patterns check. Transfer completed successfully."
What transfer? What had they done to her brain? She couldn't help herself, hastily feeling her skull and searching for something. Her inquisitive fingers could find nothing, so she relaxed slightly, easing dregs of tension from her taut muscles.
"We will now begin the second portion of the test. In exactly one hundred seconds, you may begin."
Unbidden, her curiously energized imagination roamed free, bringing back all manner of trepidations. And then there was that horrid, cold sensation. Despite having had to be a dream, the terrific chill she had felt… she simply could not articulate it, and nor did she ever want to.
And then a section of the wall melted away, revealing a hallway. The only indication that the hallway even existed was its imperceptibly differing shade of white. She couldn't see it consciously, but her subconscious recognized it and directed her to it.
"The second test is beginning. Please step into the passage."
She crept to the doorway, searching through it for any sign of a trap. She couldn't see any, but then she couldn't see anything except a featureless, dead-ended white corridor, some two meters wide and perhaps twenty meters long.
"Please walk to the end of the passage."
She waited, checking for signs of a trap. Perhaps it was time-activated. She poked her head through the doorway.
"Please walk to the end of the passage."
She stayed where she was.
ZAP!
Her eyes watered, but she forced herself to stay where she was.
ZZZZZAP!
She stumbled into the corridor, throat feeling raw. As she slowly stepped through the hall, her thoughts ran wild. Where was she? What happened? How did this happen? Who made this happen? The latter two questions were the ones she most focused on. Deep in thought, she only just stopped in time to realize something. Her horrid premonition of the electroblade had occurred just a step from where she was now. Carefully, she crouched down, examining the wall with a meticulousness borne of fear. There was nothing she could perceive. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he took a step back, and quickly tapped the floor in front of her. The floor depressed, and a microsecond after she pulled her hand back, an electroblade sliced out of the wall. She stared at it, mind buzzing with implications. When the electroblade had receded, leaving a long scorch mark in the ground, she leaped over the mark to the end of the hallway.
"Excellent. Please proceed to the next room."
The door melted away, revealing a much larger room. She took a look through. The chamber was a massive squarish room, still the same garish white. The only way she could tell it was a different room was the massive gap between the two ends of the room. Each end was several meters by several meters. The gap was slightly less wide, perhaps just enough to leap over.
"Please make your way to the end of the room."
She scanned the room for the source of the sound, noticing three miniscule pores at the top of the room, which was far too high for her to reach. Faced with this prospect, she carefully entered the room, constantly tapping for traps, until she reached the gap. She looked over it. As far as she could tell, it was some fifty meters deep. A fall from this height would shatter every bone in her body.
"Please make your way to the end of the room."
Wary that there might be a trap on the other end, she took several steps back, and then started running. At the very edge, she leaped. As she soared through the air, she suddenly realized that her velocity wasn't going to be enough. Her arms outstretched to catch the lip.
Then she landed onto the gap, which too late she realized was in fact simply a transparent sheet. Unprepared, she landed on the edge of the sheet badly and fell forward. Right through the white, opaque floor. As she fell through it, she saw a small projector underneath it.
She thought quickly, trying to make contact with the wall to slow her fall. Then she saw something thin gleam.
Various chunks and drippings of organic matter struck the bottom of the pit, some lined in a light blue spandex material. The razor wire that lined the forty meter mark gleamed a dark red.
I did say my update schedule would be spotty. Hopefully it was worth the wait.
Guest: Women have Adam's apples, albeit much smaller and less prominent ones.
Insomniac by Choice: I dislike torture porn myself, so I am aiming for a very sterile, clinical tone, albeit very detailed. A tone that tells more by what it omits. I am glad that you enjoy my writing.
razdom person: Thanks. Your name has a typo.
