When Piper had run out of tears, she leaned against the wall and stared at the puddle of blood on the floor from the man who had first captured her. Her ankle hurt more than ever now. Piper wondered if she would ever escape this horrid place of torture.
The next morning, a man wearing a white coat walked into the room. Piper followed his movements with her emerald green eyes. He strode to the faded wooden floorboards in front of her. "We've made so much progress because of you," he said with an evil smirk, "I can't wait to see what other surprises you'll have for us." Piper tried to decipher what he meant but her mind was too foggy with sleepiness and hunger. The man released her from the heavy chains and led her back to the room where she had been tortured the day before. Piper tried with all her might to stop the man from taking her there but she was so weak that the man just laughed.
Piper lay on the cold metal table and fell into another hallucination. This time she was standing on the hill over Camp Half-Blood. The camp was in flames. Piper tried to run to help but her feet were stuck in the hill. She couldn't move, she could only stand there and watch her second-home, the only place where she felt accepted and loved, burn to the ground. The heat from the red hot flames burned against her skin.
When the hallucination ended, Piper was full of too much grief and was in too much pain to do anything. "Just take her back to the room. I have a feeling she won't be going anywhere," a voice echoed through Piper's mind. Someone had slung her over their shoulder. Her head thumping against their back with every step they took. Then Piper felt the rough feeling of a rope against her wrists. Silence followed and she knew she was alone.
When Piper could move again, she looked down at her wrists and noticed that the rope was loose. "Whoever tied this would not make a good pirate. Can't tie a knot to save their life," she thought. After she had freed her hands, she stood up and walked toward the door, cringing with every step. The hall was dark and silent. She stepped into the overwhelming darkness and found a wall. She traced it with her fingertips until she found another door. She opened it and closed it behind her. The red light of an EXIT sign revealed a metal stairwell. Probably the same one she was dragged up on her first night here, she thought. Piper started down the stairs but her ankle gave out on her. She fell to the grates with a crash. Piper bit her lip and prayed that no one would come running. She heard a door close at the bottom of the stairwell. A tear escaped from her eye as she heard footsteps come up the stairs. The footsteps paused, "Piper?" a familiar voice called. Piper moved her head toward the sound. The footsteps came faster until they reached her. "Piper," the broken voice repeated, caressing her face.
"Jason," she replied, tears flooding down her cheeks. She grabbed his hand and looked at him with fear in her eyes. "My ankle, it's broken." Jason nodded and picked her up. Her head resting against is chest. He carried her down the stairwell. Piper felt safe again, in the arms of the only one who could make her feel so loved. She was hoping that no one would come and find them. She couldn't last much longer and it would kill her to see Jason have to go through what she had been through.