Going in Circles

Chapter 8: A prisoner's Mind

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I wasn't really going to die. I didn't know however, how much pain I would be in the next few days. All the time doctors and scientists were coming through my door. Taking tests and other shit. It really bugged the hell out of me when I was awake. I was asleep for most of the time, thank God.

I didn't keep track of the days that I was in there. I literally couldn't. My mind was fuzzy and my whole body ached. And when I was awake I'd be constantly vomiting. I had hot flashes and my temperature dropped to a dangerous level and I got hypothermia.

I didn't know what they put in me that day, or what the purpose of it was, but it didn't really matter, whatever they gave me, made me feel the worst that I have ever felt before.

What seemed like a year, but was only a week, as I heard some doctors talking, I began to have blisters all over my body, and they were itchy and painful. I couldn't scratch them, otherwise they would bleed. My body was bloated and swollen; it disgusted me, even though I didn't have the slightest clue to what I looked like.

Every day or so, nurses would draw blood, which made me dizzy and tired. I was actually grateful, because sometimes I would pass out and forget all the pain that I'm in.

One day, my throat got so swollen that it almost closed up completely. They put me on a respirator. They also gave me something that I will come to treasure- morphine. The pain was numbed and I was almost happy for a few moments before I got too tired to stay awake.

I couldn't remember much of the days. I was either sleeping or hallucinating. But one day, I woke up and felt like my old self again. I had no energy thought, but it didn't really bother me, all of the pain was gone, no hurting, no itching, no nothing.

A doctor came in muttering to himself. He had black hair that was held in a pony tail. He had some of the most stunning eyes that I could never forget. He was the man that I had crashed into! What the fuck was he doing here? And my doctor nonetheless! What was his name? Kouga?

I tried to ask him what I wanted to know but I found that my throat was incredibly sore and that I wasn't able to. I wanted to get him to look at me, but he seemed to busy in his work on the clip board.

He made his way over to me but he still didn't look at me. I made a move to get up. But found that my ankles and wrists were bound to the bed just as they were before.

Kouga took my blood pressure and such, drew blood and left. He didn't look at me; he didn't say a word, just mumbled to himself. On his way out though, I heard him mutter, "side effects lasted five weeks, hmm, interesting," and then he walked out, leaving me alone in this stupid hospital bed.

Side effects mean that they gave me some kind of medication instead of a disease, which made me pretty happy. I was so sure that they gave me a disease and tested treatments on me.

I was better, and soon they put me back into my old room. Sango wasn't there anymore. I guess that she went back to the hospital section to get experimented on. I was left alone.

Xx0xX

(Narrator)

And that's how it went. Kagome and Sango had intervals of getting tested with various items, whether it was medication, beauty products, to see if certain things were edible, and other things that not even Kagome knew of anymore.

And so the months passed, and Kagome forgot all about the mysterious stranger that walked the halls at night. She was too focused on her and Sango's problems to give a damn about her interests.

So far Kagome had been experimented on three times, each one worse than the last. And Sango went in four times. Hers, as she described, were all equally painful.

It was four months since the friends had even saw each other. And when Kagome healed from her fourth time to what they had called "visits to hell" she found Sango in her bed staring at the wall. Sango jumped and hugged Kagome. They were so excited to see each other. I was a reunion from the nightmarish place.

They talked on and on about their experiences. You would think that they had enough to do with experiments, even talking. But what else did they have to talk about, boys?

:Kagome, I have something really important to tell you that you might not like so much:

:What is it Sango? You can tell me. I promise I won't get angry: she smiled at her friend.

:Well… you know some of the head people aren't doctors right? Well the visited me the other day, right before I came back here and asked me something…:

Kagome nodded uneasily.

:They asked me to be one of the trainees, you know like a step down from a nurse. They reviewed my files and said that I'm one of the best students, and they could really use my help. I accepted:

Sango didn't say anything more. She knew what this meant for her best friend, she would have to face everything alone, without the support of her trusting friend.

:Sango! That's wonderful! This is your break! You can finally get out of here, just like you wanted!:

:But Kagome, this means that we won't be able to talk and see each other anymore. You'll be all alone in here I'm going to worry about you Kagome:

:I know Sango, but that doesn't matter right now. This is your chance, not mine. I'll get my chance to get out of here soon enough okay? So don't worry about me, I'll find away to get free:

Sango smiled, this was just like her friend to be so supportive. She nodded.

:Okay Kagome. I'll go, but just promise me that you stay alive, okay, no matter what happens, don't let any of the experiments kill you: she said like a mother telling a little child to be careful when going out to play.

Kagome nodded. She knew her friend would take off in the morning. And the truth was she was sad and jealous. She was already beginning to fell lonely.

The girls talked the rest of the night, about what they would do for the rest of their lives as soon as they got out of the place. As soon as Sango graduated, she would become a doctor and move to east coast. And Kagome didn't know what she wanted to yet, but she knew that she was going back to Japan.

Morning came a little to early and as soon as the sun rose, Sango went off with one of the guards. Kagome willed herself not to cry, she needed to be happy for her friend, not sad. Kagome couldn't face the pain so she slept; really wishing that she didn't wake up again.

Xx0xX

Kagome woke up the next morning to find a platter of breakfast food, near the door. she usually didn't eat. They just let her starve until the next experiment. She got up and walked over to the platter, suddenly feeling famished. She looked to pancakes with maple syrup, eggs and bacon. English muffins and toast, it was a feast to Kagome. She found a note attached to the coffee cup. It was just a name signed there. Sango

Kagome smiled. Her friend hadn't forgotten about her. Kagome ate until her fill. She could barely fit much in. her stomach must've shrunken in the past few months. She drank some coffee, to regret it later, as she couldn't sleep when she was bored and had nothing better to do.

The days went by and nobody came to get Kagome for another visit to hell. She was glad and worried at the same time. There was a routine, she was taken for almost a month and only had 3 days to recuperate. That's always how it's been, ever since the beginning.

A week had gone by and still no one. She was becoming anxious and fearful.

She tried to spend her days looking out the window and looking at all the happy people. She didn't want to be fearful. She'd rather be happy that she was getting some time to herself.

That night she couldn't sleep, or it was just that she didn't really want to. Her thoughts drifted to that stranger she saw so long ago. She knew she had a weird interest him, maybe even a slight crush. But she didn't care. He was just another person trapped inside earth's hell.

She got up to look out the window of her door. She didn't think that he would be walking down the hallway anymore; she thought that he got away, when he fled from the guards.

She didn't know why she was standing there waiting for someone who she knew would never come.

The light of the hallway dimmed and flickered a bit before going out completely. Kagome didn't know how long she stood there, but she wasn't disappointed when the man didn't come. She knew he wouldn't, but she still had hope that he would've.

She sighed, she wasn't tired and there was nothing to look at. She was sick of looking at the stars, wishing impossible dreams. It was getting harder and harder for her to accept her fate of never getting out of here. She knew she wouldn't get out of here like Sango did. Her grades were not all that good, and she had only been there a year, and had no medical training whatsoever. She was doomed.

Kagome went into the bathroom, desperate for some light. She was sick of living in the dark. Even in the day, the room didn't get much sunlight.

She flicked on the florescent light. She liked the bathroom for some odd reason, like it was the only place where she could think freely. Even in her own bedroom she felt trapped.

Kagome felt empty, like there was no meaning to her life anymore. She knew that she couldn't get out. She often thought about death. And what it would be like to get away from the pain of life.

"Suicide? Should I commit suicide? How? I'd just chicken out anyhow. But then what? I can't live here anymore, I can't stand it, It's just to painful and meaningless.' Just then an old saying popped into her mind. 'How does it go? "A man in jail has much to think about, but a prisoner has only one thing on the mind, escape" is that it? Maybe that's all I should start to think about. I bet if I plan and work hard enough I can escape from this retched place.' She realized the schizophrenic looking man had probably done the exact same thing.

So that's how the rest of her days went. She would think about nothing else. As soon as she was determined she wouldn't give up. She would constantly look out the door's window to study the guards to see if they had any weaknesses. When they brought her food on her seventh free day, she shattered the plate on the tile floor in the bathroom and put the shards in between her mattresses. She realized something that could ruin her plan forever, there could've been cameras watching her every move.

She surveyed the room thoroughly to find that the only camera inside of the shower. As she was relived she was also annoyed. 'Sick perverts,' she thought. 'At least curtain was drawn and it didn't see me shatter the plate and hide it.'

After Kagome got a weapon that she needed, she decided to work on a rope, incase she needed it or to strangle someone. She didn't think she could actually kill a person. But she would try if she absolutely need to.

To make a rope she used strands of her hair, and strands of fabric from the quilt and sheets. She pulled so much hair out of her head that it was sore, and she would get a headache if she moved it to much. She didn't want to use too many threads from here quilt, she'd rather be warm on the chilly nights. Winter was over, but the nights were still cold.

On the fifteenth day, she was taken back to the lab. They gave her a shot to make her pass out. When she woke up, she found many people surrounding her, she was mostly naked, and her wrists and ankles strapped with metal bands to the bed. There was something that disturbed her though, a presence that she didn't like that was there. She looked at all the people carefully, to find Sango.

It disturbed her, Sango didn't look unhappy or worried or anything else to show that she was in discomfort. She actually looked happy. She could only see her eyes, because the rest of her face was covered up by a doctor's mask, but she could tell by Sango's eyes that she was happy, and somehow excited.

Sango had a giant needle in her hand full of neon red liquid, and Kagome knew exactly what she was going to do with it. Kagome looked at Sango's face as she injected her with the contents of the needle. She saw her eyes narrow, that Kagome figured that Sango was smiling. Sango pulled down to mock Kagome that she was right. She had a huge grin on her face. It was almost evil, almost.

Xx0xX

Kagome woke up feeling perfectly normal. She was extremely thankful for that. And so were the scientists. Whatever they had put into Kagome had no side effects and so they finally came up with something useful. But they had to keep Kagome to say put, just incase some side effects came on later, even though Kagome has been asleep for a week.

Kagome convinced herself that it wasn't really Sango there, with her evilly happy grin. She didn't think that Sango could possibly do that to her friend, Especially Kagome. So Kagome blocked the whole event form her mind, and told herself over and over, that it wasn't Sango standing over her, but someone who had just looked like Sango. She wanted to focus on future events, like escaping.

They moved her into a regular hospital bed that actually had a TV.

'Oh my god! It's a real television, I can't believe it, I haven't watched TV for sooooo long. I really can't believe it. It's like paradise!'

Kagome didn't abuse her privileges of watching TV. She had forgotten what it was like to not be bored. She watched the news. The facility she was in was in the news, talking about the purposes of it, and how cruel it was to society and how little information was known, but the whole Nevada area was surrounded. She kept watching, to see if there was any information that she could use. Unfortunately the channel didn't stay on the subject long and went to other important things. she flipped through channels until she decided to stick to some soap show.

She fell asleep no long after the show ended, oddly, she was very tired so she decided to not bother with the TV anymore and go to sleep hoping that the TV would still be there in the morning and that she could still watch it.

She woke up with her vision blurred and she could barley make out what anything was.

"Great, I may be going blind now,' she thought sarcastically. She rubbed her eyes, but it didn't help any. 'I guess I won't be watching TV today. Maybe I should just go back to sleep' and that's exactly what she did.

The next time she woke up she could see better, but not by much. She sighed. there was nothing for her to do. She felt like she was underwater, or at least her eyes did, without goggles.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep, but she did no such thing. She lay like that for awhile until she heard some people come in. two people, a nurse and a doctor.

The nurse changed Kagome's IV needle, and the doctor told Kagome to sit up. She did as she was told as he surveyed her.

"There's mild irritation in the eyes. But that's it," he said as he was done and wrote the information on a clipboard. They left Kagome alone, and she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

The next time she woke up, she found herself back in her old room. Her thoughts drifted to Sango which brought tears to her eyes, she knew that it was Sango, and she couldn't deny it any longer. She knew that it was Sango, but at the same time it wasn't Sango. Like they had done something to her like brainwash or blackmail, or something. She knew for a fact that no matter what happened to her, Sango wouldn't do what she did.

She knew one thing for certain, whatever happened to Sango, Kagome wasn't going to let happen to her. She had to escape soon, or she too, would become someone else.

Kagome was going to escape the day that she was due for the next experiment. She would make sure she was awake, and when they came for her she would stab them with the glass. If she had to she would choke one of the guards with the rope that she made.

All she had to do was wait, and stay awake. She had no idea where to go once she ran out of the room, but she planned to go the same way the other escapee went.

It was her second day staying awake. The guards had yet to come. She was getting very drowsy, and it was extremely hard for her to stay awake. She couldn't fall asleep though, she absolutely had to say awake, she couldn't live another day in the facility.

Thankfully on the third day, the two usual guards came in. one of them had a sedate in his hand. Kagome looked like she was asleep on her bed. They approached her unknowingly. She had a few glass shards in her hand along with the rope tied loosely to her wrist. As soon as they were a foot away from her, Kagome jumped up and stood on her bed. A shot of adrenaline went through her body like lighting.

She went head on with the glass in her hand at the one with the shot. At first she stabbed him in the wrist right by the vein to prevent him from using the sedative. He had no time to react as he was stabbed and he let go of the medication. They were both stunned for a few seconds at what just happened and Kagome took the opportunity to stab the already wounded one in the neck. He wasn't dead, but fell to the ground in pain.

The other one instantly reacted and made a grab at Kagome. She easily dodged and took out her rope. He came charging at her once again, but he missed and hit the wall, creating a huge dent. Presenting his back to her, she took the chance to hop on his back and put the rope in its position.

As soon as she pulled the rope back, he backed up and his hands around his neck. The bright person that he was realized that there was a person on his back and he tried to get her off. He punched her and clawed at her, but nothing would get Kagome off. He punched her so hard that he knocked the wind out of her. But she still held on. he tried ramming against the wall. She didn't loosen her grip, if anything, she tightened it. She struggled on his back for a few minutes before he finally passed out.

From there she had to run. She looked down to see what damage she had done. The guy she had stabbed looked dead as he sat in a pool of his own blood, and the other was only unconscious. She saw that guard each had a pistol. She took it and ran.

They would notice her absence soon and she had to be far away as possible. She didn't take time to look at her surroundings. She took a right form her door and kept running until she ran into someone.

It was another guard. He looked at her with curious eyes, but didn't have the time to ask her what she was doing as she fled, she didn't have time to even think about killing him. Behind him was a flight of stairs. Should she go up or down? Down seemed easier, she also knew that this floor was the second, so it made most sense.

She got to the bottom and opened a door to see a lobby of some sort, full of people. Her eyes widened. There was no way she could make it out of the front door; she would get caught for sure. She backtracked, into the guard that she ran into in front of the stairs.

Surprised that he was their, she shot him in the stomach. He curled over in pain and she ran up the stairs she ran until she could run no longer, she heard the alarm go off, and she knew it was her who caused the alarm to go off. She urged herself to go farther, until there were no more stairs left.

She reached to roof. She looked at her surroundings. She was about thirty stories up, and there was another building adjacent to the one she was standing on that was about triple the size. The roof area was huge, she literally couldn't see where the building stopped, it seemed to go on for a mile. She heard footsteps below her and her instincts told her to run, and she did. She ran like the wind, so light and fast, almost never ending.

There was a sharp right in the path and she almost fell over the edge. She turned and tripped over something lying on the roof. She scabbed her knee to the point were it was almost bleeding heavily. She got up and ran though, not bothering to look at what she tripped over.

She came to another stair opening; she didn't go down it, afraid that she was going to get caught by other guards. She hid behind it near the edge, hoping that she was safe for the time being.

She looked down at her surroundings clearly for the first time. she wasn't as high up as she originally thought. More like 25-20 stories up. Everything surrounding her was green, there wasn't a city for miles, and all she could see were crops and small forests. Not even a single house.

She put her back against the structure and let her eyes rest for a few moments…

She woke up again, in the same spot thankfully. It's wasn't the cloudy day anymore, but the starry night. She smiled for the first time she could remember in this place.

She looked up at the sky. Actually being able to see the whole sky brought her peace, a peace that she missed so much.

She sat there enjoying her freedom. She didn't bother looking for an escape route at the moment, she just really wanted to sit, while the feeling lasted.

When she felt the metal tip of a gun pressed up against the back of her neck she knew not moving was a stupid idea. She put her hands up in the air to show whoever was holding the gun that she was willing to cooperate.

Xx0xX

She walked, fallowing the person in front, while the other had the gun pressed up against her lower back. They came up to a door, one that Kagome would come to know so well.

Naraku's office is where they came to. They escorted her inside, not bothering to ask the secretary if Naraku was in or not. They opened the giant mahogany doors. Naraku was at his desk facing the three bodies. He had an unreadable expression on his face. Kagome had deeply feared this man.

"We found the troublemaker sir. What would you like us to do with her? Take her to the caverns?"

Naraku didn't respond right away. In fact he didn't respond to the guards at all.

"Well if it isn't Higurashi, Kagome. One of my favorite experiments." He said in a way the pissed her off. 'Experiments?! I am no experiment, I'm a god damn person.'

She scowled at him and he laughed, "Such enthusiasm," he said more to himself than to her.

"I know exactly what I'll be doing with her. I'll take her to the caverns myself. I actually have some unfinished business to discuss with her."

"But sir, are you up to it?"

"Nonsense! I am always up for what I enjoy most," he scolded to two of them. "now leave! I will take the girl personally."

The two nodded and left Kagome with Naraku.

Naraku got up from his chair, and headed towards Kagome. He had something behind his back. Both of his hands were behind him, and Kagome could hear a faint beeping sound.

As soon as he got closer to her, he revealed what he had; it looked like an electric collar. Kagome was to afraid to move as he put the object around her neck, there was also a leash-like object attached to the circle that was around her neck.

He huskily whispered in her ear, "if you disobey me, then this will kill you." he said without explaining how.

Xx0xX

He led her into another building that looked almost exactly like the first. He led her into another room that looked like a cave. The room was cylinder-like and there was a one way mirror on the other end. He injected something in her that made her pass out. The next thing she knew she was off the ground held up by chains.

She was a little lightheaded, but she noticed that Naraku was a couple of yards away from her, with a long whip.

'What the fuck?' she thought to herself. As he struck her with the whip, she creamed, but no sound came out, after all she was still a mute. He did it again and again, until she was drenched in her own blood, the pain was unbearable. Her eyes were screwed shut, and her jaw was clenched.

Naraku let her stay like this for awhile, until she opened her eyes again, thinking that her torture was over. But as soon as she did so, he would start to whip at her again. And she would go back trying to take the pain.

This happened over and over again, until Naraku had lost his energy entirely.

Kagome barely had any clothes on, and she was struggling to not pass out. Naraku let her free from the chains. Kagome fell to the ground with a thud. She had absolutely no energy to bring herself up from the ground. Naraku pulled her head up by the hair.

"You will never, never try to do something so stupid as trying to escape again, is that clear?!" He shouted in her ear. She didn't say anything, but he knew that she knew what would happen to her if she did.

"do you remember when I said we had some unfinished business to take care of? I do. you want to know what it is? I was the one to kill your entire family."

'What is he talking about? My family's not dead. They just don't want to see me anymore, they're ashamed of me.'

it was almost like Naraku could read her thoughts. "oh Kagome, I pity you, You actually believe that your family isn't dead, well news flash, they're very much dead, they've been dead ever since you killed them."

'NO! I would not kill my family! I couldn't! I wouldn't! He's lying!'

"I'm not lying Kagome my dear. When you got in that accident, you triggered and explosion on your house. It's quite sad really, if you hadn't gotten in that accident than your murder wouldn't have ever happened."

"No," she said very faintly. It was the first that she had spoken in almost three years.

-End-