A/N- Slightly longer this time- hope you like it!
Korean Pearl- Well, here's the next chapter, which tells where she went. Thanks for reviewing!
TesubCalle- Thank you! I'm glad I can make you empathize with Alia. And yes, she was 'forced'- but she still made the choice to obey evil. Even if the alternative wasn't so great, she still had a choice.
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Chapter 5- Five Minutes in the Life…
Who is that girl I see, staring straight back at me?
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?
–From Reflection, a song in Disney's Mulan.
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I woke. Not to a sterile, spartan room, but to a regular bedroom. Where had that come from? Why was the sensation of waking up in a strange place familiar to me, and terrifying all at once? I tried to remember, desperately tried to recall some part of me, but could barely grasp faint memories. Terms, words, objects I knew. But memories escaped me. Amnesia? Did I have amnesia?
I stood, wearing a nightdress that was unfamiliar to me. Then I noticed there was someone else in the room, an Asian woman who was staring at me. I stared back. No one spoke. I wondered who she was, what she was doing here, but since I didn't even know who I was, how could I be expected to know her?
I raised me arm to my head, having a sudden headache, and she did the same. I raised my other hand, and she did too- why was she copying me? Then I realized she wasn't copying me. She was me, my reflection in the mirror.
I stared. I didn't remember much but I knew that I was not Asian. So why did I look like that?
I reached my hand up to pull down my hair, and got a shock when I saw it was brown- not black like the girl in the mirror's. How could I be Asian and Caucasian at once? What was happening?
I didn't scream. Instead, I sat down hard on the bed to think about this and try once more to regain my memory. I remembered a redness, and terror, but nothing else. What had happened to me?
Then something even more startling than the mirror image happened. I heard a whooshing noise, and a woman appeared. Out of thin air. She looked strangely familiar, but I couldn't stick a name or a memory on her.
That was when I screamed.
"Shhhh! Be quiet, or someone will come in here!" the woman hissed.
She then began punching buttons on a calculator, or what looked like a calculator, except it made strange noises. Then she began talking to the calculator.
"Lothos? Leap was a success, but leaper's memory is not intact." She paused. "Oh, that was smart," She said approvingly. "Good thinking. She can't panic if she remembers nothing."
I interrupted. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She shot a look toward me. "If the retrieval program doesn't work, it won't matter what you think." Then she turned back to the calculator. "Yes. Ready for retrieval. Let's hope this works," she muttered under her breath. She punched a few more buttons on the calculator, and vanished.
I didn't scream, just shook. Was I insane? This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. Then the room faded from my sight, and I was once again bodiless.
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My memory returned, as the red enveloped me. For one minute, I was still confused. Then I remembered- I had been in a chamber, then in a different body, and now I was in this redness again. Hadn't someone said something about time travel? Yes! I had done it! I had traveled in time, fulfilled my childhood dreams. For a minute it seemed as if I was exceptionally lucky, until I remembered. I was a prisoner. I had been mentally tortured. For a minute I dared to hope that maybe I would be let go now- the experiment had been successful, and they didn't need me anymore.
I thought my hopes were confirmed when I found myself in the chamber again, with the door open, and a smiling Zoey waiting for me.
"You did it, sweet-cheeks! You traveled in time."
Everyone in the control room looked over at me with new interest, then began frantically typing on their computers.
I allowed myself some relieved feelings for one moment. "I did, didn't I?" I wondered. Then I remembered my previous experiences. "What is going on?" I demanded.
Zoey, still friendly, took my hand more gently now. "Come along. I'll explain it privately."
We walked back to the room I had awoken in. She sat down on a couch across the room from my bed, and I heard the door locked. I was trapped once again.
"What are you doing with me?" I asked.
She frowned. "Aren't you grateful? We made your dream come true, Alia. And you helped us as well."
"I didn't ask you to make my dream come true," I said sharply. "I didn't ask to be dragged off to the unknown, thrust back in time, as an experiment. You never had my interests in mind when you sent me into the chamber. I could have died. Now tell me- what is going on?"
Zoey sighed. "You'd better learn not to talk that way. Lothos doesn't like complainers."
A chill seeped through my heart. "And you never explained to me about Lothos either. What is he? How did he control my emotions?"
"There are some things you cannot know yet. For now, I will tell you what you do need to know. Will you listen?"
I calmed down and sat on the bed. "Yes."
"You have become a very important part of our time travel experiment. Lothos has been working on it for ages. It involves Leaping in time- except you can't Leap as yourself, you must appear in time as another. This is why your reflection was different- anyone in that time would see you as the person you Leaped into.
"We had perfected the process of leaping back in time, down to the point that Lothos could direct the leaper into a certain person at a certain second, but were never able to recall the person back to the project. You are the first success. Lothos believes it is because you were meant to be our Leaper- you have the talent. He is sure of it."
"Wait a minute. I'm the first success? What happened to the others- the ones who couldn't be retrieved?"
Zoey shrugged. "They were lost."
"Lost?"
"They didn't survive."
My heart lurched. "You thrust me into that thing not caring if I lived or died?"
"You survived."
"But I might not have!"
She shrugged again. "Then we would have found a new leaper."
I turned away from her and her heartlessness. No one here cared about me. I had been a guinea pig for this experiment, and once again I didn't matter. I would be held here, forced to travel in time for them, until they were tired of me. I collapsed on the covers of my bed, utterly drained of emotion. Zoey quietly left the room.