Bright florescent lights flashed overhead in a nauseating cascade, as they drove the gurney down the hall. The white walls were rust stained from a decade of leaking pipes, that hadn't been serviced since before the eighties. One man in a white uniform guided the gurney at a brisk march, which made the patient on the bed dizzy with anxiety.

"I know you." The voice croaked past the parched lips, her eyes tearing against the unfamiliar brightness of the hall. "Where are you taking me?"

No answer came, but the orderly was looking straight ahead and did not hear her speak. He hurried on his way, as though he were in a hurry to get an abhorrent chore done and out of the way, before he could move on to something more agreeable. The lack of recognition on the orderly's face, when he did look in her direction, made her want to cry out in anguish. Tears flowed freely and she did cry out weakly, at finding her hands strapped with leather buckles to the bed rails.

"Where are we going?" Jerika whimpered, though she knew it would do no good to ask the deaf orderly, James. She choked on tears and began to cough. "I want to go home."

James slammed the end of the gurney through a doorway, sending the doors swinging wildly on rusty hinges. They stopped abruptly and rough hands worked on the leathers. Before she could get her bearings, she was hoisted onto another bed and left there, under an intensely hot lamp.

"I want to go home!" Jerika shouted at James, whom she had always considered to be a friend, until now. "Do you hear me? I want to go home."

James blinked at her as though he didn't know what she was talking about and then a queer glint came into his eyes. "Yes, I can hear you. I could always hear you. I'm not deaf you know. Besides, where would you go...other than here?"

Her heart lurched in her chest. "You could hear me all this time and you never said a word?"

James just winked and smiled an awful smile, before exiting.

When she went to move her head and look around, she saw that the room was painted dark olive green, had no windows, had no other doors, except the one she went through, and was lined with shelves. Each shelf held medical instruments, some of which she didn't know the name of and others that she wished she hadn't known. She flinched as the loudspeaker was clicked on.

"As you can guess, we'll not be using your normal methods of coercion. This is not to say that we don't trust your word, but the fact is…we've found you to be unreliable and we just can't take the risk. In our line of work you can't mess up more than once. I'm afraid we have to let you go."

The voice of Dr. Varesoli clicked off, as the door squeaked open. The lights around the room dimmed, leaving the center light as the only source of illumination. Jerika began to sweat, as someone walked around to the head of the bed and started clattering around in the dusty, old tools on the shelves.

"Head down." The smoke worn voice of the person she had met earlier, ordered. A palm slapped on her forehead, when she went to look around. "Don't move."

Beads of perspiration broke out on her upper lip. "What are you going to do to me?"

A grating, coughing laugh floated over her head. "I'll tell you as we proceed, if that's what you like."

A leather-like tanned face, haloed by wiry red over-treated hair, leaned over Jerika's head and grinned in her face. Red lipstick smeared a front tooth and drew the eyes. Blue eye-shadow shimmered in the crags and folds of eyelids that enveloped pale green-hazel eyes.