CHAPTER 16

How long have I been awake?

Julie sat on the floor of her cell, her head resting on her knees. She had drawn her legs up tight against her body, her arms wrapped around her shins. This was partly a protective posture, but she also did this so that she didn't have to expend energy keeping her head up. She had closed her eyes, disconcerted by the fact that her headache was a lot worse when they were opened, and it was accompanied by waves of nausea and dizziness. Not only that, but her vision was blurry. So she kept her eyes shut, trying to alleviate the throb of pain that pulsated in her head with each heartbeat.

This might be the worst headache I think I've ever had.

And to think it was actually worse earlier.

At least it feels as if things are starting to calm down.

On the other hand, there was still a price to pay. Whenever she had her eyes closed, her mind's eye kept flashing a variety of random images, mostly of her friends and comrades in the Los Angeles resistance group she led, seemingly without any rhyme or reason. She couldn't understand why she kept seeing all of these images in her head. Nor could she control them or stop them from filling her mind.

What's happening to me?

Julie sighed, her headache getting more intense whenever she made an effort to think consciously.

But she couldn't help herself.

It was just in her nature to want to understand everything she could.

What are they planning to do with me?

If they were just going to kill me, they would have done it already.

They'll probably torture me, get me to talk and betray my friends.

Well, that's not going to happen.

Julie pressed her forehead hard into the tops of her thighs in a useless gesture to get the pain in her head to subside. She also swallowed hard and bit her lip, her stomach threatening to squeeze out whatever was in it in an acidic eruption.

Aside from the headache, dizziness, nausea, and the images coming into and out of her consciousness, she also felt a strange unnatural warmth coursing through her body, and she could detect the faint trace of an unknown taste lingering on her tongue. But perhaps worst of all was the feeling that there was an impenetrable fog that wrapped itself around her mind, making conscious thought much more difficult than she knew it should be.

I've never felt anything like this before.

What's going on with me?

It's like… it's a bit like being on pot, but a whole lot more intense.

Then it hit her. Her heart rate and pressure spiked at the sudden epiphany, and as they did so did the intensity of her headache, at least for a few moments.

Drugs. That's it.

The Visitors drugged me.

But how did they do it… and when…

And why?

Julie moaned as her headache intensified again, and she cursed the fact that her discovery came at such a painful price. The pain grew worse as she willed herself to summon her memories.

Bits and pieces of images and other sensations weaved in and out of her awareness. Julie knew she wasn't just imagining these things; these were actual memories.

That weird place… I was standing in the middle of that weird room.

Lights… flashing lights… I remember these lights.

And that sound… that noise was everywhere.

And the cold… it was so damn cold in that room.

At least it's not cold in this room.

It's not a room, she admonished herself, eliciting a particularly sharp burst of pain in her head.

You're in a prison cell.

Julie gasped, the pain in her head threatening to overcome her with its intensity.

But she decided to persist, determined to not give in to the agony inside her head that seemed to be growing like some kind of malignant creature.

She shuddered as these memories and sensations washed over her like a frigid wave.

Why are they doing this?

Julie opened her eyes, knowing that to do so was to invite even more misery into her world. Through the haze of pain, and despite her blurred vision, she saw a small puddle not far from where she sat, and felt the flush of humiliation spread on her face.

She suddenly remembered how that puddle came to be there.

When Julie first regained consciousness, the first thing she felt was that terrible headache and nausea.

In addition to that, though, was a terrible, irresistible urge to relieve the pressure that had built up in her bladder.

She swung her legs over the edge of where she'd been laying down, a thinly-cushioned shelf attached to a hollowed-out section of the back wall of her cell. Though she couldn't see clearly, she did spot what looked very much like a toilet a few feet from where she was.

Her legs failed her, though, when she tried to reach it, and she fell hard onto the floor. She tried to crawl to it, but nature's call overcame her, and she wet herself.

Hot teardrops seared a path down Julie's face as that humiliating memory filled her mind.

And beyond the humiliation, she felt a raw terror.

She knew – deep in her bones she just knew – that whatever the Visitors were going to do her, whatever they've already done to her, getting her all drugged up and made unable to remember much of anything past just the most recent events, it was all just getting started. And it terrified her even more to know that if she didn't know what they were doing to her, she had no idea how to fight against it.