Taken

By Ina Beana

The door slams behind me, and my feet drag on the floor, surely being scraped bloody, as the men carrying me sprint through hallways and doorways until rushing up a staircase and then what sounds like outside. It's freezing, and I can feel the snow on the ground. My eyes drift close and my head swings around like I'm a bobble head. I feel so vulnerable like this. I have no control over my own body. How would I do anything at all?

It is deathly still outside, which makes me realize this situation is even worse than I previously assumed. I'm thrown into the back of what I assume to be a van, and I try to spit out some sort of comment on how cliché it is to be in a van, but I just start coughing uncontrollably again.

The men start muttering to each other in Russian, and then the bag is taken off of my head and a water bottle is shoved in my mouth. I drink it, savoring every drop as I gulp it all down. I'm so preoccupied that I don't feel the pinch in my neck.

All I know is that in a split second everything is black. Again.

I wake up on what seems to be a mattress thrown on the floor. It smells awful. Worse than the sewer smell from before. I open my eyes, and attempt to get up but I can't move at all. I'm fed up with this. I try harder, reminding myself I'm the Invincible Maximum Ride, but I can't even make my lips move in the slightest manner. I shift my eyes to take in my surroundings.

There are curtains hanging around me and they seem to separate me from what I assume to be other curtained areas like mine. I wish I could give more detail, but without being able to move my head, I'm useless and can't see any more than this curtain.

I keep my eyes open, but I just lay there.

And lay there.

And lay there.

After what seems to me around an hour, or at least I hope it was that long because a minute feels like five if you're not doing anything, I try to move again. I can move my lips very little, but it is still progress. I hope to let the drug wear off my me not doing anything so maybe I can overcome the drug quicker than they thought, and then escape to find my family.

My daydreams are interrupted my a scrawny man in a dirty business suit coming through the front curtain with a needle. He injects the liquid into my neck, and once again I am consumed by darkness.

I wake up again later, wondering how long it has been. For all I know, it could have been a month. The thing that scares (yes scares, people. It would scare you too.) me the most is that there are large chunks of time during which I have no idea what happened to me, or have any clue as to what might have happened. I shiver at the thought.

I'm in another cage now, I realize. And, wait! I shivered! I try wiggling my fingers, and succeed. I cautiously stand up, marveling at how I can finally perform these basic maneuvers with my body again. Now, to my escape.

The cage is small, but it is about 7 feet by 7 feet by 7 feet. A box made of something like iron bars. I try hitting one of the bars, and cry out in pain as I find out not only that the bars have tiny spikes on them, but I have been shocked by some unreasonable amount of electricity. I shake my hand as it stings mercilessly, and look around. This place has a high ceiling, and I look up to see it far far above my head, but when I look directly above my cage, there is wood. But, not sitting on my cage, slightly above it.

I look in front of me and gasp at what I have just realize.

There are shelves.

And these cages are on these shelves, which reach to the ceiling far above my head.

And I'm about 8 stories up from the ground.

And they have little elevators and things built in to escort mutants in and out of their cages.

This isn't just some sort of small trafficking business, but a large scale one.

As in I see hundreds of thousands in this expanse of space of which I cannot see the ending walls.

And now, I'm not scared.

I'm terrified.