Graceless

Ajay sat straight up as if someone had flipped on a light switch. Unfortunately, there was no light, just darkness. She felt like she had swam through the void and lost herself along the way. She couldn't make sense of her surroundings because the room was pitch black. Her hands gripped tightly to the sheet that covered her body. She moaned from the pain that radiated from her back. There was a soft glow coming from what she thought might be a cracked door on the opposite side of the room.

She rubbed her forehead and pushed her legs to the side of the bed as she sat up. She felt a little dizzy, but it didn't stop her from standing up right away. She was little unsteady when her feet touched the cold wood floor. At first, she just stood there for a moment to regain her balance and let her equilibrium get used to everything.

She shivered as the cool air hit the warm parts of her body that sheet had previously covered. She quickly retrieved the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around herself making sure that none of the fabric dragged behind her and got caught on anything. She then proceeded to slowly, and painfully, make her way to the opposite side of the room, using the light as a guide.

The door made a creaking noise as she pulled it open by the handle. It sounded louder than it should have been or maybe her senses were on high alert because didn't know where she was or maybe it was just too quiet, and it was just a loud door. Maybe she was just overthinking things, she tended to do that a lot but right now she didn't know what to make of the situation that she was in.

Too many thoughts at one time were flooding her brain and making her head spin and throb at the same time; a familiar feeling that couldn't quite put her finger on. She tried to push away any unnecessary thoughts and focus on what was right in front of her. She didn't want to let her guard down just in case this was some sort of trap, or if she was in some sort of danger.

When she could think more clearly, she found herself standing in an unfamiliar hallway. The lighting around her was a bit dim, which was actually easier on her eyes just coming from a dark room. The walls were white and had a millwork designed finish with simple sconce lights paced out along them. She looked to the right and noticed a closed door. She then looked to the left and noticed a couple more doors that were closed and a set of stairs. She quietly walked left and followed the stairs.

Each step that she took down made her stop for a moment as her equilibrium did not agree with what the rest of her body was doing. She let out a few staggered breaths each time as pain shot through her back. She grasped the sheet tightly around her as she made her way down another dimly lit hallway that looked just like the previous one. She was starting to think that whoever lived here did not want people to know that they lived here; she could respect that if she knew who this person or persons were.

As she made her way further down the depths of the hallway, she began to hear a faint clicking noise. She followed the noise, making sure to keep as quiet as she could. She had no weapons, besides a sheet that was wrapped around her. As the noise began to grow louder, because she was getting closer, she noticed a light from a room that was off the side of the hallway; that's where the clicking was coming from.

She walked towards the entry way of the room to find Hyeon Kim sitting behind a massive set of screens, which were obviously hooked up to some supercomputer that he probably built himself. She stood in the entry way for a moment and just watched him click away at the keyboard. She really couldn't make sense of what was on the screens or wat he was doing.

It was quite odd because she didn't really know much about him and now here she was in what she assumed was his house, standing in a sheet just watching him. She felt kind of cringy spying on him. She did know one thing about him though, he didn't like to be watched. So if he found out that she was spying on him, which she really wasn't, he wouldn't be happy with her.

It wasn't long before Hyeon Kim turned around but Ajay had had already slipped around the corner and down back down the hallway towards the staircase. She had so many questions but her brain was scrambled and she didn't know what to make of the situation or who to trust right now. As she made it the landing of the stairs, she heard a door not far behind begin to open. She realized that it must have been an entry door to the house.

She sped up the stairs and found the room where she had woken up in. She eased the door closed as quietly as she could and reached around for a light switch on the walls next to her. When she found the switch, she flipped it on and looked around the room. She made a mental note that the room was just as plain as the entire house was, or at least what she had seen of the house.

She looked back at the door and realized that it had a lock, so she locked the door and then scanned the room once more. A bed, a dresser, a door that looked like it led to a bathroom, another door that slid open maybe to a closet, and her clothes. That was it. That was what she needed.

She dropped the sheet and made her way over to the dresser where her clothes sat neatly on top of it. She could hear faint chatter in the distance. She didn't want to be here when the voices got closer. She needed to make haste and be a ghost. She needed time to think and figure out what the fuck was going on before she talked to anyone.

Ajay quickly slipped on a pair of black lace panties, followed by a pair of black shorts that were a little too short leaving some of her ass exposed, which made her think that someone else picked out these clothes for her. Then she slipped on a neon green bra, which she didn't ever remember getting, at that point she had a pretty good idea on who had left her these clothes. She then pull on a loose-fitting black top that hung off of her left shoulder, leaving it exposed; it had her band's name on the front of it The Flyer Liars. She quickly got into her favorite pair of boots and tied them up.

The voices were getting closer and now there were footsteps involved as well. She looked around for an escape route but there was only path that she could see that didn't involve the door that led out into the hallway. She made her way over towards a window near the bed that she had woke up in and unlocked it. The footsteps were getting closer and her anxiety was getting worse.

She pushed the window upward and kicked the screen out with her left booted foot. She climbed through the window and sat between the room and outside, straddling the window casing. A cold gust of wind hit her body and sent chills along her spine. It was a 20 foot (approx. 6 meter) drop, she knew it when she looked down at the blanket of snow that covered the ground below.

When she heard the jiggling of the door handle, she looked over at the door and hoped that the lock would hold long enough while she weighed her options. Ajay looked back outside and bit her lower lip; a nervous habit that could never shake. She didn't have a jump pack and it was too late to go back and get the sheet so that she could scale down the side of the house. She could now hear yelling, so it was now or never. She swung her other leg out of the window so that she was no longer straddling the window frame and took the dive.

It wasn't the most graceful of dives that she had ever taken, and she somehow had landed on her back with a loud thud. She wasn't sure if the snow had helped to take most of the impact or if it had added to it but either way, she felt like she had the wind knocked of out her and now she was coated in a light layer of wet snow. She knew that she couldn't waste any time, so she quickly got up and began to run in the opposite direction of the house.

The adrenaline had set in so she couldn't feel the cold encasing her wet body snow covered body, or the pain in her back, or the blood seeping down her backside and down her bare legs, leaving a trail in the white snow. She just kept running. She didn't even know where she was going, she just felt a need to keep running and get the fuck away from whatever was going on. She felt like she had been in a cage for far too long and now she was finally free and now she was being tackled into the snow. "Fuck." She whispered to herself.

Ajay knew it was too good to be true; she could never be free. She lay face down, well face sideways, in the snow with someone on top of her, straddling her body so that she could not move. She felt a pinch in her left shoulder and then some heat, then she watched an empty syringe drop into the snow in slow motion. She wanted to cry but she actually felt pretty good, so she just laid there and let everything happen without a struggle.

After about a minute or so her body was limp. She could talk but walking or any type of movement at all was not an option and was completely off the table for her. She could feel herself being picked up out of the snow and then cradle against the warmth of her attacker's body. She hazily looked up into Octavio's emerald eyes. She noticed that his green tinted goggles were set against his forehead.

Octavio looked down at her as he walked back to where she had run from. "Che." He smiled down at her, but it wasn't a pleasant smile. It was a smile of disappointment that she had seen most of her life, usually not from him though. He held back tears because it felt it had been an eternity since he had seen her, touched her, talked to her, held her, "You can't do stuff like that. Leave the stunts to me." He tried to play it off like a joke, but she could hear the sadness in his voice.

Ajay wanted to laugh because it was true, it had always been true all of their lives. He was the stuntman, she was the doctor on standby for him, kissing booboos and patching up wounds. She couldn't move to touch him because of the paralytic that he injected her with, so instead she just stared at him for a moment longer, letting the silence grow for a moment until she could find her words. "Silva. Stay out of my fuckin head." She could no longer bear to look at him anymore after what came out of her mouth.