Disclaimer: See chapter 1.
Quick Note: The next 4 chapters are going to cover a lot of ground in few words, 1 for each of them, Quinn, Rachel, Santana, and Brittany - in that order. What's going on will make more sense when Brittany shows up (Did I mention this is one of those 'secretly smart/brilliant' Brittany stories? Hopefully she won't be too OOC.)
Word Count: 1,962 (2 of 18)(Book 1)
Quinn woke up slowly, shielding her eyes against a bright, white light with her arm. She wasn't sure where she was but it wasn't anywhere familiar. Whatever she was lying on was hard and unyielding. Very un-bed-like. And it seemed to be humming.
Her last memory wasn't very clear but she was sure she hadn't been alone. She'd been with three other people, a blonde and two brunettes, though she couldn't remember their names. Or what they were doing before this, whatever this was, happened.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Quinn uncovered her eyes, and sat up. Looking around, she saw absolutely nothing familiar. She seemed to be lying on the floor, in a featureless white room. There wasn't even a door, and the light seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
"Hello? Is there anyone here?" she said. Her words seemed to echo around the room. "Hello?"
Standing up, Quinn turned in a circle, her eyes attempting to follow the walls from corner to corner several times in hope that something would happen.
Suddenly, the humming stopped, and an opening appeared in the wall she was facing. Curiosity getting the better of her, Quinn walked through the opening and found herself in another white room. This one wasn't as featureless. There was a large chair-like thing in the middle of the room.
Stepping closer to it, to get a better look, Quinn shrieked when something invisible seemed to grab her and started dragging her across the room. Struggling, she tried to resist the pull but found herself sitting in the chair, for lack of a better word, unable to move.
As she sat there, a bright, warm red light ran over her, like a giant, soft brush. This happened several times and then stopped. Still frozen to the chair, she felt herself nodding off.
Opening her eyes again, Quinn found herself standing in front of a building that looked like something out of one of those kung-fu movies Santana liked to watch. She briefly wondered who this Santana person was.
Looking down at herself, she found herself wearing what looked like a brightly colored version of the karate gi she'd worn in middle school when she'd convinced her father that karate was good training for cheerleading.
"Hello?" she shouted.
"Hello," echoed from behind her in a toneless voice. The voice then said something in a language she couldn't understand.
Turning around she found herself facing a figure that appeared to be wearing a mask and tan overalls.
"Who are you?" Quinn asked.
"This unit is/shall be your trainer," it said in that flat voice.
"Trainer?" Quinn asked. "For what? Why?"
"You shall follow," it said. Turning it walked up the steps and into the large building. Curious, Quinn followed. In the back of her mind, she wondered why she was following directions like this. Shouldn't she be refusing? Shouldn't she be demanding answers? And why did she know something about her childhood but couldn't remember what she did the day before.
Quinn woke up in the chair, exhausted, not remembering how she'd gotten back there.
The trainer had run her through a series of exercises for what seemed like hours, rarely speaking. Oddly enough, she never became too tired to continue but after going through the exercises more times than she could count, her entire body shook. At which point the trainer stopped and sent her back to her chair.
Standing up Quinn shakily stumbled back into the other room and slumped on the floor. Later, she woke up to the smell of something delicious. Rolling over, she found herself facing a bowl with something soup-like in it, a spoon, and a glass of some liquid on a tray.
She hungrily ate the soup, and drank the liquid, before lying back down and falling asleep again. When she woke up again, she noticed she was now lying on a softer patch of floor raised several inches above the floor. It was at this point that she realized she wasn't wearing any clothes, not even the gi she'd worn during training. She wondered why she hadn't noticed this before. Or why it didn't bother her - or what, in the past she couldn't really remember, made her not care.
It was very strange. She knew that some things should bother her, like her nudity, but she couldn't remember why. Just like she knew there were three others that she should be looking for but she didn't know who they were and why she needed to find them. And she knew, just knew, that she really wasn't normally this passive, doing things without thought. Accepting the directions of some other that she couldn't see.
Time seemed to flow quickly wherever she was, though, since she didn't have any way to keep track of time, no calendar, watch, or even writing materials, or ways to tell one day from another, she wasn't sure how long she'd been there once she'd started noticing the passage of time..
She got up, ate whatever appeared in her room, went to the training chair, sat down in it and woke up in the other place and trained. She did wonder if it was even real, the time she spent training. And without a way to measure progress she couldn't tell if she was getting better. But she did notice a gradually change in the training. The moves she learned became more and more complex. She learned to attack, and to work in teams when multiple blank faced trainers appeared.
She never questioned how she knew what they wanted her to do. The trainers never seemed to speak but Quinn felt like she was constantly communicating with them.
As time passed, she noticed changes in her body. She'd been in good shape before, for a cheerleader. But her muscles became more refined, stronger. She didn't look like one of those body builders, she decided, but her body was becoming something more. The remaining fat from her pre-teen years completely disappeared.
Her endurance seemed much higher than before, though again she had no way to really measure it. No way to compare it to earlier levels. No matter how hard she pushed the trainers they reacted the same. It took longer for her to tire. Bruises, scratches, and other injuries disappeared somewhere between training sessions and returning to the chair.
In her idle moments she wondered what the others would think of her now. Would they recognize her? Were they doing the same thing? Training to fight? Were they even here, somewhere? And who were they?
There came a point when she seemed to reach a plateau. When she stopped improving. And then things changed. Her trainer changed. It became bigger. Faster. And she learned to fight this bigger trainer. Yes. Fight. At first, when she first learned her moves, she didn't realize they were teaching her how to fight. When she first realized what was happening it was like a giant lightbulb went off in her head.
They, whomever the mysterious they were, were turning her into some kind of fighter. She wondered if she would get to practice her moves against an opponent like herself or if she would always fight the faceless trainers.
Things started to happen faster. She learned to fight bigger opponents. Faster opponents. Multiple opponents.
And then armed opponents while unarmed herself. And then they started teaching her how to use weapons herself. Bladed weapons of all sorts, from short stubby knives to long swords and spears. And then weapons that could kill from a distance. Throwing weapons - slingshots, bolas, a bow. And lastly, energy weapons.
Knives with energy blades. Weapons, that she wanted to call guns even though she couldn't remember what a gun was, that threw bolts of energy at a target. Some that fit in her hand. Others too heavy even for her increased strength that required some kind of support.
At some point she stopped learning new things from her trainers. She just seemed to be training for the sake of training.
And then things changed again. It was around this time that she realized that the place she went to when she sat in the chair wasn't real. That it was some sort of virtual reality place that grew or shrunk as she needed. She wondered if it was like the Matrix, though she couldn't remember if the Matrix was real or not.
She continued working on her forms, unarmed and armed. But now she spent half her days improving her knowledge of warfare, building on the instinctive responses of her trained body. She learned about the battle tactics of the Centurions of Drax. The marching orders of Roman legions and French Legionnaires. The strengths of the Pirates of Alderaan and their weaknesses. And many more.
And she learned everything from guerrilla tactics to organizing battles on a galactic scale. She soaked it all up like a sponge. She wondered if in the life she still couldn't remember much of if she'd been a warrior. In simulation after simulation, she fought battles to the last soldier standing.
Along the way, they taught her how to make speeches to her imaginary troops, though the learning process was a bit mystifying. But she also learned to listen. Both when she was in charge and when she was at the bottom. And she learned how to care for those under her. That motivated troops fought harder. That well trained troops fought smarter.
At the end of the day she would have to remind herself that these weren't real people. That she fought with, died for, and argued with, the ghosts, simulations, of real people. Ghosts of a long dead, nameless culture. A culture she slowly absorbed, both in the style of clothes she wore and the language she spoke. And technology she learned to use.
She could feel time passing, accelerating, but still had no way of keeping track of time other than when things changed in her room. Her room gained a small table and chair. A closet for clothes. Clothes she could wear, though she had no reason to. A mirror. One corner was now a shower, with some kind of force field to keep the water in.
At some point she acquired a tablet computer which contained records of everything she learned as she learned it, including books on strategy and tactics, and stories of famous battles fought by the people in her lessons, that she read when she was back in her room. And where she started recording all of her thoughts.
And then, one morning, she woke up remembering everything. Her past. Her friends. Arguing with Rachel in the car. And being kidnapped. And it shook her. Because she was different. It was hard to relate to that past self. She couldn't imagine going home the way she was. She wasn't sure how long she'd been there but the person she saw in the mirror had to be years older than she'd been on that cold, scary winter evening.
But one thing she'd learned as they trained her to become that deadly person she now was? That loyalty mattered. That she needed to find Santana, Brittany, and Rachel.
She wasn't sure what she would do once she did. It would depend on them. Were they the same or had they also changed? Would they be willing to escape? Or stay? And why was she naked?
And, as she was contemplating this, rearranging her memories in her mind, new and old, a new door appeared in her room. And half forgotten voices drifted in. Looking around, she grabbed the first thing she could think of to cover herself with.
Chapter End Note: In all honesty, Quinn is my favorite Glee character (so much wasted potential... sigh...) (Let's just pretend Season 3's Crazy-Psycho-Baby Stealing Quinn never happened. Thanks!) but for some reason this chapter feels too dry rereading it almost 2 months after I wrote it. She really needs someone to interact with - when I write her anyway. Which will happen in Chapter 6. Yeah! But first - a Diva!