Away Team: In the Shuttle - or not?

Posted on 24 Aug 2020 @ 7:17am by Lieutenant Rosine Deschamps

514 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra

It was an unknown time later. Had time even passed at all? Rosine had no way to know as consciousness nudged her eyes open. Was she still dead? Or dreaming? She still didn't know. No way to know. No way to know anything at all. This was all very confusing.

She was sitting this time. Sitting inside a building. At least, she assumed it was inside a building. A building in the colony they had been headed to. The walls she was staring at, were of the same dull, industrial gray as the outside buildings had suggested they would be. It was as good a guess as any, right?

She couldn't move her arms. She tried, but they wouldn't move. As she looked down, she could see them vanish behind her back, obviously tied. The chair she was sitting on had a hard surface. The more she appeared to regain consciousness, the more it pressed uncomfortably in her back. She had been bound tightly. Her legs were free, but she didn't see how that could give her an immediate advantage. Even as she pushed off on her heels, she didn't budge. The chair had been bolted to the floor.

Before she could make more efforts, she heard a door open behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw two.. shapes.. entering the room. Her vision wasn't still blurry, was it? Then why couldn't she see the figures more clearly? They looked the same as the shapes she'd seen in mid air, but she'd been dreaming then. Or hadn't she? Were they wearing white coats? Or were they just bathed in white? Fear filled her, fear from remembering the pain she'd felt earlier. Pain that had been directly linked to these shapes. She wasn't brave. She was a scared science officer.

Science officer. Could that help her here?

She didn't get the chance to think about it more before the shapes had crossed the short distance between the door and the chair and now hovered in front of her. There wasn't any warning as the same bolts of electricity as before hit her square in the chest. It sucked the air out of her. She gasped and drew in a sharp breath through her nose. "Stop it! I didn't do anything to you!" she yelled, momentarily (and absurdly) surprised that her voice resounded through the room at a volume she hadn't intended.

The shapes, bodies, outstretched what only could be their arms. They reached for her head without touching her. A headache exploded behind her eyes. She forced them close and tried to endure. "Why are you doing this to me?" she whispered, whimpered. As she spoke, she tasted the metallic taste of blood seeping into her mouth. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. What was happening?

'Something' happened. She didn't know what it was. She couldn't know that out in the real world, her body had been administered a high dose of anticonvulsants. Everything faded around her as quickly as it had come. Within a few moments, she had lost consciousness once more.

 

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