Scarlet has no idea how but she finds herself in a humongous rectangular room full of white laboratory coat wearing people. They're all lining up along the long tables doing everything she will never understand... or want to for that matter.
         With a thudding heart and wandering thoughts, Scarlet barely registers anyone Matt introduces to her but takes a bit of notice that her palm is up in the air, waving at them in turns. After a long walk down the room, she and Matt approach a hallway to match the ones she went through earlier from downstairs.  Except this one is so long she can't see what lies at both of its ends. It's like a void, a dark blue void.

"Earth to you!" Matt snaps his fingers in front of her and Scarlet blinks rapidly. "There's nothing for you to worry about there darlin', ya know?" Matt smiles reassuringly at her, making Scarlet realise that her unwavering gaze is indeed focused on one end of the corridor. She hastily looks away.

"Right!" Scarlet weakly smiles back. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking that," she says, though her traitorous eyes say otherwise as they steal another glance back at the void like hallway. Matt smirks knowingly and Scarlet blushes crimson.

"Please come in," he says. Scarlet notices that there's an open door where they're standing, but doesn't make any move to get in. Matt raises expectant black eyebrows at her and she has no choice but to grudgingly force a foot over the threshold. Her legs are shaking, her whole being is. She feels cold and scared out of her mind. But she needs to be strong, for herself, for Celine's safety. She needs to know who wanted to hurt her baby, that's the only reason she's doing this, that and only that.

But her fortitude crumbles the minute her eyes scan the room she's entered, making her halt in place.

She's been here before. It's very clear, no doubt about that. Science or whatever rooms could look identical everywhere and this similarity would still be too uncanny to be brushed off.

The bed, covered in baby blue sheets... she was laying in it.

She's not deluded enough to think that her dreams were just that. They were memories, memories she's been trying too hard to pass off as nightmares. Which they are, just nightmares caused by things she has been through.

The small blue table with tubes; test tubes... syringes. The room is so blue and chilly, like the silent calm of the sea, just before a storm... just like the one in her dreams.

Scarlet is anything but calm.

There are syringe pumps scattered on the otherwise neat blue tiles, on the table. Everywhere. A laboratory? But is it right to perform a life threatening procedure on someone in a room as small and cold as this?
         Almost on cue, Scarlet's body is instantly filled with goosebumps.The hairs at the back of her head stand up and it takes every once of strength in her to stop her flexing fingers from smoothing them down. She feels her blood pressure escalate, her heart is jumping out. She can hear it. She can feel it.

     No, she needs to get out of here, this is not right, it's not going to help. Her instincts are asking her to run, but her legs are roots in the linoleum floor of the little blue room and that's when knowledge dawns on her. If this terrifies her, she can't force her way out.

They won't let her.

Everything is falling perfectly like pieces into place and Scarlet hasn't the slightest clue why but it's like something has shone a flashlight in the depths of her brain. Her mind is working in overdrive, making conclusions. Why didn't she see this before? She suddenly realises that Matt's friendliness was too friendly to be true. They were up to something. They, they include Victor. Victor! Scarlet shakes her head, now is not the time.

She needs a plan, one that shows itself almost instantly. Willing herself to paste a smile onto her trembling lips, Scarlet twirls on the heels of her Timbaland boots. She will just tell them that she needs to speak to Victor again, and get out of here unscathed. But the smile, the plan, they both die with the click sound of the laboratory door lock being bolted.

A woman in a white coat is standing alongside Matt, smiling widely at Scarlet. Her black hair is held up in a ponytail, her brown eyes looking dull but teeth so bright that it would've made Scarlet squint if she were not busy willing this to be another nightmare. Because that woman, she was always a part of them.

There's a distant sound of a keypad being tapped, and a disembodied voice announcing the security of the room and Scarlet decides ... she's doomed.
 
Yet even in her state of terror, she can only concentrate on the sound of her breaking heart, on the feeling of trusting someone that'd not even blink before crucifying you.

"Oh Vic!" Scarlet sobs silently.

"Hello, A!" The woman greets. A familiar perfectly manicured red hand reaching into the pockets of her coat and revealing four syringes; two of them contain a lilac coloured substance, Scarlet remembers it from the subsections. And the other two contain a colourless one- like water.
She takes a subconscious step back and shakes her head, eyes glaring at the syringes unwaveringly. "Let me out."

The woman smiles some more as she steps forward, making Scarlet retreat another step. A quick glance at the back of the room tells her Matt is busy typing away and not paying them any attention.

"I said let me out!" Scarlet shrieks. But the woman's smile stays intact as she steps forward again unbothered by Scarlet's outburst.

"Calm down, Love," she says. "You're going to be all right."

"Don't come any closer!" Scarlet warns, holding her hands out like weapons. "And don't you dare fucking touch me!" She's  acutely aware of her tentative steps behind, and before she knows it, Scarlet trips.
She was unknowingly moving in the direction of the bed. And as soon as her behind meets the bedding, a restraint grasps at her wrist, Scarlet jumps and tries to use her free hand to free herself but another one automatically grabs it. Before she knows what's happening, her back is flat on the small bed and belts squeezing her midriff.

She's chained. Literally. She tries to fight them off but it's as if the more she resists the tighter they become. Soon, Scarlet is lying limply face up on the small bed, all limbs restrained and no longer able to move at all. "Get. Me. Out of these! Let me go or I swear I'll kill you!" she screams but it's as if the woman can't even hear her.

"There, there," coos the woman. Then she raises the syringe, and Scarlet registers a tiny prickle at her bicep.

☆☆☆

"Hello, A," it seems like a few seconds have passed, and the woman's repeating her greeting to Scarlet. That, or Scarlet's mind is reiterating it. But a few seconds aren't enough for her to get thrown onto the bed. And dragged at the same time ... or aren't they? Scarlet is currently lying motionless in bed, the only thing that she can use are her eyes. Yet her limbs are no longer restrained, but she can't move them. Her eyes move around the small cold room, trying to look around for something, someone. Then a woman's red nails come into view, holding a syringe ... and then she's mentally protesting... then the woman is injecting her. But she barely feels it.
Scarlet's eyes close for a second, then she opens them and she's standing, wearing black clothes; sweatpants and a tank. Then she's launching herself at the woman ... the woman is placing a pair of knives on the floor... There's an explosion and Scarlet twirls on her heels, then she's looking into a pair of dead but beautiful sea coloured eyes.

The girl from her dream ...

"Another one," she hears herself say as the girl regards her with a robotic gaze. "It's another dream, you just have to wake up." And she does, but soon her eyes close and she falls back under.

This time she lands on a cold hard ground. It's dark and she can't see anything, she drenched in sweat and tired ... there's a candlelight and there's a punch ... then there's a male figure ... a fight. "You've seen this before, you don't have to go through it again. You can stop it." And then her eyes are open. Droopy but awake.

Scarlet scans her surroundings once again, her body is disorientated, her mind is panicked and hazy. There's a prickling in the side of her head, like needles have been injected into it. Her hands are free from restraints despite not being able to move them. And there's a shrewd bitterness in her mouth. She's about to conclude that it's another dream again but a pair of sunglasses and spiked up red hair come into her line of sight. Matheson Kahn ... she's never seen him in her dreams. This is real. And she needs to save herself.

He smiles maniacally. "Awake," he announces with a clasps of his palms together.

"Recognise any effect?" That woman's voice asks. Scarlet is too tired to look around for her.

Matt opens a file folder, his index finger browsing along the length of a page. "Yes!" he declares victoriously. "'Once out of unconsciousness, subject's eyes shouldn't be completely open or closed.'"

A blurry figure of the woman comes into Scarlet's view. "I thought you wrote that? Is there need for you to read it?" She asks.

Matt shrugs. "Anyway," he says. "All we have to do now is wait." He flips his wrist and glances at his watch. "She should be falling asleep in five to ten minutes. Then we can administer the forth dose. Then we can find out."

"Why can't we ask her now?" The woman asks.

"No, it's the procedure Mandy," Matt says.

"But, but she may not need the remaining dosage Kahn, really?"

Matt sighs in a clear sign of exasperation. "Forth dose Mandy, then questions. She's about to fall asleep." Matt nods his head at Scarlet.

The woman hums her agreement.

Scarlet, despite the heaviness in her eyes, doesn't feel like she'll be falling asleep anytime soon.
Nonetheless, she counts the seconds as the go by, waiting, watching them as they watch their timer. When it's approximately seven minutes since she awoke, Scarlet willingly closes her eyes.

But not because she's falling asleep.

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Bleh! I've never written worse chapters.