Nov. 8, 2002/Nov. 15, 2002

"Hoo, get up. You have to get up Hoo."

"Come on, Hoo."

My eyes blinked open into the light. Nathaniel. It was Nathaniel.

I felt a soft groan escape me. I felt words on my tongue. I was trying to remember what those words were.

"Hoo, you're- What happened-- oh." he cursed only slightly too low for me to hear. "You're going to be okay. Can you tell me what happened?"

I was lying on the concrete ground. "How did you get in here?" I asked him, my voice somehow stable.

His eyes narrowed. "You're in no condition to be asking questions. Tell me what happened. Who did this to you?" he asked, his voice soft.

Mine sounded like metal against metal compared to his. "I don't know. Deborah told him to. And he-" I remembered what I'd been muttering when I fell unconscious. "He couldn't hear me. He wasn't listening to me."

"What did he do?"

I tried to tell him, but the words got stuck in my throat. So I shook my head instead.

Mr. Nathaniel backed away from me, and I felt myself being lifted off of the ground. Fear and peace filled me. Rage and sadness swirled within me. I felt a warm hand touch mine, and it calmed me instantly. That was the hand the experimented man's tears fell on. The tears felt as tangible as the warm hand that was on it now.

I was carried into a grey-walled room. The slight difference in wall color was enough to wake me up from my drowsiness. I tried to rise into a sitting position, but then I saw Nathaniel, and I immediately halted.

"You're going to be okay." he was saying, but I couldn't really hear him.

"He didn't- I didn't," I was saying, or trying to say. Hands grasped me and pulled me down, pulled me down, pulled me down. The light was so bright and it was shining through my eyelids, even when I squeezed them shut.

Frantically, I tossed and turned, trying to wake up, trying to stop this nightmare. My hand hit something hard, and then I felt myself being strapped to something flat. A table, I think.

"Let me go!" I cried. I begged. "I want to go home!"

I never asked for this. I just wanted a job. I wanted to treat the world right.

I shut my thoughts down. I didn't want to hear it. I shut off my ears too. I closed up my senses and was tempted to stop the beating of my heart too, but I refrained.

Too late I realized there was no sleep in the senseless silence.

Only an ache. Only a burning.

Something that had been lying unused in my veins caught on fire and roared into life. It was trying to eat me. I couldn't shut it off. I couldn't stop its raging.

My senses returned in a flash and I heard myself weeping the words, "Help me. You're not listening. Help me."

I heard a hissing, vibrating sound. It was as if I could feel her fingering my neck again. Her cold, thin fingers with the shiny black nail polish.

"What's wrong?" she was asking innocently. Her fingers were delicately wrapping themselves around my neck. My heart was beating like a drum. Bom. Bom. Bom.

Her breath was brushing against my ear. "Remember to breathe." she was saying sweetly. Then her hands constricted and the air was cut off from my lungs.

There was no hope. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to leave. There was no hope, no life left for me. I wanted out. I wanted out.

"What's wrong?" I heard her whisper with a smile.

My neck was cold, so cold. I could barely breathe.

"Remember to breathe." she hissed like a snake suffocating its dinner. She sucked in her breath.

She was going to tell me something.

I opened my eyes. There were masked faces all around me.

Run. I told myself. Run. I begged.

I was sitting on the doctor's work table. The eyes. They were looking at me, waiting for me to do something.

Run.

I wanted to run. I wanted out. Slowly I pushed myself off of the table, and my legs supported me when I landed on my feet, much to my surprise. I turned around slowly. I couldn't match the eyes with anyone I knew.

"Where is he?" I asked, my voice coming out a croak. I coughed. "Where's Mr. Nathaniel?"

The eyes stared back at me, watching and waiting.

I was losing my patience so swiftly, too swiftly. I sucked in a breath and walked towards the door, slowly, taking each step deliberately. No one moved. I turned around one last time. I didn't see Nathaniel or Deborah.

I pushed open the door and saw the white labyrinth's walls. But this time I knew where I should go. I dashed right down the hall, taking a left and another left, and then a right. I saw the glass doors beyond me. And then I was through them, in the cold night or morning air.

How long was I out for? What day was it? I thought I'd never know.

I ran through the streets and off into an open plain. If the aliens came now, I hoped they would abduct me. If lightning were to strike, I hoped it would hit me. I dashed around a large pond and over a highway or two. My body didn't ache though. There was this boundless energy in me just as lubricating as milk after something spicy. But the pain would bubble up within me at every moment's down.

I paused next to the road, and felt my legs collapse beneath me.

The stars above seemed just as numerous as the ways I felt. Elated. Disgraced. Thrilled. Disappointed. Disowned. Freed. Captive. Captivated. Forgotten. Unmistakable. Trash. Reborn. Murdered. Destroyed. Decimated. Incapacitated. Boundless. Bound. Tied up. Hunted. Haunted. Alive. Dead.

Blind.

I coughed up something red and vile on the dirt beside me. I laid there, watching whatever it was eat away at the grass. Something within me purred at the sight of the destruction, like a predator.

I shut that part of me down. Not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. No. I would die before I let that part of me take over.

My neck was so cold. So very cold.

Hours later, as the sky turned red, a red car pulled up beside me. Feet hit the ground and someone rushed over to me.

"Hoo!" It was Nathaniel.

"Wesley." I coughed. I didn't know how I knew his name at the time. "She says-" I paused. How did I know what she would say? How did that information get translayed to me?

"I know." His voice was so weary and tired and strained and pained. "Remember to breathe. I know. She tells me all the time."

"No." I forced out, my voice dry. "Look closer."

"I--" his voice caught and he sounded like his voice was chained up the next time I heard him talk, his voice was so tight. "I am. I'm looking so close, I've almost forgotten the big picture. But I won't. I swear to you, Rena Hoo, to you and the rest of those who are in your shoes, I will never forget the big picture and the damage that's being done and will be done."

I felt him pick me up. His arms wrapped around me carefully but purposefully, with strength. He carried me to his car, his red car. It was a new model of Ford. He opened the door in the back of it and laid me on the seats in the back.

It was a bumpy ride back.

There was no music, and I had dwindling strength.

The car slowed down entirely before shutting off, and I knew we had arrived. Arrived where? I didn't know then.

He opened the car door and carried me into the building. It wasn't very big and the floor was concrete again, judging by the sound his footsteps made upon it.

He set me down on something soft. I laid there for a while.