All I can feel is my heartbeat reverberating through my skull. I try to open my eyes, but I'm blinded by bright, white light. My hands instinctively try to cover my eyes, but they are frozen, strapped down to whatever I am lying on, which feels like a metal table of sorts. I make a futile attempt to sit up, but my torso, forehead, and legs are strapped down as well. Again, I try opening my eyes. They go from a pained squint to fully open, and I look around at my surroundings as best as I can.

I'm in a sterile, white room that smells like lemon cleaner. The light that blinded me earlier hangs closely above my head, like the ones that are in dentists' offices, but more offensive towards my eyes. Directly across from me is a white, metal door that nearly blends into the walls, except the small window in it that is reinforced by metal grating. The walls are bare of anything, and I see, out of the corner of my right eye, a machine that beeps in time to my heartbeat. As I shift towards the machine to get a better look, the door swings open, revealing a doctor-type in a white coat. His remaining gray hairs look like they were holding onto his scalp for dear life, and his sagging skin was punctuated by cold eyes and a small and cruel smile.

"So young man, what brings you to our secure, enclosed city, which is entirely closed off to the outside world?" The doctor's voice comes out of his body cool and confident, unlike his outward appearance. He approaches my side, peering into my face, scrutinizing me.

" I, uh..." I try to speak, but my throat feels like I haven't spoken in months, and the dry air in the room does nothing to soothe the scratchy feeling. The doctor walks over to another part of the room that I cannot see, and I hear the running of a faucet. He appears again over my head, holding a plastic cup with a straw.

"Here," he says, guiding the straw into my mouth. The cool water feels so good in my throat, also helping to soothe the pounding in my head, but I refrain from drinking all of it, and stop. The man sets the cup on the table next to me, and walks away again out of my eyesight, returning with a small stool that he sets down next to me, and a clipboard.

"Now that you are able to speak again, I would like to ask you how you got here," The doctor begins, pulling a pen out of his breast pocket.

"Well," I say, "The last thing I remember was walking with my friend, Elysia, to buy Christmas presents, when all of a sudden, she falls to the ground. And when I went to help her, I got hit in the head with something, and, then I woke up here." I couldn't even believe what I was saying. None of this even seemed real, not in the slightest. 

"Hmm," The doctor says, taking notes on his clipboard. "Very interesting. And your blood results were negative."

"Negative? Negative for what?" I ask, straining my eyes to get a glimpse of the doctor's notes. He stops writing and looks up at me in disbelief.

"What?" he starts. "Negative for VOID Disease. Your father must have found a good one," he says.

"My father did, what?" I asked, fear and confusion tinging my voice. But the doctor wasn't listening. He stood up, taking his stool with him over to where I heard the water running earlier. I heard him open and shuffle through a few drawers before returning to my side with a syringe in his visible hand.

"Wh-What are you doing?" I stutter, flinching as the doctor wiped an alcohol wipe on my arm.

"I'm just going to give you a little something to calm you down. You don't want to meet your new family thrashing around like you were when you came in earlier," he says, gesturing to my restraints.

"What? A new family? I already-" I'm cut off my a needle piercing my skin, making me suck in my breath. My vision immediately begin to cloud with black, and the last thing I feel before falling asleep is my restraints being loosened, one by one.