Trapped

Part 3.

Annelise

I blinked and was immediately in pain. Bright white light shone down on me, pounding against my eyes and skull. I wanted to succumb back into the darkness that had surrounded me mere seconds before. Millions of thoughts flooded my brain at once and it seemed like I was drowning in a whirlpool contained in my own mind. The only thought I wanted to get a hold of was my memory of where I was, and how I had gotten there, but I came up with nothing.

Trying to decipher the puzzle of my location, I started to look around and take in my surroundings. I was laying on a small bed. Everything surrounding me was white. Not once in my life had I seen anything this clean; a stark contrast to everything else in Captis. The dusty red dirt covered everything. It found a way to get onto your sheets and stain even the ceiling when winds blew through. This room, however, had not even a trace of that dust. The white walls had no smudges and— That's when I realized what the room actually was.

I tried to go back to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes I saw a gold striped Captis patrol car speeding towards me, consuming my vision. Every time I woke up I found myself drenched in sweat like I had crawled into bed after having a shower without drying off first. When I wasn't sleeping, I quickly found out that after being trapped in here for even a few hours, with no sound, bright white colour, and intense light, I would be helpless anywhere else. I wouldn't be able to see or function properly for hours until I acclimatized to the normal light level. And, I figured, that's exactly how they want me. Trapped, helpless, and scared.

After two days of living in complete solitude, my life fell into a simple pattern. A pattern that consisted of one colour, one shape, and nothing else. During the first day or so I couldn't help but think thoughts that took over my mind. I wanted to panic thinking about my family, but now, I didn't even have the energy to do that.

I was dozing in and out of sleep when I heard a loud click. After hours upon hours of complete silence, that small noise sounded like a gun had been fired. I opened my eyes and they immediately focused on a tall man in the dark brown uniform.

"Get up!" He yelled at me. The sound rang in my ears. "You're scheduled to meet with Chancellor Silver in 15 minutes."

My eyes widened. I knew who Chancellor Silver was, everyone did. She was the president of Captis. No, she was Captis. If you messed with her...

My stomach churned. I already had.

The guard entered the room again, but this time he marched right up to my small bed. He grabbed me by the arm and out of nowhere a slit opened up in the wall. It widened in front of my eyes until it was the size of a doorway. He marched me out of the room and practically dragged me down the hall. When we reached the end of it I saw a large panel covered in buttons. However, there was one that caught my eye. It was black, unlike the other light gray ones. That was the one the uniformed man leaned over to press.

Another slit opened up in the wall and revealed a little box. I was afraid to step inside anything with this man, but I didn't have a choice. The doors closed, trapping us inside. Then we started moving. I couldn't tell whether we were going down or up, but we must have been going down because there was a panel on the side of the box with some numbers on it. They counted down from -1 to -20. It had been almost three minutes when the box stopped moving. I found that my ears hurt. It was like they had been filled with some sort of a bubble. There was a lot of pressure pounding on my head. We must have been extremely deep underground.

We stepped out of the strange machine and walked down yet another long hallway. This one was dimly lit, but just as clean. Many doors lined the hallway and the officer stopped at a seemingly random one. I paused for a moment not even knowing what I was feeling, but the officer turned his head to bark at me.

"Move!" He said, and I half stepped, half was pushed through the doorway.