A Place In The Universe ((Book 2 in the Almost the Heir Series))

Chapter Two: Unfamiliar Familiarity

"Elena! Elena, can you hear me?"

"Guys, I told you to stop crowding her! I need space to work, and she'll freak out if she wakes up."

"If!?"

The girl tried to keep still as several voices surrounded her. There was an irritating beeping the seemed to echo throughout the room, and an odd feeling on the inside of her wrist. She nearly gasped as there was a sudden crash and the sound of someone breathing heavily. "She's here?" A new voice asked in a raspy tone, as if they had run a long distance.

There was a small silence, the shuffling of many feet, and the feeling of a cold hand grabbing her own. "Oh, Elena... My Elena," the same voice whispered as a drop of something wet fell on her face. So my name is Elena... She thought. All of the sudden, the beeping became more rapid and increased in volume just as a skull-splitting pain erupted in her head. Elena couldn't help herself as she cried out and pressed her hands to her forehead.

There were a few urgent shouts of, "Out! Out! Out!" Before two pairs of hands attached wires to various parts of her body. Then, two hands pinned her down to keep her still. She felt a sharp prick at her arm and another at her neck, and everything went black.

•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.

Elena blinked her eyes, struggling to keep the open due to the bright lights shining in her face. Slowly, she became aware of herself and her surroundings. There was a dull, but very noticeable, pain that remained in the back of her head. Before she even realized what she was doing, she let out a quiet moan. When three men surrounded her, she instantly regretted her unconscious decision.

The voices of the three men were warbled and their face silhouetted by the light. She tried to lift her arm up to shield her face from the light, but that hurt, too. Her conclusion: everything hurts.

Gradually, things came back into focus. Two of the three men had black hair, the other one was blonde. One of the black-haired men was sarcastic and rude, the other two seemed relatively okay. She also discovered that the men weren't talking to her, but to each other.

"Tony, whatever you injected her with could have compromised her entire brain and respiratory system!" The blonde one said. He seemed angry. "Without knowing what was happening to her, it was the safest thing I could do!" The sarcastic one shouted back. "Steve, he's right. We didn't know if she was going into cardiac arrest, if her brain was shutting down, if she was going into a fit of seizures, if she was having an allergic reaction-" the other one began listing things, but Elena tuned him out. He was boring.

Another wave of pain shot through her, causing another moan to fly from her mouth. "Do you think she can hear us yet?" The blonde one- Steve- asked. "Probably not. Sensory overload. It'll be miraculous if she'll be able to hear us, if nothing else, within the next three hours." The sarcastic one responded.

"It hurts!" Elena groaned quietly.

She saw all three faces turn down to look at her, a look she could only describe as astonishment on their faces, before looking back at each other. "Well there's two senses back..." The boring one announced. "Speech and touch..."

"It hurts!" She groaned again.

"Don't you dare inject her with more!" Blondie pointed at the sarcastic one. "We can't. She'd OD. It would be just like ODing on regular drugs." Sarcastic explains.

Elena didn't care what they were saying, tears pricked her eyes as she lay on a metal table in excruciating pain. "Help!" She uttered, barely audible, just before she lost all control of her body. Her body went into spasms and she felt her head hit the table hard more than once. Somehow she heard someone yell "Seizures!" In the background. It almost sounded distant.

Elena sensed the chaos that was taking place around her as she was roughly pushed on to her side. She also felt a bubbling panic both in the people around her, and in parts of her mind that she couldn't quite reach.

Suddenly, there was a lot of shouting and then she felt a cold hand on her forehead. All at once, her arms slowed their flailing, as did her legs, torso, neck, and so on. Then they stopped. All she could feel was relief. The hand lingered for a few moments too long before slowly, almost hesitantly, it was removed.

Without opening her eyes, which must have closed at some point during the panic, Elena uttered a raspy, "Thanks" and fell into a dreamless sleep.