The Shatters: The Silence Chronicles

Chapter Twenty-Two: Mauve Starts to Win

I wake up to blinding lights. I can't move. I'm lying on a hard, smooth surface. The walls around me are white, and it seems as if they curve around me in a circle. Confusion clouds over my head as I try to figure out what's happening. The last thing I remember is Alice dragging me away into her car.

People crowd around me, people with tools and syringes and all kinds of medical equipment, like some weird sort of doctors. Slowly, a low ringing comes into my ears, and a woman with black hair and wrinkled almond-shaped eyes speaks warmly to me.

"Arianna?" Her voice seems to echo. My vision is still blurry. "Arianna, we're here to help you. It's okay to be scared. Don't worry, sweetie, you'll be able to move in a moment."

Another voice speaks, this time one of a man. I see him talking to a young woman out of the corner of my eye. Alice.

"She's ready, Mauve," he speaks quietly, almost as if he's afraid. "Celine's waking her up as we speak. We'll give her the open-movement one at your command."

"Whenever you think is best," she responds. "But be cautious. Her body might overload at first, like Alec's did. She'll be one of the more difficult ones to handle."

The man nods to the woman operating on me, speaking to her briefly, and she nods back. She brings out another small syringe and injects it into one of my veins in my arm. The feeling surges back into my body, sending tingles everywhere.

I shoot up onto my feet, which are wearing shockingly white boots. I'm also wearing a white shirt and white leggings, with white fingerless gloves on my hands. My head seems to explode with thoughts and ideas, and for some reason I can almost see battle strategies in my head.

What did they do to me?

Immediately, the doctors rush to my side as if expecting me to collapse. They're surprised at my sudden outburst. As soon as one touches my arm, I find myself squeezing my eyes shut. When they open again, everyone in the room apart from Alice is floating in the air by the commands of my mind. They try to reach ground, but every time one of them begins to lower themselves, they only drift higher. Finally, I release my mental grip a little to telekinetically slam them against the far walls.

This movement frightens me. It felt like the natural thing to do to harm them. That's not normal.

It's only now that I start to take in the surroundings of the room around me. It looks like a prison, but not quite. The entire room is a sphere hanging from the ceiling, with the front of it being a giant glass window out to other sphere prisons in the room with various other prisoners, mostly supers. All the spheres are different colours, where all the prisoners are wearing their sphere colours. The one directly across from mine, where everything is navy blue, has blackened windows so that I can't see who's inside. All the walls are white in my prison except for the great glass window, which is big enough that I could only take up maybe a fifteenth if it's size.

In the direct middle of the floor, there's a mattress with a pillow and blanket on top, and at the back of the sphere, a long set of stairs leading up to nothing.

"All of you. Out. Now." Alice doesn't need to be loud to be scary, and the doctors feel the same way. They scatter, and one presses a thumbprint to a tiny panel that appears in the wall. The glass wall slides away and a little ladder tumbles out for them to use to climb out.

The minute they're all out, the ladder disappears and the glass wall reseals itself, leaving me and Alice alone in the room.

"I see you've noticed your circumstances," she smirks, as if this is all a game to her, like she's still the lovely sister I know that would never kill without reason. "Luckily, soon, you won't be panicking as much."