Don't Look Back! Part 2

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The new Beginning

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The screams of her fellow Gladers behind her, Marina had to watch as the griever carried her through the maze and into a hole that led to the end of a long hallway. There at the end, it dropped her off and hurried into the dark. Still to not alarm anything else, Marina lay on the cold ground, the wet moss and stone beneath her, gnawing on her skin.

Minutes passed before a door opened and someone lifted her off the ground and carried her through several long corridors, past doors and noises she had heard before to a giant room, where in the middle stood a pool. Not deep, but shallow, maybe three feet, filled with water, a blueish liquid that shimmered in the light from above, and a thick layer of gel that covered most of the surface.

"You cannot possibly mean that" A voice came from a door that opened and two figures walked through while the person who had carried Marina, placed her on a table and walked away. "This is not an experiment we signed up on. You can't just use the girl"

"I can, and I will, I got the authorisation, and the will to do it. And what harm can come of it, a new subject. We can use that."

"But we shouldn't. The experiments failed. We need to prepare for the worst. And if they attack again, we cannot defend ourselves and keep this running" Clicking on the floor, the woman stepped forward onto a platform that viewed the room, the pool and the table Marina had been placed on.

Her eyes half open, she had a look around to see a curtain all around the table, two nurses talking to one another while they cleaned the dirt and blood off Marina's body and dressed her in something that felt like slime and stuck to her like a second skin, tight, cold at first but soon warm. Very warm, almost hot. They attached electrodes to her head, shoulders, arms and legs, then something other Marina could not make out and pricked her with a needle.

Aware of her surroundings, Marina lay on the table, her body motionless as the sedative entered her body via an IV on her arm. She remained awake, watching as a doctor came up to her, attached some tubes to the needles that stuck out her sides and connected it all to a machine. Clicking, lights binking, the machine started and a whirring rang in Marina's ears, followed by stinging pains from the needles in her sides and arms. It took about three minutes before it all stopped, the doctor removed the tubes and the IV and ordered a man to lift Marina off the table and place her in the pool. A mask over her face, he pushed her body through the gel surface into the cold water beneath and pressed a button that activated some lights, flooding the pool in bright colour.

Motionless, under the surface, Marina watched through the mask how a clear panel moved over the top of the pool and sealed her off. Breathing through the mask, Marina lay there, not a noise reaching her ear other than the motor of a machine near her.

Panic arose inside her, but she could neither scream nor move, and thus had to remain in her prison while the doctors on the platform above her began to argue until the male doctor pushed the other aside and had soldiers escort her out of the room. After that, it did not take long until the lights around the pool dimmed and the focus lay on her in the water that tingled on her skin.

Unable to tell how much times had passed, Marina began to feel movement in her body, at first light, then stronger and a heaviness seemed to pull her farther down to the bottom of the pool, but in reality she remained in the same spot, carried by the gel that had formed a cocoon around her.

"Let me see her, please" A voice reached her ears, loud enough to hear, through faint, and Marina opened her eyes to see a dark figure approach the pool. Right above her head it halted and pressed a hand against the glass that shielded her from the outside. "What have you done to her, you promised to protect her"