Above Us, Only Sky

Awaken: part 2

One morning, Io awoke to find the house cold and dark, the air unnaturally dry. For a moment, she thought she might have been taken back to the prison cell and sprang up with a jolt, more than prepared to fight her way out and regain the freedom that was, she now felt, rightfully hers; then she felt marble, not coarse uneven concrete bricks, beneath her feet, saw the pale blue light of day instead of a tungsten lightbulb's dim flickering orange cast over the walls, and knew where she was.

She stepped cautiously down the spiral staircase, her own pulse rushing in her ears, and tried to regulate her breathing: if Sigma could teach her nothing else, she would at least learn how to be pragmatic and composed at times like this. She didn't know if anything was seriously wrong yet, thus panicking was a waste of time and energy that could otherwise be spent trying to deduce what had happened. She could not let herself be ruled by fear; instead, she would rule it.

It was hideously cold: the kind of cold that turns bone marrow to permafrost and seeps into the veins, an endless, inescapable frozen haze. Io's nose began to run; she swiped her forearm across it and kept searching the house for invaders or abnormalities. She found nothing, or thought she did: how many times could the sound of her own heartbeat have been someone else's thudding footsteps, ignored and uninvestigated? 

There was a bright trail of blood beginning at the base of the staircase: a spattering of droplets now frozen, some smudged. Io nearly shrieked, but silenced herself when she realized it was her own. Her nose was still bleeding, unhindered; having greater concerns at the moment, she ignored it.

Something called to her then: not a voice, not exactly, but a tug of urgency from the airy central room. She followed it, compelled forward as if by a chain or rope: it brought her to the foyer, where silver fish flopped helplessly, drowning in air, their elegant flowing fins gone limp and dull, their eyes wide, helpless, trusting. 

She felt their need. Felt it in the core of her as something spread from her heart to her fingertips: not a new sense exactly; more like the heightened sensitivity and vulnerability of hands after removing gloves, a repressed awareness suddenly awakening.

And she knew what she had to do. 

There was no time. There was no space. There was no thought. There was only the immense, infernal, endless pain as, somehow, she pulled water from her own body and gave it to the gasping fish, and then the great yawning void as the agony dulled.

Then there was nothing.