Naihabi Ridge

Chapter Twenty - The White Room

Oriole

My eyes burned like fire and everything throbbed. I sucked in a breath and opened my eyes to pure darkness. I was strapped to a chair painfully tight and the air was cold on my face, then I heard it—voices.
    
A blinding light suddenly struck the room and I gasped, which murdered my dry throat and I began coughing aggressively. I couldn't hear the words until I was able to breathe, then in between my labored breaths I heard the low, controlled voices.

"...escape. There are other options. Though he was the first, Number 01 did not leave unharmed; he won't have gone far. He isn't out of reach yet, Brigadier General."

"But, sir—"

"I believe we're done here."

There was a short pause, then the brigadier general agreed quietly.

So the military was involved in the scandal? It was worse than I had first imagined. Much worse.

By this time, my eyes had adjusted to the light enough to see a large window covering the whole far wall of the room—an empty medium-sized room with plain white walls. Everything was perfectly squared; the walls smoothed; the one window perfectly straight. It was incredibly eery.

There was a long moment where nothing happened, then a door opened from out of nowhere and two figures walked in front of the window. The door blended into the perfect white of the walls so well that I had completely overlooked it, which was also eery considering I was particularly proud of my attention to details.
    
The two men faced me, the bottom half of their faces covered by a white mask, and then a third came in wheeling a metal cart behind him, covered by a white cloth like the ones that covered the bodies of the previous summoned refugees.

I shuddered in the chair as the third person pulled the cart a few feet in front of me, stopping it as the other two stepped up next to it. The third person slipped back through the door and the two others started whispering inaudibly about something I was too afraid to listen for. Then they faced me and for the first time, I noticed the dark red stain on the edge of the white cloth. I stared at it, my eyes locked and refusing to look anywhere else.

Then the cloth was slowly moved. I looked to where one of the two people was removing something from under the cloth. The warden had once shown me something similar—a syringe, I think she called it. She had said, back then, that it was used as an alternative to drinking. A liquid was inserted into the glass tube, then the needle was injected into the victim, essentially bringing whatever liquid was in it into the bloodstream. I had heard of use of it in some of the higher class hospitals near the capital, and Master Romia had though it was most likely invented for that purpose.

But it didn't look like this syringe would be used for any rehabilitation purpose at all. The clear liquid that filled over half the tube bubbled as if to let me know just how much danger I was in, then the syringe came closer in the hand of the man in the white coat and I squirmed in the chair to get away from it. The chair didn't move, however. I looked down at the feet of the chair to see it bound to the ground by metal pieces.

Then I looked back up at the man, syringe in hand, and my breath caught in my throat as he brought the syringe to my arm, pierced the skin, and pressed the liquid into my blood.

I felt heat first, pulsing up through my arm and to my chest, then my blood ran cold. I felt ice from the inside, eating under my skin like freezing ice and rain in my body. My breath had been knocked out of me and I stared forward, wide-eyed with shock, not shivering because I had gone numb. I opened my mouth, thinking to call for help, but then I felt the hope leave me, drain out of me, leaving nothing but the unforgiving ice in my bones.

+++

The white room was back, the perfect window's glare hitting my eye with a sting. I squinted, sitting up in the chair, and tried to look through the window. It was hard to see through, almost as if it didn't work on one side. Windows didn't do that, though. Literally their whole purpose was being see-through.

There was a sound from somewhere outside, then the two men came back, their white masks and coats the same cold color as the rest of the room. The cart trailed in soon after, the bloodstained cloth still covering the contents, and I remembered the relentless pull of the icy winds inside me, forcing the heat from my body so that I was breathless, yet I was gasping for air like I was being drowned. My teeth chattered as they pulled the cart over and this time it was the second masked man who pulled something from the cart.

In a twisted moment of nostalgia, I was reminded of the games I played as a child back in my village. There would be a large cloth rice sack with some item inside it—no one knew what. Each child would take a turn reaching into the sack and feeling the item, then we would all make our guesses as to what the item might be.

But in the rice sack game, the item was never a long, sharp knife.

I bit my lip, pressing back into the chair as the man brought the blade closer and closer until it was right in front of my lap. I wondered, my breaths quickening, if he was going to stab me. Why would he do that, though? What could they possibly gain from killing me? Or were they just trying to torture me, to see how much they could make me suffer before I died?

Sweat gathered on my forehead as the man moved the blade away from my stomach and toward my arm, then he slowly brought it down, touching the tip of it to my skin, now a clammy paste color from the tension. I was stock-still as the blade pierced my skin. Immediately, a pebble of blood formed where the blade was and I gasped as he dragged the blade further, cutting deeper, going longer. I watched as the skin separated, raw for a second before blood came pouring down my arm, dripping off my fingertips to a dark red puddle on the floor. My vision doubled, my stomach writhing, and I leaned sideways and retched onto the floor. My arm was hot, burning, searing, screaming. I was screaming. The world spun, going in and out of focus, black spots appearing everywhere. Everything was painful... agonizingly painful. I watched the knife slice down to my wrist, my body resisting, then the blade stopped, my ragged breath tightening as the metal, now dripping with blood, was lifted away from my arm, a long, straight slice now going from my elbow to my wrist. I moaned, turning away and clenching my jaw as the sound of my blood hitting the floor hammered at my ears and the scratching of pens against parchment and low whispers swirled around me like ghosts.

If there was any god out there, I hoped they would make this end.
    
Please, make it end.

————— • —————

That... was a little intense, wasn't it? Yeah...
If you liked the chapter, vote for it! If you have a question, ask it! Or if you just feel like commenting about how lovely this slicy-dicey scene was... go ahead... I guess? Votes, comments, and questions are always welcomed.