Suddenly, I woke up, breathing hard, and stared at the unfamiliar ceiling above me in shock. I had been running straight at someone in the Council chamber in broad daylight. I couldn't recall who. Now I was lying down on something uncomfortably flat in a very dark room, and it felt like no time had gone by. A quiet yet incessant buzzing filled my ears. That's strange.
Drowsily, I tried to check my watch, but the familiar weight of it wasn't there, and besides that, my hand couldn't move! Panicking, I tried to get up, but my hands and feet could only shift a millimeter in any direction before they hit the cool, hard surface of solid metal.
I was instantly struck by fear. Of what, I didn't know or remember, but I knew that I was being held by evil. My parents were possibly dead, and my dreams of being in the Order had been dashed. My memory was full of small events that melded with each other to further my confusion and anxiety.
Without anything else to do, I looked around the room. The walls were either blank or too shrouded to reveal any details, but I could just barely see a rectangle of tiny lights at the top edge of my vision. It looked foreboding, but I had no idea what it was for.
I flexed my arm, desperately trying to force one of the restraints open. It only seemed to grasp me tighter, punishing me for daring to think that my enemies would be stupid enough to give me a way to escape as easily as that. My forearm hurt, too, right where my mage symbol was. I tried to calm down, telling myself to backtrack and go through what had happened. That would distract me well enough.