• Chapter One

    She sat there silently, waiting for the clock to tick to five p.m. when she would be permitted to return to the hole in the wall of a room and wait for the whole procedure again tomorrow. However, tonight was different. The light was swinging. It seems she was starting to make her interrogator mad by not talking for he had left his chair rather quickly and hit the light resulting in a bout of curses before he took a walk around the room.
    He sighed and glared at her. “What is your name?”
    She wanted to roll her eyes at him, but that would be showing that she had any interest in what he had to say. Instead she settled for her old game, playing mute.
    He tried again. “Please state your first and last name.”
    She felt like she was being investigated for a crime, although as she thought about it, maybe she was. The crime of trespassing into a place she was to call home but that could never feel like one because they had branded and belittled her by keeping her here and putting her in a hard metal chair at a hard metal table from the hours of three p.m. to five.
    She turned her attention back to her mental clock. She figured she had about five more minutes left. She met the man’s eyes. When he had first come into the room two weeks ago she had thought him an interesting person.
    He had entered in on that first day and every day after that with a pristinely pressed black suit and a collected expression that showed none of his feelings towards her or his job. He had introduced himself as John and she had been surprised at that. She had thought that his name might be unpronounceable. She contributed that thought to far too many fantasy books when she was younger.
    John cleared his throat and pushed his chair back. “Very well, it seems we are done for today. We’ll try again tomorrow; maybe you’ll be a bit more reasonable then.”
    She wasn’t impressed, he said that at the end of every interrogation. She stayed sitting as he moved towards the door and keyed in a code on the door that opened it to reveal a brightly lit hallway and two guards that were to lead her back to her room. She waited for them to enter the room, for one of them to stand by her chair while she got up, and then for both of them to get out into the hallway, shut the door, and lead her away.
    They were there to make sure she didn’t run away or cause a ruckus she presumed. She had never actually been told but that was what her assumption was from the way they toted around the large guns. All in all she thought it was a bit excessive, she was one person without a single object that could do harm upon her.
    The walk along the light yellow painted walls and cream colored tile seemed to take less time than usual, or perhaps she was just not as bored for once, after all the light had been swinging. She let out a heavy sigh that caught the attention of one of her guards. She blissfully wondered if this was what her life was reduced to, finding joy in the swinging of a light. To think she used to be so active.
    The guards left her in the small eight by eight room in white, with her bed in white, her clothing in white, and the white light. She moved to the bed and sat down with a sigh. She didn’t even permit herself to talk here, she was sure that the place was bugged. But at least here she could act out mannerisms that allowed herself to think she was real, that she was still alive.
    Her hands traveled to her hair. Hair that had once been long and something that she loved had been chopped to her shoulders. She had cried the day she awoke after a spell of comatose to find the length gone, which had alerted someone and a well meaning woman by the name of Sharon had come in and sat with her. Sharon had been by quite a bit the first week. They never had a conversation and she made sure she never cried around the woman, but it was still comforting to have her there.
    She had to hand it to the woman; she knew she had been a wreck that first week. She hadn’t known where she was and would wake up at odd times in a panic and find that something else had been changed regarding herself. First it had been her hair, then they had inserted a chip into her brain that made sure she understood them and that she spoke the same language as everyone else on their planet, as explained by Sharon. Then they had done something to her eyes which made them shine differently than normal eyes, again via Sharon. Then came the tattoo, forever marking her as different. Sharon barely mentioned that fact and when she had it had come with a bitter little expression.
    She wished there was a mirror in the damn place that they would let her use, but she had no clue how she looked. For a while she had been desperately confused. Things seemed to have moved to slow and she had felt constantly dizzy. She was sure she cried out in her sleep that she did other things that showed them all she was still alive inside.
    For a while she had felt like a trapped animal as well. She didn’t have a bathroom attached to her room and had to open the door to alert the guard sitting outside of it that she needed something. The first few days had been awkward because she refused to talk to him. He had simply guessed until she had nodded. It only took a few more times for him to realize that her opening the door only meant one thing.
    She had felt trapped until she decided that she just didn’t care.

    She was woken up by a pounding on her door, nothing unusual. It was her wakeup call as well as the arrival of breakfast which always consisted of bacon, eggs, and two pieces of toast with a glass of milk. At first she hadn’t eaten much at all, everything tasted different than what she was used to, now she ate it all but the eggs and it was returned to the kitchen. There was never any issue about her eating habits even if at times she ate little, nor was there ever a communication between her and the guard that sat with her.
    She pushed the plate aside and waited for her guard to get to his feet so that he could take her to the gym. The gym was the only place where she let herself stand out. She figured she had to give her captors something or they would throw her out or whatever they did to the undesirables.
    So she climbed onto the first machine that day and ran for as long as they wanted her to. Sometimes there would be instructions to make sure she moderated her heart rate or to pick up the pace, she always complied until she was told to switch to lifting weights where she complied again.
    The whole procedure bored her; she had never been bored with life before. She was trying to work out a way to get out, the only way she could think of was to talk and she didn’t want to do that. She knew exactly why they wanted her to talk; they wanted to know why she was one of the ones that made it, what her take on the situation had been. Well, John certainly wasn’t going to get it out of her.
    Lunch was served in her room and then she was left alone for two hours with a few books that were about their history, a journal and a pen in case she wrote instead of talked, and a logic book. She usually read a few chapters and did some logic puzzles, the pen was left untouched. When three o’clock rolled around her guards appeared and lead her to the room with the light, desk, and chair where she waited facing the door, aware that there were people watching her from the video surveillance, she found that quite annoying.
    She heard the beep of the code for the door and shifted her eyes towards it, starting her mental clock. She waited for John to come through and was thoroughly surprised when he didn’t. Another man came through the door with a hand in his pocket, his suit slightly rumpled about the sleeves and with a height he looked like he had never grown into.
    “Hello there,” he said pulling his chair out. “My name is Jensen, shall we get started today?”
    She watched him carefully wondering where John was. John also never greeted her, just sat down and asked questions, they were trying a different tactic. She read it as a sign that they were either getting desperate or bored of her.
    “Alright then,” he stated with a clearing of his throat. “Let’s see here.” He flipped through a file she presumed was hers.
    She wanted to tell him to relax; she wasn’t going to bite him. She settled for silence and instead gazed at him steadily.
    “So I see that we don’t have any information on you, that won’t do.” He said more to himself than to her. He flicked his eyes up to her. “Please state your first and last name.”
    She gave a heavy sigh; she should have figured that it would be the same old runaround, just with a different face. She watched as he examined her, his face not as mask like as John’s, he was good at hiding what he was thinking but she could see the interest in his eyes.
    He folded his hands on the table and leaned forwards. “My name is Jensen; I’m twenty-three and have worked here for five years. I like my family and own a dog.”
    He paused, she stared.
    “May I please have your first and last name?”
    She sighed. “My name is Ashleigh Sullivan.”