"...shouldn't be here, girl," she heard through a fog. "What were you thinking?" Krystle tried to open her eyes. It took a Herculean effort, and once she got them open she saw only a white blur. "Don't do that, Krystle," said the voice, an impatient mother dealing with a wayward child. Then the drugs coursing through her IV's hit her system, and she started to drift away again. Just before the world turned dark, she heard a hushed voice across the room. "How did she do that? She shouldn't have been able..." Then Krystle was gone, and she had no time to wonder what it was she shouldn't have been able to do.
She awoke several hours later, completely alert and aware for the first time in what seemed like years. Her body automatically tensed, responding to training ingrained in her mind that told her to be ready to fight any danger. She glanced around her surroundings frantically, relaxing only slightly when she realized that if she was in danger, it was not immediate. Her heartbeat slowing, she looked around again, trying to determine where she was. The walls were white, lit by the glow of flourescent lights on the ceiling. She was lying on a narrow bed, wires connecting her to computers that sat next to her bedside, a steady beeping marking her heartbeat. The beeping continued to slow as she calmed down further, then sped up again as she looked down at her hands and realized she was bound to the bed.
Confusion clouded her mind for a brief moment, and then memory came crashing down on her. Images of dreams, of horrors faced and overcome, of desperate fights she should have never survived, of dangers that could only be real in a nightmare. Each one had been real to her, lived in her mind. She had felt every wound, every ache. How many times had she tasted her own blood from bleeding cuts on her face? No dream could have been as real as what she had been through. No dream could have been that real, except that she also remembered, even more dimly, brief moments of lucidity, moments like this when she had been allowed to be fully awake. Those moments of wakefulness were frequent, but never long. As she searched through her hazy memories she came to realize that this was the first time she had truly known what was happening to her. Always before she had been too confused or too drugged to be able to think clearly. Then she realized what was different. The nurse was gone. She had always told Krystle she was sick, or crazy, and she had believed the woman. Doubtless the drugs continually coursing through Krystle's body were also the nurse's handiwork. Doubtless, too, they had added to her delusions.
Krystle glanced up at the IV. It was empty. She allowed a small smile to cross her lips. It felt good to be herself, to be able to think clearly. But the smile was short-lived. Krystle glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall that was counting each precious second she had to herself. She didn't know how long she would be allowed this freedom, and she had to think fast. Why was she here? How did she get here? What did they want with her? Why in the name of anything good had they tortured her this way? She felt rage and hate and fear well up in her, and for a moment she almost lost the power to think. But her training as a soldier and the weeks she had spent fighting against creatures and elements she could not understand had taught her to channel her anger, to put it aside and think with cold, cruel logic. This she did, but under a calm surface she burned with a desire for revenge.
She dug methodically through her memories, back to the last time she had been able to think clearly.
It had been night. She remembered sneaking out of Com headquarters. She had needed to meet someone. Wait, she was sneaking out of Com headquarters? How could that be right? But it was. She knew that it was. She went back further, to days of pretending to be what she was not, to nights stolen from her supervisors to meet with informants, firends. She remembered, then. She had been a spy. Her training at Sixth Realm, before she had joined the Revolution, made her uniquely qualified to plan battle strategies for their false war. She had done her job well, sending their troops where there would be the least damage while seeming to promote the havoc and chaos that the Coms so desired. She had made it possible for them to keep the war going when it should have been long over, all the while gathering what secrets she could about the internal structure of her enemies' society. That night she had gone to tell her secrets to her brother.
Carson.
For a moment the rage subsided and fear took its place. They had been watching her. They had to have been. That was the only way they would have caught her. Somebody had figured out that she was a spy, and they had tracked her every move. She remembered seeing her brother, almost reaching him, before the electrical pulses of a laser gun had slammed into her back, rendering her unconsious. She didn't know what had happened after that. Had Carson seen her fall? Had he escaped? She had known so much heartache and fear since that night, but for the first time in five weeks her fear extended beyond herself. What if they had taken Carson? What if they had tortured him the way they had tortured her? If he had broken under the pressure, the Revolution, the freedoms of America itself, would be endangered. Or what if they had let him go? Had followed him back to the base without his knowledge? Krystle didn't know which possibility was worse. Although, it didn't really matter. Either way, her friends and her beliefs would die. Their only hope was if Carson had somehow managed to escape the Coms. Somehow. Krystle held desperately to that hope, knowing that it was probably vain.
She turned her attention to herself, to the problem immediately facing her. Raising herself up on the bed, she studied the room around her. It was plain white, with no furniture but the bed she lay on, the stands that held various screens, a counter that held medical supplies, and a chair in which the nurse usually sat. Krystle grimaced as she looked down at her hands which were still bound to the bed. She remembered twisting and writhing in them countless times before, never with any success. She didn't expect to get free this time either, but she pulled on her bonds compulsively and thought furiously of some way she might get away from her captors.
The minutes passed, and though she rubbed her wrists almost raw, she came no closer to freedom than she had when she was dreaming. She had thought of one possibility, but it would have to be a last resort. It was a desperate plan, based on suppositions and theories, but if it worked it would either force her out of her dream... or she would die. She would be more valuable to the Revolution alive than dead, but she would die before she wilingly gave her enemies any information that could help them. It was a feeble plan of action, but it was the only one she had, and if they put her back in the dreamworld she didn't know how long it would be before they tricked her into telling them something she didn't want them to know.
Footsteps coming down the hall made her freeze. She made herself stop pulling at her bonds and lay her head down. She didn't want them to know she had been awake. That would take away any advantage she had managed to gain by her ten minutes of clarity. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, doing her best to look as though she hadn't moved. In her mind she rehearsed her plan, ingraining the importance of it into her subconscious. She hoped it would be enough to make her remember as she dreamed.
The door opened and the nurse stepped in, breathing a sigh of relief. "You're in for a world of trouble, woman," she muttered to herself, "if you can't even keep track of the time." Krystle heard the sharp click of the nurse's shoes move across the floor to the bed. Metal clinked together as the IV was replaced, and Krystle imaged herself in the future. She willed herself to remember, prayed that she would remember, placed more importance on that than on anything she had ever known. She felt the drugs as they hit her arm and spread through her system faster than she had believed they could. Through the wave of dizziness that took her she held to her plan as though it was a lifeline. Her last thought as she faded into darkness was a sure knowledge that she would be able to do what she needed to do.
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