Not So Alone

The lights flickered above me, making my eyes blink. The lights had been getting dimmer as time wore on, and any minute now the scientists would come in to administer another round of shots. My body was still sore from the last time they had given them to me. 

I sighed and got up, pushing myself up with my arms, which were shaking. I had specifically been told not to leave the room, and while they suggested that I remain in the bed until my release, I disregarded their concern. My bare feet hit the cold stone floor and I shivered involuntarily. My legs were shaky for the first few steps, and I clung to the dirty stone wall as I walked to the other side of the room. 

My goal was simply a window. I simply wanted to look out the window. Of course, as I had been in this prison for years now, never getting up to clean the window, it was covered with filth from the warzone outside. I lifted a pale hand and wiped at the grime. Nothing came away with a simple swipe, making me scratch at it with my nails instead. Eventually, I managed to make a small peephole and stared out of the yellowing glass. 

My memories of the outside world had been affected because of the drugs that they had been giving me, so what I could remember was blotchy and pieced together. But I was sure that it looked nothing like what was outside now. 

The bunker where I was held was in the middle of a desert in America, hidden away from the enemies, which were searching for both me and the scientists. I saw a guard walking about a meter away from the window, a gun in his hands as his eyes searched the sky for any sign of the enemies. Other than him, there was nobody around, besides the odd lizard that skittered across a rock cooking in the heat. The sand was a dusty color, and the heat outside made the air flicker like a fire.

The large metal door to my room made a loud grinding noise and I turned to see three men dressed in white lab coats walk into the room. They had never told me their names, although they knew everything about me. They knew that I had been born outside of America, they knew that I was celebrating my sixteenth birthday when they kidnapped me, they knew that I had tried to escape, and they knew that my body held the scars from the lashes that they gave me when they caught me. The last time I had tried to escape was three years ago, a few days after I had been brought here. I knew it was three weeks ago because whenever the doctors came in, they would first tell me the date. I hated them, and I hated what they had done to me.

Almost robotically, I walked back to the bed and lay down, shutting my eyes. The doctors hummed in delight as I followed orders perfectly. They strapped my ankles and wrists to the gurney, as they had learned the pain of the injections often caused my legs to shoot out wildly. I had sent one man to the infirmary when I kicked him square in the head.

I felt the pale blue sleeve of my hospital gown slide up my arm and a tight band being tied around my bicep. The needle pierced my skin and as the fluid entered me, my eyes shot open, and I knew my eyes were dilating. They had never told me the reason behind the injections, only that they would help my body adjust to where I was going. They hadn’t told me where I was going either.

After the injections were complete, the doctors left, shutting and locking the door behind them. I sighed and sat up, massaging my wrists and ankles where the metal had strapped me down. A dull pain started to grow at the points of injection, like my bicep, my thigh, and my neck.

“You will be leaving in an hour.” 

My head shot up, making my neck crack. My hand flew to my neck to massage it and I stared at the man that they had left in the room. I hadn’t seen him before. 

He wasn’t dressed in the classic white jacket that the doctors always wore and he seemed to be around my age, so I doubted that he was a doctor, but the clipboard in his hand made me second guess myself. He had short black hair and the darkest skin I had ever seen. His eyes were bright and they made a memory of ice resurface in my mind. The cold chill that ice gave when I touched it. He seemed oddly familiar to me, although I couldn't place it.

“Where,” I asked. “You haven’t told me that yet. I want to know.”

He shook his head, adjusting the shirt that he was wearing. “I’m not cleared to tell you that.”

I scoffed, “Then why are you here? Did they send you in here to patronize me, or do you have a reason for being here?”

The man groaned and wrote something down on the clipboard before sitting next to me on the gurney. “They should have warned me about your sharp tongue.”

“Why are you here,” I pressed. I wasn’t getting any answers and I was getting more frustrated by the minute. If he wasn’t going to give me any answers, then I wanted him out of here so I could enjoy the supposed hour that I had left.

The man shot a look at the door, “I’m going with you. The two of us are being sent into a stasis sleep and we’ll be like that for a few centuries.”

“Wonderful,” I groaned. “First I’m being shipped away by creeps who abducted me when I was a child, and now I’m going with some asshole who seems to hate me.”

“Watch your mouth!”

“Watch your attitude!”

The man turned to look at the door as if he was considering how much it would take to break it down. A tight tension filled the room and I shifted on the gurney, massaging the site of the injection, which was starting to become sore. 

Huffing, the man dropped a new set of clothes onto the bed. “Get changed.”

“Not with you in here,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest. I felt like I was on fire. The thought of changing while a boy was in my room was extremely uncomfortable to me, and with nothing blocking his sight, I was suspicious of him trying to look.

“You don’t have a choice.” He still didn’t look at me and it was irritating me to no end. “They’ll be back in ten minutes and they told me that they’ll lash you if you aren’t changed.”

“Fine,” I smirked. I swiftly tore off a piece of my gown and wrapped it around his head, tying it securely so that he couldn’t see. 

“Woman, would you...” he exclaimed, trying to get rid of the blindfold.

“Shut up and wear it,” I hissed. After about a minute of him shifting around to try and get out of the blindfold, he finally accepted that he wasn’t going to get out of it and turned to face the opposite wall so that I could get changed.

“It’s not like I would look,” he said. “I have no interest in you.”

“Why, you have a girlfriend that you’re leaving behind for this noble adventure, and even though you’ll never see her again, you want to stay loyal?”

He didn’t answer. 

I smirked to myself and grabbed the clothes that he had dumped on the bed. It was fairly simple clothes, a pair of jeans and a black crop top with frayed edges. I suspected from the quality of the clothes that they had been worn out by someone else, and that whoever had worn them last had completed their mission. I put on the clothes and flinched almost instantly. My body wasn’t used to wearing proper clothes any more, as the only clothes I had ever received from this place was a new hospital gown on my birthday. 

I yanked the blindfold off of the boy, making him yell at me in annoyance.

“What is wrong with you,” he shouted, his hard blue eyes glaring at me with hatred.

“Calm down,” I sighed, using the material to tie my hair up into a bun. “If we are going to be put into the stasis together, can you at least tell me your name?”

The boy didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything else to me. Not when we were marched from my room, down long winding passageways that seemed to lead deeper into the earth with every step we took. Not when he accidentally brushed against a cold blue wire that shocked him. And not when we were led to our pods, which looked like large coffins with rounded edges. I was pushed into the black one and I lay down, crossing my wrists over my chest as instructed.

“Can I talk to her for a minute,” the boy finally asked. I heard quiet murmurs, but with the coffin lid over my head with only a small gap where light shone in, I couldn’t see anything. The door to the room opened and closed and I suspected that people were leaving. 

The lid of the coffin was pulled off of me and I was met with the boy’s face again. He stared at me for a minute before asking, “What’s your name?”

“Iris,” I answered. “Although I don’t know why it matters to you.”

The boy suddenly leaned down and his lips brushed my cheek, making me flinch and stare up at him. He had hated me for the hour that we had known each other, or so I had thought, so the sudden act of affection made me do a double take.

“My name is Chris. I’ll see you in a few hundred years.” He shut the lid of the coffin before I could process what he had said, and I was left to think in the darkness and the cold slowly creeping up my body.