𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 - 𝘔𝘈𝘡𝘌 𝘙𝘜𝘕𝘕𝘌𝘙

1 ~ 𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙡𝙖𝙙𝙚

Charlotte

 I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I am NOT scared.

I told myself these words over and over in my head as I peered into the darkness. I was kneeling on hard ground, and I found with further inspection that it was made of bars, like the ones of a cage. The air was metallic-tasting, and my stomach churned as I was reminded of blood.

A blaring alarm erupted into existence, and I clapped my hands over my ears. Adrenaline pulsed through my veins as I stood, trying to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they wouldn't. Another sound was added to the alarm; a screeching sound of metal against metal. Suddenly, the floor shifted. I was knocked to the ground, and hit my arm against something hard. It cut a long gash from my shoulder to my elbow.

I scrambled to my feet, only to be knocked down again with another movement of the cage. The floor had begun to rise. It reminded me of an elevator, only it was dark and cold. When I inhaled, I could feel the dust on my tongue. I coughed, and froze at the sound. It made me realize that I had no idea what I sounded like. My eyebrows furrowed, and then they did so even more when I realized that that wasn't the only thing I didn't know about myself.

I couldn't remember anything, in fact. No names, no faces, no personal memories. Who was I? What was my name? Did I have any friends? Family? Who were they? The questions sent me into a state of panic.

"Help! Help me, please!" My own voice rang in my ears, high-pitched and frightened. I banged on the bars, but there was no response to my cries, which were easily drowned out by the racket the cage and alarm were making.

After a few minutes of slamming my fists painfully into the bars, I decided that there wasn't any point. No one was coming to help me. There was nothing to do but wait. I sat in the middle of the cage, hugging my knees and rocking back and forth. I tried to control my breathing, but that just seemed to make me panic more. I opened and closed my fists, feeling warm, sticky blood flow from the broken skin on my knuckles and drip onto the bars on the floor.

I suddenly felt the cage jerk to a stop, making my body slam into the wall yet again. I scrambled to my feet and looked up to see the ceiling split in two, letting a blinding light shine in. I shielded my eyes, and I heard surprised male voices from above.

"A girl?"

"What?"

"What's she like?"

"There has to have been some kind of mistake."

I squinted to see a group of silhouettes leaning over the top of the cage, staring down at me like I was an animal in a zoo. Instantly my skin crawled uncomfortably; not that it wasn't before. I looked hard at the silhouettes, trying to find anything recognizable there at all. There wasn't anything, but there were things that stood out to me, like the fact that the males all seemed to be young – nineteen at the oldest. The second thing I noticed was that most of them had long and shaggy hair, as if a haircut hadn't been an option to them in a while.

One of the boys jumped into the cage with me. This one in particular was extremely tall and had large muscles, with angular eyebrows that gave him a permanent glare. His eyes, however, betrayed him. Even though they were black and intimidating, they weren't cold. Instead, I found intense curiosity.

I didn't trust it. I backed away as far as I could, pressing my back to the opposite wall. "Don't scare it, Gally!" One of the boys from above called down.

It? Why am I an 'it'? I thought with outrage, but I didn't have much time to ponder it, because the boy – whose name was Gally, apparently – had turned back to me. "We ain't gonna hurt you, Greenie," he said. I cocked my head at the foreign word. Greenie? Was that my name? How did they know my name before I did? Greenie. That was a stupid name.