Intertwine

52 - It's Spiderman

I just wanted to say thank you for all of you who are still reading and keeping up with this story. Your support means everything. I've been posting a bit less recently as I've had to focus on other things and the story, as I'm sure you're seeing, is getting a bit more complicated which means more writers block! I'm also trying to get out a better quality of writing which means less posting four times a day and more rewriting chapters six times over! I genuinely never expected people to read this, it's just something to flex my rusty writing muscles a little and for a bit of fun, so to see you guys enjoying it is really cool! 

There is a far wider story that I've constructed which is just so wide that you won't see all of it, but it helps me build so sometimes things will go unexplained - if you want to know just ask! 

Aditi

What happened next was a bit of a blur. I say that, it's more that it was so wild I don't think I could recount everything if I tried, and I was also somewhat sedated. 

We were all gagged and injected with that strange liquid again and as the woman, who I learned was called Cog, was setting up a load of computers in front of her I felt an immense wave of connection crash over me. 

I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but something felt familiar. Knowing. Whatever it was meant me no harm, but I knew that they wouldn't want to be here. This wasn't somewhere anyone should be. I glanced across to Miriam, her body slumped against the floor from the beating she'd taken for trying to speak out. They'd gagged us after that. 

I sent out a blast of warning, of foreboding, telling them to get away from here. Nobody else was going to get hurt. I was exhausted, but through my tiredness I felt them crossing the emotional boundary. I pushed it out further, harder, but to my surprise and I was met with a response. 

A woman's voice in my mind. "We're coming to get you. Hold tight." And then it was gone. I groaned, looking upwards. I felt tears leaking from my eyes, but I couldn't even wipe them away with my hands tied behind my back. I just wanted to go home. Home. I wanted to be with my parents, to smell all the spices in the kitchen as my father cooked, to sit at my window seat and draw on my sketchpad. I wanted to smell my mother's perfume as she held me and stroked my hair and told me it was all alright, that it had just been a bad dream. 

I'd tried already to wake Miriam, but it had been no use. All I could do was wait. So I did. Hands bound, mouth covered, eyes sliding in and out of focus. At this point I just wanted someone to knock me out, I didn't want to be conscious anymore, because this was all too terrifying. I hadn't done anything to these people. The other girls hadn't spoken, but all except one had woken. The girl on the end, a tan young woman with curly hair, had been dragged away after they'd given her an injection of something. She'd begun to make these strange wheezing sounds, her eyes never even opening. And then the noise had stopped. Cog had gone over to her, kicked her, and when she hadn't responded she'd grabbed her shirt front and dragged her to a side room that I couldn't see. The sound of her limp body being pulled across the floor wasn't something I was going to forget easily. The youngest girl looked the most terrified of all of us. There was a small pool of liquid around where she was sitting, soaking through her clothes, and the acrid smell of urine was nearly unbearable. None of us could even comfort her, that was the worst bit. I tried my best to reach her, stretching out to try and feel her emotions and send her some sense of peace, but whatever they had given me had put a dampener on everything.

It was just as I was about to fall back into unconsciousness when I heard it. It was like a light patter on the other side of the wall. From what I could tell with the window placements behind me, my back was to the outside wall on the edge of the building. I wouldn't have heard it, if my head hadn't been against the wall. I closed my eyes, listening. It was regular but light.