Gauntlet

Part 1: Chapter 3

Awake again. Dazed and confused, I returned to a fuzzy kind of consciousness. The side of me touching the floor was being poked by a bunch of little splinters, which made more sense once I realized I hadn't been moved much. My face was so close to the wall that I probably could've licked it, but I didn't because that would be weird. What I couldn't explain was a slight blunt pain in my nose.

I wanted to move around a little bit and maybe get more comfortable than this worn wooden floor, but wasn't awake enough, so I decided that the splinters I was being stabbed by were in fact as comfortable as I cared to be at that moment.

The door burst open at a ridiculous speed, stopping almost as fast as it opened directly before it hit my nose. I sure as hell was awake now. A familiar green-and-black coat whooshed through the doorway and the alien wearing it stopped in front of me.

"Judging by how little you've moved, I'll assume that you've just woken up," she started. "You must be the first to actually wake up on time."

The first. Earlier she kept speaking to me as if I was just another test subject going through the motions.

"What do you mean, the first?"

"It's quite simple. No one else I shot with that syringe woke up when they were supposed to." Maybe I was just thinking too much about this. Overthinking is overrated anyway. "Right, well. Since you are awake at such an opportune time, you might as well learn to stand." She stretched her arm out to me.

I was tired and really didn't feel like doing anything. I was in the same kind of mood as I'd been the last couple years when I woke up. My alarm, or in this case her arm, was there for me and only me. But most of me felt no incentive to respond to it. It was more of a nuisance than anything else and I was motivating the bare minimum amount of muscles to wriggle over to turn it off. That always moved my blanket just enough that I lost the comfortable heat that had been building up, and that forced me out of bed because the advantage of staying there was lost.

She pulled me up with such an unexpected amount of force. To the point that my feet were slightly above the ground at the height of the motion. That didn't last of course, and they landed back on the ground. Stayed there for what must have been only a second, but everything went slow when I felt the nostalgic sensation of my leg muscles contracting in an attempt to keep me upright.

But it wasn't enough. My left leg landed badly and flew back, causing my right leg to bend under the pressure. I fell to a kneel before collapsing sideways, bracing with the one-and-a-half arms I had.

That was unpleasant to say the least. Back to the splinters, but now closer to the centre of the room. Corru walked up to me, and reaching her hand again, said, "Again." Unpleasant was honestly the only way I could think to convey it. It barely hurt, but the hurt that it did give me was still there, along with the sinking feeling I got from falling uncontrollably. So I let out a groan and ignored her hand.

She saw no problem with this, as she hooked her right arm under my arms and pulled me up with her other arm on my stomach for leverage. I was still lifted up aggressively, but it was more graceful this time, or something. It felt different. 

"I will get you to walk one way or another, whether or not you make it simple for me."

It was strange. I was just kind of being held halfway upright, my lower legs still touching the ground. And it stayed like that for a good couple seconds. I felt patronized. No, something different. Mocked? Whatever it was brought my patience to the negatives.

"Either pick me up or put me down, whatever you're trying to do here isn't-" The presence of her arms left my body, and my chin hit the ground with quite the thud. My jaw slammed into my teeth which now felt like they were on the verge of breaking, my chin was throbbing, and I was vaguely aware of a headache.

"Don't get mad at me," was the first sentence she uttered with a hint of emotion. It was stern and confident, and quite frankly took me back a little bit. Suddenly I was scared of her again. She turned to face the door, and walked toward it. As she was about to close the door, Corru paused and said, "Remember you won't make it five minutes in this world without me." And with a controlled slam of the door she was gone.

I was on the floor again, and still didn't want to move, but instead of it being in the essence of waking up, it felt like when I woke up in the middle of the night and had to go to the bathroom. It was dark and my light switch was at the other side of my room. But I always held it. Everything told me to get up and go, but it was the irrational that stopped me, and so despite every sensation bugging me, I managed to just sleep again. Paralyzed.

The sun was out again, although I could only tell that by the light that leaked through the small gaps between the planks making up the wall. It interrupted a dream, and I spent the next minute alternating between getting mad at the interruption and failing to remember what the dream was actually about.

Corru wasn't in the room, so after the best part of a minute, boredom got the best of me. I noticed the workbench and obviously the platform I originally woke up being strapped to, but everything else until now had just blended into my peripheral. There was a big open space in the middle of the room, where I was now lying. In front of me was the workbench and to my left was the platform.

The new things were to the right of me. There was a big round table about two metres in diameter, which took up about half of that side of the room. Instead of legs, the whole thing was solid, just a cylinder going up to waist-height, and from what I could see there was nothing on it. 

And behind it, against the wall to my right, was another workbench. Although it was considerably neater than the one in front of me. It had a couple tools on it, most of which had some semblance of a lever or two.

Anyway, this was just distracting me from the thing I was really eyeing. That arm on top of the main workbench. I dragged myself up to it with the only limb functional at that point. For a basic little table, it looked pretty tall from here. I reached my arm up to the table, but couldn't quite get to it. And of course, at that moment, the door burst open behind me.

"You are rushing things. That arm will serve as a reward for regaining the ability to walk with relative ease."