G/t I Guess

🧇 (1)

Run.

That was the only thought present in her mind.

It was the only thing putting distance between her and the bad place left behind. Whether it was putting any distance between her and the bad men hot on her trail, who was to say. The woods never seemed to end, the sky was dark with clouds where stars should have been, and the air was cool and crisp, and each breath made a visible puff of vapor as she ran.

She stopped for a moment to lean against a tree, trying to breathe, trying to think. She could be big. She could evade the bad men easily that way, but they could more easily find her no matter how far away she got, and she wouldn't know how long it would last. She could be small. She could probably avoid being spotted the most easily but it would be vastly more dangerous, more likely from one of them killing her accidentally with a simple misstep instead of capturing her and bringing her back to the bad place.

She shuddered at herself for considering the quick death as a preferable alternative to having to go back there.

A couple freezing droplets of water touched her skin, sending an involuntary shiver through her body. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to eat. She wanted to cry. She was so tired of all of it, the running, the soreness in her bare feet, the scrapes and cuts on her legs from the thick brush, the cold, the damp, the constant fear, the experiments, the punishments, everything. She just wanted it all to stop.

The thought of a quick way out barely had a moment to cross her mind yet again before a distant shout called out from behind her. A faint flashlight beam cut through some of the trees on the other side of the clearing from her, and she took a worn out breath. Time to keep going.

Her mind went numb again as she moved on autopilot through the darkness, hardly flinching to dodge the tree trunks whizzing by. She was getting tired, but she knew she couldn't stop, so she only focused on moving forward, running and running for as long as her legs could carry her.

She became so used to the sprinting and the intermittent dodging of trees and branches that she fully smacked into the chain link fence suddenly in her path, completely missing it until it hit her hard across the entire front of her body. She pulled back and rubbed her face where it stung the most from the impact, using the moment of pause to take in her surroundings. Woods still all around behind her and along the fence, but in front of her, on its other side, she could see a structure. It was still dark outside, but she saw windows of light illuminating some of the fence down a slight hill to her left.

She slid down less carefully than she could have in favor of moving quickly, no longer hearing any bad men in the distance but knowing they would be here soon enough, still coming this way every second. The light from the building illuminated a small part of the fence peeled pack creating a gap near the ground.

She hesitated, considering her options for only a moment, knowing that the more people that knew about her, the more danger she could be in, but she'd take her chances at this point. It was either sneak inside to hide and hope she wouldn't be found, or stay outside and be captured and this would all be for nothing, so she took a breath, and crawled through.

She made her way below a window, finding a small wooden crate beneath it and climbing on top to peek inside. She could see a room full of steel walls and machines, and countertops and tables.

There was a door up a small set of stairs next to the building, so making as little noise as possible, she walked up the steps and held her ear to the door. She could make out the hum of some sort of machine, soft and constant, but heard no footsteps or voices, so mustered up what courage she had left and turned the doorknob.

Stepping through the doorway, she entered a hallway lined with shelving on her left and a chair on her right, next to a doorway leading to one of the lit rooms she'd seen from the outside, metallic surfaces all over its inside. Countertops, doors, all of it the same shiny gray, save for the red and yellow item contrasting with everything around it.