REESE

chapter forty six (b).

Reese POV:

When the world came back to me, it came back to me in pieces.

A flash of ocean blue, a flood of metallic red, a slice of bottomless velvet black. I was drowning in colored pieces, fighting tooth and nail to somehow get back up to the surface, but the surface floated centimeters out of my reach. After what seemed like hours, the colours eventually dissolved into a formidable black in which even the tiniest flicker of light was sucked away into oblivion.

Stirring, I became acutely aware of my labored breathing. Darkness continued to lick at the edge of my consciousness but I tried to focus on the cracks of light penetrating the deep fog swirling in my brain. I tried to take in every detail I could without pushing against the weight that kept my eyelids closed. I knew I was injured, badly injured, but the problem was I could barely feel the pain.

I groaned, the noise sounding sluggish to even my own ears. A muffled, steady mechanical beeping registered slowly in my hazy mind. Everything was just so slow, so heavy. The beeping reached my ears once again but this time I didn't push the sound aside, this time my aching brain understood what that beeping meant. A surge of blinding panic crashed down my chest.

No. Not again.

I couldn't breathe.

They had done it again. How many more times would they subject me to this? How many more times would they mend my wounds just so they could prolong my suffering? How many more rounds of torture did they have in them?

I couldn't breathe.

The steady beeping was now turning into a high-pitched, frantic alarm. It filled the room, drowning everything else out. It was like a siren that echoed through my skull and made my heart race in response. The urgency of the sound was palpable, like the noise itself was trying to communicate something important.

Fear thundered down my throat.

Everything around me felt detached, like I was floating in a dream world. Panic brewed heavily through my numb limbs. I could feel the pain of my broken body but it floated somewhere in the background, muffled by something keeping me down, keeping me immobile.

A sob ripped out of me as I heard a door slam open.

I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the world around me. I couldn't move, but I could feel the force of my breathless sobs wracking my entire body with each struggling inhale. I was on the edge of a cliff, teetering on the brink of disaster, just bracing for the impact of incoming inevitable pain.

"Ree!" Voices faded in and out before cutting in again. "Open your eyes, honey!" The voices begged and pleaded, but I was consumed by an overwhelming sense of panic, completely detached from my surroundings and devoid of any other emotions.

Hands roughly wiped away the flood of moisture on my cheeks, I went rigid with fear. "Ree, it's me! It's dad! Open your eyes!" Somehow through my muddled terror, I recognized the voice calling out to me. In what could have been a disastrous error of judgement, I forced my weighted eyelids open.

Blinking, I took in a head crowded over me. The person was holding my face in his hands. His image was blurry but I could make out those distinct features anywhere.

"Dad?" I sobbed, my head spinning from what I knew was probably a bad concussion.

His voice was frantic, worried. "It's me, Ree. It's me. I'm here."

I couldn't control the onslaught of tears that streamed down my face. "Dad, I—I want to go home. Take me home."

Clarity started surfacing over my surroundings, but I kept my terrified gaze on my dad's watering eyes. I was afraid to move, afraid to blink. I didn't want him to disappear, even if he was just a hallucination my drugged up mind created.