Light in Dawn

Chapter Seventeen - Brewing Storm

Where am I?

For a while, it was the only thought in Amethyst's mind when she woke up. Just those three words circling in her head, without emotions, without subsequent conjectures.

It wasn't as if she lapsed into a fit of panic that divested her of the ability to reason, no – her mind was operating like a jammed keyboard: while she had every desire to key in the additional command, every circuit for every key seemed to be connected to the same three-word mantra.

Amethyst was utterly confused. It wasn't the type of confusion that shrouded you like a cloud, but more like one which gripped you at the throat, made your head swim and your eyes lose focus. If confusion could manifest in the tangible form of an endless fine string, she was bound by its entangled coils. As she sat in silence, debilitated, the invisibly wound string began to loosen its strangling hold, and her senses began to return in wisps.

At first all she noted was the pitch black darkness. Her eyes opened and closed, but it made no difference.

Her arms and legs were numb, but as she frowned she could feel rough fabric brushing against her skin. The acute sensation elicited a slight wince. Almost at the exact she realised what it must have been –

A blindfold.

For a split second she felt her heart beat stall. It was like that time when she had walked atop a skyscraper in a dream and accidentally stepped over the edge. There was a moment of suspension. Then panic. Free fall. Her heart beat renewed with a sudden jolt, pounding in her ears, so fast and thunderously that her ears ached at the sound.

The first time that you awoke from a dream like that, it felt like revival. After the first time, it would become easier and easier to tell dream from reality.

She grimaced, gritting her teeth – her field of hearing began to expand: five metres radius, then ten, then twenty, then fifty, then a hundred –

Someone was idly tapping their feet.

Someone was whistling.

Someone was swinging a set of keys.

Someone was yawning.

"... Do you reckon ... check on her?"

"What's the rush? ... wake up any time soon..."

"... some stuck-up brat..."

"... he said tomorrow..."

"... haven't eaten all day..."

"Guys, shut the hell up!"

The overlapping conversations paused for barely two seconds before resuming.

"What do you think that girl is – deaf? She's not a bloody Inferior for f***'s sake!" The same voice growled.

The whining only became louder.

"Go on, keep shouting at the top of your lungs and the next thing you know, she'll sneak through the door right under our noses and we won't hear a damn thing!"

"Can you bark outside where no one can hear you, b**ch?"

Amethyst cringed at the incessant bombardment of profanities. The meagre information she could extract from their conversations – or rather, tasteless banters – was almost not worth subjecting her ears to such torture.

Strange. She mused, flexing her numbed fingers in hope of regaining control over them. Why would someone fret that she could overhear the conversations? They had to be somewhere close to a hundred metres away from where she was held captive. With such a distance, an ordinary person would have no chance of eavesdropping on her captors.