「ABSENCE」 TMNT 2012

2; Rescue

    "Elly."

    The brunette bolted up, quick as lightening, eyes darting around her cell. Her heart seemed to be beating faster than a cheetah's sprint. She sat, gasping for air as she slowly came to realize she had been dreaming a terrible scenario. She remembered falling unconscious due to the amount of unknown fluids being injected into her system, and that must've been thrown into her sleepy mind movie.

    She looked toward the door to see Carson standing there holding her food. He dropped down to one knee and slid it underneath the bars. It came to a stop beside her cot.

"Thank you for waking me up." She threw him a nod as she clutched the sheet tangled around her legs. He grunted, which Elly took as a "you're welcome", and walked away without a sound.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the cot, she stood, a shiver running up her body at the contact her feet made with the cold floor. Immediately, her legs were overwhelmed with pain, as well as every other part of her body when she moved. It felt as though her muscles had torn, like the soreness when she'd wake up after an especially exhausting workout.

    Thinking back to the day before, Elly determined her discomfort must be a result of the experiments the Kraang bots had put her through. She grimaced. "I'm a human guinea pig. What a way to live." She would've fallen back onto her cot, but it was a hard slab of wood and she'd probably find herself in more pain than she already was. So she slowly and carefully sat herself down and pulled the sheet up around her waist.

"Day one hundred and eighty-one," mumbled the sore captive. She scratched a tally mark beside all one hundred and eighty previous marks, then laid her head down on the the scrawny pillow she had. "How long do you think I'll be in here, Buddy?"

As usual, silence. Buddy the cockroach hadn't appeared to greet her that morning, so Elly yawned and shifted on the makeshift bed. After awhile of staring across the room at the opposite wall, her thoughts settled and her eyes began to droop, heavy with exhaustion. Soon, she fell into a troubled sleep.

    But, as many fitful slumbers often end, she again awoke with a start. This time, she was alerted to a strange atmosphere around the prison. It was eerily silent, and the torches seemed to grow dimmer, flickering down to a small, candle-sized flame.

Elly hopped off her cot and rushed to the metal bars, clutching them tightly. She peered out into the darkened room, searching for any sign of what might be going on. It seemed all the guards had disappeared. There was no one around, and that wasn't normal.

    She smoothed a piece of greasy hair back. Her brown locks were so filthy they were almost to the point of becoming dreadlocks. "Looks like they've all left me here to die of starvation," she groaned.

Buddy still hadn't shown up, which made her wonder what in the world was going on. Maybe the headquarters, as she'd learned this place was often called, had been suddenly abandoned for a new facility. Maybe World War III had descended and everyone was dead from a poisonous gas. Maybe they were all simply taking part in a beautiful wedding!

Even as she ran through the possibilities, she was startled at the deafening sound of a huge, heavy door being thrown open and slamming into a stone wall. Voices echoed around the prison. Unique laughs swirled together to form a colorful picture of a happy, smiling group in Elly's mind. She squinted, attempting to see who had just bursted into the once quiet vicinity.

"In and out without a trace!"

"Yeah!" A smack was heard as two hands collided for a high-five.

"I bet he's just tired of chasing us." A smirk could be heard in this man's cocky tone.

"Maybe because he knows he could beat us any day and he wants us to let our guard down."

"Stop being so negative, Leo. We got the thingamabob, and we didn't even make a peep! That's a pretty successful stealth mission if I ever saw one."

    They faded away, conversation continuing, and suddenly, she began to panic. Something in her memory clicked, and the voices fit almost perfectly! They were running past her like last time. She had to do something before they left without her again.

    "Hey!" Her voice cracked, but she didn't stop calling for them. She had to make herself known. She just had to. "Hey! Come back!" But the voices only left her farther behind.

    At that moment, she realized just how desperate she was. Something made her throat catch; a familiar, choking feeling. Her eyes brimmed with tears that dripped down her oily cheeks. Freedom was leaving once again, unable to hear her pitiful cries for help.

"Please," she sputtered, choking on her own tears. The voices grew farther and farther from her hearing until finally, they dissolved completely into the distance. She stood, squeezing the iron bars so tightly her knuckles turned white. She was frozen with the understanding that she would never get out, never be free.

"No!" She screamed with renewed panic. "No, no, no! Not again! Don't leave me here again! You have to come back! You have to!" She tugged at the prison door, willing it to come unlatched. "Come back! Come back!" Her body shook with suppressed sobs. "Please! Don't leave me! Come back!"

    She hadn't been loud enough, and now she was even more alone than before. She'd missed her chance, and now it was gone.

Desperate sobs and angry screams that had been locked in her chest now found their way out of her. She'd cried many times while in the wretched cell she'd been carelessly tossed into. But nothing like this. She pounded her fists against the walls, storming around the cell and staining her torn shirt in her own tears.

Finally exhausted and dehydrated, she backed up to a wall and sank down to the ground. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked back and forth, crying constantly. "You have to. You have to come back," she pleaded, quieter now. "Please . . . come back."

    For the second time since she'd arrived, she'd been left behind. For a moment, there had been hope. But she'd waited too long, and now she was paying dearly for it. It was time to accept the truth: she would be in this underground prison until her death.

    "Hello?"

    Elly snapped her head up. A bright light shone into her eyes. She held her hand up and blinked multiple times to adjust her sight. Behind the blinding white huddled four, large silhouettes, and a much smaller fifth person. That one stepped closer to the cell door.

    "We've come to get you out of here."