Finding A Way Home

Hallways and Questions

Phoenix looked around her, knowing that if she were to find out anything about why she was here, where she was, or how long her "visit" would last. The faded and cracked yellow walls did not fit in well with the white and green tiled floor. The expired smoke detector sat a little to the left of the middle of the ceiling. The door that was at the end of this old hallway looked exactly like the door to the room that Emma had been in before she had miraculously gotten out of the cell.

Wait a minute... Something was going on here. Phoenix stopped making her way towards the other door and thought hard about her situation. How had Emma gotten out of her cell, anyway? She had said herself that no one could not get out of that room. Was there something Emma had not been telling her? Was her name even Emma Cooper? Cooper was a common and friendly-sounding name, and so was Emma, but had the other girl planned it that way? Emma had seemed relatively normal before they were both kidnapped, but she had not even looked up at the van, which was very obviously not up to any good. Was this all a ploy to get her, Phoenix, to come here, not the other girl? But why?

Phoenix thought about it and realised that that might not be the case, and she was most likely not the one that the kidnapping was revolved around. Emma knew how to fight, and she was trying to use her full force against the men who kidnapped them both. The armed men were not afraid to hurt Emma, hence she was fighting them back. To Phoenix, it seemed that she was unexpected by the armed men. Maybe she was only kidnapped because the men were startled and they panicked and did not know what to do. Why was Emma kidnapped?

Emma had fierce combat skills, and she fought as if she had done this all of her life. When she saw the armed men coming towards them, she had not even flinched. She had just gotten into a fighting stance and had launched herself onto two of the men, easily bringing them down, even though only for a second. Emma had known what was happening, and she had not told her. When Phoenix found Emma, she was not scared, she was only mad and angry, and she had not even cared for Phoenix when Phoenix was taken away. 

Now that Phoenix thought about it, Emma had tripped her and left her in pain just so she could provide a distraction and get away from the armed men. So far, besides the kidnapping, the armed men and other people at this facility had seemed like good guys, not bad ones. So maybe that was it. Emma was a "bad guy". Maybe the people from this facility were some type of government or something, trying to arrest Emma for... something horrible. Phoenix would rather not know what.

Phoenix realized that through all of her thinking, she had yet to enter the room. She could feel her knees shaking, knocking together, uncontrollable. She looked down at her hot and clammy hands, which were curled into loose fists. She felt the sweating beading along her forehead and wiped it off with the back of her right sleeve. Phoenix fought the urge that told her, "It is not to late! You can still turn around and run away! Run!" She shook those thoughts out of her head, told herself that this was her chance to get an explanation and to go home, and forced herself to take a step towards the big door.

Each step that Phoenix took felt like an eternity, but she gained a little bit more confidence with each step. When she finally made it to the door, she took a deep breath, and rapped her knuckles loudly three times. She waited there, her teeth biting on her lower lip, for a second before a deep voice said, "Come on in."