Crystal Legacies: Rebirth

Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

The Conversation

The room felt oddly dark to Razaria as she labored to breathe. There were other treadmills along the line, ones that individuals could turn on and off as they wished. Hers did not. The machine underneath her was unrelenting as she desperately struggled to keep up. She could feel her heart in her throat as she held on towards the front by the monitors. The sad thing was that it wasn't that she was out of shape by any means. In fact, Razaria really didn't have too many complaints about her own fitness. It was just that they were pushing her so hard and she couldn't turn the machine off to catch her breath. She didn't see anything that would help her slow down. One of her hands was even strapped on the same bar that the monitors were on. So other than letting the machine drag her, Razaria had no choice but to continue to run. Which was something Razaria did not want to endure. Especially as she already had a few bruises from the mistreatment of the facility guards.

"Your heart rate is getting dangerously high."

The voice was clear and masculine. Razaria had heard it before giving out orders; she had yet to put a face to the voice, however. That was the least of her concerns though. Razaria knew without a doubt that the man was right. Shortly after the voice had made that observation, the treadmill mercifully slowed down. Her heartbeat was painful against her ribs and it was hard to breathe. She was probably very close to passing out. It was much easier to walk than it was to run at this point but that didn't aleve all the pain. She just didn't have enough energy to complain. All of her energy was focused on dragging air in to fill her lungs.

When the treadmill finally came to a stop, Razaria weakly went to sit down. Her chest heaved as she tried to recover from the exertion she had just been put through. Her arm pulled uncomfortably above her head as her wrist was still strapped to the machine but it was worth it to be off of her feet. The break was short lived as the two guards from earlier unlocked her restraints.

They might have ordered her to stand up if it wasn't for the fact that she obviously couldn't comply with the order. Instead, the guards employed another tactic. Between the two of them she was hoisted up and carried off. Her body dangling between them and feet just barely scraping the ground. The indignation was already far too great to put into words. It made her feel like she was constantly stumbling around but there was little she could do. Her heart hammered in her chest with such ferocity that she thought it might burst out, breaking her ribs in the process, and oxygen seemed to be in a short supply.

As they carried her from the training room to a small offshoot area, Razaria caught sight of one of the girls she had met earlier. Just past a thick window, Mari stood off against a man in all black. Razaria couldn't see his face. From what she could see of her red headed cellmate, it looked like there was some sort of fight going on. She soon lost sight of the redhead and the man in the room as the other guards continued to carry her to another small room. There was a sort of beauty to the vaulted architecture with a crisp aesthetic but with everything that was going on she couldn't exactly appreciate it. She'd only been at this "Organization" for the better part of half a day; the time right before that was a bit fuzzy. Most of which time she spent getting manhandled.

She had no idea what was going on or why she was there beyond what the three girls she'd met had told her. All she knew for sure was that she'd woken up in this place before getting a tattoo of a barcode on her like she was a package of meat. After that she was manhandled even more, thrown into a room, and then forced to run until she couldn't take it anymore. All without an explanation. Which meant that all of the clean lines and technological marvels were wasted on Razaria. Just like how the beauty of this particular room was lost on her. She didn't see the silver vain detailing that ran through the baseboards of the walls. Nor did she really notice the crystalline lighting in the room as it cast fragmented rainbows high above, dancing off of the incandescent upper walls. All she really saw was a man sitting in a plush black chair.