The Arena - The Moon Trilogy - Book #2

Chapter forty-two:

When Clarity woke up, she found herself in darkness. She couldn't see anything except for vague, shadowy forms that slithered and receded, causing her to doubt their existence. The bed she was lying in was soft, and when she reached up to feel her head, there were bandages covering the worst of her wounds.

She sat up, and she felt a sharp tug of pain on her left arm. Her right hand groped around in the dark air above the spot, quickly discovering that the source of the pain had been an IV needle, stuck into her forearm.

She made sure to be gentle as she pulled the IV out, but even as she did, she couldn't help but dread over how long she'd been asleep. It had been a long and deep enough sleep for her not to notice when she'd been bandaged up and stuck with at least one needle that she knew of.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and slowly stood.

With her arms stuck awkwardly out in front of her, she tried to find a wall or a door. Finding the wall was easy enough, but it was a few moments more before she found a light switch and flicked it up.

The room was flooded with bright light, and her eyes narrowed of their own accord to shield themselves from it. She looked around once her eyes adjusted properly.

The walls were plain white and the only pieces of furniture were the bed, a side table next to the bed, and an un-lit lamp on top of that side table.

Clarity turned around, and she saw that the door was directly behind her. How convenient.

She pulled the door open and stepped through.

She was at the end of a short, wide hallway. There was a door on either side of the hall, and the hall ended with a big window. The window was by far the most interesting thing within sight, so she stepped forward to look through.

The view all but took her breath away.

She was looking out over a sprawling, tightly-clustered city from what had to be a top-floor window. Shining buildings stretched out beyond the range of her sight, gleaming with the sunlight reflected off of millions upon millions of windows.

It was hard to tear her eyes away from the view to explore further.

To her right, there was just an empty wall, but to her left, an open doorway led into a spacious living room. One wall was made entirely out of glass, providing the same breathtaking view of the city below them. The furniture was simple, but she could still tell that it was expensive and well-made. A few more doorways branched off of this room, but she was stopped short in her exploration when Sam walked in.

He looked up from a phone he was holding and surprised flared up on his face. "Clarity! I wasn't expecting to see you up so soon."

"Where are we?" she asked, doing a little half-spin to look at her surroundings again before turning back to Sam. Her mind was in a daze. Was she still dreaming? How was this even possible?

"Benny brought us here," Sam said, pocketing his phone as the screen went dark. "He said it was a safe-house for the staff of Atlantis, before we—you know—drowned the place."

Clarity nodded slowly. "Where are the others?"

"Scarlett and Alex went down to the city to get groceries, Xenia went to the roof for whatever reason, Rachel and Benny are talking in the kitchen, and Johnathan and August haven't woken up yet." he counted each person on his fingers, his eyes going distant as they focused on a mental list of their names.

"How long has it been?" she asked, biting the inside of her cheek.

"It took two days to get here from Montana, but we've only been here for a few hours."