Awake.
The girl’s eyes opened. Inky pupils dilated, absorbing the tiniest echoes of light from the fragmented darkness of the room. In the temporary absence of a conscious mind, instinct dug its claws into her brain, and every muscle in her body tensed.
She rolled quickly off the steel table on which she had been lying, and landed with an undignified thump on the gritty concrete floor. The scrabbling of her long nails against the cold, rough surface echoed around the cavernous room.
Darkness.
Cold
Fear.
She rose to all fours, her eyes straining against the unfamiliar blackness. Her naked skin erupted into goose bumps in the slight draft.
Fragmented memories slashed at her mind, more felt than seen. Pounding footsteps, smashing windows. Dozens of giants scooping her up, examining her with glowing orange eyes. She felt painfully alert, yet weak, as if she had been asleep for many years, or as if she had just been born.
Slowly the room came into dim focus. There was the table she had woken upon, there was the concrete beneath her bare knees, and there were the grimy brick walls. There was a tickling on her back, like the crawling of spindly spiders. She whirled around and grabbed a tuft of her waist-length brown hair in a slender fist. She continued scanning the room, storing visual data in an otherwise empty brain. There was a heavy metal door with a seam of light beneath it. She looked up. There was a single lightbulb. Off. Cold wires behind dusty glass.
Her stomach growled. Hunger. Thirst. A furious, burning desire for sustenance.
She rose slowly to her feet. The lightbulb clinked against the top of her skull. She walked, unsteadily at first, but with growing confidence. She staggered through the darkness.
Thunk. She bumped into the door and wobbled backward slightly. Somewhere in her brain, a sense of depth perception rippled into existence.
She pushed the door, palms flat against the icy metal. There was no movement. Feeling around its surface she found nothing but smooth steel and a square-edged handle, which didn’t respond to her pressure.
She pushed the door again, harder this time, and there was a creaky, whispery crunch which seemed almost deafening in the suffocating silence of the room. She ran her fingers over the brickwork around the door frame, feeling the cracks she’d made. Encouraged, she prepared to push the door harder—and then it swung open towards her.
The girl fell backward. She was on her feet in moments, washed in the light pouring through the doorway. There was a figure silhouetted in it, his slender fingers resting on the handle. The girl squinted at the glare reflecting off his bald head.
“I didn’t expect you to wake so soon,” he said.
The girl tried to sculpt words from her thoughts, and failed. She pulled her lips back into a silent snarl.
“But I knew you’d be full of surprises,” he continued. He flicked a switch. The lightbulb clicked on. The girl scrambled sideways, towards the shadows under the table. The darkness felt safer.
The man crouched slowly, examining her with wintry eyes. “You look…ready,” he said.
The girl clenched her fists, ready to attack him if he approached. But he stood up again, turning back towards the door.
“Come with me,” he said.
He walked out of the room. She heard his footsteps retreating into the distance.
The girl crawled out from under the table. Light still flooded through the doorway. She looked around her grimy cell once more and stepped into the light, closing the door behind her.