:TRANSLUCENT: Half-conscious, Maura heard silent beeps around her that reminded her of a hospital’s operating room although she’d never been in one. One thing Maura majored in was cautiousness. Behind the beeping was a silent mechanical hum that was lulling her deeper into her unconscious state. She felt tired and slept as if she were in her room and her bed. But there was an air of claustrophobia that her subconscious sensed. It was odd how terribly cold it was. She hugged herself and pulled up the blanket to her shoulders, her eyebrows scrunching together in frustration. No matter what she did the blanket seemed almost non-existent. It provided not even a touch of warmth. Maura sat up, tossing her blanket to the side. The surface of her bed seemed the same as the blanket, non-existent. She felt as if she were floating on it. She couldn’t feel the sheets and her room seemed translucent. As if she had no control over her own thoughts, she ignored this and got off the bed in search of a thicker blanket. As her feet touched the floor of her room, it was burning cold. Her feet turned an instant blue. She withdrew her feet immediately and stared at the frozen skin. Then there was a freezing drop to the back of her neck. She jumped, touching the place of the drop repeatedly. Maura looked up in amazement. Ice was forming on the ceiling and the walls. Ice slowly crusted together until it reached the floor of her room. Maura gaped as her bed was the only thing left untouched by the ice, it was like being inside of a fridge. “Maura,” Her Uncle Charlie called from outside her door. At least this was normal. She slowly swung her legs off the bed, testing the iced floors. She exhaled with relief, finding that she didn’t burn this time. There were cool mists from the ice that rose to her ankles, chilling her lower leg. “Maura, come here!” He called out again, but regardless, Maura walked slowly, careful not to slip. The flat of her feet slightly sticking to the ice. “I’m coming,” She murmured to herself. Taking the door knob in her hand, she tilted her feet, standing only on one side of her feet and shifting to keep from freezing. But before she opened it herself, the door burst open, heavy cold mists assaulted her, making her stumble backwards on the cold ice. She lost her balance and dropped on the edge of her bed. She looked into the black void beyond the open door. A figure slowly materialized as it slowly entered. It was a tall man, slowly entering in an armed uniform, aiming at Maura’s face was a slender silver tranquilizer gun. Maura tried crawling away, but her back was on the edge of her bed. She was stuck, kicking against the ice. The man stopped where he stood, there was a click from his gun, and in slow motion, Maura watched the thin syringe flying towards her chest, a fluffy decoration at the end of it seemed almost hypnotizing. The orange and yellow colors started to move like fire. Then the syringe zoomed towards her chest. × Maura heaved in as much air as her lungs could take. Her upper body lunging forward and there was instant relief that it was only a dream . . . Until she saw that her reality was none better.jl She was in a claustrophobic place. A case. Her nervous eyes trailed around her. She was in a teardrop shaped tube. The circular part of the teardrop encased her upper body, and the concave glass cover of her pod covered in a cluster of clear glass was not even an inch higher than her scalp. Maura started breathing hard and quickly. Her dream reflected the fact that she really was covered in ice. Small crystals of ice were sprinkled randomly on her and she remembered the night that she had been kidnapped right after her birthday. “Oh, God,” She muttered, a white mist came from her mouth as she spoke. “Where am I? Where am I? Hello? Hello?” Her voice slowly rose and started to panic. “Please, where am I?!” She yelled, her face scrunching as she screamed, tears slowly start to flow heavily. “Please!” She pounded on the glass above her, hard enough to hurt herself. “Help! Please! Get me out of here! Please!” But her cries only returned to her. She raised her leg to kick. As soon as the numb sound of her hitting the glass echoed inside her pod, pain welled in her foot. She had no shoes, in fact she had no clothes at all other than the thin blue surgery gown tied tightly to her body. She started breathing hard and quickly again. “What did they do to me?” She muttered, her breaths were as hard as the glass she tried to break. “Please! Help me!” She yelled out again, hot tears trailed down her cheeks as she attempted another hit on the glass. Her lower palm hit a sharp and hard crack of glass. She grimaced from the pain. She had given herself a long wound down the side of her palm and was bleeding profusely. She cried as she cradled her hand against her chest. If she was here in . . . whatever she was in, where was Uncle Charlie? She tried to recall the night. She hadn’t seen Uncle Charlie. She recalled being kidnapped right in between the hall and her room. But where did they take her? Her heart was beating hard enough that to almost seem like her heart was off-beat, and her ears were numbing due to the uneven intensity of her heart. Maura was afraid of something else. Being trapped forever and starved, and enough time inside her pod would lead to freezing to death. Knowing that her chances to get out were slim, she cried new tears. Her hand spread blood down her surgery gown. Did they perform surgery on me? She thought. It took an hour for her to calm down. She felt the fog of tiredness come over her that always did after she cried, this time with added effort to get out, thrown in some screaming and the fact that she was kidnapped for hell knows what. She took slow breaths and didn’t move from her position. Hugging her knees and her face tucked in between them. Her eyelids were slowly closing despite her situation. Finding out you might die and trying to escape was a tiring thing. The hums and beeps played in the background, it was sick how she found it comforting when the sound meant she was trapped forever. Behind her eyelids, a source of light blinked rapidly, light was being interrupted by darkness. She forced herself to wake from her sleepiness and looked to it. Behind the ice, she could still see that it was a fluorescent light hanging aimlessly from the ceiling, it was long, spanning one pod from her left, hers, and the one on her right. There were sparks shooting out from it as it blinked, causing a short darkness in one part of the room. One of the strips that it hung from was breaking. Maura could tell despite the distortion of her view behind the ice because it had already tilted low on one side. There was a tiny snap, and the light dropped lower. The broken strip couldn’t take the weight and snapped in half. One end of the light fell, she jumped on the impact. The light smacked directly onto the side of Maura’s pod, almost scraping the floor. She unfolded herself from her shielded position and found that the side that took the impact had caused a break, but just a small one. The cold mists were allowed to spill out into the room, but it didn’t lessen the cold. Maura’s hand spasmed as she reached for the light that oddly was still working. Slowly, she fit her hand through the hole, which was not a very large hole and her big hand was scratching against the glass. She grimaced at the pain but still slid her hand through. She could hear herself silently crying at the new wounds slowly being carved into her hand. Once she got her wrist through, the pain had stopped. She grabbed the light and had begun to tug on it. The first time she did, there were electric sparks that startled her, causing her to pull her hand through the glass which wounded her again. She cried silently as it was too painful. And having a hole on the side of her pod didn’t seem to drain out the cold. It only brought in more. Maura calmed herself and reached through the hole again, this time, grabbing the bulb from under the metal that covered its top to avoid the sparks. She pulled on the bulb repeatedly, muttering, “Come on, please fall!” A couple pulls and it still hadn’t worked. The single strip that held the light was still attached to the ceiling. “Fall!” She yelled out, jumping to her knees to get a better leverage. She was slowly losing hope. The longer it took the more it was becoming impossible. She tugged again and hard. This time there was a crackling of the bolts that held the last metal strip. Maura tugged again, but this time with hard breaths as she tried keeping down the clump of hot tears in her throat. Almost giving up, her grip had weakened and she started to cry. The cold was hardly hopeful. Finally, with a scream, she pulled hard. The bolts in the ceiling of the massive light gave in. Her cries stopped, replaced by incoming danger. She watched with wide eyes as the other side of the light was already falling. Quickly, she ducked into a fetal position, her hands clasped against the back of her neck to protect it. She closed her eyes shut. She stifled her scream as the light fell, shattering the concave glass shell above her in half. She felt a small sting of pain when she opened her eyes. With the light gone, it had becoming exceptionally dark, but the hums and the beeps were still there. Broken glass lay around her, and the massive light had fallen on her hip. She tried pulling herself out but the light had a good grip on the pod. Maura sat up carefully, twisted under the light and pulled her limbs in towards her. Maura tried to calm down. She could still hear herself breathing hard after all the excitement, especially now that she was going to get out. She lifted the light, it shattered the pod and itself. The broken glass tinkled as she lifted the light and threw it over the side. It smacked onto a hard floor, or at least what it used to be. Maura heaved herself out of the hole, but the excitement hadn’t stopped there. Her dream was truer than she thought. It was a vast dark room with steel for everything with many more pods just like hers, others more frozen than hers, walls and floors were covered in ice, at least what she could see of them with the little light left. She stepped out one foot at a time, almost slipping from the large tube of light she had shoved to the side. Regaining her balance, she placed her foot on the floor, like a spring, she withdrew it, just like in her dream. She glanced down, already knowing what to expect. The steel floor was covered in what seemed to be two layers of ice. Maura crouched down and observed it on one knee. Luckily the faraway light was as big as the one she had pulled and was clearly not flickering. Maura put her hand to it and inched closer. The ice was like a deep transparent mirror. “How long was I here?” She muttered with her voice shaking. It was a sensible question. She looked at her arm and noticed the small ice crystals that were sprinkled on her, there were trails of her sweat that melted through them. She stood and slowly and walked along the side of her pod towards a square protruding from the wall with thick lines down it that connected to her pod. It was also caked in ice but was smooth and clear enough to see through. Maura rubbed her palm against the ice to clear the moist and squinted to see through the ice. The screen was black and held bright red letters. It looked like old dinosaur technology. It displayed certain information about the pod and who it carried inside. Above all the information was a flashing box, she read: Unauthorized Pod Break: Pod 16A subject missing. Maura glanced down at her pod. “Subject”, so what was done to her as the “subject”? Subject of what? Around the frame of the pod were glowing red lights that signaled the emergency of the Pod Break. Maura skimmed down the other details also in red: Carrying: Maura Laine Maverickson, 16 She nodded to herself, that much was right, she continued down. Date and time held: May 4 2026, 4:18 AM She remembered that event and the year was correct. Her last birthday was on May 3 2026. No one gave her a notice that she was about to be frozen in an unknown place the midnight after her birthday. Main Pod Release Date: November 2 2056 Maura calculated, she knew the time she was captured and put into her pod and the default time her pod was supposed to open itself and let her go, but what she wanted to know was how long she’d been captive. Emergency Break Details: Her heart missed a beat. Emergency Break: Unauthorized opening Emergency Break Date Listed: January 1 2035, 2:37 AM Maura stepped back, almost toppling backwards over the broken light on the floor. Ten years. 2026-2035. What could they have wanted with her for so long of a time? The pod wasn’t even going to open until 2056. She woke up and got herself up on the New Year of 2035. Then that would mean- Maura gazed down at her reflection in the ice and fell to her knees. That would mean she was twenty-six years old. She touched her face. She was still sixteen year-old Maura. Her appearance was frozen into place and it never aged. Maura felt hot tears down her cheeks. If she’d been in there for ten years, what could have happened to Uncle Charlie? Questions started flowing out as she leaned on the side of her pod right next to the broken glass. What could’ve whoever brought her here wanted to do with her? For ten years she missed her life, what could the world look like when she walks out? Would she even find a world at all? Maura’s head shot up from her arms. She was nothing special, she was an average teen. She had no special connections to anyone who could possibly hold a country, much less a weapon. She was just a girl. She looked towards the vast line of pods just waiting in front of her. She was nothing important, so there must be others. Maura stood up clumsily, almost ready to run. She steadily walked past the pods, looking to their frozen screens to see if they carried a “Subject”. She swallowed as she heard the word in her thoughts. Subjects of what? Most of the Cryo pods’ screens were shut down or broken or the pods simply weren’t carrying anyone. Maura stopped. She ignored the dark part of the room and there was that beeping from a specific pod. She turned around. From the dark, there was a glow that was in the shape of a square behind ice. Other pods were unused and only sweating, some were open and frozen completely from the inside. Did others get away and completely ignored the fact that there could’ve been others who needed saving? Maura shuddered at the thought. She found the glowing screen that connected to a pod as frozen as hers was. She stood, deciding which to check out first. She rubbed the pod’s top and breathing warm breath into her hands and rubbing on it again. It didn’t do much but she could see a face under the ice and glass. It was a face as young as hers or about the same. Maura rubbed the screen this time and her hands became itchy after. She wiped her hands down her surgery gown harshly and brought her flaming pink hands to her armpits to apply body heat. It was always her hands and feet that got cold first, and once they did her whole body did, so it was always a struggle for her to keep warm. According to the info on the screen, the “subject’s” vitals were stable. So Maura didn’t doubt that he was alive. Her eyes scrolled to all the other details. Pod 13C Carrying: Shaylon J Mathens, 17 Date and Time Held: May 4 2026, 4:50 AM Main Pod Release Date: July 4 2057 Maura gaped, someone was even supposed to be held in stasis a year longer than her and was taken shortly after she was. This wasn’t a very far off operation and their age groups were close to each other. This relieved her. Whatever they were doing to them, she wasn’t alone. Maura glanced down her side at the face through the ice. Should she open his pod? She didn’t know him and what if he was a criminal or a street mob gangster or- But what was she doing there if those were the type they were looking for? Maybe they thought she was a criminal herself? But she doubted it. The worst thing she’d done was not washing dishes one night and Uncle Charlie had grudgingly washed them himself. Maybe this Shaylon was just like her. A regular kid not knowing he was going to be taken from his home to be . . . experimented on, she guessed. Below everything, she found a glowing rectangle that wasn’t available on her screen but was available on Shaylon’s pod. It was clear what was written: Stop Cryo Stasis; release specimen. Specimen, they switched it up. Even if she wanted to, how was she going to do what it said? Was it touchable under ice? Was there a button that controlled it? She tried, pressing her finger hard on the ice. No response. She went back, finding the metal above of the broken light had cracked off with a very useful sharp edge. She cautiously held it in her already bleeding hand and made her way back to the pod. Deciding she was ready, she stabbed at the bottom part of the screen, aiming to chip out the area that blocked the release button. She had done this before, at least with a knife and a clean tub of ice cream that Uncle Charlie had always made ice in. She would just hack at it and get big chunks of ice for a drink. Soon enough, she had created a slanting deep cut on the side that framed the button. She massaged her reddening hand. It had blunt sides but the piece of metal didn’t exactly have a handle. She started stabbing the other side and carefully the top, preventing the stabbing of the screen itself. Finishing, she dropped the piece of metal and grunted as she smoothed the skin of her hurting palm. Looking back at the damage she had done, she decided it was enough to pull the chunk she had stabbed into the ice. She reached and pried at the ice at the top, then pulling downwards. The ice cracked gently but the progress was slow. She shifted her feet as they stayed on ice too long, already feeling them start to itch. One hard pull and the chunk flew out, smacking against the floor with a loud thud in the exact shape that she had stabbed in. now she could see that area of the screen clearly, the rest still squiggly looking under the ice. She took in deep breaths, still deciding. It would risk her safety if she accidently released a bad guy. But he was a teen like her. What could they possibly have done to be trapped in stasis without their permission for ten years? She took her bleeding hand, some traces of blood had already dried out, and pressed the button hard with all her four fingers, making sure that the screen’s sensory would recognize a person’s touch just in case the ice had numbed it out. At first there was no response. She used both hands’ four fingers and placed them on the button. Still no response. Out of frustration, almost breaking down, she tried again but harder. She kept her tears down in her throat. She was ready to just sit in a corner just when the button had glowed green. She fell silent and her tears stopped, waiting for a response from Shaylon’s pod. It took a minute but the response was visible. Maura sat patiently on the unfrozen pod next to Shaylon’s and waited. The response was visible. The pod’s glass top had lifted an inch, hardly noticeable through the thick and cold mist that leaked out from inside his pod. Once it reached Maura’s ankles, her teeth chattered and had to pull them up and fold them under her legs. More mist and the top lifted slowly but smoothly despite the ice that covered it. She leaned in, could this Shaylon still be alive? Her pod wasn’t even as frozen as his. The top stopped at the tip, revealing Shaylon. Maura studied him. He wore the same surgery gown and was at least six feet and broad-shouldered. Dark brown hair slightly wet and dusted in little crystals of ice like hers. There was no response from him, Maura stayed far from the pod on her perch of the unfrozen pod she was sitting on. Shaylon’s wrist twitched like a nervous spasm. Maura rubbed her eyes. Did she really see him move? Then without warning, Shaylon’s upper body shot up and he started having a coughing fit. Maura jumped, almost falling off. The coughing sounded like it was getting worse, almost sounding like he was trying to vomit. Maura had the same itch of dryness in her throat but what she was seeing was far worse. After the fit, he started wheezing, his lungs starting to come alive. Maura felt her own vocal chords frozen as she asked silently, almost inching away backwards, “A-are you . . . are you awake now?” She saw Shaylon freeze after hearing another human’s voice. His eyes were wide as his head turned to face her. “Who are you?” He responded, more anger in his eyes than afraid like Maura’s were. “I-I-I . . .” She stuttered under Shaylon’s scary stare. Like lightning, he had made it out of his pod without a stumble, and almost like Maura’s eyes had cut the rest, she only saw Shaylon’s face in front of her, holding her shoulders like steel. “Are you one of them?! Where am I?! What did you do to me?!” “No-no,” She could barely whisper in fear. “I’m like you, I’m like you.” Her voice rose as she regained her breathing. “See?” She lifted her bleeding hand in between them. “I-I-I freed myself.” She was breathing hard, it seemed to echo against the humming and the beeping. “Then I freed you.” Shaylon’s eyes widened as he realized his mistake. He withdrew his hands off her cold shoulders. “I’m sorry.” He said calmly, but his eyes were displaying the same thing, fear. He was probably already panicking the way Maura had although he was calm outside. “How do we get out of here?” He asked, his head turning in every direction. Maura got on her feet. “I don’t know.” She breathed, her voice shaking. “I was hoping you’d know.” “I don’t.” He said harshly, panicking himself. “I was taken when-when . . . that night.” Maura was almost ready to cry. She sniffed, keeping the tears in. “Just like me.” “What?” Shaylon turned around. “I was taken after my birthday.” Maura forced herself to steel her voice. “I didn’t know.” “We have to get out of here.” He said as he searched the ceiling. He found unmoving cameras, stuck to the root thanks to the ice. But he had to try. “Hey! Hey! Help! Get us out of here!” He waved his hands at the cameras but nothing happened as expected. Luck was not dependable. “It’s not going to work,” Maura said, watching the defeated Shaylon. “If this place was top secret, top-priority, we’d already have security in here. I think we’re alone.” “How long have we been here?” He turned around, his jaw clenching. Maura gulped, but eventually she had to say it. Hearing it out of her own mouth was daunting. “Ten years.” “What?” Shaylon muttered, afterwards, he started laughing nervously. “No, no, last I remember my dad . . .” He stopped, remembering the painful night, the men in uniform, the tranquilizer gun. And how he just gave in. “The screen of the pods said so.” Maura said, Shaylon turned around, “What do you mean? Are you sure? Then that would mean-“ “We aged,” Maura sniffed again. Shaylon sat down on the ice as it all was coming too quickly. “Oh, God,” He bent over and planted his face in his hands, putting them on the ice. Maura let him. She would have had a worse reaction if she had allowed herself to panic. “How old am I?” He asked, his voice muffled in his palms. “You’re twenty-six because your original age was seventeen.” She said, Shaylon leaned back, seeing his face in the ice. “But I-“ “I know,” Maura said, “I think that’s what it does. Our skin, our appearance was preserved.” “How are you sure that this is all real? By reading off one of those old screens?” He sounded mean, hating the reality and almost blaming it on her for even waking him up. Maura sniffed, looking down at her hands. “Well, we disappeared from our homes right? And you witnessed that too? How can you possibly doubt anything anymore?” her eyes moved up, they were steady but shiny because of the wet layer of tears. Anger made Maura cry. If it was the total peek of anger, she cried. Almost as if her anger was connected to her tear ducts and she hated it. It looked pathetic, weak instead of portraying the real anger she was feeling. But now her eyes were defiant as they met Shaylon’s. Maybe having a stranger in the same situation was better than having no one at all. Shaylon heaved himself up. “You’re right,”
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:46:02 +0000
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