Every Missing Piece

Chapter Two

The door bursts open almost immediately and they flood into the apartment in swarms, their gloved hands reaching for me, but I pull away. I don't know if I'm screaming or crying at this point, but my voice mingles with the sounds of the intruders and I desperately wish I could be alone.

Alexa said they were coming, didn't she? She said they were coming for me.

And yet, as I curl into myself and prepare to lash out in a fight I would inevitably lose, I realize that no one is carrying any kind of weapon at all. No, as I look closer, I can see that the intruders are actually medics. Two have covered Alexa in a plain linen sheet before gently carrying her away while others, as soon as I begin to relax, start to measure my pulse. I let myself breathe.

But then what was Alexa warning me about? And how did the medics come so quickly, almost like they were waiting for me?

"She's in shock," a medic says, maybe across the room, maybe right into my ear. I don't know. The words are all blurry around the edges, just like my vision. All of the sudden, my head feels light, too light, and I try to push away the outstretched hands that won't stop reaching for me, but I can't quite do it. As the hands touch me, forcing me to lie down, my lungs can't seem to work as quickly as I need them to and I need more air, more, and I can't, I can't...

I surrender into the black clouds of my nightmares and the hands that hold me at last fall away.

~.~.~.~.~

I awake into brightness. The setting sun shines a golden light through a window across from my bed while some sort of device near my head punctuates the silence with irregular beeps. I try to sit up and identify the noise but there's a rustling beside me before a pair of hands gently pushes me back down.

"Shh," a voice says. "Just rest for now."

But I shove the hands away because I can't wait any longer to find out what happened and why I'm here, wherever that may be. It comes back to me in pieces and I collect them one by one. The files for my assignment clutched in my hand. A room covered in red, red, red. A girl face down on the floor, completely still after her final warning...

Alexa Barron, what did they want with you? What do they want with me?

My surroundings begin to fall into place. I'm lying on top of a narrow bed, the faded blue sheets stiffly tucked into its metal frame. At my side, at the source of the beeping, there's a machine that displays a line pulsing up and down with the rhythm of its metallic noises. Thin wires connect the machine to my arm and my chest. I want them out but I fight the urge to tear them off of my skin. No doubt a nurse would quickly replace them anyway, since the only place I could be right now is inside the medic center. They've also washed the blood off my hands. Good.

I always thought the medic center would be loud and bustling with activity, not that I had any memories of the place to prove it otherwise. So far, however, there's been nothing but me, the faithful beeping of the device at my shoulder, and the figure by my side urging me to rest. I turn my head ever so slightly to get a better look without being detected. A young woman—she must be one of the nurses—stands at my bedside, her dark hair pulled back into a long braid and her posture so straight it's almost militant. She shifts and I can see a crest of two enfolded hands embroidered on the front of her uniform. Not just a nurse, then. A medic.

The woman must have noticed me staring because she's focusing on me instead of the device's signal now. She smiles faintly but it doesn't quite reach her eyes, and she offers no explanation about what happened to me or Alexa.

"So, you're back with us, now," she says.

"What happened with the rest of my assignment?" It's the stupidest question I could ask, especially when all I want to know is why I'm here and why my memories are filled with nothing but red, but my mind can't seem to combine the words in a way that makes sense.