His Gold Assassin

Part 5

Things were always bad when I failed during training. But after I visited the white room I learned to stop failing. I was only sixteen the first time that I visited the white room. The first time that I truly began to experience psychological torture.

It was called the white room because it was the only place on Aurum, that I knew of, that was void of any color. It was all underground and the hallway that led to the room, the doors, the lights, all of it was a blinding and bright white.

At sixteen they strapped me to that oddly white chair and pumped unknown chemicals into my veins that left a metallic taste in my mouth. They attached cords to my head and body and they made me go to sleep where I dreamt of hyper realistic things.

Dreams where I was tortured by things that felt unimaginably and undeniably real. Dreams that seemed to last weeks but were actually only hours in the real world. Again and again the plots of the nightmares played out and the results were always the same no matter what I did in them. It was a type of torture that followed me even after I had left the room and the white chair they strapped me down in. Some of the people I trained with never forgot the dreams, even while they were awake. They would suddenly scream and fight against invisible things that only they knew about, until they were dragged away by our superiors. I always wondered if their dreams were like mine, or if each of our dreams were catered to fit us individually.

After a few too many visits to the white room I committed my life to following every order with precision and accuracy for failure was no longer an option if I wanted to stay sane.

It became a trial for us students to visit the white room and as long as I didn't fail, I only had to go once a year. It was a major part of our life at the academy and yet it was an unspoken topic.

No one talked about the white room.

And no one talked about their dreams.