A Rude Awakening

Chapter 2

Warning: this chapter contains descriptions of bodily harm and fighting. I will reveal more about the forensics laboratory guard Ivan later.

St. Petersburg Forensics Lab 7

Russian Federation

Maria Nikolaevna Romanova awoke to darkness. The former Grand Duchess opened her eyes, squinting under the harsh glaring lights and breathing hard. She shrieked and trembled, remembering what the horrid Soviet guards had done to her family. They said that they were going to move her family and friend Dr. Botkin to a safe place. They instead had beaten, shot, and stabbed her and her dear family to death!

She whimpered, bursting into tears. She did not know what happened. She felt so alone again as if she were being transported without her sisters to that dreary prison.

And neither did she know what sort of place or realm she had awoken up in. Was this heaven after the wandering gloom she had been within? Perhaps she would see her family again! However, something felt off. She was laying down on a soft surface, and there was a small platform above her...

Minutes passed. Nothing, nobody, had approached her yet.

She saw nothing but a blurred arrangement of lights and silhouettes of objects. She blinked hard a few more times, feeling the places around herself. A wall was to her left, and the steel platforms were only as large as her body. She then looked aside, seeing a strange white room with shelves and desks cluttered with strange devices. Some of them had strange, thin devices flashing strange images and Russian text. Connected to the lit up objects were peculiar gray and black boxes with buttons and strange slots. Cords- Wires of some dark material connected the boxes to the thin, flashing objects.

Her fright only intensified, as she began to hyperventilate, clutching her arms around her naked body. And the sight of other human skeletons enclosed in glass cases upon metal racks did not offer her a comforting sight either. No... Perhaps the Soviets had brought her somewhere to torture or violate her! No, this could not be!

"No, no, no!" She shouted, rolling off the shelf. She fell onto the tiled floor with a hard thump, feeling pain on her back and legs. She felt the cold, dry air against her skin. Yet the faint odors of alcohol and something like mint wafted through the air. She felt perplexed, which soon morphed into mild relief.

This was likely a hospital?

No, that assumption was false. She had died. Hospitals were focused on servicing the still alive. The patients were sick and wounded people. She had once dealt with the Russian soldiers in the Great War as a light nurse. Memories came to mind of uniformed doctors, her father giving medals to the bravest, her mother singing hymns to the suffering and dying, and her sisters handling their nursing duties to those loyal men...

Wherever they were, they were all either dead or had moved away. This saddened and frightened her again. She ran behind a shelf, looking for something to cover herself. A white coat caught her eye, along with rubber pants.

This would do. Wherever she had awoken in, she would find someone to inform and help her. With shaky steps, she made her way to the metal door. She opened it, looking around to see an empty white hallway with numbered, steel doors. Signs on each door read "Sample Room 1A" or some similar title.

She went out of the room, until a shrill noise blasted out from the red boxes high on the walls... Red lights flashed as the red boxes continued to blare their noise.

She shut her eyes and covered her ears, running down the hallway... Until she hit something and fell onto it. She opened her eyes again to see a uniformed man and another woman in a white lab coat.