Relentless (Newt) [1]

1.1

When she came to inside that impenetrable darkness which was suffocating her, she almost screamed bloody murder.  She wanted to scream so, and would have, but she couldn't get her physical being to follow her mental directions.  Hell, she realized, she wasn't even breathing right.  Her lungs didn't want air; it wouldn't stay inside, so she had no choice but to rapidly gasp shallowly, uncontrollably, until she felt dizzy.

Plus, she was trapped fetal-style in some too-small box from which she was having a lot of trouble finding an escape.  Yet somehow the tiny box contained enough space for her to be shaking like a dang leaf, and despite some rational part of her mind recognizing this as a panic attack, she felt like she was dying.  If she was, she wished death would hurry up-she couldn't breathe at all and she was so damn cold.  Literally, black spots were covering her vision now, and though a panic attack wouldn't kill her, passing out wouldn't help her situation, so she tried harder to inhale through her nose and out through her mouth. 

Eventually, she miraculously managed to get her breathing under control-ragged, but under control-so she continued to search more thoroughly for a way out of this tiny, cramped damn box.  She couldn't quite find one, exactly, but she noticed the thing seemed to be made of sturdy cardboard, and at the top held together only by some sort of durable tape, from the feel of things.

Her breathing screwed itself up again when she noticed she knew what cardboard and tape was but had no idea how she knew it.  Holy crap, holy shit-she didn't know anything, but she knew everything and she didn't know how. 

Oh my God, oh my God, ohmygod, ohmy-she felt like she was going to be sick.  Not wanting to vomit all over herself on top of everything else, she told herself, "It's okay, Rosie, you're going to be okay.  Whatever happened, you probably just hit your head and it'll come back, we'll be fi-" her thought process was again interrupted when she realized that she at least had unknowingly known her first name: Rosie.  Or Rose.  Of course without understanding why, she had a strong gut feeling that Rose was really her name, Rosie being a nickname that she somehow associated with comfort, thus the probable reason it had slipped into her thoughts when trying to calm herself down.

Okay, good, she thought.  See?  We'll be fine, it will all come back.  Now this box...  She couldn't think of anything to do other than just shove upwards at the taped part and hope it broke.  It took multiple attempts, and definitely some exertion of her arm strength that she couldn't fully access due to her awkward cramped position, but she finally did it.

Heck yeah.

She yanked herself out of the torn box, just now realizing how incredibly stiff her legs were and how much her back hurt.

She burst into tears.  She'd just stepped into more darkness, and she realized she was in some sort of loud, crude elevator, and she didn't know where it was going. 

What now?  The hell NOW?!  The sobs became louder.  Rose's emotions were all over the place, unrecognizable to her, even, in this state.  Because she was starting to worry that depersonalization or derealization-or both-could be next, she understood despite her lack of memory that this must not have been her first panic attack.  In a weird way, this didn't feel unfamiliar anyway.  Not how, despite everything, part of her wanted to curl back up on the dirty floor just to hold herself together, because it felt like her body wanted to tear itself apart with these crazy tremors.  No, not how, instead, she ended up pacing around rapidly, respiratory state worrisome again and tears not ceasing, trying to run a hand through her hair but noticing distantly that it was tied back into twin French braids.  Yeah, this wasn't an unknown entity at all, how she was sure she'd have to sit down soon regardless or she'd fall, thanks to her nearly useless, shaky legs of playdough.

She came to this conclusion right as she tripped over another box-she realized that there was a whole handful of them near, maybe half a dozen or so-and fell on her face anyways.

Hissing in pain as she pushed herself up, she reached gingerly up to her right eyebrow.  Yep, sure enough: blood.  Crap.

With her soft right sweatshirt sleeve, she dabbed and wiped at it as best she could.  Meanwhile, the girl-her gender was the only other thing she knew about herself-was able to carefully make it to her feet again despite the tiny room's continuous upward ascent.  She grabbed onto the indistinct metal wall nearby to help her remain upright.

The cut obtained from her little fall actually kind of stung like a mother, seeing as the floor, too, seemed to be made of some mixture of metal and cement.  But, if nothing else, the whole thing seemed to have snapped her out of her physical symptoms of panic.  Her breathing was calmer and tears had stopped also.  She used the other sleeve to wipe those off her cheeks too. 

No matter how suddenly exhausted, Rose was just about to think up another plan when, with a thud, the God-forsaken hellevator ride ended.  It was such an abrupt stop that the girl's knees, still slightly weak, forced her down into a crouch despite her grip on the wall.

Before she could right herself once more, there appeared, simultaneously,  a grating, squealing cacophony, deafeningly loud in volume; and an increasing amount of blindingly bright light.  Left hand leaving the wall, both flew instinctively towards her face though she didn't know whether to shield her eyes or eyes. 

She didn't have time to make up her mind about it before a loud, somewhat shaken "Oh!" reached her ears.  Despite the obvious inflection of some emotion, Rose noticed, ridiculously enough, that it was a nice voice: masculine but smooth.  Gentle.  British.  And calming, somehow.  "Well, that's a surprise," the same voice continued, but quieter now-almost muttering, really.

"What, Newt?" an impatient, though not necessarily upset voice half-snapped and footsteps approached.  "Oh shuck!  Yeah, surprise is right."

Up until now, Rose, still crouched down on the balls of her feet, had been blinking down into nothing, trying to get used to the newfound abundance of sunlight.  It seemed like sunlight, anyway.  Something natural.

However, she anxiously decided that, in any case, it was probably time to look up and face her music.

So she did, and her heart skipped a terrified beat, breath catching in her dry, sore throat once again.

Nine tall, muscular teenage boys were staring curiously down at her.

And no girls.

She finally found her long lost blood-curdling scream.