Defiance is Survival

Ch. 1

Spensa pov

I float through the black emptiness. I can't feel anything. I can't see anything. I can't . . . remember anything?

No memories, no thoughts, no nothing.

Am I dead?

Did I go to hell?

I'm fairly sure that even people who go to hell are supposed to remember who they are. I also don't think hell is supposed to look like this.

Spensa

The word—the name pops into my head like someone flipped a light switch.

Spensa

What does that mean? Is that . . . me?

Yes. Spensa Nightshade. You've forgotten.

Well that's for sure. Spensa Nightshade. Doesn't exactly ring a bell. But nothing does, so i'm not going to base anything on that.

You've forgotten. There's no need for you here.

Excuse me? What's that supposed to mean?

Leave now, and we'll spare your people.

My people? What people? How am I supposed to get out of here anyway?

As if on cue, the world seems to open before me. Eyes, hundreds of them, thousands of them open, all at once. It's all I can do not to scream.

I feel frozen in time. They stare me down, every single one of them exactly the same. I try to close my eyes, try to block them out, but they're cemented into the back of my eyelids.

I curl up into a ball, and suddenly. . .

I'm gone. Or rather, i'm here. Here in a relative sense. I really have no idea where I am. All that matters is that nowhere became somewhere, and the eyes are gone.

I unroll my self, feeling sticky with sweat and fear. When I open my eyes, i'm blinded by light. Bright lights, that seem like they're burning into my very soul.

I'm wearing what I think is a flight suit, tattered and dusty. A strange white chalk coats the ground around me.

And on the ground in front of me is . . . a slug? A slug? A large, blue and yellow slug sits, I think unconscious, before me. And next to it is a mini fox-gerbil . . . wearing full armor.

Scud.

The universe must really hate Spensa Nightshade.

I sit up slowly, still shaken from my encounter with the strange eyes and whatever must have come before that. I rub my eyes, trying to expel the haziness from them, but all that succeeded was getting chalk in them.

Double scud.

Because whatever was controlling this weird situation was on a roll, loud, obnoxious alarms start ringing out, bursting into my ears. Ow.

I put my hands over my ears, trying to block out the sound.

It sounded . . . familiar? I shake my head of the odd thought. People start turning corners in hurries, but stop once they see me. The tattered girl in a ripped up flight suit, shaking wildly, hands over her ears. Not to mention the odd creatures in front of her, or the fact that she couldn't remember her name until weird space eyes projected it into her brain.

Just a normal day in my life. Which, to my account, has only lasted one day.

Soon enough, a large crowd is circled around me, leaned up against the wall in a fetal position. Soon enough, people who looked like they were in charge made their way through the crowd.