The Steam War (The Steam War #1)

Chapter 4: A Simple Plan

The air is damp and stale. There's no breeze or movement.

I'm stuck in a room, she realizes. She squints around, but there's nothing to see. The musty air matches the rest of the atmosphere. It's the most pitch-black, ominous darkness she's ever seen—or not seen—before. As her eyes focus and adjust to her surroundings, a figure lurking in the shadows slowly makes himself visible.

Definitely ominous.

"Who are you?" she asks. The sound is simultaneously ear-splitting and timid, muffled by a cloth over her mouth. If the figure hears her, they give no indication. She tries speaking again, but her lungs feel heavy.

What's going on? Was I kidnapped?

She attempts to move her arms, but finds them impaired by a strap. Definitely kidnapped.

The figure moves closer, with a single slow and methodical step. Why was she kidnapped? Who is the figure in front of her? She tries scanning for more clues. There are a few items and furnishings on the outskirts of her vision, but her eyes seem blurry.

Her kidnapper takes another step closer to her, and she can see how frail their figure looks.

It doesn't make them any less ominous.

As her kidnapper steps right up to her, she feels full-blown panic. Her compounding fears only worsen as she keeps thinking about this strange, spontaneous situation. What was she doing before they kidnapped her? She can't remember.

The kidnapper reveals a sharp object from their sleeve, reflecting an invisible light. She can still barely see the faint outline of her attacker, but the blade is crystal clear and defogs as it reaches for her. Finally, more details reveal themselves to her. The man in front of her stands tall, with perfect back posture and one arm behind their back. The arm equipped with the sharp object sports a red armband and an old hand.

Her eyes snapped open. She was staring at the ceiling, panting and drenched in sweat. It took her a moment to realize that she was back in her own bed, unrestrained and not kidnapped.

"Thank God," she said aloud. "It was just a nightmare."

Just a nightmare, she repeated to herself in her head. Right?

A beeping filled the silence as she tried to recover from the unpleasant experience. Was that a lucid dream? She'd never had one, but it felt very real. Her heart kept its fast pace.

If that was lucid dreaming, I think I'd rather stick with normal dreaming for the rest of my life.

Finally, she recognized the beeping. This time, she'd set her alarm clock way too quiet. If her strange nightmare hadn't woken her up this early, she wasn't sure she would have woken up on time at all.

"I'll need to fix that again," she told herself, writing a reminder on a sticky note.

She nicely straightened out her thick blanket sprinkled with gear artwork, fluffed her pillows, adjusted her "Sparky the Spark Dog" stuffed animal, and kicked off her morning routine. It all started with walking along the wall.

She'd had the same living space for all three years, so she knew pretty much everything about it. Every morning in the dark, she would brush a dent in the drywall. In the wall next to her bed, a secret compartment held all of her drawings. There was also an additional light switch compartment in the bathroom, where her solitary form of defense, a switchblade with a purple frame, sat untouched. She hoped she would never have to use it.

After changing into her uniform, she grabbed her goggles from the receptacle and a random mug from one of her cabinets. Today was definitely a coffee day. With a quick peep at her reflection in the mirror, she was out of the room and on her way to the study hall.