THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

CHAPTER 12

The guards dragged me through corridors I hadn’t seen before, deeper into the prison’s labyrinthine structure. Every step took us further away from the noisy chaos of the yard until all I could hear was the echo of our footsteps on the metallic floor.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, my voice bouncing off the steel walls.

The guards didn’t answer. Their stoic expressions didn’t even flicker.

We stopped in front of a reinforced steel door with a digital panel. One of the guards scanned his thumbprint, and the door creaked open, releasing a gust of air that was both stale and oppressively hot.

“Move,” one of them barked, shoving me forward.

The moment I stepped inside, the heat hit me like a brick wall. It was suffocating, the kind of heat that made it hard to breathe. The walls were made of rusted metal, and the air was thick with the metallic tang of iron. There were no chairs, no beds, no signs of comfort—just a barren, sweltering chamber.

Before I could take in more, the door slammed shut behind me.

"Great just what I needed"

I stumbled forward, squinting through the haze of heat, and that’s when I saw her—the girl from before. She was slumped against the far wall, her face slick with sweat and her hair plastered to her forehead.

“You too, huh?” she croaked, her voice hoarse.

“What is this place?” I asked, leaning against the wall for support, only to recoil as the burning metal seared my skin.

"HELL- or as I call it "The Chamber,” she said, wincing as she shifted her position.
“No guards, no beatings—just this. The temperature shifts. Right now, it’s the heat. Give it a while, and it’ll flip to freezing.”

As if on cue, the heat began to dissipate, replaced by an eerie chill that seeped into my bones. The transition was slow but relentless, like a predator taking its time.

“Why... why do they do this?” I asked, my teeth chattering as frost began to form on the walls.

“It’s punishment,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest for warmth. “But they don’t lay a hand on you. The room does all the work. The shifts mess with your body—your head. It’s designed to break you without leaving a single bruise.”

I stared at her, trying to wrap my mind around the cruelty of it. The constant extremes were maddening. One second, I was sweating bullets, and the next, I was shivering uncontrollably.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

She gave a hollow laugh. “I stopped counting after the first day. It’s hard to think straight in here. The heat drains you, the cold freezes you, and in between, you’re just... nothing.”

I slumped to the floor, trying to conserve my strength. The chill was getting worse, and I could see my breath in the air.

“Why did they bring you here?” she asked after a long silence.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Something about causing a stir.”

She gave me a skeptical look. “They don’t throw people in here for nothing. What did you do?”

“I didn’t steal the emerald,” I said firmly, more to convince myself than her. “But someone wants me to suffer for it.”

“Well,” she said, her voice trembling as the temperature began to rise again, “welcome to suffering.”

The next few hours—or maybe days, it was impossible to tell—were a blur of torment. The heat turned the room into an oven, and when it wasn’t that, the cold sliced through my skin like knives. Sleep was impossible, and my body felt like it was being torn apart from the inside.

I caught glimpses of the girl—sometimes shivering, sometimes drenched in sweat—but we didn’t talk much. The room sapped us of the energy to even speak.

At some point, I found myself curled up on the floor, my mind drifting in and out of delirium. Thoughts of escape felt laughable. The chamber was designed to make you forget who you were, why you were here, and what you were fighting for.

But I couldn’t let that happen.

I clung to the thought of the black emerald, the lies that had landed me in this place, and the people who wanted me to rot.

If they thought this room could break me, they were wrong.

Because for every second I spent in this hell, my resolve hardened.

I would find a way out of Nowhere. And I would find out who did this to me.