Refinement: A War of Europe

Chapter Twenty-One: East: Captive

 Anya~ East (Russia)                        

A solder held my arms tightly behind my back and pushed me forward into a cell. Behind me another one pushed Abbeiy into the same one with me. Neither of us were happy to be cellmates for this section of Refinement.

"We are locking you in here, and we will come back tomorrow morning. Once locked inside don't try to escape. This is a test, for Confinement. Part six of  part one, Inauguration, of Refinement. There won't be any meals and we will turn some valves so that a gas leaks into the cell. It will turn you to insanity and some of it is truth serum so you will randomly speak what you think. We will be monitoring you. Basically we need to know how you will respond to captivity should West get hold of you," said a soldier with close cut brown hair. He was thoughtfully tapping on his badge with his left hand's boney fingers.

He half smiled and shut the door in front of us. I heard the door lock and I had an idea that what was coming wasn't very going to be pleasant.  I looked at Abbeiy and then sat down on the eroding concrete floor.

I heard a hissing sound and looked up. The serum induced gas was seeping into the room. I took in a deep breath of it as it stopped. My mind suddenly felt stranger, and more awake.

I blinked my eyes rapidly. Then I nervously clenched my shorts with my fingers. I widened my misty brown eyes and looked around the room.

"Walls. One. Two. Three. Four. A ceiling. A floor. All grey, all sad," I muttered quickly.

"Don't hurt me." Abbeiy muttered from a corner.

"Never," I whispered. Hands can hold. Hands can fix. Hands can hurt, but not mine. Never mine. Not to a friend of East. Just to West, their punishment- death.

A corner, a crease, a small little room. Dark and damp and boring and hard. No windows. No freedom. No easy escape.

"No escape..." I said frantically. "Want to leave, I want to go. Let me please." I didn't know to whom I spoke or why, but I felt horrible.

"Hours," Abbeiy muttered.

I looked up at the ceiling. "Too many."

I turned towards the wall and put my hands on it. "So heavy. If we tried we might as well remove all of the raging blue water from the oceans and seas. So much time. My head sees things. Strange things. Numbers, walls, words. Is that all we have left?"

My heart jumped as Abbeiy responded. "Seven feet to make a square. A prison cell. Not only for us to be held, but to capture insanity too."

I banged my fist on the wall and then tuned to look at Abbeiy. Brown hair, and dark, shining, skin. Wish's same and thoughts alike. 

I sunk back to the ground and closed my eyes to shut off the room. In my mind I thought of Russia. So much suffering, crying, and pain. So bad the humans are rarer than the creatures- the bad ones. How nice it'd be to fly away and be with "Grayson," I finished out loud.

 The insanity impressed upon my head let me think of him clearer for some reason. I was oddly happy. I knew he wasn't a coward and outcast who went to America. I knew he wasn't dead. He was very alive, but not joyfully. I shuddered. His eyes, his sweet and sad eyes. I remembered when my aunt who I grew up with told me: "Anya, child. We speak through our mouths for a reason we see through our eyes for a reason. Focus closely on somebody's face and you have unlocked their life." Grayson was in West. "Why couldn't it have been East? Why, West, why?" I asked myself out loud.

"Why West what?" Abbeiy asked. Her face was set in her hands.

My brother... that is what I knew I should say. Those were the words that formed at my lips. I knew things would be bad if I told my new secret though. I struggled to hold it in. The truth serum was fighting against me.