Awoken

Where to Go

   "So where are we going now?" I ask Keeper as she stands, collecting documents off of the table. With the blush wearing off her face, she looks at me and says,
   "Preps."
   "So what are 'preps?'" I ask merrily, balancing my hands on the desk, leaning forward.
   "You see soon." She stands completely up, documents in hand, and walks through the room of brainless people lost in their own reality as he had with Keeper. Though the "nurses" did not look anything like Keeper, they all looked the same.. She was one of a kind.. Why?
   Keeper leads me through a pair of double doors where a line of recruits are lined up, it looked familiar. A twist in my stomach takes its place, and I begin to sweat. I jog and grab onto Keeper's shoulder pulling her toward me, she jumps, "Keeper, I can't do this."
   She stares at me, takes away my hand, and responds with, "Why not?"
   "Because," I say stepping in place, "I've been here before, and it was too much. It's kinda how I ended up in this.." What is place..? Where am I? I grab her shoulders, "Keeper, where am I? What hospital is this?"
   She gives me a concerned look before saying this: "What is a hospital?" And that was all, no answer as to where we were or anything.
"Keeper," I say under my breath so those who are training can not hear, "where am I?"
   Keeper stares at me, her gaze shifting from concerned to cold very quickly. Then after a few moments, she pulls out a walkie-talkie, "Code 9.." She murmurs quietly, keeping eye contact.
   The recruits stand still now, casting their stares at us as if she had screamed war orders. They did not move, nor did they blink. No one moved. Keeper looked at me sorrily before awkwardly going in for a hug. Shorter than me, she wraps her arms around my waist. "I'm sorry.." She murmurs into my shoulder. Then, in the base of my back I feel a prod of electricity, and everything goes dark.
              *                *                 *
   I wake up strapped to black table, standing vertically. Wires are attached to my head and body. My arms are pressed to my side, and claustrophobia begins to fill my lungs, begging for more air, and space to stretch out. I begin yelling, "Please! Please! I can't breathe!!" I look around, desperate, only seeing blurry glass, sterile, and pristine.
    "I'm in a glass box," I thought.
    "That is right." A voice rings from nowhere.
   "Keeper? Keeper! Help! Please, Keeper, help! I'm strapped down and I can't breathe!!" I yell, stressing my lungs, increasing my panic. "Please.." I whimper, rolling my head on the uncomfortable, cushion 'pillow.'
   "Hold still.." She says uncomfortably, then everything goes black behind my eyes, and I am again swept into a new reality.
This time I stand on the edge of a building; I immediately jump back so that I don't fall off. I look out over the lost city, centuries old, and forever abandoned. The old Keeper, the one before the accident appears beside me nearly scaring me off the edge.
   "Keeper!" I scream, picking her up and hugging her. "Where is my body?" I ask optimistically, setting her down. Her long, dark locks fall over her beautiful, tan, chestnut colored skin, and one of her blue eyes. I sweep it out of her face and behind her ear, smiling gratefully.
   "You're in containment for testing." She tries to say positively.
   "What am I being tested for?" I smile, glad to see her face.
   "Abilities? Stuff like that." Her clear voice coaxes the words out easily.
   "Oh, what? Am I special?"
    She rubs the back of her neck, "Well, yes. We think so at least."
   "Who is we?" I ask, cocking my head.
   "Sorry, I mean I." She stumbles, fumbling with her hands.
   I glance at them, then back at her eyes. She seems nervous. I direct my attention to the skyline. "So where have you brought me this time, Keeper?" I tuck my hands in my pockets and walk to the edge. She follows, crossing her arms,
   "Same place. Just a different time. We were in the past last time we stood in a separate reality than our original, and now we're in the future. From the time where this place was an overwhelming forest, to a concrete jungle, and now to a decaying waste land passed from war, we stand in a second of it's time forever, and we can stand in this second for however long we want while minutes pass away in the other reality. It appears we are sleeping, but we are forevermore awake~ just in a different time." She stares off into the foggy horizon as I do too.
   "So why here?" I ask, glancing at her distressed face.
   "Because you feel negatively in our reality, so it took us to a timeframe that closest resembled your emotion, here." She shrugs.
   I turn to her, "Oh.. Keeper, do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?"
   "Doesn't mean I'll answer, but go ahead." She keeps her gaze in the distance.
    "What happened to you? Like, I don't mean to be rude, I just wanna know how you got to be the way you are in the original time frame rather than this one where you're—"
   "Normal. Yeah." She looks at me, longingly. "I can be who I want in these things, sorta like avatars. I chose my past self."
   "But still.. What happ—"
    "I can't tell you, Fighter." She looks down, then back out to the foggy sky line, decorated with abandoned sky scrappers and lost buildings coated in the same gray as the rest of the world's shadows.
   "My name isn't Fighter, you know?" I look at her, wishing for my proper name to be used. She glances at me with tiny flames in her eyes,
   "Right.. My apologies. I've forgotten what your birth name is. Mind reminding me?"
   "Uh, sure? It's Tristan Matthews. What is your's?" I ask curiously, moving closer to her.
   She snatches her head around to me, looking me dead in the eyes. "My.. my name..?" She asks, sounding small. Aside from our voices, in this moment, there is nothing but silence. "My name is, uh.."
   "It's okay, you can tell me." I tell her encouragingly.
   "Ekatsim Nur, but most people called me Kat."
   "Interesting name." I say running it through my mind. "So if something happens right now, does it technically still happen in our reality?" I ask, pushing myself closer to her.
   "Technically." She says tilting her head to me, smiling. "Why?"
   "Because.." I say moving my hand closer to her's.
   Then I am snatched back to my reality. The original, where I lay, fastened to a standing table. A mechanical voice courses overhead, "Experiment: Extra Heart, Trial 1: Complete."
   "Experiment? Keeper, what experiment?!" I yell into the glass box where only a ceiling vent is in view right in front of me.
    "I'm sorry." She says, and I black out again, back to a new reality.
                *                *                *
I'm not even sure how many days I've been in this glass box. I've kept count and my mind blank. So far I've had 8 trials performed on me, each pushing my heart farther and farther until I wish to be with her. But why is she doing this to me? Why, if she loves me?
   My head hangs as I try and sleep. It had been too long in the box, and I had begun to waste away. No food or water had begun killing me. Where was Keeper at 3:32 p.m. with my food like she used to? And where was my buddy, IV, with my fluids?
  Since leaving IV back in the hospital room, I had begun to miss it. Seeing as it was the first thing to have gained my trust in this world.
   I had begun to learn when the dark spells were coming on and I would black out, and I had gotten that feeling now. I knew at 10 trails we would have to have kissed in that reality, and after that, I didn't know. I breathe slowly as my vision begins to fade out again, but in the middle of my fade it stops and my vision clears.
   Through the reinforced air vent I can hear whispers and howls, "Fighter– where my– FIGHTER?!" The howls thicken and the air vent begins to tremble as bolts drop from it. My breathing increases, and I begin screaming for fear of Himm. I thrash around in my restraints until the final bolt drops out of the vent, and it falls to the ground exposing a pitch black hole in the glass box ceiling.
"No, no, no, no, no." I'm wheezing to myself.
Keeper's voice comes on overhead, "Calm. Stay calm. No panic. I come." The mic shuts off in a high pitch tone which blends in with the tornado-sounding winds coming from above. Slowly, a dark figure, wrapped in pitch lowers itself from the air vent, hovering above ground, centering itself to me. It was Himm. I couldn't breathe.
Himm closes in, "Fighter," it hums, "Fighhh–ter." I don't dare breathe; I stare to where its eyes should be, before it envelops me into its mass, and I am taken away.