Wellspring Children

Part 1: Nightmare of Fear

I open my eyes and looked up at the ceiling of a room I had never seen before. It was dark, only illuminated by a single, flickering flourescent light that gave the area a dim gradience. Then there was the wall right in front of me. It was completely blank with a metal vault door that beared rust from its age. There was no sign of a knob, or any sort of handle to pull on, and it was bolted all over- no way to open it- and above it was was what seemed to be a broken analog clock, flashing only straight zeroes as if it had never been set.

When I had finally gathered myself enough to make my head stop spinning, I rose with caution. The room seemed to be completely empty. There wasn't so much as a shadow to fill in that black void... At least that's what I thought until something came into view in the corner of my eye. I squinted toward the edge of the wall, but no matter how much time I gave my eyes to adjust, I just couldn't focus. I figured the next best thing was to inspect it- whatever it was- for myself.

I sidled over to it, one step at a time. As I drew nearer, its form settled into shape. After a few more steps, I could finally tell what it was... a person laying on his side.

I was relieved to see that I wasn't alone. Whoever it is, he could be my key to finding out where I am or what I'm doing here. I moved over to the person to try and wake him up. He shifted to his other side, seeming almost awake, and with a groan, revealed his face to me. At that moment, I realized that he was the last person I would want to be stuck in a room with.

His eyes had slowly begun to open. My eyes darted around the room for some place to hide, but there was nowhere. There was no avoiding him. Accepting my fate, I stepped back and waited for him to see me.

He lifted his eyelids and grunted. Once he had them open, he surveyed the room, just as I did. Visibly confused, he sat up. It wasn't long before his attention fell to me... and to my surprise, he had a slight hint of fear in his voice as he spoke. "Asir... is that you? What is this place?"

The boy before me was none other than the guy that has been giving me crap since the beginning of freshman year, Troi Nocel. I never quite understood why he was such an ass to me, in fact, as far as I could remember, all I'd ever done is brush past him in the hallway. He would never pass up an opportunity to ruin my day, whether it be by humiliation or physical pain. Being confused and alone in a room with him is probably even worse than waking up here alone.

"Yeah, it's me..." I said. "I'm guessing... you don't know why we're here either?"
He hastened his voice. "Wait... You mean to tell me you don't know?"

Troi stood up, trying with little success to keep up his tough-guy act. I had never seen him act this way before. Try as he might to hide it, he felt vulnerable, for once he wasn't the one in control. It almost seemed like he was more scared than I was.

In a frenzy, Troi shoved past me and rushed to the metal door, firmly planting his hands along the seams. He pushed forward with every ounce of strength he had, which, from my experience, was a lot, but even through a solid minute of work, it wouldn't give. With a look of defeat in his eyes, he walked back toward me.

"This isn't funny," He shouted. "What the hell is this?!"

I admit, I wasn't used to him being angry at something other than me. For what must have been the first time, we appeared to be on the same side. "Look," I said to him. "above all else, we need to stay calm. There's no way for us to know why we are in this room unless we wait."
"Does that... mean we were kidnapped? Oh my God... What do they want with us?!"

In all honesty, I had no clue what to say to him. It's plain as day we were kidnapped, and who knows what will happen when they decide to open that door. For all we knew, we were sitting ducks waiting to be picked off... but I decided against telling him that. Clueless as I was, I felt like I had to be the one in control of the situation. "It is possible that we have been kidnapped... but I'm sure help is on the way. In the time we spent being asleep, our parents must have noticed we were gone... the police must be searching for us as we speak."
"And you th- and you think... That this will all be okay?" his voice grew shakey. "My parents don't give a shit when I get back. Probably don't even notice I'm gone."
"Even so, we need to keep our wits about us. Once we find out what our abductor wants, we could give it to them and... we'll be free."
"And what if he doesn't want anything? What if he's just keeping us here so he can kill us later?"
"If they wanted us dead, they would have had plenty of time to do it. Besides, if their intent was to kill, they would probably want us immobilized too, right?"