Prisoner 83 | the 100

chapter twenty-two

The room seemed as if it was growing in brightness, everything was so goddamn white. The intensely cleaned room was overwhelmingly blinding, so much so that Hazel had to squint in order to see.

As it progressively continued to brighten—making her vision blurry as her eyes tried adjusting to the room's glow—Hazel heard distant footsteps getting louder and louder. There was another noise, it sounded like something was being rolled along a smooth surface. Hazel wanted to get up and see who this newcomer was, but she was scared. The footsteps were hurting her ears, the brightness hurting her eyes. She felt a migraine begin to brew in her head and her heart was pounding unevenly, neither of these being good signs.

Her heart beat faster and faster as the footsteps became louder and seemingly closer. The painful rolling noise suddenly stopped, the footsteps stopping soon after. Hazel almost let out a relieved breath, but it was caught in her dry, sore throat. She could not relax just yet, the footsteps had stopped directly outside of her door—the door of the white room. The dirty blonde tried looking through the window from her vulnerable, curled up position on what she had known to be her bed for the last few hours.

And before she could look around for somewhere to go—somewhere to hide—the doorknob began to twist. It seemed as if everything was moving in slow motion at first, but then the door was abruptly thrown open. Hazel grabbed the closest thing near her—her IV pole—as a weapon (one that she inwardly promised that she would only use in case she needed to defend herself). She knew she was in some sort of hospital, but she still felt uneasy.

Maybe that had to do with the fact that she had not had any human contact in hours, or because the first person she had seen was lying in a bed across the hall from her, plugged up to a bunch of unrecognizable tubes.

As her soon as her thoughts had begun to take over her brain and make her forget about her current fearful predicament, they stopped immediately once someone entered the bright hospital-like room. Two people, actually. One of them—the young female—was dressed in a short sleeved, frilly pink dress covered in flowers and ruffles. The other was an older male dressed in a fading navy blue suit that was fraying. The suit seemed to be in fairly good condition, but Hazel wouldn't have known if it wasn't. These people have strange clothes, she thought.

"Hazel," the white haired man greeted with a smile as he entered, "My name is Dante Wallace, this is Maya Vie. She has been monitoring you for the past few hours during the decontamination process. It seems as if you've taken a hard beating to your head, how are you feeling?"

It was then that the dirty blonde realized her head was pounding from having taken a hit earlier, which she oddly could not remember. Strange, she thought, why hadn't I noticed the pain in my head until now. It could be a concussion. . . Her thoughts trailed off as she remembered that she had been asked a question. Her parents had always taught her to speak when spoken to—or at last she thought they had. "My head hurts."

The white haired man slightly nodded as Maya gave the dirty blonde a sympathetic smile. Dante offered her a smile of his own before stating, "Yes, Maya mentioned that might be the case. You see, she's one of our best medical assistants in Mount Weather."

"Mount Weather?" Hazel asked. If she wasn't confused about her location before, she definitely was now.

"My apologies, it seems my old age has caused me to forget my own manners," the elder man said with a chuckle. He then raised his arms and continued, "Welcome to Mount Weather, Miss Daniels."

If she were being welcomed, then she could not have been there before. And if she was not already at Mount Weather, then where did she come from? It seemed as if Dante Wallace noticed her confusion and went on to explain.