Castaway Team

Chapter 1

As if from nowhere, a gust of swirling sand hit her face, waking her from her deep, almost eternal slumber. Aisha sheepishly forced open her eyes to find her face pressed against the harsh, burning desert floor and her glasses slightly buried some two metres away from where she was laying. She quickly scrambled to her feet, only to realise that she had no strength left in her and she slumped back onto the floor, this time landing on her back. To her horror, when she attempted to speak, the only sound that left her mouth was a struggling sigh and when she tried again, she wasn't even able to conjure the sigh from her mouth.

She didn't know how long she was paralysed for but she had seen the blazing sun sweep across the clear sky in what had seemed like one quick, seamless motion. She attempted to move but her body didn't respond so she felt as if all she could do was look up into the sky: an empty blue canvas with a blinding circle of light suspended in it. The sun. The ruthless, merciless sun. However, a pale face found its way into Aisha's view. A face that Aisha knew. It was her friend Julia.

Although she was surprised to be face-to-face with her old school friend in this unfamiliar world, she couldn't help but morph her look of fearfulness into a quick but convincing smile. Julia smiled back. However this smile was short-lived and within seconds became a face of realisation as she remembered her surroundings. They were stuck between endless dunes of golden sand with no possible exit in any direction. To avoid letting the horrifying reality engulf her mind, Julia let out a hand to Aisha, and pulled her up so that Aisha was now sitting. But this sudden movement triggered an uncalled-for pulse of pain in her temples and her vision blurred slightly. Her mind showed her something. A needle. Two people with masks. She even heard the screams. And shaking?

It was Julia trying to shake her out of this sudden trance and the image left Aisha's mind faster than it had appeared. Julia, clearly suspecting something had happened to Aisha just then, desperately exclaimed "What happened?" to which Aisha shook her head. "I ... don't know." Desperate for reassurance, Julia dropped to her knees in order to be eye-to-eye with Aisha and with fear trembling in her voice, asked "Where are we?". However she already knew the answer to the question and answered it herself. "In the middle of nowhere."