Caged

9 - Riddle

The light is blinding –– so blinding, in fact, it makes me feel blind, only instead of being surrounded by darkness, blindness is a stark, burning white.  It’s burning in the fact that it appears to be moving, like heat waves, and it crackles low and soft under a shrill, still, one-pitch clangor.

I swat my arms in front of me, and I’m not positive what I intend to run into.  I’m pretty sure I try to call out to Dalton, who I see squinting next to me.  He can’t hear me.  It’s not until I see Dalton sort of running in slow motion, fighting something pushing him back –– wind, blowing his hair back, which is does the same to me –– that I realize I’m doing it too.

And all of a sudden –– it stops.

I quake forward at the force, the jolting to a halt.  Dalton grabs my shoulder hastily to steady one of us, or perhaps both of us.

“Where are we?” he breaths, green eyes a more vibrant green in the loud white.  He takes in what little there is.

We’re in a white room, so enormous I can’t see the end of it –– if there is an end of it.

I shiver uneasily.  I don’t like the thought of that.

A round cylinder begins rising from the white ground in front of us.  On it are two big red buttons with black labels.

“Tunnel and light?” Dalton says, looking at me for some kind of explanation.  “Here we go.”

The crackling shakes the room again, almost like it was on Dalton’s cue.  Only by the look of alarm on his face, it was not.  I grab the cylinder, and when my hands can’t get a grip of it, I impulsively throw my arms around Dalton, who looks like the steadiest thing in the room, although he and I are practically the only things in the room.  He doesn’t say anything or react to the violently shaking at all.

My arms shake with the turbulence, mixed with my own fear.  Earthquakes.  They were not frequent in Ecritica but they would strike, and I always thought the ceiling would come crashing down on me.  Hiding underneath a table like the safety precautions taught?  I would run, outside, where nothing but the sky could come plowing onto my head.

I can feel fear, white-hot in my veins, spreading through me like medicine, a serum, with the Panel as the syringe who injected it.  Assuming this is not a real earthquake.

Rattling noises, like metal clanging on metal scream so loudly in my ears I have to shut my eyes to try to process logically why all of this is happening.

And as abruptly as it restarted, the shaking stops.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

My eyes open at the accusing, foreign voice.

I recognize him, his shaved head and dark skin, and it only takes me a little while to connect that it’s Grafton, someone Elena introduced me to.

“I knew I wasn’t alone.”  He rolls his eyes.

“Who are you?” Dalton snaps.

“Grafton,” I answer for him.  Grafton dips his head as a hello, or a thank-you.  I’m not sure which.

Dalton steps forward, and I remember that my arms are still dramatically draped around him and I slap them to my sides, although with the lack of things to look at in this room, it’s impossible that Grafton didn’t see, and he most likely did not understand.

I just hope I’m not blushing.  Although, why should I be?

Grafton raises his eyebrows and walks toward the cylinder.  We all study it.