Strong For Too Long Trilogy ✔️

04. The Containment Unit

CHAPTER 4: The Containment Unit

The pain was an excruciating momentum against my head. My brain felt scattered and skewered with the realisation that I wasn't sure why no physical pain against my arm came to life, why it wasn't stimulated by my natural nervous system and yet, all I felt was a numbing sequence, a hungover when I don't drink-I no longer feel the things I know I should when I watch.

It was a constructive masterpiece. The first set of programming entered into the screen eye level with me and I frozen at the suddenness it surfaced. The beginning of faxing files, the notes I wrote on the screen and off-screen were vital for the questions I'd been asked next. Day one-must of conjured further over-more than one day will remain as day one.

Each line on the programme had abbreviated symbols when writing a new code on the software. Soon, when I finally reached a certain pattern of memorisation, the programme developed and changed, turning numbers into letters and using such coordinations to open a sort of game.

A delivery system for structure plot lines, population-wide. I wasn't just looking at how to fax paperwork over to whomever was in-charge, I was reading each notation because that was the only way to clear it.

After what felt like hours, the timer stopped.

The lights above me flicked off and soon I was scorched in a pitch black diaphragm of nothingness.

My fingers tremble on the keyboard, "Rest, Candidate Eleven." I screech at the sound that resonates beyond the walls surrounding me.

I had no choice, no natural decision to rest when I wanted to and I recognised it in the dulled, automatic and robotic voice of the speaker I couldn't see and the voice who's face I couldn't match.

I dreamt of him.

Of Aaron.

He was merely standing there. A solid, structural form; angular with his silhouette and broad-shouldered, as he always was. I didn't just find his phenotype, his physical appearance an attractive attribute that had locked me into him, I found his aura confusingly safe guarded and secure. He did, in some odd way, make me feel safe in his presence. Only after I'd finally understood what he was doing, why he hated me at first and suddenly, the second I'm injured, he clicks to an abrupt change. Our relation was like a learner driver using a manual vehicle and jolting it every practise lesson.

We were arguing constantly, but again, many couples apparently did that too, common arguments and some multiple fights. Aaron Westlake did push himself into my life, after Pierce shoved me into Aaron's. With all the pushing and shoving, injury was obviously to be included, but sadly, in my line of work, it was consequentially compulsory.

It's what got me here, to the end of day one and I'd completed the faxing unit, with a ninth-two percent score rate and I was in the green, in the clear, for now. I couldn't tell if it was night or day, or how long I'd been here, just that it was day one of my initiation into the programme.

The dream contorts and my silhouetted hero disappears with the dispersing of volcano ashes and mist in the air, my head snaps off the desk in fumes. I'd slept for what I thought was a few minutes in my sleep deprived tales but, sitting up on the desk, the screen flickered back on, but another item popped up.

'Dinner instruction initiated:
First meal: Rice.
First drink: Water.
Take medication immediately after meal.'

Written in bold letters
The tab remained open, almost glaring at me before another page was printed from the drawer. I breathe slightly faster, hating the anticipation of wanting to read the page and what might happen if I didn't. Raising my trembling fingers towards the haunting set of drawers, I pull the handle and on commend, it opens.