subject 13 // h.s. au

chapter five.

I jolted awake to throbbing pain in the back of head. A wave of nausea rolled through me and I moaned, leaning forward to place my aching head in between my knees. 

I gripped my wrist to find the nausea pressure point that Dr. Seven had once shown me, then immediately moved to grasp in between my thumb and pointer finger to try and relieve the pounding in my head. Nothing worked. 

I let out a groan of frustration, and then immediately straightened as my memories flooded back to me.

Where the hell was I?

I glanced around the room taking in my surroundings:

The clock on the wall, the heavy steel door, the thick concrete walls, a glass of water on the bedside table, barred windows looking out into a hallway, blinding white lights hanging from the ceiling. I frowned. 

I almost thought for a second that I was back in the bunker with my brothers and sisters, but these lights were white, not red. I pushed away the brief sadness that flickered in my mind as I thought of my siblings. 

For the first time, I looked down and noticed I was in large gray sweatpants and a large gray sweatshirt, the sleeves hanging down past my fingertips, and I hesitated. I had never worn anything besides my stiff black uniform.

I felt the white sheets on the small cot-like bed with the end of the sweatshirt and heard the faint clink as I looked down to see my ankles bound in thick iron chains with a lock secured to the frame of the bed.

"Great," I muttered to myself quietly.

Not because I wouldn't be able to get out, but because I didn't feel like having to do what I knew I would need to in order to free myself. I sighed heavily and mentally cursed The Doctors in about ten million ways. 

Amateurs, I mused inwardly, not feeling nearly as fearful as when I had first encountered the men by the forest. Obviously, they weren't experienced kidnappers if they had left both of my hands free. 

With those thoughts running through my mind, I reached up to my open mouth and blindly sought after the small tool adhered to the inside of my upper molars. When my fingertips hit against the small metal piece, I steadied myself with my other hand bracing against the bed, took a deep breath, and jerked the tool out of my teeth. 

I hissed as a blinding pain shot through the nerves of my upper jaw and forced myself not to scream. After a couple of moments of sharply inhaling and clutching onto the bed with my other hand, I opened my eyes to inspect the small metal object in my hand.

I don't know which of The Doctors decided that hiding a small lock picking tool on our fucking teeth was a good idea, but I guess it came in handy in a situation like this.

I sighed again, ignoring the pain from both my head and now my jaw as well, reaching down to fumble with the large lock anchoring my ankles to the bed. It took maybe ten seconds of fiddling around with the lock pick before the lock snapped open and I could unwrap the chains from my ankles, letting them drop down onto the concrete floor. 

The crash of the iron hitting against the concrete rang out in the small room, and I looked up to see three men racing through the door into the room five feet from me, just as I noticed the blinking camera above the doorframe.

It was the men from the forest, and without their protective suits I could finally see them clearly.

Oliver, the only name I had caught so far, was smaller than the others, wearing all white clothing with shoulder length blonde hair and a blue wide-eyed innocence. I frowned momentarily, he looked much too angelic to be living in a world like this, and an image of 12 flashed in my mind.