(September, 2075)
'Burning....'
She kicked and thrashed until the blanket fell from her bed, long black hair matted to her forehead and neck as she spread out on her bed, seeking some sort of relief from the burning that was happening within her body....
'I...I am...'
She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt every cell in her body shaking. She tried to stay within the realm of dreams as her body continued to burn her...
'Fire...is everything… on fire...'
The flames engulfed her room. Bright red and orange morphed to hues of green and blues as delirium took her mind to wondrous imaginations... she grasped at pleasant dreams and memories as the fever within her body physically presented itself in the form rare and exotic colors that seamed to dance around her... whispers of images and memories danced within the colorful swirling flames....
'Am I… dreaming?'
She was clammy, hot, unbearably uncomfortable... her clothes were burned away from her body that was physically shaking as she started to whimper aloud...
'Have I come to hell?'
Her cellular shaking was beginning to burn her joints and her bones... she could feel them tearing apart thread by thread... She could feel every fiber of her being ... it felt as if a dull hot blade were cutting her layer by layer...fiber by fiber stretching... pulling…
'Is this… am I… being torn …apart?'
Every nerve was tingling with raw energy, shaking, creating more friction within her body; making it burn even more...
Her heart was pumping so fast it felt as though it would burst out of her chest at any moment.
The new pace was bruising her sternum, making the golden eyed girl gasp for air as it was sucked out of her room- she could barely hear her windows shattering … The outside air was only a momentary reprieve…
'It...hurts...'
Her chest constricted as her body refused to obey her commands, she wasn't even aware of what she was commanding her body to do... she could hear screaming, thumps and thuds... but she could not make out anything else... she could feel a thunderous shaking rumbling from her bruised chest...
'Help… please… make it stop...'
Everything hurt....everything felt unbearably sore...everything felt too real to be real... Part of her wondered if the burning fever drove her mad as it hurt too much to produce a coherent thought...
'Is this... how I die?...'
She screamed as painful convulsions ripped through her battered body. The burning came back tenfold and she felt the air leave her body as she gave into the smothering darkness...
"Iḷaiyavaṉai eḻuppu… (Wake up young one.)"
A mystical melodic voice whispered from within the darkness... She felt her eyes closing when the voice spoke again:
"Itu eḻuntirukka vēṇṭiya nēram!
(It is time.... To Wake)"
***
Myriah woke up with a scream, as her body shot up. In that same moment she hissed from stiff muscles resisting her movements. After stretching and rubbing the sleep from her metallic lavender eyes she looked around to see that she wasn't in her room. Metal surrounded her... 'Titanium? stainless steel?'
The sixteen year old girl narrowed her eyes as she looked around the cell for maybe the third time. It was a cell, a little bigger than a jail cell, with a toilet and sink across from her.
She tilted her head.
'Where am I?'
Myriah looked at the messy state the cell was in, papers and broken metal littered the floor.
'What is this place?' Myriah slowly climbed out of the bed she was in, she gently stretched her arms and legs; 'I must have been asleep for a while. Maybe a week or so as it's difficult to move.' Myriah pursed her lips as she felt her arms and shoulders 'my body feels as if muscle atrophy had taken hold of me... Yet i also feel refreshed.' She looked around again, 'where is mom?' A tilt of her head, 'More importantly… where am I?' Myriah wondered with a tinge of fear pinching at her chest.
'I can't get scared.'
The goal is to stay calm and to keep the mind from racing or else you are subject to give into panic.
That would lead to counter production.
Counter production in what could be a life or death situation was always a guaranteed path to death.
Myriah shook her head, swaying at the dizzy spell the movement gave her. 'I am fatigued..' She licked chapped lips, 'dehydrated as well...' with no real recollection of how she came to be in this place or what this place was, Myriahs thoughts turned to what she knew:
1. She is not home.
2. Her parents and siblings are not with her.
3. She has to get out and find them.
Slender fingers reached and touched the bars with her finger tips. A buzzing zap-like sound sent a decent jolt of electricity through her fingertips and up her arms.
Myriah jerked her hand back with a loud gasp. 'If I wasn't awake before, I am now. That has to be a dangerous voltage... why would one need to take such measures?' Myriah wondered as she brought her stinging fingers to her lips only to pause and look at her hand, 'there's no red or real stinging... any wound the voltage could have caused is gone. 'Did I exaggerate the sting?' Myriah tilted her head as she looked around again...
"Iḷaiyavaṉē, nī piḻaittiruppatai nāṉ kāṇkiṟēṉ.
(I see you survived, young one.)" a low raspy whisper pulled her from her thoughts.
Myriah tilted her head at the sound. The voice was raspy, hollow. The person in the cell across from her was also speaking a language that she had never heard.
Myriah shrugged that thought away for the more important one: 'How can i understand a language I've never heard?'