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Chapter 5 - Part 5 -- Breach

Hannah's eyes snapped open, her mind even clearer than the "day" before. Because of that alertness, when she got up and crawled around, she immediately noticed a difference in the room. She was certain now. The room was more cramped than it had been before. What was going on? Why was the room shrinking every time she slept? Was it to encourage her to eat the room in large amounts so that she wouldn't get crushed by an ever-smaller enclosure? If so, it was a redundant measure, as her hunger was enough to make her consume large quantities of her room. But… the room was shrinking day by day, even if she could not make out why.

There was another question that came to mind from this. If the room was shrinking to make her eat it, why did they want her to eat the room so badly? Further, how did they make her this hungry every day in the first place? Did they drug her? That seemed likely, as she found her own behavior was completely inexplicable by any other means. But again… why? Why kidnap her, trap her in a delicious-smelling room, drug her to make her absolutely ravenous each day, and then shrink it while she slept? Aliens' actions were always inscrutable to some degree, of course, but Hannah had found reasons behind bizarre alien behaviors before. It was something she had done regularly during the War. Knowing why the enemy did what it did gave the humans a much better chance of finding ways to circumvent and even thwart such behaviors. 

So… why? This would be an easier question to answer if she had any light to allow visual examination of her surroundings, or an alien to try and eke answers out of. Yet she had neither. She had only the same, delicious-smelling, dark room, somewhat smaller than it had been the day before, and only her own self to keep her company.

Resigning herself to waiting for answers for now, Hannah climbed up to the ceiling and began eating her way upwards at last. The imperceptible instinct that had kept her from doing so before was now gone, making her wonder in the back of her mind what that was about. Was it somehow dangerous to do so before? Now, though, it felt as if her very being yearned to go upwards, and a different instinct called to her from above. So she carefully bit chunks of the ceiling from the space between two of the beams.

Shortly thereafter, her mouth breached a thin layer of differently flavored edible room, simultaneously causing a small rush of air to escape past her and beams of blinding pink light to spill into her enclosure. Hannah was too stunned to react at first. Her eyes screwed shut against the uncomfortable brilliance, smells of an unfamiliar space filled her nostrils, different from before but not unpleasantly so. Eagerly, she quickly ate to make the hole big enough and squeezed her head through. Her eyes had been so light-deprived that she kept them closed as she rested the back of her head on the soft outer layer of her enclosure, the roof she supposed, simply enjoying the cool air and new scents as her hands and feet clung to the beams inside to support her weight. Wow, this felt good. Suddenly sleepy, Hannah found that for some reason, even when she relaxed herself completely, she could still cling where she was without trouble. This was a curious realization that quickly faded into unimportance as sleep overtook her.