After only a couple seconds of trying to meditate, she peeked open her right eye, immediately catching the sight of a faint light in front of her. She felt a faint, joyful flutter inside of her ghostly body, before quickly rising to her feet as she opened both of her eyes to stare at the small glistening light of hope in front of her.
Drawn to it, the sight of it drowning out the fear of the unknown she was surrounded by, she began to run to it, frantically; her steps silent as they rippled the water below her feet.
Faster...
Faster....
Faster!
She didn't have to worry about running out of breath or becoming exhausted, but as she got closer, her eyes began to see an image.
No...
A movie?
Kaori was staring at the back of a woman with long black hair. She was wearing a black and orange body suit, but was standing in a large metal room with hundreds, if not thousands, of lit up buttons. A cockpit of some sort?
She was alone and slightly hunched over with her arms hanging down limply in front of her, and her legs were bent as if they were about to give out.
The woman was also covered in blood. Her blood.
Then the sounds of groans, screams, scratches against metal, hard thuds, and drips began to enter her ears- it was horrific, but she couldn't help herself. She just wanted to keep running towards it all; the pull towards this woman was almost magnetic.
Kaori felt like she wanted to save her. She didn't know what was going on, but she felt distressed.
She reached out as far as she could, her fingertips finally touching this image, and as her hand began to sink in, she began to feel pain in it; but she couldn't stop.
Then her arm; pain.
Then as her face entered, everything went black, like her eyes were closed and pain jolted through her entire body all at once.
And then she was awake; immediately collapsing to the floor from the agony while sweating profusely. She hastily began to lift herself up, managing to get her torso off the floor by extending her arms.
In front of her, through her hazy, distorted vision, she saw a small bottle of red liquid only a few feet in front of her against a wall; it was at the end of a narrow walkway between odd, metal desks-control consoles?
Despite her body screaming at her to die, she dropped down to her elbows and rapidly began to crawl towards it against the cold, metal floor. Her long, black hair was tripping her up as she crawled, while her body and limbs were scrapping against thick screwheads before Kaori finally reached the odd, small bottle of red liquid.
Without any hesitation other than hoping it wasn't blood, she gripped the small cork of it with her teeth, pulling it from the bottle with a hollow pop, before spitting it out haphazardly. Kaori then chugged the bottle, and almost instantly, all her pain went away and her vision, hazed by agony, had come back to her.
Though it wasn't doing her much good. The room was barely lit unlike the image.
As she sat up, twisting herself around to place her back against one of the metal, slightly curved walls to face the inner part of the room, she couldn't make any sense of it.
She was surrounded by numerous large control consoles, uniformly placed, and each with blinking buttons.
Each of them facing one direction.
An extremely wide, large, curved, heavily bloodied glass window that faced nothing but the stars and distant planets. Space? She wondered to herself, hoping it wasn't and that she was actually just in a coma back on Earth and this was something like the ghosts of Christmas ordeal.
Kaori then noticed her hair beginning to turn white, seemingly starting from her roots as she watched the color change like a wave down to her tips.
Panicking, she jumped to her feet, finally noticing the sounds she had heard previously before touching the odd image. They were coming from the other side of a singular, sealed door that was in the center of the room; a small blast door that was not far from where she was standing.
It sounded like a group of things that were banging up against everything possible while groaning. She gulped.
She's heard sounds like this before.
Then, just as she was beginning to process everything, a feminine computer voice started speaking over the intercoms while a red light flashed near the door.
"Cockpit door opening in 30 seconds, please stand back for your safety."
No! If it was what she thought it was, she knew this wasn't good.
"I'm only dreaming though, right? A coma?" she began to look around for a place to hide, and decided on the largest console that was closes to the window, though still standing about 10 feet from it.
"20 seconds."
She took a mad dash for the window console, half holding her breath as she ran. Persephone put me in a personal hell!
"10 seconds." The intercom was quiet up until the last 10 as it then continuously counted down.
With each second she felt her heart pound, but she ran until her legs burned.
Just as she reached the console and leaped over it, the voice over the intercom informed that the door was now opening.
As she hit the floor, staying low, she heard the metal retract, allowing whatever was on the other side of it in.
A lot of whatever was on the other side, as she listened to almost a horde of footsteps dragging into the room like a herd.
Help me, someone! She scrunched down into a fetal position, her hands pushing down onto the top of her head as she attempted to fold herself into a smaller ball.
But the only sounds she could hear were the sloppy steps getting closer and closer to her.
Then the intercom sounded once more. "Door closing in 30 seconds, please stay clear."