Chapter IV: Containment

Everything is new and strange now. Christina doesn't know what will happen next.

          I was so sleepy, but someone kept nudging me. Couldn't he see that I was exhausted? Why wouldn't he let me sleep? The ground felt so comfy. . . .

 

          "Wake up!" said a whisper close to my ear. I rolled over, away from this annoying person.

 

          "Someone's coming," he said. "We need to be alert."

 

          I gave an irritable little grumble and pushed myself up into a sitting position, rubbing my eyes. I was in a cell with three smooth, white wals and one made of glass with a door in it, looking out into a spacious hallway.

 

          "Where . . . ?"

 

          "I think it's some kind of lab. I don't know how long we've been here exactly. Remember when we were captured, how they knocked us out with a weird kind of whistle?"

 

          I nodded.

 

          "Well, we both woke up about three hours ago," he said.

 

          I flipped through my memories, but there was only a void of darkness between passing out in the clearing and what had happened just now.

 

          Frowning, I said, "I don't remember . . ."

 

          "When you woke up the first time, you weren't so happy to be here. You were livid, actually." He gave a little chuckle. "It was hysterical; you were screaming, beating against the glass trying to break out. I kept trying to tell you that it's missle-proof."

 

          I struggled to remember any of that, still drawing a blank.

 

          "Then these five guards came running in. It took four of them to hold you down, and the last one injected you with a tranquilizer. I'm surprised you don't remember it."

 

          I stared at him, not quite knowing how to respond. I tried to remember it again and got nothing. An instinct fluttered on the edge of my thoughts, alerting me to something. It dawned on me.

 

          "You jackass!" I smacked his shoulder as hard as I could. He didn't even flinch.

 

          Peals of his laughter rang around our little prison, and I glared at him.

 

          "Why did you tell me that? Do you honestly think that the situation we're in here is funny?"

 

          He flashed me a half-smile in an attempt to be charming. I was not charmed.

 

          "Listen," he said, dropping the act and looking a little more serious, "I was just joking. Trying to lighten the mood. I know this is bad, I just don't see the point in freaking out about-"

 

          "Don't you understand what this place is? Some mad scientist who created us is going to come out and we're going to be forced to do experiments and we'll never get to leave and never see our families again and we'll be forced to live like lab rats until we die of some painful disease they inject us with!"

 

          Tears sprang to my eyes and I fought hard to hold them back. I couldn't start crying in front of this guy!

 

          And then he was there sitting right next to me, his hand on my shoulder, consoling me and apologizing to me at the same time, softly whispering. I surprised myself by not flinching away. It felt cool in the little prison cell, and I was only wearing a blue camisole and denim cut-offs. I shivered a little, and and he scooted closer to me.

 

          "Can you forgive me?" he asked. I nodded, aware somewhere in the back of my mind that I'd just made a friend. I smiled and sighed. We lay down next to each other, close but not quite touching, and let our thoughts wander in silence, pretending that our lives hadn't been irreversibly altered.

 

          "What's your name?" he asked, breaking the silence. He satt up as he said it, and I followed suit. It was weird that we hadn't thought about names before now.

 

          "Christina," I said. "You?"

          "Trae. So what are-"

 

          He was interrupted by the whir of an automatic door opening.

 

         "Lieutenant! Front and center!" a woman's angry voice called.

 

          "Y-yes, Ma'am?" came a man's deeper voice.

 

          "What is the meaning of this?"

 

          "Is there a probl-"

 

          "Of course there's a problem! You put these children in a high-security containment unit?"

 

          "Ma'am, they were openly hostile to us when we were-"

 

          "When you were what? Hunting them down like they were animals? I don't want to hear it!"

 

          "But, Major Kayne, these children are highly dangerous-"

 

          "And they're also human beings! These are people we're talking about here, not savage beasts, Lieutenant, and how dare you put them in a cage!"

 

          "Y-yes, Ma'am."

 

          "Well? Don't you have work to do? Go do it!"

 

          "But, Ma'am-"

 

          "Go!"

 

          The doors whirred again, and I guessed that the Lieutenant had obeyed her orders. A small woman in a white lab coat came into view outside the window. Trae and I were both standing now, unsure of what had just transpired. Could this woman help us? She punched a code into a keypad outide the door of our cell, then bent down slightly so that her right eye was level with a red laser of some sort. A retinal scanner. A half-second later, the door clicked open.

 

          Trae and I stood there, frozen, as the woman took a step into the cell. Her hair was messily tied back, and she wore a black shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes under her lab coat. She looked to be about twenty-five, but her eyes sparkled with a wisdom that suggested she was older than she appeared. She was a could inches shorter than I was. A cautious smile spread across her pretty face.

 

          "Would you two please follow me?" she asked in a kind voice.

 

          She stepped into the hallway. After a moment's hesitation, we followed.