62 3600 Seconds (2/2)
'This isn't new. This has happened before...' and she survived it. The thought comforts Sia, and the build-up of tension abates momentarily as she tries to think of a solution. Again, she sweeps out her arms at what used to be walls but doesn't make contact with any solid materials.
”A... Apex? Puter? ...S.I.D? Computer? Hey!!”
Silence.
”Don't do this.... Stay calm.... this is...this is..”
'I don't know what this is....'
”Hello? I need help!” She holds her breath, waiting for a reply, but nothing happens. Her newest prison without walls, absent of all signs of life, furnished by absolute silence and unceasing darkness. She's experienced this before, but this time feels more final. She gave up control of her body, she got them trapped in that underground base with countless enemies...
What if this was their plan after becoming tired of her continual failures. What if this had been their plan all along? She sets her head on her knees and squeezes her arms around her legs. No. No... Maybe Apex was hurt, and they needed to get him away from the pain, but how long before they switch her back? An hour, a day, a week? How does time work in this place void of the laws of physics?
For several moments, she sits...It feels as if she has been curled up on her knees for hours, but it could have been minutes...seconds? ”Hello?”
”Let me out!”
”Come on.... please?”
”Let me out! What is going on?! Let me out!” She begins to crawl in a random direction. She braces herself for a possible collision but never collides into anything. Her lips mumble nonsense statements to calm her nerves as her hands and knees slide across the smooth terrain beneath her. It feels like an eternity passes before she pauses several meters from a cloud of blue particles swirling around in the air.
The cloud drifts closer and closer to her position until it surrounds her in a mist of blue flakes. She reaches out a hand to touch it and the particles seem to pass through her. Then the small flakes emit a strange pulse that forces Sia to shield her eyes from the increasingly blinding light. The particles begin to swirl counterclockwise around her form.
The first few circuits around her body are slow, but as they continue to circle her the speed increases until Sia's body is lost in a thick neon, blue twister. Her skin is riddled with tiny stabs of pain, gradually the feeling expands from along her spine to her shoulders to down both of her legs until agony radiates throughout. She is deaf to her own screams, it feels as if acid is circulating within her veins, incinerating her from the inside, beneath her skin, deep within her bones, within her core. She is blinded by the neon blue cloud and thrashes against the ground, out of reach of death but unable to contemplate life beyond this moment.
Dernel knows that voice, empathizes with her plight, but can't stop the events unfolding. He doesn't understand, why won't the pain stop?
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Twin currents of torment coexist in this azure hellscape indefinitely until suddenly they wake.