Part 6: Prisoner

   When Lynia woke, her head was spinning and the world around her was covered in a shifting haze that clouded her vision. Fear started to envelope her mind as she realized she was enclosed in a small metallic grey room. Her instincts to flee started to take over as the lifeless walls started to close in around her. She tried to move but her limbs refused to properly respond to her commands, and Instead of standing up, she only managed to get her limbs to twitch and jerk randomly. Her struggle to move only resulted in her falling from her position on an elevated hard slab to a cold lifeless ground.

The impact with the hard metal caused pain to shoot through Lynia broken ribs and arm, and elevated her emotions that began to overwhelm her dazed mind. Tears poured down her face like small waterfalls as the reality of her situation sunk in. Looking up again, she tried to make sense of her surroundings as the world seemed to collapse around her. She closed her eyes and fearfully tried to curl up into a fetal position as her out of control emotions began to dominate every corner of her mind. Once again, her body refused to move as she commanded, and this further damaged her already weakened spirit.

   ‘Gather control of yourself. Do not let the fear consume you. Do not let despair disable you, you need to find your inner strength, ‘thought Lynia as she tried to recover her mental strength after crying for several long minutes that to her felt like an hour. She needed to regain control of herself so she could find a way out of this cage. Deciding to meditate in order to reconnect her mind and body as well as retake control of her emotions, she closed her eyes and began to calm herself the best she could. As she calmed down to enter a state of meditation, she ended up drifting off to a drug assisted sleep as her mind calmed.

   The next time Lynia woke, she felt different than before. Her entire body lacked feeling, and she couldn’t move her arms and leg. Her eye lids felt like they were being held down by many stones, but at least her mind felt less hindered. Forcing her eyes half open with significant effort she began to look around at her new surroundings. Instantly she wished she had not awakened, as her eyes revealed she was in a nightmare. Her naked body was lying flat on her back with straps holding her arms, legs, and head. She looked down the best she could with her head immobilized by one of the leather straps and saw several machines moving around her chest and abdomen. Looking at the machines she quickly realized they were covered in blood and were doing something to her unfeeling body. She could not look down enough to see exactly what the machines were doing to her, but her imagination filled her mind with terrifying possibilities. She tried to summon energy to protect herself, but as she did one of the arms spun around and faced her. Its three black claws held a long needle that it started to approach Lynia’s neck with. She watched it insert a needle into her neck the best she could, but she could not feel the puncture. Seconds later her eyelids grew too heavy for her to keep open and they slowly slid shut surrounding her in darkness once again as the new drug overwhelmed her mind.

   Waking up a third time she quickly sat up and felt pain shooting through her stomach. Looking down she realized her clothes were gone and all she had on was a lightweight white gown that covered her to her knees. Lifting the thin material to see her stomach she was horrified to see bandages wrapped around her chest and stomach. It had not been a nightmare! What did they do to her? She did not know the answer to the question, but she knew she had to escape as soon as possible. Grabbing a hold of her still broken left arm she sent healing energy into it. Her arm felt warm and tingly as the warm yellow light caused her bones and flesh rapidly mend. She used the same healing abilities on her left side and her stomach once her arm was healed. Once she was done healing, she felt fatigued from using a vast amount of energy.

   Resting for several minutes, Lynia looked around her prison. A single door was the only indication there was a world outside her tiny prison, and there were several strange terran devices that she had no idea how to use. The room these devices took up only made the already small prison feel smaller. Lynia carefully stood up, making sure she was not still suffering from the effects of the drugs that had been forcibly injected into her. Determining her ability to move was not being hindered any further, she decided to walk over to the one of the devices, both of which looked bowl like. One was a large deep bowl had strange dark blue liquid water in it, and was close to the ground. The other stood taller and its bowl shape was shallower and it held nothing in it likely due to the hole at the bottom of the bowl with a cylinder leading into the wall. Kneeling down close to the blue liquid filled one, she pulled her head back as the strong smell of chemicals quickly reached her nose. Standing up, she frowned at the liquid that could not be used to satisfy her thirst. She looked at the taller device for a second before she turned and walked over to the door.

   After standing in front of the door for a second, the faelin reached out to touch it. A burst of energy greeted her right hand as she was about to touch the door. The energy burned her offending fingers and caused her to pull her hand away violently. She stared at the door with a curious before closing her eyes. She reached out slowly toward the door again and as her right hand approached the door she could feel a wall of energy protecting the door. Suddenly a plan formed in her mind and she reached forward with her left hand as well.

   Lynia used her energy manipulating talents to carefully draw some of the shield’s energy into her hands. The energy felt very strange to her. It felt both dangerous and powerful, and was hard for her to control compared the energy of life she was used to using. Unlike life energy, she would be unable to turn this power into anything other than a destructive force. Forming a volatile orb of the energy in each hand she carefully backed away from the door as she combined the two orbs into a burning red sphere that tried to lash out at the air around it with vines of pure destructive energy. Once the two sources of energy had been combined, she used a thrusting motion with both arms to launch the energy toward the door. The orb of energy quickly lost its shape as it impacted the shield it had been formed from. The focused energy tore through the shield with ease and continued onto the door behind it. The energy violently blew a burning hole through the door, and continued its destructive path through the wall on the other side of the hall, revealing an identical empty cell. The material around the newly created exit glowed white from the heat as an acrid smell started to filled the air. Hope returned to the faelin as she darted toward freedom.

   As Lynia moved toward her self-created exit, a guard that was barely missed by the blast, poked his head and weapon into the faelin’s cage. He had a startled look on his face as Lynia moved past him. Holding out her left hand, the woman touched the barrel of the weapon as she unleashed a burst of energy that burned through the shocked guard’s weapon. Lynia seamlessly took a turn to the right, putting her back to the guard as she quickly sprinted away. The guard just stood there staring at his weapon helplessly while the alien escaped. A loud siren filled the building followed by mechanical voice announcing that the faelin had escape and for all guards to capture her. It insisted that the fleeing alien was not to be killed, which meant that the terrans would likely not use their weapons on her. The loud noise hurt the faelin’s sensitive ears, but she did not bother to cover them as she moved quickly through the halls of the compound. The announcement told of her location and her direction of travel and prompting her to suddenly take a left turn down an intersecting hallway.

Coming to a three way intersection, she quickly rounded a corner to the right, where she almost ran into a scientist engrossed in some flat square device. Lynia didn’t stop or slow down as she ran past them. She avoided the researcher by making a quick hop to the right so she could easily run past the terran. The scientist seemed surprised and just stopped to watch the faelin dart past. Lynia continued down this hall until it turned into a T intersection. She initially was going to take another right, but as she curved around the corner she saw there were two guards moving down the right hallway in her direction. Making a quick 180, the faelin darted down the left hallway as the guards yelled for her to stop.

   She rapidly created distance from those guards and took a right turn at another T intersection in order to lose them. She continued down this hall and found herself facing off against another guard. The guard stopped moving when she saw the escaped prisoner and held up her rifle up to her face. The woman demanded the alien to stop and surrender with a firm voice. Instead of listening to the guard, Lynia continued running toward the guard, gathering energy in her left hand as she closed the distance. She held up her left hand and closed her eyes once she was a meter away from the barking guard. The faelin released a burst of intense light that temporary blinded the terran. Opening her eyes after releasing the blinding strike, Lynia darted past the terran. The plan worked perfectly as Lynia was able to take another turn before the terran’s eyes could recover. Lynia had correctly guessed that the terran would not shoot since the alert kept emphasizing to not kill the faelin.

   Frustration and fear filled Lynia’s mind as she ran through the seemingly endless maze of dull grey hall ways. She was quickly tiring as she continued to flee, and she seemed to be running into more and more guards. As she ran past another intersection, she caught a glimpse of natural light. She quickly stopped and back tracked as hope filled her heart. There was an opening to the outside! A smile appeared on her face, as she bounded toward the welcoming light of freedom. The door began to slowly close as she approached it, but that would not stop her now. She started focusing energy into her right hand to blast through the door if it closed before she could reach it. As she smelled fresh air, a large figure suddenly appeared from behind a doorway ahead of her. The terran was quick and she did not have time to react before she was slammed to the ground by the attacker’s tackle. The sudden impact knocked the breath out of her and caused herself protective instincts to bring up her hands to try to shove away the attacker.  The gathered energy stored in her hand ended up hitting her attacker in the left side of his chest and tore through his body violently. The force of the energy knocked the attacker off of Lynia, allowing her to recover.

   Lynia recovered to her feet quickly as the shrinking beams of sunlight promised her freedom. Lynia was about to leap forward as her nostrils were suddenly filled with the smell of burnt flesh, and her ears picked out the wheezing breathe of the human she had hit on accident with the energy intended for the door. Looking down at her attacker, she saw the large man lying on his back with a fist sized hole through the left side of his chest. A pool of blood quickly began to form under him, as his storm grey eyes looked up at her. The faelin’s mind was torn, would she escape and allow her attacker to die? Or would she try to save him and forfeit her freedom and perhaps even her own life?