As soon as she uttered those last words, a chill ran down my spine. My time was coming to an end.
I believe that 24 hours had not passed yet, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to try to do something before the time was up.
I mean, I had basically just had lunch, so that would mean that I had a couple of hours left. I know I slept in, but it couldn’t have been that much, then breakfast, ice box, lunch, and now here.
“I-I thought you said that I had 24 hours of immunity.” I stuttered, trying to stall as long as possible.
“Oh, you do, you’ve got 6 hours left. You slept for 12. Don’t worry, I’ll let you dwell on these last 6 and see if you can come up with an escape plan.” She laughed out loud. “In the meantime, here, take your glasses. If you do happen to manage your way out of this floor, I want the chase to be as enjoyable as possible.”
This sadistic bitch.
“As a show of good faith, I won’t tie you up for the remaining time. I want to see how you fare against me and everybody here.” She licked her luscious red lips.
What is going on? All this time I have been restrained, and suddenly I’m free to escape? Try to escape?
Ok, well, first things first, I can’t fight her head on like this. I need some type of weapon or something I can use to defend myself. My best bet would be to try to knock her out somehow. I’ve never fared well against her before. I haven’t really had a chance to test my strength against hers, but she is taller than me and definitely has combat skills or some type of martial arts training or maybe both because not only is she fast to throw me off balance or get on top of me, but she has outmaneuvered me every time.
If I try to go against her, my best chance is to take her by surprise. How? Maybe when she’s coming out of the bathroom? That’s too obvious.
“What are you thinking about so much? You seem deep in thought.” An amused tone accompanied her words.
“Nothing really. Just trying to figure out the best way out of here.”
I got up from the chair, her eyes were fixed on me, but she didn’t change her stance. First order of business, do my business. I headed over to the bathroom, once I came out, I just made my way over to the couch and sat there. Dr. Garnett was just enjoying everything.
I decided to try the easiest thing, so I went over to the exit door, locked.
“Seriously, that’s the best you can come up with?” She roared in laughter.
I’m glad I’m so amusing to her.
“First of all, obviously it’s locked. I have a key right here if you can get it.” She flashed a key card which she inserted into the pocket of her white coat. “Secondly, there are guards on the other side of that door, so how do you plan on getting past them?”
“I had to at least check. I’m winging it right now.”
She laughed again. “Damn, I haven’t laughed like this in such a long time. You’re great.” She wiped the corners of her eyes.
I rolled my eyes and turned away. I looked around, but there’s really nothing that I can use to defend myself. More books? The coat hanger? The microscope? Shit, I need something!
Resigned to not escape for now, I decided to go over to the microscope. If I’m stuck here for the next 6 hours, might as well enjoy myself.
Dr. Garnett saw me sitting at the microscope station, so she just dove into her work.
I opened the first drawer and saw some slides in a box that were labeled after different tissues in the human body.
This is going to be fun.
I started out with the different cells in the blood, starting out with the red blood cells. I appreciated their biconcave shape and a couple of rouleaux formations, then moved on to the neutrophils and saw their multilobed nuclei, the basophils’ blue color, and the gorgeous eosinophils’ red granules. I kept going through different slides for different tissues. I saw neurons, thyroid, kidney, different types of muscles, bone, cell types, it was everything in the body. This kept me entertained for hours.
I was quite intrigued at all the different things I was looking at. It was this semester that I was starting my human anatomy class. My test on Monday covered the structure, function, and location of the different cell types, so I stayed looking at those slides a little longer than the rest. I did a mental exercise, recalling where I could find simple squamous cells, stratified squamous, columnar, cuboidal, and all the rest. At some point I must’ve been enjoying myself and saying a couple of things a bit louder than I intended, because Dr. Garnett said that if I had any questions, she could come over and would happily teach me.
Um, ok, thanks, I guess. I still haven’t forgotten where I am and who she is. I also declined her offer to be taught by her, so why is she still eager? Anyway, maybe I could learn a thing or two before my test. Yes, I still plan on escaping by tonight.
Snapping out of my thoughts, I went back to the box of slides. When I got to the adrenal medulla slide, I saw that it was smudged, so I looked for something to clean it up. I opened the drawer from where I had gotten the box from, but there wasn’t anything to clean, so I just opened the next one. The box of wipes was there, but it was closed, so I took it out to open it, and that’s when something fell to occupy the space where the box had been. My eyes grew wide in surprise to see that it was a scalpel. I quickly grabbed it and concealed it on the inside of my right forearm with my middle, ring, and pinky finger.
Dr. Garnett must have seen me jump because she asked if everything was ok. I tried to cover my tracks by saying that I was just trying to get the box of wipes open and that everything was fine. The suspicion in her tone indicated that she didn’t believe me. She got up from her chair and walked my way.
Shit.
I fumbled with the box and finally got it to open. I took out a wipe and turned her way, saying that things were under control, but she kept slowly walking towards me.
Oh god, it’s now or never.
I uncapped the scalpel with my thumb, but luckily still had the wipe to hide the weapon.
“What is going on?” She eyed me suspiciously.
“Nothing, just need to clean a dirty slide.” I turned towards her. I got off the chair, making sure that it was between the both of us.
“Then why are you backing away?”
“Because you scare me.” It was the truth. I don’t know what she is capable of.
“What’s in your hand then?”
Fuck. She knows. I don’t have an option.
I kicked the chair her way and lunged towards her, keeping my arm close to my body so that she didn’t have much to grab at and stop it. She put out her left arm to block her body, but I went below it and managed to stab the scalpel into her thigh. I made sure to wedge it as deep as I could, but she was quick to push me off her. She staggered back a few steps. I could see the glistening red liquid run down her shapely legs.
She was absolutely livid.
She grabbed her thigh, and that’s when, without thinking, I just grabbed the heavy microscope and swung in her direction. She put her right arm up just before impact. The microscope collided with her arm and with the force of the blow and my own body weight she fell to the ground.
I couldn’t believe it; I had actually managed to get one up on her.
When she fell on the ground, the things in her pocket flew out and the key badge she had shown me earlier landed a couple of feet away from us.
In a matter of seconds, I had gotten past her and was scooping up the badge. Will it work in the elevator too? It looked like the same one.
While Dr. Garnett was still on the ground, I ran towards the doors. Oddly enough, she stayed quiet. She wasn’t shouting for security or anything. Maybe she really wanted to see how far I’d get.
When the light on the card reader next to the door turned green, I opened the door and ran out. The guards saw me and looked confused for a moment until they realized who I was and told me to stop. Yeah, right. Thankfully, there weren’t people in this hallway other than those two guards.
I weaved my way past a couple of corridors, past some scientists, until I reached the elevator. I desperately pressed on the up button of the elevator, knowing the guards were right behind me.
The elevator announced its arrival just as the guards were turning the corner, so I just launched myself headfirst into the opening elevator. I crashed into somebody and they, in turned, crashed into a second person.
I quickly pushed myself off the person I had crashed into and realized it was Dahlia. Fuck.
The adrenaline surged through me, I freaked, and I just kicked her in the chest. It really wasn’t intentional. I just reacted. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
I turned around to swipe the badge over the elevator’s card reader and pressed the topmost button.
As the doors were closing, I felt a hand grab my hair and pull back, at the same time, one of the guards had wedged his hand in between the elevator doors so that they opened back up.
Fuck, so close!
The pull on my hair was so strong that I felt a couple of strands get yanked off. I placed a foot back enough to not lose my balance completely and was able to pivot towards the person pulling at my hair, which most probably was Mia. When I turned my body, my right hand came crashing down on her face, slashing her skin with my fingernails. I caught a glimpse of the red streaks across Mia’s face before the guards pinned me against the wall.
I was trying to dig my nails into the guards’ sides until they each grasped an arm and twisted them behind my back and secured them.
So damn close.
Restrained and pinned against the wall, both Dahlia and Mia were now able to regain their stance.
“This little motherfucking bitch!” Dahlia was fuming. “She thinks she can get away!” Dahlia roughly grabbed my hair bringing her face closer to mine.
“Almost did, cunt!” I spat back at her.
Without warning, Dahlia swung an uppercut at my face and hit my mouth and nose. Pain shot through my face as I felt blood gushing out of my nose. I could also taste the iron as I spit blood back at her face. That incensed her further.
“That’s it! Hold the bitch back, but move out of the elevator. Mia, tie her legs!”
The guards moved me from the wall, out in the hallway, to face Dahlia. Mia cuffed my ankles with heavy-duty zip ties.
Dahlia swung again, this time into my stomach. It was the hardest I’ve ever been hit. All the air rushed out of me. I instinctively tried to bend down, but the guards were holding me up. I was trying to gasp for air, but no sounds came from my mouth. My lungs weren’t responding. I couldn’t seem to fill them with air and began to panic.
“Heh, that’s your diaphragm spasming.” Dahlia stated smugly. The panic in my face was more evident, my lungs were on fire at this point. “If your diaphragm doesn’t work, your lungs won’t inflate.”
I’m opening my mouth, trying to suck in air, but I can’t pull it inside myself. I’m squirming, trying to find a position that lets me breathe.
“Let go of her.” Dahlia told the guards.
As soon as they let go of my arms, I fell on the ground, writhing and contorting to get air. Nobody stepped forward to help me as I suffocated in front of them, panic at an all-time high. At one point, I got into the fetal position and felt the sweet rush of air inflating my lungs. I gasped like a fish out of water, my breathing fast and heavy with a couple of coughs in between.
My panic started to dissipate as soon as my body was content with the amount of oxygen that flowed through my blood. My breathing started to normalize when I felt a kick to my stomach.
I contracted back into a ball and felt more kicks to my midsection, my sides, and my back.
“THIS.”
Kick.
“IS.”
Kick.
“FOR.”
Kick.
“KICKING.”
Kick.
“ME.”
Kick.
“IN.”
Kick.
“THE.”
Kick.
“CHEST.”
Mia had joined and was also doing her little chant, hers had to do with me scratching her face.
“I think that’s enough!” A guard interjected.
Dahlia and Mia stopped, snapped out of their rage. They both took a step back.
I was just a groaning, coughing, bleeding mess writhing around in pain on the floor.
“Grab her and take her back to Mistress’s office.” Mia told the guards.
One of the guards grabbed my arms and the other one grabbed my legs. As they lifted me off the floor, I wailed in pain.
“You deserve every ounce of pain you’re feeling right now.” Dahlia pushed the hair out of my face. “I see now that Kristia and Nivia were not exaggerating about you. The problem with them is that they hurt you to the point where Mistress couldn’t play with you. We hurt you to the point where she still can.” Dahlia assured.
Oh god, no.