Brynn Phytrelia Pt. 06

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When she awoke again, she was completely encompassed in a blackness so thick, she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. She could feel the restraints on her ankles and wrists, above her knee and her elbow, and a thick, uncomfortable restraint across her forehead. She felt the cold metal against her back. Groaning, she opened her eyes and stared up into...nothing. Gasping softly, she licked her slightly chapped lips. Her throat felt dry and sore and her voice came out raspy. "Hello? Anyone?"

She heard his voice this time. "Brynn...Brynn?! Is that you?"

"Why am I...strapped down? Idris? Where are you? Where am I?" Entering more of a conscious state, she actually gave a hard jerk of her wrists and winced when they didn't budge.

"Shh. It's ok. I'm here...I'm with you. Just don't try to move." A light began to illuminate in the room, slowly glowing over the slab that she rested on. As it got brighter, it got more painful, the bright light shining in harsh contrast to the darkness she'd been drowning in. She heard footsteps as someone moved closer. She couldn't make out their face...or their shape. They rested their hand on her shoulder and she heard his voice again. "See. You're safe now, Brynn."

Cringing as the light got brighter, she tried to turn her head away. Slowly she opened her eyes again to try and see. "What's happening? What's happening!?" She screamed it this time her temper flaring, her body heat rising as flames threatened to ignite.

"Shhh, close your eyes. The light hurts at first. Let your eyes adjust to it and then try to open your eyes again. It will pass."

She felt...lips on her forehead as he leaned down to kiss her. She didn't mind, but it felt...wrong. Her and Idris had groan closer, but they weren't romantic. It made her stomach turn. This couldn't really be him. "Stop...stop..." She shut her eyes again, shaking her head. "Who are you? Who are you REALLY? And why am I tied up?" Panic began to wash over her and her hands balled into fists, and her skin growing hot as she felt the anxiety welling up inside her.

"It's for your own safety. To keep you safe." The figure started to walk around to her other side, stopping at her feet. "Besides...we wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you..." They leaned into the light, smiling. It wasn't Idris, but they had Idris' voice. The woman looked familiar in some way, but her complexion...the tone of her skin...she looked like she was dying, or like she was already dead. "After all," Idris' voice said as the woman's lips moved. Then it was a different voice. A woman's voice. "We wouldn't want any...harm...to come to you."

She'd heard her before, she'd seen her before. But where? Frowning, she immediately tried to shake her head, straining hard against the restraints. She was sure she was hurting herself. "Where's Idris?! Where am?! What are you doing to me?!" Her voice lowered as she growled. "Let me go!"

The figure smiled at her, her teeth surprisingly perfect and white for someone who looked like they had crawled out of a grave. Her eyes, too, looked a healthy, vivid shade of blue. And then Brynn remembered. She was, in all her basic appearances the woman, that Captain Johansen had showed her in the memory she'd shared. "We're not done with you yet. Captain Chariton is very good about keeping information to himself. He's also particularly good at hiding things. But we already knew about you. We knew that with him...we could lead you out into the open...we could use him...to flush you out. You were even kind enough to bring my ship back." She smiled at Brynn, her expression filled with all the suppressed anger and malice she held inside of her.

Glaring at the woman, Brynn had to force herself to stay as calm as possible. "What do you want with me?" Brynn asked slowly through gritted teeth.

The figured snickered at her. "With you?! No. We wanted Avenger and the other warships. We want Idris. We want my ship. I left something there...something very important...and we want it back. But I am sure...once we have Captain Chariton where we want him...that you will find your place amongst us...in the empire. Until that time, you are just a means to an end for us."

"I'm not helping you. Not ever!" She jerked against her restraints as if she actually thought they might break this time. She wasn't doing anything. Her eyes shut for a second before they opened to focus back on the woman.

"We don't need your compliance, Ms. Phytrelia. We just need...you. Don't worry though, we probably won't have to hurt you...at least not very much." She smiled again and moved to walk away.

"Let me out!" Brynn screamed. She stopped, closing her eyes, and focusing. This time...she wouldn't hold back. This was something she had never, ever done. Tightly controlled, even on the Avenger, she'd been trying to control it and it had gone wild, but she had never simply...released it. She'd let her fires consume everything in this room. She opened her eyes, and let it go. She cried out in pain as sparks bounced out of her hands, horrible popping noises sounding as she tried to even a single flame. She yelled in anger and realized that she was only going to hurt herself, reining in her powers again.

The woman laughed as her voiced moved away. "Oh, you needn't bother trying to brighten the room with your glowing personality. We've already seen to it that your efforts will only result in self-inflicted pain and anguish." And then the lights were out again.

There was a loud noise as the door thudded and ground into place. The restraints popped open and she rolled off the table only to hit the ground and let out a sharp cry. There wasn't much use in standing. She couldn't see, so she crawled forward slowly, one hand outstretched, and finally touched a wall. She felt around the metal and found nothing; no opening, no switches, just the wall. She curled up next to it and hid her face. She wiped angrily at the tears that she found on her cheeks and whimpered softly before silencing herself. She held her hand out and tried to make even a little light. It was like...like when that thug had thrown her in the cargo hold, but without the movement. She twitched and bucked involuntarily and finally made herself stop. She cried out again, fear and despair filling her with the hopelessness of uncertainty. How had they done this? Why couldn't she even conjure a single, pitiful flame, just so she could see? She drew her knees close to her, wrapping her arms around them, and rested her face against her legs. She didn't want to cry, but the loneliness and the despair seemed to crush her as she sat there, crying, all of the pain, the frustration, and anger, pouring out of her in passionate sobs.

After a long while, her sobs subsided. Brynn was never one to simply lose herself in sadness or despair. To add insult to injury, she felt a sense of hollow worthlessness over the fact that the Delethirians didn't even have a real use for her. So far, it seemed she was always being shuffled away for later.

She sat up straighter and did a mental inventory. She had no shoes. Likely not an incredible loss while on a space ship. That was, assuming she was still on a ship. She looked around, frowning. She still seemed to have her Gift, just not access to use it, but that was mostly useless. It didn't work, exactly, but she had been able to produce a spark before, even if it was at...a cost. Could she use that?

She held out her hand, the other clenched, and managed to manifest some light on the tips of her fingers. The sparks crawled around the flesh of her hand and she winced, but she got a flash of a square room, one door, and the table she had been restrained on. The spark fizzled out and she held the hand to her chest, biting her lip. She stood, her uninjured hand on the wall to steady herself, as she walked forward, her hurt hand in the air in front of her. She felt her fingers touch metal and stopped. The door had been on the other wall opposite to her, so she turned so that she faced the right wall and walked forward again. Another wall; this one would be the one the door was on. She used both hands to feel sideways until she felt the gap of the door frame. There was a panel on one side, she was sure it was used to open or close the door. She felt multiple buttons, so it was probably a keypad.

Brynn pulled in a lungful of air and channeled power through her fingers. She let out a quiet cry as the sparks popped mere inches from the casing of the box. Nonetheless, it had given her what she needed to know. Nine buttons in a grid square. She probably didn't need to figure out the code. If she could summon enough energy to overload the interface, maybe that would release the door. She flexed her fingers, bit her lip, and exerted. The pain was blinding. It started in her hands and then seem to spread, reaching up her arms and down into her chest. Just before she collapsed, she heard the pop of the interface exploding. The door unlatched, but she didn't have the strength to move and try to open it.

She lied limply against the wall as she rested while she composed herself. She crawled to the door with her eyes closed, flinching. She reached and tried to find a handle or something to anchor herself and pull herself up off the floor. The door was flat, but as she clutched the wall and made it back to her feet, her head swimming a little, she felt that the door was not secured. She reached her finger in the gap between the door and the wall and managed to get enough grip to pull it open. She looked around, aware that it was still quiet. No klaxons, no alarms, just an absolute quiet. She allowed a sigh to escape, relieved that she appeared to have gotten through the hard part. She hesitated a moment, considering the level of effort she had exerted just to get out of the room. What if that wasn't the hard part, and what remained would turn out to be the harder of the two. She realized she had no idea what she was going to do next. She didn't even know where they had taken her.

She shook it off, not wanting to drift into another tangent of thought. Another second went by as she looked around. It wasn't any lighter on this side of the door. She couldn't tell if she was in a corridor or simply another room. She steeled herself and slowly reached out with her hands. Her arms, hands, and fingers all felt tender. Her muscles complained as she reached in front of her, the after effects of the exertion to open door apparently leaving her with the sensation that someone had savagely pummeled her flesh. She eventually found a surface, and slowly moved closer to it, her hands resting flat on the wall. She started moving along it, maneuvering left until she reached a corner. She turned it and found herself in a hallway, minimally lit, with doors on either side. She had a feeling that if her eyes were not so used to being in the dark that she wouldn't have been able to perceive what was in front of her, so dim was the light. She lifted her hand and attempted to create a small flame, only to be rewarded with another jolt of and little more than sparks. She hoped that maybe she was beyond whatever suppression field was inhibiting her, now that she was out of the room, but frowned and sighed as she realized she was still just as helpless.

She cradled her hands and looked around. The doors were all open and empty. She peered inside each one as she passed, seeing the same table and bare room. She continued down the hall, her socks quiet on the chilled floor. Perhaps the missing crewmen and, by extension Idris, had been behind these doors, locked away as she had been? Each room seemed to be mostly the same. In one room she found restraints that were left bloody. The restraints, the table, even the floor. She felt her stomach sink as the new fear welled in her heart, and she had to work to stay calm.

The woman, Adria, had said that they hadn't needed Brynn specifically. It seemed that this had created a bit of carelessness. No one came to check on her, and if someone noticed she was out, they didn't care. The hall had turns, three of them, slight ones, before she came to anything different. Suddenly hallway only had doors on one side, while the opposing wall had two doorways: one with a door, and one without. Brynn listened, trying to still the frantic thumping in her chest, then gently got to her knees on the floor and crawled until she was right next to the door frame. Still no sounds, and she was sure if someone was in there, they would have shifted by then. She inched her head into view of the room and felt her heart completely stop as soon as she verified no one was in it. Heartache for nothing.

This answered why no one came to check on her. There was a room full of monitors on one wall, cycling through each cell even ten seconds or so. Hers showed the damaged interface, but there was no one to watch it. The room was not much larger than every other she'd come across, but against the wall she noticed there was a section fenced in. The gate was open, and just behind the opening was some kind of foot locker with a box sitting on the top shelf. Next to it was a line of bins on the floor, each with some kind of clothing or other personal items. She walked through opening in the fence and retrieved the box. It had a bunch of note cards in it, each one with a name on it, and under the name, a location and instructions. She scanned through the little cards.

"Wilkins, Henry: transferred to Project Onyx, discard items." "Jenkins, Laura: transferred to Project Onyx, discard items," and then Brynn felt a mixed sort of shame and relief as she read "Harin, Alice: deceased, discard items." So the blood hadn't been Idris', but still, they had killed someone.

Then she saw it. "Chariton, Idris: SELECTED, retain all personal effects." Her heart skipped a beat. "Selected," she whispered softly. She shook her head, not understanding. She transferred to flip through the rest of the cards. She counted about fifty of them, some had been transferred to the same ship, and some hadn't been transferred at all. She felt a small loss at the thought that so many of the people, who had been captured, might have been killed and spaced like so much garbage. A very small number, however, had been transferred to this "Project Onyx." Only Idris had been marked "SELECTED." She shook her head, not knowing what this meant. She realized that she had not found a card with her own name, nor did she find any cards that had no name. She hadn't even been worth the time to be cataloged.

She moved back to Idris' card and found the correlating bin. She noticed something emitting a small glow. She dug through it. The clothes he'd been wearing, of course, and a few things he'd had in the pockets, and then she found a bloodied fragment of circuitry. She winced as she remembered that Ophelia had said Idris' tracker was a sub-dermal chip. She doubted that it had been extracted in a very friendly manner, judging from what it was covered in. Slowly, she put Idris' clothes on, dirty as they were. They still smelled like him, and the memory raised her spirits. She walked back into the hall and continued.

As the corridor turned, she peered around the corner, dread welling up inside of her as she saw the corridor end at a single door. Above the frame were two green lights, illuminating the surfaces of the hall with an eerie glow. She moved to the door, and turned the handle, slowly, peering between the edge of the door and the frame. She felt sure something was going to leap out at her and dash her hopes of escape. She moved inside the door and saw the way opening up into a large, expansive warehouse of sorts. It was still dimly lit, but it was bright compared with what she'd had to struggle with up until now. This appeared to be the what separated the prison from the main ship.

Inside of the immense room was a very large, egg-shaped structure that towered over here. She noted that this side of the doorway had flood lights above the door, shining onto the structure. At least there weren't any alarms. She heard the sound of animal calls, but she did not know what kind of animal. The creatures making the noises did not sound warm or fuzzy. She swallowed nervously and looked to see if there was some kind of passage out of the room she'd ended up in. The only thing she could see was the door she'd just been through, the structure in front of her, bathed in bright lights, and vague shadows of the walls of the room. She looked up, noting that the ceiling appeared to be high overhead, about thirty or forty meters, at least. She frowned, and looked ahead towards the middle of the room. She didn't feel safe or confident about it, but she decided all she could do is move along the outside of the room, where the shadows were, and avoid the terrible feeling she got when she looked at the disconcerting shape in the center of the room.

She moved to the far wall, to the right of the room, moving so her back was facing it. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it just felt wrong when she looked at it. She realized the length and width of the room were greater than the height of it. She continued on, and eventually found a void in the wall. It was another doorway, with no door. She glanced back into the center of the room, one more time, and then moved through the opening. On the other side of the wall were two men standing at the doorway. They saw her immediately, of course, and started towards her. They didn't seem very concerned. In fact, they seemed amused at the sight of her.

"How'd this get loose?" The first one asked. He stepped towards her, his hand outstretched.

Brynn stepped back, eyes wide.

"Come on, let's go," the man said, now speaking to Brynn. He snapped his fingers at her.

Her face twisted in anger. "No, stay away from me," she warned, her voice suddenly strong. She was finished. Finished dealing with these people, this ship. She was finished hiding and moving in the dark. Finished with running and cowering. The second man, barely paying attention to her, was fiddling with the strap on his weapon instead of actually paying attention to the exchange. The first man grabbed her and Brynn clenched her teeth, summoning her power. She felt the pain as her powers resisted and punished her, but she managed to get a healthy shot of electricity off, sending a strong jolt into the man trying to restrain her. He screamed in agony and his body jerked away from her, falling on the floor.

The second man jerked the weapon up and Brynn turned her eyes to him, her vision blurred as her knees gave out. The strings of electricity leapt from her fingers into the second man, then arced around the room. Brynn stumbled and lost her footing, unable to maintain her strength, and panic flourished in her as she groaned a little. When she finally looked up, both men were on the ground, but there was a new sound shrieking in her ears. Klaxons. A few more men came into view, looking confused when they saw the two guards on the floor and Brynn crawling to get back to her feet.

They raised their weapons, though rather half-heartedly, and Brynn felt the rage rise again. She slammed her hands on the ground and let her anger escape out of her, letting it loose. She felt the world tilt and distantly heard her body hit the ground. She tried to look around, but the blinding pain eventually turned to blackness. When she regained consciousness, she struggled just to lift her hands to wipe at her eyes, to clear her vision. She groaned, her body sending echoes of pain around each bone with every breath. Somehow, she pulled herself together enough to roll on her side, then struggled to roll to her stomach. She pushed herself off the floor, hands first, but her strength left her and she was again on her stomach, her cheek sore and a horrible ringing in her ears.