The ringing in my ears subsides, but the relentless lights blind my now sensitive eyes as I wake up, dazed. I clear my throat and blink several times as my eyes adjust to the stark white room. I hear a beep, then a click as the exhaust from a heavy door releases itself. This does not seem like any place I’ve ever been to in the small center of Doverfield. I try to sit up, but I am restrained. As realization sets in that I am strapped in, memories that I don’t want to remember flood my consciousness.
The party, the whole class of 2045, Jayden DJing. Cassie runs to me, eyes bright and glazed over with the undertones of drinking too much for her body mass. She was a tiny little thing. Besides the alcohol, she was an avid health nut. She preached about it whenever she could. Yet, quinoa, kale, and homemade detox water wouldn’t prolong her life. Nothing could’ve, really. She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, one of those things.
As our appointed friend, Luis drove us home, we passed a McDavis’s and Jayden started rambling about how he was aching for a McDavis burger and he just had to have one or he was going to implode. So, we went - against my vote, by the way. After the drive thru we headed to my house. Everyone was invited to sleep over. As we crossed over to get onto the highway, a crazed jerk was driving the wrong way.  It was too fast. As soon as we saw the headlights, we were already in the air, hamburger buns and all. I don’t remember a thing after that besides being carried away...  I resurface again, confused and irritated. This was a recurring dream I’ve been having since the incident. I wake up breathless and sweating everytime. Monitors still beep beside me, and I observe that the liquid being pumped into my wrist is probably why I keep dozing off. Someone doesn’t want me to be awake yet.
I hear what sounds like wet feet slapping the floor to my right. I can only turn my head so much before the cords attached to my temples start to rip at my scalp and the monitor starts to beep like crazy. I wince and stop struggling when a cold wet hand reaches my forehead. I look up, and to my surprise and disgust, a pale face regards me with a cold hard stare, his onyx black eyes seeming to go on forever, like black holes. His nose twitches as he seems to make a decision. He grunts and nods his head to a place in the room that I can’t see. I yell and writhe in panic, and as I twist this way and that, I catch a flash of long brown hair. Cassie.
My mind reels. It can’t be. I saw it myself. Cassie was dead. Her pulse stopped on impact. That’s what they said. It’s been about two months now, I calculate in my head. That means someone has harvested her body or she’s been alive the whole time, stuck in this place. Will I be stuck here too? I am horrified as this crosses my mind. How did I get here? I am being wheeled away. I look around, forcing my eyes not to roll back into deep sleep again, for any identifying marks. I see a small chrome triangle on the pale blue door and what looks like an x through it. The hallway is green. Everything about it including the floors, walls, and ceiling. There are two, four, six, eight, ten fluorescent lights that we pass before I am being turned to my right. That’s when we hit a dead end. My eyes flutter as the weight of my efforts cause me to shut down once again.