Sam's dreams became a nightmare fusion of the events leading up to her capture and the strange, mechanical spiders which had chased her through every twilight hour she could remember. Had they been her alien abductors, or had they been there before that? Could it be she had been watched since before her escape from Mantovani and his men?

Her dreamscape violently reshaped itself, swirling briefly into a jumble of disjointed, senseless imagery. She could hear the eerily quiet heel-toe click of Italian leather soles, punctuated by the tap of a metal-capped cane. She raised her head and made herself look at him.

"I don't really need you," he had said, pinching a transparent vial filled with a thick, red fluid between his thumb and index finger. "So your options are [i]rapidly[/i] thinning out."

Mantovani had been pacing like a caged lion. Sam remembered this scene. He'd been trying to get her to cooperate with him of her own free will, but...she had been...less than forthcoming with the information he wanted. Had he been able to force his cell phone into her hand, or had that been another memory fouled by stress and head trauma? She couldn't remember. She did remember that he had her blood, and that it would only be a matter of time before his scientists could replicate whatever genetic oddities had unlocked her talents. She [i]had[/i] to get that vial.

"...I'll do it." Sam repeated the three words she most regretted in her short life, with a dry throat which threatened to choke them off before her lips could shape them. "Just get me out of this fucking chair."

The scene melted into chaos once more. Sam saw herself in a metal chair, her arms splintering into countless thousands of wires which threaded through a computer bank spread out in a 120 degree arc before her. From this out-of-body view, she could see that the top of her head was missing; her exposed brain crawling with those tiny metal spiders. One of them stopped picking at her neurons for just long enough to sharply redirect its compound sensor-eyes at her. She had a split second to react before it lunged, forelegs and mandibles poised to strike.

Sam's eyes shot open, though her body did not move. The searing pain in the back of her head forced her to squeeze them shut again, and she dragged her right arm across her face, feeling for the source. Her fingers came back sticky from the matted hair at the base of her skull.

"Uuuuuuuuuuugh..." she moaned softly, so as not to give the diamond miners in her brain any further excuse to swing what she could only assume were titanium picks coated in fire ants and acid; maybe a little Ebola. It took some doing, but she pried her eyes open and cast them about from her position on the couch.

[i]"Nice ceiling..."[/i] she noted. It was one of those "modern, but rustic" deals, where they'd gone and covered the rafters of a high ceiling with polished hardwood planks. They hadn't been stained, but...there was definitely some kind of weather seal at work. It was glossy...acrylic? Some kind of resin, maybe. That would protect it from moisture, without spoiling the natural look of the wood.

Her eyes traveled right, but she had to turn her head slightly to get anything other than more ceiling. There was some kind of balcony wrapping the wall. She hadn't seen [i]that[/i] done before; not in a cabin in the woods. Hotels, maybe, but not places like this. Somebody had expensive taste.

Talking of taste...that was when her nose registered something wonderful. Her  nostrils flared, sucking in enough air to identify the scent. That was definitely chicken. 

[i]"[/i]Spicy[i] chicken..."[/i] she corrected herself. For the first time in days -perhaps weeks- she had a reason to get out of bed that did not directly revolve around a visit to the scrapyard. Her neck muscles screamed their defiance, but she made them lift her head off of the back of the couch. She swayed a little, but steadied herself and slowly stood.

[i]"No hurling, Sam." [/i] she commanded herself, even as her stomach threatened to jump through her throat. Her eyes would not settle on anything in the way of a focal point, but she managed to shuffle her way toward the kitchen. Someone was cooking.

She made it to the doorway before her balance failed. Her shoulder thumped into the frame, and she curled her left hand around the doorway to keep from falling over. It was hard to concentrate. Had she dreamed the smell? She managed to slur out something about being hungry enough to eat a baby seal, but her brain wasn't working well enough to finish the joke. If not for that damnable slip-and-fall, she'd have topped it off with "club sandwich".

[i]"Still, though...Fajitas. Totally works."[/i]