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[color=0076a3][i]The feeling was like nothing anyone could have described to her,
or better yet, it was like feeling nothing at all.
Like not being able to see, or breathe, or feel, or smell.
Like all of her senses just disappeared and she was left with emptiness.
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The room had been bright. The uncomfortable kind of bright that casts a white glow on everything, and the whole building had an eerie sort of sense to it, like a hospital in the middle of the night when you wander the halls and it's only you and the night nurses who quietly murmur amongst themselves from the shelter of their glass-walled station. They had quickly ushered her through the entry and down a small elevator. Nothing of particular note caught her attention until they entered the laboratory.

It was late and the floor seemed mostly empty, save for a select few manning the machines which were humming along the walls. They directed her towards a small and sparsely furnished room and told her to wait. The staff she had met thus far seemed to all be the quiet type, but for the first time since she entered the facility she was alone.

[hr]

Nausea and a sense of uneasiness swept over her when she finally awoke.

She couldn't recall the faces of anyone she had crossed paths with, and what's worse, she had very little memory of what happened after she entered the testing room. A side effect of the procedure, they told her. So was the sick feeling in her stomach. Her eyes burned. Her throat burned. Every part of her body ached, and she was oddly... wet? She traced her fingertips down her arm. [i]Did I take a shower?[/i] The puzzled look on her face remained until she looked up and saw what looked to be a large glass cylinder filled with water in the center of the room.

The uneasy feeling she had when she first awoke heightened to a sense of sickening dread in a matter of moments as flickers of the previous hours flitted through her brain. [i]Screaming. Darkness. Water.[/i] She couldn't breathe and yet she wasn't drowning. Like her worst nightmare except she couldn't wake up; couldn't escape it.

Blinking she stood on shaky feet and walked the few feet towards the white, windowless door. The icy handle turned easily and she stepped out into an empty hallway.

It was even brighter outside the lab room. [i]Or maybe they dimmed the lights while they were testing?[/i] Heels clicked at the end of the hall and a frighteningly tall older woman with a stern face and dark eyes strode towards her.

"You shouldn't be alone out here yet," she huffs. The woman places a firm hand on Maddie's back and guides her to the main room to finish recovering with the other subjects.