She tries to ask for help

She heard the angry man’s voice again, louder now. “…you sent two of them? Where the fuck is… other one?”

He saw the policewoman’s mouth move but couldn’t hear what she was saying. The man slapped her hard across the face. Her head jerked back from the force. Her eyes stayed blank, then she simply stepped forward again and got back into position, face empty, posture perfect, as if nothing had happened. The slap had left a red mark on her cheek but she didn’t react to it at all.

“…so this bitch left one asset behind while recovering another, this was your genius idea?”

The other man, the younger one, responded quickly, voice defensive. “I’m sure she just got caught up with something man! Unlike this one,” he said as he motioned towards Serena in the pod, “that asset wasn’t triggered. I’m sure she’ll return to the network soon!”

The angry man looked at him for a long moment, then mumbled something under his breath and turned and left the room. The door slammed behind him. The younger man shook his head as he rubbed his temples and started working on something attached to the pod Serena was in. He moved with purpose now, checking a small screen on the side of the capsule which seemed to glow faintly. On instinct Serena knew whatever the man was doing wasn’t going to be good for her. Her heart started beating faster. She pulled at the wrist straps again, harder this time, but they held. The glass in front of her was still clear. She could see everything. She could see the policewoman still standing there like a statue. She could see the man working on the pod controls. She could see the faint reflection of her own naked body in the glass, wrists bound, legs spread, breasts rising and falling too fast.

She looked at the policewoman as she weakly mouthed her first word since waking up.

“…Help…”

The word was barely a whisper, her lips barely moving. She tried again, putting more air behind it.

“Help…”

The policewoman didn’t react. She didn’t turn her head. She didn’t blink. She just stood there at attention, eyes forward, face blank. Serena felt a fresh wave of terror. Even the cop was one of them. Or under their control. Was this the reason behind her missing hours? The same way her body sometimes moved without her telling it to. The same way the headaches came and went and left her feeling like someone else had been driving.

Suddenly the glass went opaque. It frosted over in seconds, turning from clear to milky white, cutting off her view of the room. A sweet smell filled the pod, thick and cloying, like flowers mixed with some chemical. It hit her lungs with the first breath and made her head swim even worse. Lights began flashing on all sides of the capsule, pulsing in patterns that made her eyes hurt. They were too bright, too fast, colours shifting from white to blue to purple. She tried to close her eyes but the lights were everywhere, reflecting off the curved walls, hitting her from all angles.

She could feel a tingling sensation at both sides of her head. It started as a faint prickling, then grew stronger, like small electrical pulses right at her temples. Something was pressing there, pads or contacts or whatever the man had sprung into action. The tingling moved in time with the flashing lights. Her body jerked against the restraints on instinct. Her back arched away from the wall but the waist strap held her in place. Her breasts bounced with the movement. Her nipples were still tight from the cold air and now from the fear. The sweet smell was making her warm between her legs, an involuntary reaction she hated. Her thighs tried to close but the ankle straps kept them spread. She could feel the cool air on her exposed pussy, could feel herself getting wet against her will as the gas and the lights and the tingling all worked together.

She tried to scream but her voice was still weak. Only a small, broken sound came out. The tingling at her temples was getting stronger, pulsing in waves that made her thoughts scatter. She tried to think of Mason, of his apartment, of anything real, but the lights and the smell and the pulsing at her head were pulling everything apart. The last clear thought she had was that she was going to lose more time. That whatever this was, it was going to take another chunk of her life and leave her with nothing but a headache and a blank space where memories should be.

Then everything went dark as her mind stopped resisting.