Sera woke slowly.
Not the soft kind of waking that followed sleep.
This one scraped its way into her skull like metal dragged across concrete.
Her head felt stuffed with cotton and broken glass, her stomach tight and wrong. She didn't move. Didn't open her eyes yet. The air carried too much information already.
She felt the cold metal under her shoulder. It wasn't uncomfortable, per say, but it was enough to tell her that she wasn't at home anymore.
The steady hum of electricity through walls.
The faint chemical bite in the air that clung to things scrubbed too clean.
And…
She forced her eyes open.
The ceiling was far away from her. Too far to be normal.
Ten feet above her, steel panels crossed in a grid so tight that even the shadows stayed in neat little boxes. The plexiglass walls were closed in at eight feet by eight feet, a perfect square built for something less than human comfort.
