The icy cold steel tiles sent a jolt through her, reviving her slightly.
He paused at the door.
She struggled to get to her feet.
The man shifted his grip, wrapping one hard arm around her chest, just beneath her breasts.
She managed a half a dozen steps before he began dragging her again down an impossibly long, wavering corridor that seemed to undulate like rolling breakers.
Doors opened off the vein sporadically, but all of them were closed, and Lena was in no condition in any case to figure out what the rooms might be for.
They paused again at a set of double doors when they reached the end of the corridor.
Seconds later, the doors slid silently open, revealing another cubicle very little smaller than the one they’d just left.
Dragging her inside, the man released her, allowing her to slump to the floor, and punched a glowing button.
The doors slid shut.
The sensation of rapid movement that followed made Lena’s head swim even worse.
Settling with a sharp jolt, the doors opened again.
This time the man hauled her to her feet and slung her over his shoulder.
She thought for several moments she might be ill as her head swam sickeningly. She fought the nausea, partly because she wasn’t certain she could stop if she got started and partly because she figured he would react violently to having her puke down his back.
She gave up on trying to see anything, squeezing her eyes closed to help battle the dizziness. Around her, she heard whispers--the voices of both men and women--but she could only catch a word here and there and the whispers told her nothing more than the fact that there were other people nearby.
The man halted at last.
She opened her eyesand managed to get a quick glimpse of the area around her as she was set on her feet. In the next moment, she was shoved through a narrow door. The door slammed closed and she found herself in yet another tiny cubicle. This one contained two bunks stacked one on top of the other.
The woman sprawled on the bottom bunk eyed her with hostility. Her attitude was plainly territorial.
Lena looked up at the top bunk a little hopelessly.
It took some maneuvering but she finally managed to hoist herself up onto the bunk and collapsed. Her head was still swimming. She closed her eyes, gripping the hard mattress on either side of her. After a while, the nausea eased off. The disorientation from the drug didn’t abate appreciably. She found herself struggling to make sense of her disjointed thoughts, going back over and over the questions that had been bellowed at her and the argument between the two men.
The men had been wearing uniforms of some sort, she finally realized.
She was in an institution of some kind. Mental hospital? Prison?
The drugs seemed to indicate a mental hospital, but everything else that she could recall seemed to contradict that. Why would they interrogate a mental patient?
For that matter, why would they interrogate a prisoner? Presumably, one did not end up in prison until one had been tried and convicted for a crime.
The word crime prompted a sickening flood of memories.
She was in prison.
She’d been sentenced to life--for killing herself.
* * * *
Three months earlier
The tube shuttle jolted to a halt and doors all along its length slid open. Every passenger in the car Lena occupied tensed, as if fearful that someone would leap on, or that they might be grabbed and shoved out.
