Suddenly, it was as if all the oxygen in the
room had been extracted. David started coughing and then his knees made his
body collapsed to the floor, unable to hold him any longer. He felt as if his
weight was three times as much. The room around him, well lit only seconds
before, suddenly became a dark place, more like a cave than a normal hotel
bedroom. He tried to inhale through the nose but it didn’t work. He opened his
mouth wide but that didn’t do anything either.
If that was possible, his brain was hurting.
It was as if someone was burning it inside of his skull. The coughing
continued, with his hands against the floor, trying to breather once again. But
nothing happened. That was what people in space must feel like when they have a
bad space suit or when the ship is not working properly. His head started
spinning and, in a matter of a few more seconds, David fell completely to one
side, closing his eyes, stopping his attempts to breath.
Hours later, he woke up. He wasn’t dead, which
was good. He had a mask over his face, apparently supplying him all the oxygen
he needed. His head was still spinning, but David tried to make sense of where
he was. He looked to the right and saw nothing more than a table full of
operating tools. The wall was made of metal and there didn’t seem to be any
windows in the room. To the left, there was a door, also made of metal, in the
middle of the wall. There was some sort of sound coming from the other side.
In the right moment, David closed his eyes and
tried to breath normally. The sounds he had heard were voices and they were
apparently discussing him. As they entered the room, they commented on the
health of the subject, that probably meaning him. For their tones, he could
infer one of them was a woman and the other a man. They walked around him,
probably staring at his body, sometimes saying something interesting and some
other times just walking.
One of them touched David in the head and it
had required a lot from him in order not to scream. He didn’t really know why,
but the touch of that person had triggered a horrible headache. It was as if he
or she had fire on the tip of the chosen finger. They left after doing that,
probably expecting to have an instant reaction and instead not getting
anything. But as soon as they left, David opened his eyes, touched his head and
realized it was still burning. Or at least that’s how it felt, as if he had
been marked like cattle by however those people were.
The point was, he didn’t want to know what
else they had prepared for him. He stood up, got down the table he had been
laid on and walked to the door. No sounds were coming from the other side so he
opened it and ran out. There was a very long corridor but he just chose a
direction in the moment and started running. Soon, he had to stop. All of a
sudden, he felt very tired and the headache threatened to make a comeback,
which wouldn’t help him at all right then.
He was then more careful, walking along the
hallway until he saw another door, which he opened. It was a closet. He was a
about to close it when he realized there were several robes there, the kind
doctors use. He hadn’t seen the people that had entered the room he was in, but
they possibly had those robes on. So he entered the closet and put one over his
body. He then realized that he wasn’t wearing his shirt, only his pants and
shoes. It was very strange but he didn’t have an answer for that.
David came out of the closet and started
walking again, this time with a faster pace but without really running. He finally
found a crossroads and it was there, from the distance, where he saw other
people in robes, checking on some papers. The hallway they were standing on was
much shorter, as on the other side there was a massive room, very white and
bright. He would have wanted to know what that was all about but the real goal
was to get out of there fast, before they noticed he had escaped.
He checked at least five more doors along the
way, finding only rooms just like the one he had been in and more closets.
Finally, he ended up in a tiny open space, that had a very different door, this
one made of glass, with one of those machines on the side were you put a card
for the door to open. Obviously he had no card and he had no idea how to make
the door open. His breathing started accelerating and, even as he tried to calm
down, it didn’t work at all. It was as if something was inside of him.
Suddenly, several men and women with robes
surrounded David, as he collapsed on the floor completely. The headache was
getting stronger. But instead of helping him to a bed or something, the people
were just watching and using instruments to measure something over his body.
They waved those things over him but then someone else appeared. Someone who’s
voiced he recognized. But he couldn’t raise his head to look at the person, as
the pain had grown too strong. David finally collapsed and the last thing he
heard were the words “It was a success”.
