There was nothing but pain. It wasn’t just the two bullets that had entered his side, still stuck there between layers of flesh, blood, and bone. His mind was in pain as well, as though someone had begun to drill through his skull. Most of the time, he couldn’t even remember where he was. Or who he was. All Matthew James Copeland could see was white, a fitting sight for the man who had taken the name “Shirotou” upon realizing the truth.
He tried to stand, but his legs failed him, knees buckling, head colliding with the hard floor below. Blood trickled from his nose, his mouth, a small river forming around his body, the result of many days of trying to stand and escape from this place. He just couldn’t do it; his mind would not let him out so easily, not yet. He continued to stare at the ground below, trying to muster his energy through focus. There had to be something there, had to be some way to escape from here. He had done it before, hadn’t he?
The twin doors opened, revealing a figure. A woman in a white dress. It was her, the figure that had haunted his dreams for almost a year, the lady in white. Her white dress fitting her hourglass figure perfectly, feet now arched in white heels that clacked as they hit the ground with every step. “Hello, Matthew.” Her tone was welcoming; her voice soothing as the words flowed through his ears. She approached him, kneeling, and took his chin in her hand. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
He said nothing. There was nothing to be said. And, besides, he couldn’t. He was too far within the white to say anything.
“It’s been a year, Matthew.” She answered for him, her smile turning into a frown. “I thought I had lost my favorite experiment, my pet. You had escaped somehow from our prison construct and escaped into the Matrix. How you did this? We are not sure, but it does not matter now.”
He could hear the clicks of typing in the background, could hear a strange static-like noise buzzing in his head, blocking out any other sound. What in hell was going on? What was happening? And then, there was pain, unlike any other pain he had ever felt in his life. What were they doing to him? Why were they doing this?
“We have you now.” The lady in white said with a grin, her voice barely audible above the static-like noise within his mind. “And that is all that matters. Welcome back to our experiment, my pet.”
He screamed and screamed as he once again saw the green code before his eyes, the world around him falling apart piece by piece, his own body piece by piece. He screamed for help, screamed for God to save him, screamed for anything to help him. But, this time there was no help. There was no escape.
There was just the white.
To Be Continued