Mara woke up suddenly, her body feeling stiff and her head hurting badly, like it had been cracked open. Her eyes blinked open slowly, and the world around her started to come into view, but everything felt confusing and out of place. She knew right away she wasn’t in the Memory Retrieval Centre anymore. The usual quiet, clean sound of the place was gone, replaced by a strange, unsettling silence. She was lying on a hard, cold metal floor. Her hands were tied up, her wrists tightly bound with something rough and scratchy. Fear gripped her chest.

She blinked a few more times, trying to see clearly, but nothing around her looked familiar. The faint light above her made weird shadows on the walls, making the room look strange and distorted. She tried to sit up, but the pain in her head and the heaviness in her arms and legs kept her from moving.