Her eyes strained to see. It was pitch black. She pulled at the restraints to no avail. Her bare feet ached from the cuts and bruises she had obtained while attempting escape.

Escape. Not something they took lightly to, apparently. Her mouth was gagged and she was strapped to a cold, hard table of some sort. She lay on her back, still wearing the tattered nightgown, but she had no idea where she was or how she'd got there. The last thing she remembered was her message in the night sky and the pain of the Taser, or stun gun. Whatever those horrid things were.

They were pretty much how they kept the captives in line without doing a lot of damage. The things could be set to deliver debilitating and painful shocks, or to knock you out completely, depending upon the situation. Unfortunately, they were mild in comparison to the torture and humiliation the captives had to endure in the name of science. 

They were continuously told how important they were. How special. That the pain they endured was for the greater good. For the future. Of course, they weren't given a choice. Their minds and bodies were no longer their own. They would never go home. Never live normal lives or have families... jobs... fall in love. They would be used until their bodies gave out or their minds snapped. Then they would be disposed of.

She cringed when she thought about the disappearances of other captives. One day someone would be at dinner, or lunch. The next day, they were gone. Sometimes they seemed perfectly fine when they disappeared. Those were the ones she supposed had been subjected to some sort of experimental procedure that must have gone wrong and killed them.

Then there were others who gradually gave out. You could see them deteriorating every day. Then they just didn't show up at meal times one day and you never saw them again.

One girl, she recalls sadly, became increasingly... silly. She began laughing hysterically at dinner one evening. She couldn't stop, even when they came and threatened her. They tased her and took her to her room. She wasn't at breakfast the next morning, but at lunch time, she walked into the dining hall with a blank face. No expression. The laughter was gone. She got her meal and sat down to eat. Suddenly she jumped back up out of her seat and ran, screaming, over to a wall and began clawing and scratching at it. They rushed into the dining hall and pulled her away from the wall. When they turned her around, she began screaming and clawing at her own flesh. Her face. Her chest. Before they could get her under control and out of the room, she had torn her own skin to shreds.

She was never seen again.

Another boy had disappeared when he began whispering to other captives. He would walk up to people and start whispering to them about his plans to make a break for it. He wasn't very sly, though, and they noticed. They heard what he was whispering about and he stopped showing up at meal times. 

A woman, who looked to be in her late forties and claimed to have been brought there when she was a teenager, disappeared after going into convulsions one morning. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the floor. She began convulsing violently and foaming around her mouth. Similar to some epileptic grand maul seizures epilepsy sufferers experienced. They came in and dragged her out by her arms. She was never seen again.

........

The darkness felt suffocating. It didn't help to be gagged, of course, but she felt like the darkness would close in on her and snuff out her last breath. She squirmed harder, pulling at the restraints on her wrists. She twisted and pulled, trying desperately to free at least one of her hands. She wondered how long she had been lying there. How long she would continue to lie there. There was no way for her to calculate the passage of time. Time held no meaning for her. A minute could pass that felt like an hour. An hour go by and feel like a day.

Her mouth was dry. The gag stole all moisture, soaking it up the minute her glands excreted it. Her wrists became chafed and sore. She could tell that her twisting and pulling had torn her skin in places. She felt blood run down to her fingertips. She was unable to utter a sound, due to the depth with which the gag had been lodged into her throat. Tears ran down the sides of her face to her temples to mingle with the sweat already there. They ran along tracks from previous tears that had dried in salty streams. They trickled into her ears. She continuously turned her head from side to side to keep them from filling up.

As she lay there, she suffered waves of panic. They washed over her, bringing her to a state of hyper-ventilation, before subsiding as she struggled to regain control. No sooner had one attack subsided, when another would begin to build.

She was at the height of one of these attacks when suddenly she was blinded by excruciating light. Her eyes instinctively squeezed shut and she cringed, turning her head to the side. She did her best to shut it out, but it went right through her eyelids.

She kept her eyes closed, but slowly began to relax them. After a moment, she was able to crack one open. Her vision was blurred, but she tried to look around at her surroundings. She appeared to be lying on the only object in a stark white room. She couldn't see behind her, but from what she could see, there was nothing else there. Just walls and a ceiling. The door must have been behind her.

"Number 143." She jumped at the sound of a voice saying her assigned number. That was how they referred to the captives. They were not allowed the use of their own names. They were no longer people. They were only numbered test subjects. "You have committed the act of attempting escape."

She moved her head, trying to see as far behind her as possible, but whoever it was sat (or stood) just out of her view. Suddenly white-gloved hands shot into her view and plucked the gag from her mouth. They disappeared just as quickly. She tried to swallow, but couldn't. There was not a single drop of saliva left in her reserves.

The gloved hands reappeared with a paper cup full of water, which was dribbled into and around her mouth, unceremoniously. She gobbled up every drop she could manage to catch. When the cup was empty, it along with the gloved hands disappeared.

"Do you believe that you have any right to freedom?"

The question puzzled her. Of course she believed she had a right to freedom. No one deserved to be locked away and treated the way they were treated.

"You do not have any rights, Number 143."

She tried again to catch a glimpse of the person whose voice she was hearing. She twisted and pulled.

"Your struggling is pointless. It is merely a sign of your stupidity. Your uselessness, other than the use we get from you. It is quite obvious that your unusual ability was bestowed upon you for the purpose of study and experimentation. Your simple lack of intelligence testifies to that."

Her breathing quickened and she felt her pulse begin to race. This was what they did. They slowly sucked from you your identity. Your sense of self-worth. Value. She didn't have much of it left. She had recently had to think for a moment before being able to recall her name. Virginia. No! Victoria. Victoria! Her name is Victoria.

"M-my n-name.... is Victoria!" she croaked, squeezing her eyes closed in defiance. She clung desperately to what was left of herself. Of her strength.

"No. You do not have a name. Why? Because you do not matter. Not in that way, anyways. You are very important in the grand scheme of things because of your contribution to our expanding knowledge. Our power. That is all. Naming you would make about the same amount of sense as naming a lab rat. You are nothing more than that. Acceptance of this would make things much easier for you. Your desperate fight to cling to foolish notions only makes things harder for you."

"M-my name is Victoria!" she croaked a little louder this time. "I-I am 12 years old. M-my parents..."

"Nonsense! You have no parents and you have no name! Your purpose... your existence... is for the advancement of science. That is all. It is that simple."

"I h-have a mother... a f-father..."

"You were hatched. If you have memories of such silly things, it is simply because you are delusional. You have a weak mind and it is going to snap very soon. Then you will be disposed of. Is that what you want? To sink into your delirium and make yourself so useless that we rid ourselves of you?"

Tears once again began trickling down the sides of her face, over her temples, and into her ears. This time she did not shake them out. This time she allowed them to fill, hoping that the moisture would block out the sound of his voice. Hoping she wouldn't have to hear what he was saying anymore.

Silently she said a prayer. The same one that she prayed every day, every hour, every minute. To whom, she didn't know. Would they hear her? Probably not. But, she said it anyways. She prayed for someone to save her. She clung to the hope that, eventually, someone would.

(Votes? Comments?)