Shadow the Hedgehog - Nightmares on Repeat

If you have ever lost consciousness, you know the kind of sleep that has depths far more impressive than the Mariana Trench. There's absolute nothingness. Merely a void, soundless, lightless, thoughtless. It's strange, really. As is regaining consciousness, like I'm trying to.

Sound is the first of my senses to return to me, even if everything still sounds submerged. I hear voices, several of them, somewhere above me. There's a tone of intrigue, of urgency, and somehow a lack of concern simultaneously. I hear distinct syllables, but I can't tell the words. What's going on?

I hear my own voice vaguely, and I wonder if I even made out real words.

The next sense is sight, and it's not exactly pleasant. Darkness ebbs away and an intense white light floods my vision. Quick seconds tick by while my vision grows clearer, and I can tell that I'm staring at a ceiling, into a light that's occasionally blocked out by the movement of hands, of masked faces - scientists? Unease spreads through me like a frozen weight, and the sensation wavers just as quickly as it comes. No - chaos, hold on. Stay awake! My vision is clouded by returning darkness, and one of the last images I see is of a syringe. I don't feel the next injection.

The next sensation is the kind you feel when you're relaxing, nearly asleep, and suddenly you jump and scare yourself awake. I'm jolted into consciousness, and I'm confused by my surroundings. There's a cold, hard ground beneath me, and it looks like I've been fortunate enough to be locked in some kind of cell in a boring, grey room. Through the same metal bars you'd find in prison, I see a metal black door across the room. Must be the only way out. There's literally nothing else in here beside the single, exposed light bulb on the ceiling. Despite that, I push myself up to stand. While I manage to do that, I'm stopped halfway due to an apparent metal cuff around my left wrist.

I'm chained to the floor. How convenient. I pull my wrist toward my chest to test the strength of the steel chain, and it's unfortunately evident that I'd need to break half of the bones in my hand to be free. What the hell is going on?

A sudden echoing, repetitive slamming sound seizes my full attention, and my eyes focus on the black door. Somebody's on the other side. The sound stops, and the room is brimmed again in silence. I can feel my heartbeat and hear the blood coursing through me. Every nerve in me is alive, and I'm starting to experience what I'd hate to consider fear. I can't look away from that door.

Nothing is happening. My unease is insane.. and the strangest voice comes from the other side of the door. So high pitched, it should be female, but I don't think it is. It's unnerving either way. Just.. weeping?

"Oooh, my..." the voice echoes somehow in the cell, despite coming from outside. It resonates, and the sound is all directed toward me. My blood feels colder. "This is not good, this is not good!"

I take a step back, and I touch the wall behind me. I slide down to the floor, trying to shake the disturbance creeping into me. What the hell is going on!?

"She's very upset, very upset indeed!" the voice cries on. Shrill. "She's very angry at you."

Now it feels like a much more direct statement, and maybe I'm supposed to respond. I'm bordering a panicky state of mind, so my voice is low and without much confidence. "At me?"

In a natural world, there's no way that thing on the other side of the door would've been able to hear me... but it does right now. "Very angry. Please go talk to her, please. She's scaring me."

I'm nearly nauseated by the horrible vibes in this place - am I dreaming? "What am I supposed to.." I mutter aimlessly. I pull on the chain again. "I can't go anywhere. I'm chained down."

The terrible wailing returned, and the sound ricocheted against the walls and flood my senses with dread. Then there are actual words. "Oh, please try again."

Like magic, there's a single loud snap at my side. The cuff is now cut in half, and I'm free to move. I inhale sharply, highly disturbed, and my attention snaps to the cell door before me. It creaks as it slowly opens.

"Oh, please try to talk to her," the voice continues, then begins sobbing again. I feel so hollow, and I'd believe I was if it weren't for my heart slamming in my chest..

Against all of my instincts, I stand up again, this time completely upright. The weak cell door swings calmly open as I take a step forward, nearly like an invitation. Only mildly horrifying. "The hell is going on..?" I say quietly, to myself more than the owner of that terrible voice outside. I take a few tentative steps out of the cell and into the center of the room, and I wonder how smart an idea it would be to go out there, where that voice is coming from. I hear it crying still, and I feel frigid. I approach the slightly opened black door, and when I put my hand out to push it open, I realize how badly I'm shaking. If I don't go forward, though, what else am I gonna do? Wait in here to die or go insane? I slowly push the door completely open, and the room in front of me seems a bit brighter than this one.

Before I step through, I realize the next room is likely twice the size of this one. I don't see anyone in there, but I hear the crying still. Though I keep telling myself it's a suicidal choice, I take a few steps forward and I enter the next room. Same walls, same lights on the ceiling. The voice is behind me now, still sobbing. I turn around immediately, seriously unnerved by knowing it's at my back. Currently in the same cell I was just locked in is a terribly disfigured creature, some dark grey humanoid with simply horrifying black indentations for a mouth and eyes. It's sitting on the floor and hugging it's knees, and it's looking up at me with such vacancy... It starts wailing again and a wave of wicked energy courses through me. I can't look away while it says, "She's so angry... please calm her down."

Who!? I avert my eyes and scan the room immediately, hoping for some way out of this torturous place. All that's in this room is a - really? A gun. In the center of the room, on the floor. Well, what the hell else am I going to do? I take a few unsteady steps toward it, expecting the thing in the cell to start screeching uncontrollably at any time. I pick up the gun - still, my hands are shaking - and nothing happens. I check the chamber, and the gun is loaded. This gun looks familiar, somehow, and I'm almost grateful for that. Some sense of reality in this evil hallucination.

I find slight comfort - if that's what you can call it - in the weight in my hand. Something to hold onto. As I stand there in the silence broken only by that incessant crying, I wonder what I can do to get out of here. Am I supposed to do something? ..Could I shoot that creature in the cell? While weighing my very few options, I realize I'm starting to point the gun toward the sound of the crying.. I look forward at the creature, and I blink once - and drop the gun immediately, because now in the place of the crying monster is a painfully familiar young girl, in a bloodstained blue dress. She's smiling at me with dead eyes.

The image burned into my mind that plagues me is now revived and right before me. All of the panic and anxiety in me just melted into hatred and sorrow. I can't look away from the blood, from her smile, from her cerulean glass eyes -

"What do you think Earth is like, Shadow?" she asks. The question she used to ask the most. As she speaks, thick crimson blood spills from her mouth, further discoloring her dress, and it doesn't stop. "I hear the people are sad there," she says. Such an immense understatement. Everything inside of me ceases to matter.

"Maria?" I call to her weakly. This can't be real at all, and yet some part of me wishes it could be. So I could see her again. But I never wanted to see her like this.

She smiles wider, and her teeth are covered in blood, which only seems to spread. "You can help them, can't you? Help them be happy." The crimson wells up in her eyes like tears, and she begins crying blood. Choking on blood. Suffocating. I fall onto the floor, and breathing isn't working out well for me, either. I cover my ears in a futile attempt to block out the sounds of her suffocation, her suffering - it's failing. She's dying all over again, even bloodier than the first time that replayed in my mind a thousand times... and.. her choking becomes quieter.. and now silence. My vision returns to complete darkness.

I resurface from another slip of consciousness, and again - that blinding light overhead returns. I hear the scientists again. There's a buzzing sound resonating from my skull, and I swear to God the room is spinning. This is still a million times better than seeing Maria like that.

I can feel tears on my face and I can hear those vague syllables once again. Where are the scientists? I try to sit up, and I'm stopped by both complete disorientation and because I'm tied down. The resistance on my wrists and ankles makes me feel like I'm back on the ARK, dealing with their experiments.. is that what's happening here?

"Let me up," I mutter. I hate how weak I know I must sound - they won't listen anyway. "Let me go!"

I fall back down against the table beneath me completely, far too medicated to keep trying to get up. This entirely hopeless feeling is all too familiar... how did I get here again?

"...Interesting..." came some man's voice. Only one clear word in what must've been a full sentence. Some of the syllables sound more like words than they did the first time.

"Please let me recover," I ask, remembering the relentless drugging on the ARK. Straight from one dosage to the next, for hours on end... this seems no different.

"Add the... admer..." continued that same man. "We'll see..."

This time I feel the needle push through my skin, directly into my forearm, left side... and again, darkness consumes me.