The Facility
Chapter 6

A chime work Cass and the lights intensified though her closed eyelids.

Slowly she opened her eyes and stretched, yawning. Sitting up, she looked around expecting to see her nurse, but her room was empty except for her.

She slid out of bed and made her way to the bathroom, and then to the sink. Looking into the mirror, she saw she looked tired. She turned on the water and splashed some on her face and smoothed down her hair.

Pulling her braid around, she looked at it to make sure it had not come too undone.

Satisfied her hair was good enough, she turned the water off and turned around, only to let out a yelp.

Peg stood by the table that now held her breakfast tray.

“Has anyone every told you you’re too quiet?” Cass asked holding a hand up to her thudding heart.

A smile flitted over Peg’s face. “I do believe I’ve heard that a time or two now. Come. Eat. Someone will be here soon to take you to the lab.”

Cassidy shuddered at the mention of the lab. She did not want to be some kind of lab animal; poked and prodded, examined and tested.

Not that she had much choice. If she did not cooperate, she had a feeling they would really do bad things to her until she did what they wanted her to do anyways. At least this way she had some control over what happened to her. Or what did not.

She walked to the table and sat.

Peg uncovered the tray and as Cass began to eat said, “A word of warning. Someone will come to get you and they will be armed. Seeing just some of what you can do, I suspect you could take care of the guard, but all the corridors are sectioned off and can be closed off and gassed.

“You could try to run, but you wouldn’t get far. The cameras are everywhere.”

Cass continued eating while Peg told her all this. She had given thought to trying to make a break for it, but now thought better of it. At least for now.

They seemed to expect her to try something, so she decided to bide her time and maybe lull them into being lax with her. Only then would she attempt it.

“I understand,” Cass told her.

Peg walked around the table, coming up behind her. “Okay,” she said putting her hands on Cass’s shoulders, giving them a brief squeeze.

“I just don’t want to see you hurt.” She kissed the top of the girl’s head. “There’s a pair of shoes by the door. Someone should be here in an hour or so.”

With that she left, leaving Cassidy to finish her breakfast alone.

When she finished, she brushed her teeth and got her new shoes before going to sit on her bed.

The shoes that Peg left were simply slip-on shoes – white of course.

She pulled them on knowing they would fit and sat back and waited. Her anxiety was too high to read, so she decided to take a few deep breaths and try to relax.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled through her nose and out her mouth, and began to inhale again when a different chime sounded, startling her.

The earlier one was more of a buzzing, akin to an alarm. Exactly what it was she had decided. This one was more like a doorbell. Realizing this, she glanced at the wall and saw an open section.

A guard in black from head-to-toe stood net to the opening outside.

Cassidy could visualize him watching her behind the dark visor of the helmet covering his head.

When she did not move, he raised a hand, pointed at her, then pointed down the hall away from him.

There were no extra movements in his gesture and Cass got the feeling this person was not into a delay, so she hopped up and made her way to the door, stopping at the edge of her room.

When she hesitated, the guard inclined his head slightly for her to continue.

“Sorry,” she said stepping out into the hall. She glanced behind the man and saw the clear wall continued for about the same length as her own room before ending. The hall ended as well into a solid wall.

Since the guard blocked that way and did not look like he would let her explore, she turned left and began walking.

At the end of her room on the same side, the wall turned from a clear, transparent wall to a white, solid wall and about halfway to the end she passed a small window set into the wall.

Or was it where the door would be? She thought.

She wanted to pause and try to look in, but the guard was only a few paces behind her, and she would have to stop and stand on her tiptoes to try to look in.

Cass did not expect the guard to be that accommodating.

At the same distance down the corridor as she figured the room would end, a large metal door stood in her way. It looked solid, with most of the top half clear but sturdy non-the-less.

She was about to stop when the whole section slid up into the ceiling as silently as her own door.

As she passed, she looked up and could see the door was at least three to four inches thick. On the other side of the door, things seemed to change.

The walls were still white, but looked more utilitarian, more practical. There was something about the walls where they put her that was not the same here.

She saw that about hip height to her, a strip of white was raised from the wall a fraction of an inch. If it had been a different color and maybe a little thicker, it would remind her of a hospital wall and the protective bumpers they put on their walls.

She took in a gulp of air as it dawned on her that was exactly what this was.

This corridor was different in another wat too. Every ten feet of so, on either side, were doors.

Well, what she assumed were doors, anyway. Unlike her door and the windows she had passed, these suspected doors had small viewing windows four inches wide and two feet high, and while she saw no doorknobs, the seams were not invisible on either side. They probably did, however, slide up into the ceiling. Hence, no doorknobs.

This corridor ended in a T-junction and Cass looked back at her shadow for a direction. His head tipped slightly to the right and she continued to the right after peeking to the left.

Not much to see down that direction other than a corridor with rows of windows set into the walls – or doors – in regular intervals. This ended in what looked like another T-junction, but she could not be sure.

The right side she turned down looked like same and as she walked, a door in front of her slid up into the ceiling.

She slowed as she approached the opening, not quite sure if she was supposed to go in or not. Cass looked into the opening as she got to it and heard an accented female voice that said, “Come in,” to her.

She stepped through the opening and as soon as she was through, she felt, more than heard, it close behind her.

The first thing she saw was something that reminded Cassidy of a dentist’s chair. Beside the chair stood a tall slender Asian woman in her mid-thirties, Cass guessed.

A man, older than the woman and just a few inches taller than she was stood further back and to one side of the woman. He too was Asian.

“Come, please,” the woman said to Cass, motioning her forward. “My name is Doctor Lia Oshiro and this,” she continued, waiving in the man’s general direction, “is Doctor Shenji Tanaka. We will be your primary doctors and scientific investigators while you are here.”

As Cassidy approached, she replied, “Does this mean I’ll be released?”

The man, Dr. Tanaka, said something to the woman in what Cassidy thought was Japanese. Doctor Oshiro’s lips thinned at she pressed them together at the man’s reply.

Finally, she said, “That is not something for us to decide. Sit, please.”

Cass turned and sat in the chair, leaning back in it. It was padded and not too uncomfortable, and Cass noted it did not have restraints.

“Relax,” Dr. Oshiro told her. “Today will be an easy day. I’m going to lay the chair back some, so don’t be alarmed.”

Cassidy’s back started to recline, and her legs raised until she was nearly straight and looking directly at the ceiling.

Doctor Tanaka pushed over a wheeled desk and Dr. Oshiro pulled a drawer out of the back of it.

Holding up a bunch of wires the woman said, “Don’t be afraid. All these do is measure the electrical impulses in your brain. There are a lot of them, and when we are done, you’ll need to wash that pretty hair of yours, but they don’t hurt or anything.”

To show Cass, the doctor put the first two electrodes on the girl’s temples, then began to place them over the top and sides of her head.

When she finished, she sat Cass back upright and had her lean forward to place more on the back of her head.

With that done, Dr. Tanaka came up and put a dark blue cuff around Cassidy’s right forearm and said, “It monitors your vitals.”

She decided he was a man of few words.

After that, Dr. Oshiro slowly turned the chair around facing away from the door she entered from.

“We will begin today with some simple exercises for you,” the woman told her, and the walls Cass was looking at slid up into the ceiling.

Both doctors were out of sight now, and Cass jumped a little when Dr. Oshiro spoke next as it was not from beside or behind her, but through a speaker.

“A small table will rise from the floor. On it will be an object. Please raise the object approximately a foot if you can,” she said.

A small white table -more like a pedestal – rose from the floor in front of her, with a small red orb on top of it.

Cassidy looked at the red sphere and raised it off the table.

“Excellent,” Dr. Oshiro said. “You may put it back.”

Once Cass did, the table lowered back into the floor. Over the next hour, the doctors had her lift various objects on at a time, all at once, and in stages.

Cassidy had no problem lifting single or multiple objects since it was basically the same to her. Starting to raise one object, then raising the next while continuing to hold up the other was harder.

As the table sank back into the floor, Dr. Oshiro suddenly appeared beside Cassidy holding a glass.

“You must be thirsty,” she said holding out the glass to Cassidy.

When Cass only looked at the glass, Dr. Oshiro added, “It’s just juice.”

Cass reached out and took the glass and drank. She decided that there was no point in drugging her since she was cooperating.

The juice was cool and sweet.

Finishing the glass, Cass handed it back.

“Um, I’m guessing it might be a little difficult, but, uh, I need… to use the restroom,” she said embarrassed. She felt the heat creep up her neck into her cheeks.

“Ah,” Dr. Oshiro said looking unconcerned. “That’s actually not as difficult as you think.”

Doctor Oshiro moved to the desk net to Cass and unplugged something, coiling the cord as she closed in on Cass.

Handing the young girl the coil of wires, Dr. Oshiro took hold of Cass’s arm and helped her up, then led her to a wall that opened before them.

“I’m sorry but I cannot allow you to proceed alone, but I do not have to cause you discomfort. I will respect your privacy, providing you do not do anything… inappropriate.”

She looked at Cassidy with dark brown eyes that hinted of fear.

“I promise,” Cass told her.

Doctor Oshiro moved out of the way, and Cass entered the small bathroom. It contained a toilet and a sink with a small mirror over it and nothing else.

The doctor stepped inside with her, taking almost half the available space in the room, and turned around to face backwards.

Embarrassed by being in such proximity to someone, yet having to pee badly, Cass closed her eyes and imagined herself along, pulling down her clothes and sitting.

Anxiety crept up when she started and panic abruptly stopped her as she was mortified to be peeing with someone standing within reach, listening to her.

Even knowing the woman was a doctor, a woman, and was not watching her, Cassidy felt herself go deeply red and hot.

As if reading her mind, the doctor said, “I have two children who are around your age. I understand how you must feel, and I am sorry for this. It is our protocol however and I must follow it. If I may suggest something however.”

The doctor did not say anything else, but instead turned on one of the taps on the sink. The water flowed out, splashing in the sink filling the room with noise. The noise of flowing water at that.

Cass took a deep breath to relax and the running water broke through the anxiety that caused her bladder to freeze up, and she was able to continue.

She finished and flushed, pulling up her clothes as she stood.

“Please do not get the end of the cord wet,” the doctor said, stepping forward out of the bathroom.

“Um,” Cassidy said holding the coil in one hand, trying to figure out how to wash her hands while holding it.

“If I may,” the doctor said, holding out her hand.

Cass passed the coil to her, then washed her hands and the two walked back to the chair. One the way Cass saw Dr. Tanaka sitting in a chair towards the door waiting impatiently by the looks of him.

She sat down in the chair while Dr. Oshiro connected the cord back to the machine, then walked back towards the other doctor.

“Now,” Dr. Oshiro’s voice said, once again through a speaker instead of a few feet behind her. “A series of objects will be raised through the floor. Each is progressively heavier than the last. Attempt to lift them, one at a time, a few inches off the floor, or s high as you can if you cannot lift them up a foot or so. No need to lift the lighter ones up as high as they should be easy for you.”

There was a brief pause and then a section of the floor slid open as ten objects raised out of the floor. Each was pyramidal shaped, starting from something palm sized to the last which was about five feet long on each side of its base.

“Start with the first. It’s one pound,” the doctor said.

Cass lifted it up, floating it a foot off the ground.

“Good. Next is five pounds.”

Cass repeated the levitation act.

“Next is ten pounds,” the doctor said as Cass sat the last one down.

As the weight got heavier, it was harder for Cass to lift the object. Ten and twenty-five were not too bad. Fifty was a strain, but she raised it at last six inches.

“One hundred,” Dr. Oshiro announced for the next one.

Cassidy focused, straining. The pyramid canted on one side, raising, but not uniformly. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she raised it a few inches.

“Good,” the doctor said, and Cass let it go and the weight landed with a clang. “Two hundred is next. Raise it as high as you can.”

Cass took a breath and focused on merely raising it off the floor. One of the four corners raised up slightly, followed by a second. Both hovered off the floor unsteadily as the other two joined them – all tipped at a thirty-degree angle. It quivered about three inches off the ground for a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity to Cass, before falling with a loud metallic thump.

“Very good. Five hundred pounds is next if you can continue.”

By now Cassidy was sweating profusely and breathing heavily, but she was determined to continue. She focused and strained, but nothing happened.

Knowing it was of no help, simply mental, she raised a hand, willing the weight to rise. It trembled but did not raise up.

Cass lifted her other hand, straining to lift the weight. Sweat rolled down her face, stinging her eyes, yet she dared not blink.

Rise, she commanded the weight. Damn you, move!

Her heart was pounding and her breathing fast and shallow as she strained clenching her hands into fists. Nails bit into her palms as she squeezed tighter.

Her focus was tight on the weight, but she was peripherally aware of a keening sound around her.

The big weight bounced on all four corners as if it were dancing. With all her energy, she mentally manhandled the weight into the air. It rose several inches before everything went black for Cassidy.