The Ethereal Vision

  ***

  She awoke later to find that her surroundings were exactly the same; it seemed that no time had passed in this artificial environment. Immediately, she could feel that some of her strength was available to her; the tranquilising effect of the drug was diminishing. She grasped at the sheets on the bed and pushed herself upwards. She squinted as she rose, then felt the urge the vomit. It passed after a moment, and she gasped for air.

  Breathing deeply and slowly, she looked out at what she was really faced with. Indeed, it did seem that through the darkness there was a tree opposite the space she now occupied. She could make out the wiry texture of the rivets in the bark that encircled the trunk, but she couldn’t understand why on earth she could see a tree. She turned away from it.

  She lifted her legs slowly to the floor, trying her best to ignore the nausea, and stood up slowly. Dim white light flickered on and filled the room.

  “You now have five minutes of remaining light,” a voice said from overhead. Her brow furrowed as her drugged mind tried to understand these simple words.

  She paced around the small space, taking note of the minimalist surroundings. She saw a separate door to her left, behind the single bed, and approached it. Inside there was a simple, stark bathroom with a shower, toilet and metallic wash hand basin. To her left, she saw shelving lined with folded clothing that was wrapped in plastic. She winced and returned to the dimmer, main section of the room. She felt a lump form in her throat, and the desire to whimper arose in her, but she refused that comfort; her years of stoic control forbade it.

  As she sat back down on the bed, her breathing once again became ragged as the realisation of what had happened became more apparent: she had been taken to one of the facilities, and she had no idea where it was. She began to gasp as she felt panic spread through her body. Where the hell was Max? she wondered as she glared around the room desperately. Then the lights flickered out, and she was once again confronted with the darkness of her new reality.

  She stood up again, ignoring the feeling of nausea, and put her hands on the glass. It was thick—she guessed it was nearly a full inch—but she was sure she could shatter it if she tried hard enough, guilt be damned. Failing that, she would bore a hole in it with her thoughts, just like Max had shown her with the fire. She would peer down to its most basic elements and tear it apart from its core, molecule by molecule if she had to.

  She felt for the glass with her mind, working slowly, but then the thing that had been lingering just behind her awareness—the thing that had caused her to feel so ill when she first woke up—came to her understanding: there was nothing there to feel. Those primal faculties of her mind were gone. She could feel only a dim remnant of her ability to detect the physicality of the environment around her.

  She gasped and tried again. The darkness seemed to become a thicker, darker blanket around her. She reached out for the glass, but still, there was nothing there. Her eyes began to well up as the panic grew worse, and she began to feel her heart beat in her chest in a manner she had never experienced before; she could feel the pulse of blood run up inside her neck. She turned and looked around the room for something else to try. She could discern what looked like a remote control on a desk to her right.

  She aimed the beam of focus at it, but once again, it was not there—gone completely. She was aware, only dimly, of the controller’s brief outline in the dark, which indicated the ability was still there, but was now reduced to almost nothing. It was as though only one percent of that talent remained—and probably less than that.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks as panic got the best of her. She knew what had happened; they had found a way to control it. Not only that, they had switched it off completely. Whatever they had done to this place—to this location where they had taken her—they had somehow managed to close off that channel in her mind where the ethereal energy flowed. She came face to face with the reality that she was now defenceless—and alone. She was cut off from her mother and from Jack, and she realised that she had no way out of here.

  She thought of Lucas and her fists clenched as she vowed in that moment that she would find a way to make him pay for doing this to her.

  After a time spent slouched against the giant window at the front of her room, facing the bare, white corridor, she returned to the bed and lay down. The panic was abating now, and her breathing began to slow and return to normal. She thought of Max, and a surge of excitement ran through her. She reached out for him with her thoughts, but found that there was nothing there; she could not contact him.

  Max? she said pleadingly in her mind. But no reassuring father-like voice flowed back to her across the winds of the psychic. There was nobody there. MAX??? She screamed his name this time as a tear rolled down her cheek. She could discern the faintest whisper, like a voice in the static for a split second.

  Jane…

  But that was all she got. He was gone, too. She was alone.