章節 107: A predator’s hunt pt.1
Ada sat on the cold, smooth floor of her white room, her legs crossed and her gaze fixed on the wall in front of her. Her dark hair contrasted starkly with the whiteness that surrounded her, like an ink stain on an immaculate sheet of paper. She wore a white dress, almost indistinguishable from her surroundings, which made her look like a ghost floating in that sterile void.
Her small hands played absentmindedly with a loose thread on the hem of her dress, the only movement in that unnatural stasis. The room was a perfect cube, with three glass windows that broke up the monotony of the walls: one in front of her and two on the sides. Through those openings, Ada could observe other small micro environments parallel to her white prison.
Her gaze wandered to the window to her left. There, in a cell identical to hers, a white-haired boy fidgeted frantically. His right arm twisted and transformed before his eyes, the skin becoming covered in thick fur made of pure darkness, the fingers elongating into sharp black claws. It was a wolf limb attached to a human body, a sight that would have terrified anyone, but Ada looked at it with a disturbing, almost hypnotic calm.
The boy howled and threw himself against the glass, his wild and desperate eyes meeting Ada's for an instant, before returning to focus on his futile attempts to escape. His nails scraped the smooth surface and made a screeching sound that echoed through the demigoddess's room.
Slowly turning her head, the young girl shifted her attention to the window to her right. There, another surreal scene unfolded before her eyes. A girl, perhaps a little older than her, pressed her face against the glass. Her eyes were those of a snake: vertical pupils in irises that changed color like a crazy kaleidoscope. Her forked tongue darted between her lips as she hissed incomprehensible words, her breath fogging the glass in concentric circles that appeared and disappeared in rhythm with her exhalation.
Ada watched some of her fellow prisoners with a mixture of fascination and terror. Part of her wanted to look away, hide in a corner and close her eyes. But another part, one that was growing deeper inside her, couldn't help but watch, absorb every detail of those visions.
The wolf boy and the snake girl continued their desperate attempts to escape. They screamed, scratched, banged on the glass with a ferocity that Ada couldn't understand. She remained still, silent, as if afraid that the slightest movement might draw attention to herself.
Hours passed, marked only by the change in the intensity of the light filtering through the front window. Ada didn't know if it was day or night and definitely didn't know the date. Time seemed to have no meaning in that place.
She couldn't count the days spent there even if she wanted to.
She couldn't even remember the day she was taken to the "orphanage". If she had relied only on her memories, she could have easily deduced that she had lived in there forever, but she knew that wasn't the truth.
Once she was free, she had a family in the mortal world.
Then, suddenly, something changed, in the literal sense.
The door to the wolf-boy's cell opened, and figures in white coats entered. Ada couldn't make out their faces, but she saw how they pinned down the young man and dragged him away despite his howls of protest. The door closed, and the cell remained empty, an emptiness that seemed to scream louder than any scream.
The little girl's heart accelerated.
She knew what would happen next. She waited, holding her breath, as the minutes slowly dragged by. Then, as expected, the same scene was repeated in the snake girl's cell. The same anonymous figures, the same heartbreaking attempt at resistance, yet another oppressive silence that followed.
And finally, Ada was left alone.
The cells on either side of her were empty, mirrors of the loneliness she felt growing inside her. She curled up, hugging her knees to her chest as her gray eyes stared into nothingness before her.
There were no more screams, there were no more attempts to escape.
Only silence, the blinding white environment and awareness growing that soon, very soon, it would be her turn.
Ada began to tremble as the doctors in white coats approached her cell. Despite the disturbing calm that had previously pervaded her, now, faced with the inevitable, a wave of terror made its way into her chest. She saw them open the door without any sound, as if even noise was banished to that sterile and impersonal place. The cold hands of one of the doctors rested on her thin shoulders. Ada shivered, not so much from the contact, but from the feeling of being completely at the mercy of those figures that almost seemed like automatons.
She didn't try to object. Not like the wolf-boy or the snake-girl had done. Their desperate protests had only made things worse, and Ada knew that fighting was useless. She stood up, with slight hesitation, as the doctors led her out of the bright white room that had imprisoned her all this time.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the sound of the doctors' rubber soles against the floor, a sound that seemed to bounce off the smooth, empty surfaces. The neon lights above her hummed faintly, casting a pale shadow over her slender frame.
When they arrived in front of a different door, larger and heavier, Ada sensed that her destiny was about to be fulfilled. Her heartbeat increased, and she felt her throat close for a moment.
She had promised not to object, but the primordial instinct of all humans took possession of her. The door opened with a metallic hiss, revealing a room that was the complete opposite of the one she had just been taken from. Darkness reigned supreme, so dense that it seemed to swallow up the light and suffocate any trace of heat.
She began to thrash like a madman, screaming for help.
"No! No! Please!"
Her weak voice made the request sound like nothing more than the gasps of a motherless puppy.
It was all useless.
The doctors pushed her inside and closed the door before she could reach them. The moment she crossed the threshold of the new room, darkness enveloped Ada like a suffocating blanket. The contrast with the blinding white of her cell was so drastic that for a moment she thought she had lost her sight. The air was thick, she couldn't even say of what, filled with an energy that would have made the hairs on her arms stand up if the doctors hadn't constantly shaved them off.
A thin beam of light cut across the room like a silver blade, revealing blue dust particles dancing in the stagnant air.
That lone beam only served to accentuate the surrounding darkness, creating shadows that seemed to move at the edges of her vision.
Something that would normally have been impossible.
Ada took a step forward, uncertain.
The sound of her bare feet on the cold floor echoed in the vastness of the room, making it seem much larger than she could imagine. She strained to see beyond the beam of light, trying to give shape to the shadows that surrounded her.
That's when she saw them.
Two eyes, shining like headlights in the darkest night, stared at her from the darkness. They didn't flap, they didn't move, they simply watched her with an intensity that nailed her to the spot. Ada felt her heart speed up in her chest, the beat so loud she feared it could be heard throughout the room.
The wolf boy and snake girl had been taken there before her, but had not returned.
It could only mean one thing: "They're dead," she deduced.
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