Chapter 31 Nina

Chapter 31

?Nina

The lights flicker on after four hours of darkness and Nina squeezes her eyes tight shut at the sting of it. She blinks the room back into focus and rises to stretch her aching limbs.

She managed to sleep for a large portion of the sensory deprivation period, perhaps three hours, but she had no real concept of time alone in the darkness.

She paced the black in her waking moments, mapping out the room like a woman newly blind, using the edges of things and her own strides as maps and markers. She had water at least; though silent, the tap in the room had collected a few handfuls in its curved catch cup above the drain. She had that, and time to think; much too much time to think.

Standing now she reaches her arms up and stretches out her aching back muscles, too taut from the trauma of hours before. She knows something is coming and she knows she needs food and if she had to put money on it, she'd bet that's how they'll get her in the next room. And by God, she has thought a lot about that next room over the last few hours.

With a hydraulic whir the door across the room slowly slides open.

Bathsheba's voice returns, after so much silence. "Sensory deprivation complete. Please proceed to the vestibule."

Nina looks beyond the door at the thin vestibule corridor and the other room waiting. She turns back to the door she entered the room from, firmly sealed behind her.

She reminds herself that Joe is coming, he might be here already, he will have alerted someone, help will be on its way. It's only a matter of time until someone batters down the doors, one after the other, and rescues her. The only reason James's firm didn't do so before she arrived was because they didn't want to damage the property. But if she is clearly in danger no one will think twice. And James will get her messages soon, if he hasn't already; it will be Monday soon.

People are coming, she tells herself, and she will make it out. And she promises herself that whoever, or whatever, this is and the reasons behind it will be dragged into the light.

If she were to be honest at this very moment, she'd admit that she doesn't care anymore if any of this was her father's doing, though she feels a twinge of shame at the thought. She isn't even interested in the women whom she assumes have been through this house before her. She doesn't have space in her mind for that right now because she knows what's coming next. Not exactly, but she knows it will be hard, physically and mentally, and she knows it will be a game designed to test her very limits. And if she keeps going long enough, she will reach those limits.

She has considered her options.

She needs food. She will need more water. If she stays here in this room for another round of sensory deprivation, she might be too weak even to continue eventually. Better to keep her body healthy and try to delay whatever comes next than to waste time here and hope she isn't tested again.

Bathsheba repeats the request. "Please proceed to the vestibule immediately."

Nina knows they're watching her. She felt it in the darkness, in the silence of the sensory deprivation, eyes on her, night-vision cameras—in her mind's eye she pictured the scene like some kind of behavioral experiment. Perhaps it is that, perhaps it isn't. What this place is she still doesn't know. But she knows it isn't good. And she knows that she can, and fears she most likely will, die down here.

She presumes her father created it, all evidence seems to point that way, but his reasons are still unclear.

And yet, in spite of everything, she still believes those reasons will unveil themselves before too long and she will suddenly make sense of it all, either by the nature of what she finds down here or with the arrival of help.

But she knows she can't spend another four hours in darkness.

The vestibule is her only option.

And with that she steps out of the room and into the green-tinged corridor. Another door closes behind her, sealing Nina even deeper into the house.