My Hockey Alpha

 Chapter 96 Trapped

Nina

I woke up in a dimly lit room that smelled oddly of lemon cleaning solution. My throat felt raw and sore, and it took longer than usual after opening my eyes for my vision to come back into focus. Finally, when it did, I realized that it seemed as though I was in some sort of brightly lit prison cell. It almost felt like something out of a science fiction movie, like I had been abducted by aliens. There were no windows.

“H-Hello?” I croaked. I tried to sit up, only to realize that my wrists and ankles were being held in place by leather straps that were attached to the bed. “Hello? Let me out!” I shouted, struggling against the restraints.

No one came.

I wasn’t sure how long I thrashed against the restraints as I tried desperately to get free, screaming and practically foaming at the mouth. Eventually, I tired myself out. I knew, now, that no one was coming for me.

Where was I? It appeared to be some sort of strange prison-like room, but… Where was I? And why was I here? I couldn’t remember anything past seeing Edward’s cold, glowing eyes fixed on me. That was it: he must’ve hypnotized me and had me locked up somewhere.

Maybe Enzo would come for me. Surely, being one of my closest friends, he would know that something was wrong and he would come straight for me. But as I remembered what had happened at the party… Would he even care to come and look for me? Had whatever Ronan did to me on the night of the party broken any trust that Enzo had left in me?

I wanted to hope that Enzo would come for me, but at the same time, I couldn’t know for sure. What if I was trapped somewhere far away, somewhere that he would never find me even if he tried?

There was no way I could just lay here and pray that someone would come for me. I would have to get out on my own.

I started by looking around the room for something, anything, that could eventually help me to escape. At the same time, I started memorizing everything that could be even remotely important for the future, just in case I did somehow get out and would have to give a report to the police: the number of ceiling tiles, the number of fluorescent lightbulbs on the ceiling, the sound of water dripping from a pipe…

Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. I quickly shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep. I heard the door to my containment cell slide open in an oddly mechanical manner, then heard the footsteps approach the side of my bed.

“Wake up. I know you’re faking it.”

Edward.

I opened my eyes wide and began to scream, but he only sighed, rolled his eyes, and stuffed something in my mouth to muffle my screams. I watched then in horror as he pulled a small, metal rolling table up to the side of my bed and retrieved a syringe from a drawer, which he filled with some sort of yellowish solution.

“What is that?” I murmured through the cloth in my mouth, struggling against the restraints again as he flicked the syringe.

He didn’t answer. Edward bent down over me, avoiding eye contact, and gripped the skin of my upper arm. I thrashed harder and managed to spit the cloth out of my mouth.

“Get away from me!”

Edward merely sighed and looked into my eyes.

“Calm down. This will only take a second.”

“Get off!” I screamed, throwing my head back repeatedly against the bed as I struggled with all my might, to no avail. My screams intensified as Edward pinched the skin on my upper arm again, then shoved the needle in.

I was suddenly overcome with intense dizziness.

“What did you give me…” I muttered, my speech slurred. My tongue felt heavy and dry in my mouth, like it was made out of chalk. I watched as Edward straightened and tossed the syringe down onto the rolling cart before walking over to the end of my bed. He picked up a clipboard, speaking to me hushed tones as he made notes on the board. Something about hallucinations…

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I tried to speak again, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, either, as though my body was slowly becoming paralyzed.

Then, everything went black again.

I woke up again in another dark room, but this one was different from the “bedroom” that I woke up in originally. This room was darker, and the restraints didn’t just stop at my ankles and wrists. He had me strapped down to some sort of cold, metal table, with leather straps running across my abdomen, my shoulders, and even my head, rendering me completely unable to move.

I couldn’t see much around me aside from a single, bright spotlight that shined down from above. I could hear some murmuring from the darkness before footsteps approached. A large, meaty hand reached out and grabbed the light, swiveling it so that it now shined down directly on my face and blinded me.

Squinting my eyes, I tried to call out into the darkness — but I couldn’t. There was a gag in my mouth that not only kept me from speaking in anything more than incoherent mumbles, but there was also a leather strip affixed to the front that kept my teeth from touching.

The muttering around me continued. As my heart rate quickened, I could hear the sound of metal instruments being moved around on a cart beside my head.

Suddenly, Edward’s face came into view. He was wearing a surgical mask, but as he stared down at me and pulled the latex gloves onto his hands with a snap, he stared down into my panicked eyes with such a look of cool indifference that it was almost sickening.

“This’ll hurt a bit,” he said, reaching for something out of my view. “Just try to relax. Struggling won’t help you any.”

I felt something cold and wet touch on either side of my temple. A scream erupted from the depths of my throat as I began to thrash, but all of the straps holding me down kept me from moving.

Then… Agony. It felt as though my body was being relentlessly electrocuted from the inside. I couldn’t move, couldn’t react; I could only tremble, feeling as though my eyeballs were vibrating in their sockets.

The pain stopped momentarily.

“I think I’ll turn it up another notch,” I heard Edward say, as though he was simply having a casual conversation with me.

I felt a bit of drool run down my cheek and drip into my ear. The pain began again, but this time, it felt as though I somehow managed to escape from my body. It was like I was looking down at myself, watching everything that was happening to me, completely detached from my pain.

I had always been told that electroshock therapy had been outlawed for decades. What sort of hell had Edward imprisoned me in?

“I think that’s enough for now,” Edward said after a few more agonizingly long minutes as he turned off the machine. “Come on now, Nina. Let’s get you back to your room, and get you some more medicine.