One

 

I have, for as long as I can remember, always had an irrational fear of being lost. The feeling of wandering around helplessly terrified me more than anything else, and that was why I hated not knowing where I was at all times.   I knew, almost as soon as I gained consciousness, that I definitely did not know where I was. My head buzzed dully, leaving behind only the remnants of a splitting headache. I felt around cautiously, and touched soft padding with my fingertips. A mat. I was lying face down on a Styrofoam mat.   Carefully, I raised myself up onto my elbows and opened one eye, then quickly snapped it shut again. The room was blindingly bright, with white porcelain walls and fluorescent lighting mounted on a high ceiling. For a moment, I had to fight back the urge to throw up. After dry heaving for a good minute or two, I sat up, and, more slowly this time, opened my eyes. The room that I was in appeared to have no windows and no doors, and I was its only occupant.   But how had I gotten in here if there were no doors? More importantly, why was I alone?   I leaned my head back against the side of one of the walls, and thought hard. I had been going home from school with my twin brother, Moonkyu. Then…then someone, no, a group of strangers, men dressed head to toe in back, had started chasing us, yelling something unintelligible. I had been running, following Moonkyu, and then –   – nothing.   I remembered nothing. A cold, sinking feeling came over me, and it finally dawned on me that I was in some serious .                   There was no way of telling time in the white room. Slowly, the headache and nausea subsided, and I was able to get up and walk around, counting the room to be ten paces from wall to wall, no more than five meters in length and width. I tapped along the walls, listening for sound changes that might indicate a hidden door, but heard nothing out of the ordinary.   Eventually, I gave up and sat back down on the mat when my elbow started bleeding again. I had noticed the gash when I first felt the sting, and realized that I must have taken a hard fall when I was running away from the men in black. The palms of my hands were also covered in scratches, and I wiped the blood hastily on my jeans. This was not the time to get squeamish, but I noticed that the blood flowing from my elbow was starting to seep through my cardigan.    I bit back a wince and reached over to increase pressure on the wound. I needed to stop the bleeding, or I would pass out again.   At that moment, there was an ear-splittingly loud clang, and my hands flew up instinctively to cover my ears. A panel from one of the walls was sliding to one side, and a door had formed where there previous definitely was not one. A man in a white lab coat with thick framed glasses stepped in, followed by four of the men dressed in black who had been chasing Moonkyu and me.   “Who are you? Where am I?” I asked, scrambling to my feet and moving to the far end of the room, away from the men.   The man in the lab coat just looked at me for a long moment, eyes darting down to my bleeding arm.   “Get her,” he finally said, moving aside.   The four men in black advanced towards me and I screamed, willing for them to stop. I pushed out with my mind, searching for something, anything, to grab onto, but again, nothing. Two of the men clamp down on my arms, and I was lifted forcefully off the ground. Another one of the men in black led the way, and the other three shoved me out of the room.   The hallway outside the room was also painfully white. There were four other doors just like the one we had just come out of, and I saw that a switchboard was placed next to each one, allowing for it to only be opened from the outside. Before I could get a closer look, however, I was practically carried down the white hallway.   “Let me go-what-hey!” I squirmed, trying to struggle away, but the men held on tight.   “Shut the hell up,” one of them muttered.   “Let me go!” I screamed again, right into the ear of the man on my left. The man flinched and gave me an icy glare, but kept moving.   We were going through a different hallway now, one with green linoleum tiles for flooring and pristine white walls. Doors on either side were marked off with numbers and letters, rather like those in a hospital. Then, the walls started to get darker, and I was being led down concrete steps.   Turning the corner, I was shoved through a glass door in the middle of a glass wall, and saw what looked like a large prison cell, with actual bars, on the other side. That was the last straw.   “Let ing go!” I yelled again. This time, I leaned over, and bit the hand of one of the men holding onto my arm.   The man let out a yell of pain and released me.   I took the opportunity to swing that arm around and landed a blow, and then a kick, on the man on my other side who was taken off guard. The first man had grabbed my wrists again and I struggled as hard as I could, thrashing around. Again, I pushed out with my mind, for anything, and got only silence.   “Stop fighting us, you brat,” one of the men growled.   There was a loud cracking sound as I felt a fist collide with my face and my vision swam for a second. I could taste blood in my mouth and I felt myself being dumped into a heap on the floor. I blinked, focusing my vision, and then sprang to my feet again, wincing.   “Where is my brother?” I yelled desperately, rushing at the metal bars even as the men in black closed and sealed the door.           “Which part of shut the hell up did you not understand?” One of them spat.   “My brother!” I repeated, reaching out through the bars. “What the did you guys do with Moonkyu?!”   The men ignored me and turned away. “Thank god the glass door is soundproof,” one of them muttered. “That girl is a crazy .”   They stepped through the outer glass door, sealed that, and took positions on the other side, standing guard. Letting out a groan of frustration, I reached up and felt around my face; my lip was now bleeding as well, but nothing seemed to be broken.   I could see them. They were so close.   They had to know where my brother was, right?   For the third time, I pushed out with my mind.    Ever since I was little, my twin and I have been able to read each other’s minds. At first, Moonkyu and I had thought that it w