“I’m going, I’m going,” Rowan muttered, her attention already on starting the ship. She pressed a few more buttons and the lights in the ship came on. “Let’s go.” She flew out if the dock they were stationed in and flew into space. “So are you nervous?” she asked Nora.
Nora peered out of the window and watched as the scenery goes by. "Nah, not really. This is supposed to be an easy mission." She turned her attention back to Rowan and offered a reassuring smile. "What about you? Are you nervous?"
“Nope,” Rowan said. “Like you said, it’s supposed to be easy. Routine.” She noticed some larger ships flying over head but didn’t think much of it. Suddenly, their ship started to shake.
Nora grabbed onto the sides of her chair and stiffened, her face paled considerably. "What the hell is going on? Is this normal?" The situation was not covered in training.
Rowan tightened her grip on the steering wheel and frowned. “No.” The planet below them started getting farther and farther away, as if they were being pulled up. “Hold on.” She flipped a switch, grabbed a lever, and shifted it down. She jerked the steering wheel to the left. She thought giving the ship more power and jerking it would get them out of whatever was grabbing their ship but it didn’t. “I don’t. . . . Somethings got us.”
Nora reached forward and flipped some switches on her own panel. “Alright, I turned on the shield but there’s some interference. It should still work but it’s not at full power.” They didn’t know what this was so she wanted to be prepared for anything. “We’re going to be fine, Rowan, this is probably a surprise training exercise.” She didn’t even believe that but they couldn’t afford to panic.
Rowan nodded as she typed something furiously. “Yeah,” she muttered distractedly. She pressed one more button then looked up. “Come on, come on. Okay just in case, I’m sending out a distress signal. It just has to send.”
Nora yelped in surprise when the ship suddenly jolted. She was positive that the situation wasn't a training exercise. "We don't have any weapons on the ship, do we?" Archery was more her thing than guns but any form of a weapon would be great.
“No.” Rowan’s face was calm. “We were supposed to get them at the base down on that planet.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe it is just a test. But I don’t know.”
Nora peered out of the window and looked up at the aircraft above them. “Rowan, we need to hide.” The ship was not army marked and looked nothing like any of the other test ships from training. “I really don’t think this is a test.”
“Where? There’s nowhere to hide.” The ship was tiny. It was just big enough to hold two seats and the dashboard, but that was it. “We'll just . . . fight our way through.”
Nora sighed heavily. They were screwed. “Fight our way through? We have no weapons and we’re most likely outnumbered.” She had a horrible feeling about this.
“I don’t know,” Rowan admitted. She looked at Nora, a fierce, determined look in her eyes. “But I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” The ship jostled again and Rowan could see two metal arms grab them. The door behind them opened into darkness. Rowan didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Two arms shot put and grabbed both of them. She heard a sound like someone hitting someone and Nora made a small noise next to her, then was silent. She felt a blow to her head, then felt everything grow dark.
She woke up strapped to a table that was tilted upwards, immediately panicking when she didn’t see that Nora was strapped to the table behind her. “Nora?” she whispered, her voice harsh.
“Just don’t do anything stupid, Rowan. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” Nora stood the second she saw the metal claws. She reached out and grabbed Rowan’s hand and squeezed it. “No matter what happens, just remember that we’ll still be together.” The words had barely left her mouth before an arm grabbed her and she was hit over the head. She made a startled noise before succumbing to the darkness.
The headache was all she felt through the musky darkness. Her eyes slowly opened. She couldn’t see a thing. It’s all black. “Rowan? Where are you?” She was immediately overcome with panic.
“Nora? Thank god. I’m right here. I’m right here.” Rowan breathed a sigh of relief. She looked around her, noticing the room. It was small and simple. To her right was a metal table with a metal chair at it. To her left was a door, but that was all.
The door buzzed and opened and two guards in uniforms stepped in and closed the door. A voice from a speaker somewhere above them spoke. “Which one of you is the mechanic?”
"Are you okay? You aren't hurt, are you?" Nora twisted and turned her head in a desperate attempt to look at Rowan. She managed to catch a quick glimpse at her. That would have to work. She glanced around the room and frowned. The room was definitely creepy.
Her eyes narrowed the second the a voice cut through the darkness. The guards made it worse. "How about you take that question and you shove it up your ass?" She snapped venomously.
"No, I'm okay." Rowan was about to ask if Nora was okay when the voice cut her off. She almost laughed at Nora's response due to a weird mix of panic and adrenaline. Rowan's mind raced. What did they want with her? Why did they want a mechanic? And where were they? She remained silent.
"I won't ask again. Which one of you is the mechanic?"
Nora glared defiantly at the guards. “And I’m not going to tell you again. Take that question and shove it up your ass,” She snapped before she spit on the nearest guard. “We’re not going to tell you a fucking thing so how about you stop wasting air by fucking breathing and running your fucking mouth?” There was no way she was going to tell any of these dumbasses a damn thing. She was much too stubborn for that.
The voice was silent for a moment. "You're going to regret that." The guards surged towards Nora. One had a syringe in his hand and stabbed it into her neck. Rowan heard Nora's body slump over but she could still hear her talking and breathing. They unstrapped her and started bringing her out of the room.
"No!" Rowan yelled. "No stop it's me it's me!" she cried desperately.
"The only thing I'm going to regret is not beating the shit outta your sorry ass sooner." Nora bit down as hard as she could on a guard's hand but it was too late. The syringe had already been jammed into her neck. She slumped over and felt completely limp. The weak and helpless sensation was weird. She turned to look at Rowan. "Don't tell them anything. No matter what."
Rowan blinked, her breathing speeding up. "But I- no, no, no. I can- I can. . . . " She bit her lip and nodded. She watched the guards drag Nora out of the room. "What are you doing!" she yelled at them. "Don't hurt her!" She banged her head back against the table as the door crashed shut.
The guards brought the girl into a different room and strapped her to an elaborate chair with wires and metal running all through it. "Comfortable?" the same voice asked from another speaker.
Nora squirmed a little in the chair before she yawned. If she showed fear then she would make it worse for herself. Hence, she was showing boredom. "Well, it's not the Ritz Carlton but whatever. Though, based off of the way you vulgar people are it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't even know what the Ritz Carlton is." She winkled her nose in disdain at the two guards that had dragged her in here. "Let's speed this process up, shall we? I have much better things to do than just sit hear and listen to you blab your mouth."
The guard to Nora's left shoved a black fabric bag over her head. Immediately after, the other one punched her once, twice, three times in the head. He punched her again, this time in the stomach. "Go shoot the other one," the voice said, sounding bored. The two guards left the room, the heavy metal door slamming behind them, leaving Nora alone.
Nora yelped when she got punched in the head. She would feel dizzy if the black bag wasn't over her head. With a sharp intake of breath she prepared herself for more pain. It came in the form of a strong punch to the stomach. The blow knocked the wind out of her. She had been prepared to keep up with the snappy comments but the second she heard the voice order to shoot Rowan, that façade dropped. "Rowan!" She screeched and panicked completely. The pain she could handle but Rowan is the one thing she cared about more than herself.
(K so I've been doing a lot of research on torture so let me know if this gets too much for you)
Rowan heard Nora scream her name and looked around frantically. "Nora? Nora!" she yelled.
"Which one of you is the mechanic?" the voice demanded. Rowan bit down on her bottom lip so hard she drew blood, but she remained staring straight ahead. Nora had told her not to say anything, and she wasn't going to say anything. She heard a gunshot and another scream. But it didn't sound like Nora . . . it sounded like her.
'What are they doing with my scream?' she wondered. 'Nora. Oh god, what if they're making her think I'm dead?'
The door opened again and the guards came into the room Nora was in. They immediately took turns pummeling into her.