¡Ay mi cabeza!
The pounding of my heart echoed in my temples. Now that I was conscious, I could feel the Earth turning beneath me.
Wait.. Earth? I groped at the ground around me and felt the grittiness of dirt along with the smoothness of grass.
I'm outside? I thought as I forced my eyes open, immediately blinded by the errant rays of sunshine peeking through the overhead trees.
I was outside, but outside where?
Slowly, the images around began to crystallize. I was lying in the middle of a large meadow. There was tall, lush grass surrounding me, and the towering trees reached so high that it appeared as if they were holding the sky up.
Wait a second… the more I looked at the swaying branches, the more unfamiliar the trees seemed to me. These weren't the ones that were planted around the compound.
My stomach lurched, and my vision blurred as I sat up too quickly. The pounding in my head intensified, so I pressed my hands against it, and I felt it.
A warm, wet stickiness that set the world tilting again.
My right palm was bright red with blood. The ground below me was wet and darker than the surrounding area, where it had soaked up the pooling blood.
Shit. What happened to me?
I felt my chest constricting, and a sob escaped my lips unprompted. The rest of the world dropped away as I watched myself from the outside in.
With shaky hands, I touched my neck gingerly, expecting to find some tenderness, but there wasn't any. I breathed out slowly and inhaled very shakily as my hands continued their descent. My breasts felt normal, my stomach did too, and then I paused.
Trembling fingers moved gently down my inner thighs, but there were no bruises or sore muscles. I let out the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding and the tears that had pooled in my eyes.
I wiped at them, smearing blood across my face as I did.
Finally, on my feet, I became acutely aware of the sheer size of the trees around me. They dominated the scene. These were definitely not from around the lab. I looked further, but couldn't make out any buildings hiding within the trees.
Out of habit, I reached for my back pocket, but my phone wasn't there. The front pockets were empty, and so were the ones of my lab coat.
A fresh wave of panic crashed over me.
I was in the middle of nowhere without the most essential lifeline of the 21st century! How the hell was I supposed to figure out now how to get out of these woods if I didn't have GPS?
"This is fine," I mumbled to myself, hoping I would believe my own words and ease the rising pressure in my chest. "I don't need my phone." I lied to myself again.
Closing my eyes and taking deep breaths, I ran through the reel of memories.
The experiment failed. Walking over to the annex. Getting into the elevator…
And then the reel flickered, images pulsed and faded too quickly. There was darkness and a figure, then a bright white light.
My eyes shot open, and anger replaced panic.
Those bastards.
Valeria had warned me when I first arrived to be careful of the 'initiation hazing' that some scientists engaged in. I hadn't believed her, couldn't believe that grown adults, professionals in their fields, would partake in such activities. Then I saw them, saw their victims looking more haggard and miserable than normal. I thought I was spared because of my last name, or out of fear for my father, but clearly I was the latest prey.
They had knocked me out. Abducted me and then tossed me out in the middle of nowhere.
I was fuming.
This was beyond any acceptable form of hazing, and that bar was low.
If they think I'll wait to be rescued by them and keep quiet about what they did, they've got another thing coming.
¡Los voy a matar!
But first, I had to figure out how to get back to civilization to press charges.
I tried to remember any outdoorsy advice I had picked up growing up, but I knew very little.
Father had forced me to take swimming lessons, not paid classes either; they had been the 'sink or swim' kind. The throwing me over and yelling instructions at me kind of lessons. He believed that swimming was as necessary as walking, because the world was 70% water. I couldn't argue with his logic, or I didn't argue with it, too busy trying not to drown.
I had never attended any sleep-away camps or been part of any scouts.
Very few sleepovers in my life as well. I thought miserably.
Not because I didn't want to, but because Father had never wanted me to be too far away from home and because 'uno nunca sabe.'
Probably why I didn't have very many friends either, I shook my head as if wanting to dislodge that train of thought; it wasn't the moment to be commiserating about my childhood. I'd save that for my next therapy session, where I would undoubtedly also be working through the trauma of my current predicament.
Okay, think. I must have read some survival tips at some point, I thought. Panic resettled in my gut, imagining I wouldn't find my way out of the woods before nightfall.
Follow the North Star.
I'd read that somewhere, but it wasn't helpful, as the sun was still shining brightly, and I wasn't going to sit here like a lame duck until nightfall. A beautiful forest though it was, something about its stillness tugged at the primal part of my brain that warned me to be out from its canopy when the sun set.
Go west toward the setting sun.
My mind whispered to me. Not bothering to examine where that advice came from or if it was right, I looked for the sun, which was now amongst the branches instead of above them.
Everything looked the same as I walked. It was like in those old movies, where the actor would be on a treadmill with the background looping behind him. I had to look behind me several times to make sure the meadow wasn't still there, but I had long lost sight of it, so I was making some progress. I hoped.
The sun had dipped below the branches and was hiding amongst the thick tree trunks. Its light blinding me whenever it peeked through a wide enough gap between trees.
The only sound was my footsteps crunching the dirt beneath them. Then I heard it. The rushing of water.
People settled near water, right? That was definitely something I had read in a book. My brain struggled to make a connection to civilization through my weak reasoning.
I walked faster toward it, my mouth feeling like a desert in peak summer.
Then the voices rose above the rushing water.
I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I didn't care; it was people, it was rescue, it was rest.
And it was revenge.
I broke through the treeline, escaping their grasp.
My mouth hanging open to scream help to the faceless voices, when I saw him.
It was a small boy. He couldn't have been more than 10 years old yet. His hands white knuckled as he clutched tightly to a rock jutting out from the river. The current furiously beat against his small frame. His head was barely above the water's surface, and his mouth filled with water every time he tried to inhale. He wasn't going to last long.
I looked at the raging water. It spilled over the banks as it slapped against the shoreline.
It was dangerous. Especially for a small boy, so why had he gotten near?
Across, on the other shore, were several other children who didn't appear to be much older than him. They screamed and jumped as they watched their friend struggle. A few of them were running up the hill that rose behind the bank, but their short legs weren't getting them anywhere quickly.
Then I saw it, the dropped buckets that lay empty by the children's feet. They were collecting water.
Their attention momentarily shifted to me. I am pretty sure their screams grew louder. Even the small boy hanging on for dear life looked extra panicked to see me. I didn't blame them. I was covered in blood, emerging from the woods like a bruja.
There was another rock jutting out of the water next to the boys, close to the shore I was standing on. If I could get to it, I would be able to get him out of the water so he wouldn't drown.
I placed one foot in, gauging the strength and depth of the river floor. It pushed against my leg forcefully, the water cold, cutting to the bone.
If I moved fast, I could reach the rock, but my thoughts were cut off as shrill shrieks filled the air.
I glanced up, and the jutting rock was empty; the boy was gone.