The Prisoner Read Online Free Page B

her head.
    She jerked awake. Rollers of panic pushed out from the corners of her mind. Her hands jerked to entangle in a web of slithering worms encasing her body. Cold slime, thick as snot. Her fingers drew back. The worms drew tighter, suffocating. They were everywhere. She felt them on her thighs. On her legs. On her back. The beep blaring in her head matched the erratic tattoo beating in her chest. She tried to scream, but her mouth was full of gunk.
    Laurel kicked, but the worms held her fast. Darkness. She was blind; she couldn’t open her eyes. The worms gripped her feet, dug under her arms, and brushed her crotch to lift her through the slime. She fought, jerked, and kicked, but the worms held tight. Then, somewhere, a tiny light flickered. She reached for it, projected, streamed through the mass of worms to the light. She needed the light.
I’m Laurel Cole
, the light whispered,
and I’m alive
.
    Shit, I’m in hibernation
.
    Laurel sucked in greedily with a deep motion of her stomach.
Hyperventilate. I need to hyperventilate. I need to drag more air from the hose
. But she came up empty until themachine delivered her next breath. She thrashed in panic.
I need more air
.
    The sensation of weight increased. She was being hoisted from the tank.
    The whirlwind of spinning details slowed to a stop. Laurel tried to relax as Shepherd’s voice echoed in her mind.
By the numbers. You must go by the numbers. Remove your eye protectors
.
    The sensation on her skin had changed; her face tingled. In small stages, she hiked her right arm through the tangle of jellylike cords to stop at a thick lump wedged into her mouth. She explored the object. Higher up, the lump rounded and became a hose.
I’m still intubated
. She sucked greedily at the next delivery of air from the machine.
    After you’re intubated, a machine will attach eye protectors. Remove them
.
    Laurel’s fingers reached behind her left ear and found a strip of elastic material. She hooked a finger around it and pulled it up. Light flooded her eyes. She closed them as a sharp stinging sensation flared. Then she blinked repeatedly to clear them as her irises adjusted.
    Your body will produce heat by chemically induced thermogenesis. For a while, blood vessels close to your skin will dilate to promote irrigation, but it will wear off soon
.
    Laurel eyed her arm and flexed her fingers. Red like a boiled lobster. Fighting an insane urge to yank the coupler from her throat and breathe at a faster rhythm, she rolled her eyes sideways to get her bearings.
    She was dangling in midair, in a forest of wires that disappeared into the gloom above her head. The wires attached to her harness shuddered, and her cocoon moved past scores of gleaming cables sinking in the fluid beneath her feet. Laurel knew it was a fluid, but it looked solid, its surface bright. A drop fell from her toes, and the surface distorted for an instant but didn’t ripple, like crude oil.
    When her wires cleared the maze, unseen robotic arms veered her cocoon over a catwalk and slowed to a standstill above an empty platform clad in the institutional white polymer surrounding the tank. The robotic arms must have beenin need of fine-tuning or the programmer hadn’t given a damn, because the wires slackened a tad too fast. Laurel dropped the last foot unceremoniously onto a mess of jelly net, but the solid surface beneath her butt felt good.
    The wires snapped free and disappeared into the heights as she felt a tremor in her throat.
Oh, shit!
    Laurel’s stomach protested with involuntary contractions as the never-ending hose pulled from her throat. She tried to stand and follow the motion to arrest the overpowering movement, but she failed. With a wet slurp, the plug yanked free and vanished upward. At once, she rolled over, convulsing inside her slimy cocoon, and retched blobs of pink-tinged bile until her gag reflex calmed, leaving a thin thread of saliva dripping from her lip. Then she filled her