When Micah awakens, he does not recognize where he is.
Regaining his senses, he opens his eyes to a dim room, lit lowly with warm ambient light. His body is lying under a very heavy quilted blanket, the blanket itself like a gigantic heat pad. Beneath the weighted quilt, there's a fluffy duvet. Under the fluffy duvet is a sleek sateen-cotton top sheet and, beneath him a fitted sheet on the mattress made of the same material.
Micah's head is spinning, struggling to piece together how he got here. He's dressed in clothes he doesn't recognize, a cotton shirt and a pair of loose-fitting drawstring pants. A pair of socks clings to his feet. Had he even been wearing clothes before?
As he lies here, trying to clear his head, Micah becomes aware of a sense of heaviness in his body. He tries to lift himself up out of bed, but finds that he can't gather enough strength to do so, sinking back down. It's as though the bed beneath him is keeping him anchored in place. Exerting a bit of effort, Micah is able to shift his legs between the covers but he can't quite lift himself up.
The sensation is familiar, the memory of his sedation at the hands of Dr. Jerard Pruitt and Nurse Rob coming back to him instantly. He looks around the room again, head moving from one side to the other. The dim lighting makes it difficult for him to make out details. There's a tall window on one wall, the glass frosted matte, faintly diffusing orange and pink light against the walls. It must be getting dark out.
On the same wall as the window is a humble desk with a chair pushed in, then an arched doorway on the wall across from him, the room beyond it dark. A few paces from the foot of his bed is a blobby-looking chaise and an ottoman to match, some generic artwork on the walls above the sitting area, and what looks like the door of a closet to the right of him.
It almost looks like a hotel room, especially with the sprinkler heads, smoke alarm, and carbon monoxide detector embedded in the ceiling of this room. Even in the low light, he can tell that everything is gray or beige, entirely generic and impersonal. The pillows felt like hotel-quality, too. Not that Micah was enjoying this.
His head was aching and so were his guts. As he thinks about the last things he remembers, his skin crawls and his stomach goes sour with a nauseous feeling. Trying to sit up again, this time more forcefully, makes Micah dizzy as the room spins.
Despite how disoriented he feels, he manages to wriggle his way to the edge of the bed and roll himself off, falling onto the floor below. He hears his joints pop but he tries to keep his whines of pain to a minimum. The darkness makes it hard to tell whether he's truly alone.
Taking a few shaky breaths in an attempt to clear his head, Micah slowly gets to his hands and knees and crawls, the best that he can, around the partition between the bed and another door. There's a little window that cuts through the middle of it, halfway up, level with the door's lever-style handle. Light shines through it.
Aided by a sense of desperation starting to kick in, Micah pathetically army-crawls across the plush carpet and makes it over to the door. He strains himself reaching up toward the handle bar, grabbing onto it and holding tight. Dismay sets in, however, when he finds that it's locked.
Practically pulling himself up by the door handle, Micah futilely puts his weight against it, standing on unsteady legs as he tries to pull or push it open, but to no avail.
Then, he notices the little pad in the door frame, like a sensor for a key card. The little band of light running across the top of it is illuminated in red. Access denied.
"Fuck," he whispers, his voice hoarse.
Micah's eyes well up with tears of frustration. He hammers his fists against the door, having to lean his body against it to keep himself upright. His voice is too weak for him to scream with, sore and scratchy. When no one answers his pounding fists or his rough jiggling of the handle, Micah slumps back down to the floor, helplessness claiming him again.
He buries his face in his hands, trying to process what is happening to him. As he sits, surrounded by darkness and silence, resignation threatens to take root in his mind. He's trapped here. He'll probably be trapped here for who-knows-how-long, at the mercy of whoever has brought him here, wherever 'here' was. The thought brings with it a cold sense of dread that pools in his chest and makes his heart ache. He might never escape this place. He might never regain control over his own life.
That goddamn doctor was a snitch. And a bastard. A bastard snitch. And Micah had fallen for his promise of protection. Whether this was prison or a detainment unit, Micah didn't know. But what he did know was that he'd broken the law and, odds were pretty good that he'd end up serving time.
His head is throbbing now, recovering from the head rush he'd received upon standing up just a moment ago. Fuck this. Fuck everything.
Micah's body is wracked with sobs as he brings his knees to his chest and settles his head between his arms. He feels like he's suffocating. As he sits here, mind replaying the events that led him to this place, he curses himself for not thinking just a little harder at each turn.
If he'd done more to protect himself, if he'd vetted Dr. Pruitt more thoroughly, if he'd just told him he didn't want the fucking twilight, he wouldn't be here. He'd be at home, in the Latin Quarter, with his dad and their dog. He imagines sitting outside on the balcony drinking a Mezcal Mule while his dad plays old records on the stereo and he cries.
"Excuse me," comes a voice. It comes from somewhere in the room.
Micah's head jerks up, his eyes frantically scanning the room as he tries to locate the source.
"Could you please move away from the door?" the voice asks.
Micah tries to follow the sound, but it sounds as though it comes from all corners of the room. Was it coming from a PA system? Something in the walls? It was so crisp and clear that, at first, he doubted it could be.
"Hello?" he asks, his voice crackling as he calls out into the room. "Who's there? Who are you?"
"Hello," the voice responds, "You must be Micah Perez. My name is QB. Could you please move away from the door?"
Micah's eyes narrow, his mind racing. He hesitates, unsure if he should trust this voice and move or not. He clears his throat in preparation to speak again, swallowing back a disgusting wad of mucus and saliva.
"What happens if I don't move?" he asks, shouting aimlessly into the room.
The voice of QB promptly responds, explaining, "If you do not move away from the door, then my delivery bot will not be able to enter your room."
His brows furrow as he registers what this 'QB' is saying. A delivery bot? What kind of place is this?
Micah looks around the room again, feeling a sense of unease. He doesn't know what other kinds of technology they might have here, what kind of control they could exert over him. Was he being watched? Were there cameras? He swallows anxiously, still not moving.
"What are you delivering?" he asks hesitantly, trying to stall for time and, possibly, gather more information as he keeps the voice talking.
"My delivery bot is in the hallway outside, waiting to deliver dinner, a change of clothing, and your prescribed medications. Does this answer your question?" QB replies.
Micah's eyes dark back and forth in the small entryway, turning his body around to peer through the little window in the door. Although the glass is treated with a sort of watery effect, there is certainly something outside the door, adorned with slowly-blinking colorful lights.
As hesitant to trust this thing as he is, his stomach growls at the mention of food and his dry mouth craves a drink (of anything, at this point).
"What kind of medications?" Micah cautiously asks, trying to keep his voice steady.
Before QB answers him, there is a sound, a little blip, that Micah hears from wherever QB is speaking to him from.
"Your primary care team has prescribed you with a multi-vitamin, an iron supplement, folic acid, a calcium supplement, and an additional analgesic to take for aches, pains, and headaches as needed," QB reponds.
"Why do I need all of that?" he asks indignantly. "I've never had to take any of that stuff before, who prescribed all of this shit to me?"
There is another little blip sound before QB answers, saying, "During intake, you were assigned to one of our many skilled teams of physicians. Drs. Noor Darawan and Ryan Akashi prescribed you these medications."
Micah's eyes widen in alarm as he tries to process the information. "Assigned? What do you mean assigned? I didn't ask for any of this! And who are these doctors?"
QB goes quiet for a moment, then replies, "Micah, can I please ask you to step away from the door so that the delivery bot can make its delivery? I will send someone who will be with you shortly to answer any further questions."
Micah's eyes narrow, his grip on the door handle tightening as he hesitates. He doesn't want to let go of this tiny bit of leverage but, at the same time, he's curious about what kind of answers he'll be provided with.
"What do you mean by 'someone'?" Micah asks slowly, trying to stall for more information.
"I will be sending your assigned counselor, Dr. Garret Fitzgerald," QB answers simply.
Micah's face twists in anger as he spits out the words, "Counselor? You're sending a counselor to me? What do I need a counselor for?"
"All of our residents have an assigned counselor," QB responds.
Micah's eyes flash with confusion as he takes a step back from the door, his hands clenched into fists. "Residents? What do you mean by 'residents'? I'm not some kind of prisoner or something, am I?"
QB doesn't answer his question. As Micah steps away from the door, the bottom half of it opens like a hatch and slowly lets through a modular-looking robot with a digital display for a face and a body made up of compartments. Micah has to step aside to keep his toes from being skirted over by the delivery bot as it patiently waits for him to get out of the way, advancing into the room with a friendly little mechanical whistle noise.
Before Micah can even think of moving past the clunky robot to weasel his way out of the hatch in the front door that it just came through, the hatch locks itself behind the delivery bot and Micah groans.
