Lucia woke to the sound of a man talking. She began to open her eyes but whatever she saw was so blindingly bright. She knee-jerk reacted by trying to cover her eyes with her arm but her arms were tied down.
Her head ached with a throb that was quickly becoming all-consuming.
"Oh shit, sorry girly" she heard him say. "Here you go that should be better. No-no, she's fine, she just started coming out. She's so little I keep underestimating her doses. Anyway you'll need to keep her under at least a week but no more than two. And it takes time for the neural pathways to build themselves back so she'll have headaches for at least a mo- I know you know..."
The voice started fading away, the pain in her head did as well, and she drifted off again.
---
Her head was killing her. The pain seemed to focus at the nape of her neck and then lance through her head with every heartbeat. She opened her eyes to a blessedly dark room. Light threatened to pour in from behind a fabric that covered the window, and from the gap underneath the door. She lifted her hand and felt a bandage covering the back of her neck. Anxiety flared which she attempted to tamp down. She was alive, and aside from her head she felt whole.
Aside from her head. Her head was a big deal. Her head had her brain and she wasn't particularly smart but she did know the brain was important.
She tried to access her PD, irritated that it wasn't already providing her information on her physiological status but nothing happened and her head pounded from the effort. Deep breaths she told herself. Her heart lurched into her throat and tears welled in her eyes.
She tried again but it was off. She fingered the bandage at the nape of her neck. Her PD, something was horribly wrong.
The door opened and the light blinded her. It closed again leaving her in blessed darkness, but she could feel someone in the room with her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt hands on her ankles but the sudden movement split through her skull and she cried out which made the pain even worse. Before it subsided, before she could get her bearings and understand what was happening, her ankles and wrists were tied down, pulling her legs open and her wrists together up over her head.
Something began grazing over her skin, lightly dragging up from her ankles, stretching out below her knee and grabbing her. A hand. It slid up her thigh dragging some intangible current with it, setting her nerve endings into crackling electricity.
"Filthy, dirty, whore" a deep voice resonated through her bones.