It felt like my eyelids weighed a ton as I slowly opened them.
Pain greeted me immediately.
Not sharp pain.
Something deeper.
Like thousands of needles had been carefully threaded underneath my skin while I slept.
My eyes burned.
My skull throbbed.
Even breathing felt wrong.
For a few seconds, sound reached me strangely. Muffled. Distant. Like I was underwater listening to the world through layers of concrete.
I tried moving, only to realize I wasn't able to get far.
The restraints holding my wrists weren't crude like rope or zip ties. They felt smooth. Reinforced. Almost molded around my arms instead of tied to them.
Scientific.
Not like the crude ropes and zip ties I'd grown so accustomed to.
That realization alone made my stomach tighten.
My head lolled back slightly as I looked upward.
The ceiling above me was white.
A polished, holy white.
The kind of white only rich people trusted.
Embedded into the surface overhead was the Crucible insignia.
