Curtain Call

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

She had looked outside of the window for the last week, but Valarie Meddler had no idea that it had only been a week. She starred at the window with her soft, almost ice-colored blue eyes. Her black hair shone of the lighting in the room that was as soft as her eyes, the atmosphere of the place almost a warm, inviting thing.

The only other person in the room wasn't someone who ever stayed in the room for more than ten minutes, though once they had stayed for exactly ten minutes and sixteen seconds. Valarie had noticed this, and taken it upon herself to make a note of it. It had caused a small spark of happiness in her, but at the same time an emotion she recorded was concern. Not enough concern to be fear, but concern none the less.

Now as Valarie kept starring out of the window, she looked without moving her eyes at the curtains that were always draw in front of the window, to of course hide from the outside world the fact that she was a prisoner. Not a prisoner of her own home, which would have made her entire situation a little more desirable, if anyone ever bothered to ask Valarie how she felt about aforementioned situation.

Once, as Valarie remembered, a man had been shot in the alleyway that she could see from the curtain-covered window. A scream from another place had echoed in the same alleyway, and six minutes and thirty-four seconds later, the sounds of police sirens were heard as local law enforcement arrived on the scene to figure out what was going on. This was thirty four seconds under the dedicated response time for the police of East Brook, but noting times was something Valarie had become very good at during her time in the house on the corner of 5th St and Baxter Ave.

As Valarie continued to sit in the chair in front of the window, she heard a beep behind her head. She blinked, and number appeared in her vision. A bar, that was sitting at 97% of being filled. This happened once a week for Valarie, and every week on Thursday, the same man came into the room that Valarie was in and unplugged four cords in the back of her head. The cords were plugged back in before the man left, and while they were unplugged, a separate cord was plugged into the side of Valarie's head, and the data that was stored in her brain was downloaded onto a disk. Or maybe it was a hard drive system. The process wasn't painless, but it wasn't enough pain to cause Valarie to move or cry out. Once she did cry, when it first happened, before she decided to let herself descended into what she now called "the collective space."

The current day, as the memory bar disappeared, was Thursday, according to more words and numbers appearing in Valarie's vision. It was forty-eight degrees outside at 12:09, on Thursday Evening. Soon, around the 1:00 hour, the same man would be back to to unplug the cords from Valarie's head, and take out whatever data she had accumulated for the week.

While Valarie wasn't sure why this man needed the data in her head, Valarie was somewhat sure that he wasn't a bad person. He had blonde hair, a smooth, taken-care of face, and always wore at most a black suit jacket that matched his pants, and black shoes. He wore a watch on his left wrist, a shiny metal one that had golden hands to tell the time. The only time he ever touched Valarie in a way that wasn't related to the plugs and cords in the back of her head was once when he pushed a strand of hair out of her face, because it was in front of one of her eyes.

As she kept starring at the window Valarie blinked, letting the time tick by until it would be 1:00. She moved her mouth then, something she didn't do often, and licked her lips. The air in the room wasn't hot, and it wasn't cold. There wasn't a thermostat in the room, at least not where Valarie could see. She could have turned her head in either direction, but most days she simply starred a the window, watching the outside world that seemed so unfamiliar, almost florigen to her now. She had been in this home, on the second story, for almost six months. She had sat in the same chair, and eaten much of the same food whenever they choose to come into the room to feed her. She knew for a fact that she had lost weight, as her clothes didn't fit her as snuggly as they once had.

Today the sunlight through the window gave Valarie a happy feeling in her mind and body, as she watched a pair of children in the street, playing a game with a red ball. Cars came to drive past every so often, hovering their way down the street. Sometimes, if Valarie was lucky enough, she would catch a glimpse of a spaceship flying low enough for her to see. The days she did she took extra care to examine it as closely as possible, and deconstruct it in her mind for a closer analysis. She knew of thirty-three different kind's of spacecraft, and told herself that she could pilot any of them with only a twenty-eight percent margin of error.

While she wasn't thinking of what time it was on a constant basis, Valarie registered an emotion of surprise when she heard a crash from somewhere else in the house. A scream followed the crash, then the sound of a dull, thudding noise.

Now Valarie blinked, and turned her head left, just a little bit. Her eyes didn't break away from the window immediately, and she was now listening for anymore sounds around her.

More sounds did come, in the form of the door of the room, it was a bedroom, flying open suddenly. Footsteps ran across the floor, and Valarie felt hands on the back of her head. They were faster than normal, and whoever stood behind her now was breathing hard.

"Listen to me," the voice was recognizable as the same man who came into the room everyday, "Valarie, listen to me."

Valarie was listening as the first cord came out of her head.

"They found me, Valarie. You're not ever going to have to deal with me again, lucky for you. All this time I spent coming in here..."

The second cord came unplugged now,

"All this work I did, all the time I spent trying to help fix you..."

Now came the third cord. It was quickly followed by the fourth and last cord, and the man was breathing faster as he was attempting to fit the download cord into Valarie's head.

From somewhere else in the house then, a shout of,

"Clear! Get upstairs!" was heard.

"I'm out of time, and you don't know everything you need to know. You're going to be very disoriented when you wake up, but trust me this was for your own good. Your better now than you ever were before, and I can't have you getting put in the wrong hands. I tried as best I could I did!"

The man swallowed then, an audible sound as he was breathing in Valarie's ear. The cord that was the download cord was slipped into her head finally, and a new bar appeared in Valarie's vision. It read "upload" above a bar that began to rapidly fill itself. As Valarie sat still she estimated the time until the bar was filled was just under five minutes and twenty-six, twenty-five, twenty-four seconds.

Now the man was backing away from Valarie, his footsteps heavy on the carpet covered hardwood floor. Valarie heard him draw something from his person, and the snap of metal on metal told Valarie that it was a gun.

Footsteps were on the same floor as Valarie and the man now, who's name he never did disclose to her. The footsteps got louder as they were coming down a hallway, then the door of the room banged as someone came into the room.

"back up!" a female voice called, "hands up and gun down!"

"Dam you dogs!" the man with blonde hair was saying, "you don't know what your dealing with! I saved this girl from you all!"

"Put it down man!" a male voice gave an order now.

Now the man who controlled the cords on Valarie's head laughed, and the woman said,

"Put the gun down!" again.

The man only laughed more as he said,

"Valarie. My name is Pio Kastov. Remember me."

The sound of a gunshot came then, and the other man who had spoken swore. His swear hung upon the air of the room as the sound of body hitting the floor was heard, and Valarie blinked.

"Can you get her out of there?" the man asked the woman then.

"Yeah, just let me look at her. Oh... Val, what happened to you?"

Valarie blinked again as the progress bar was getting closer to finishing, with only one minute and ten, nine, eight seconds to go now. As Valarie licked her lips again, she wondered for a moment if they bar was going to complete it's download today.

In Valarie's vision now a woman stepped into her view, a younger girl than Valarie with blonde hair, green eyes and a scar across her nose. She wore black clothes, a hood on her head, and carried a pistol in one hand. Her other hand was made of metal, and she looked at Valarie, reaching out with her metal hand to touch Valarie's cheek. The woman's metal fingers were cold, and she said,

"Oh Val. Do you remember me? It's Nadia. We're going to get you home Val, hang on."

As the woman stepped away from Valarie's view, the man stepped up to the window, and reached out to pull back the curtian. He threw sunlight into the room, and as Valarie listened to the woman named Nadia move behind her, Valarie asked a one word question to the both of them:

"Home?"