Adrift in Silence

Chapter 3 Welcome to Evercliff's

Lucina woke in a slight panic, the last thing she remembered was an intense shock of pain riving through her. After catching her breath, she immediately noticed that she was being elevated on a lab table. Streams of blue lasers shot at her from machines straight out of a science fiction movie, beeps and boops and all. She tried to swim away, flailing her arms in the air but continued to float, spinning uncontrollably in place. Metal prongs lunged out of the machine, grabbing her like a pair of robotic arms, holding her in place. She tried to grab the prong, but another smacked her hand away, like a child caught doing something they weren't supposed to do. She managed to grab the edge of the table with her toes and pull herself close enough to grab it with her hands. She rolled off the table and onto the floor, the machines tracking her every move.

Lucina stepped away from the lasers to the point where they could no longer reach her. With nothing to examine they went into a stationary position and emitted a long, drawn-out noise, like someone was flatlining on an operating table. Lucina left the dark room and strolled into a massive study, full of strange gadgets and books with ineligible inscriptions across their spines, scattered and unorganized. Computer monitors with orange hologram displays hovered in any empty space they could occupy, displaying diagrams of Lucina's body and charts of her vitals. Lucina was quickly distracted by the quietly humming wall of supercomputers emitting blinking yellow lights, also covered with scrolls and books. It was like stepping into the laboratory of a messy undergraduate genius who couldn't make up their mind on how they were going to change the world.

Lucina gawked at all the technological splendor until she witnessed the back of a floating severed head, slowly being dropped onto a metallic body. "You're awake, took you long enough," the old cyborg uttered gruffly and turned to face her, staring into her eyes with lenses where his eyes once were. "Can't really complain though, you are a marvelous specimen. I learned more than I thought I would, and trust me, that's quite the compliment," he boasted himself unabashedly.

Lucina took several steps back, holding her breath as her eyes bugged out from her head, wide with shock. What is happening, she thought in frustration, trying to decide if the monsters she faced earlier were more frightening than a talking severed head with no eyes.

With his robotic hand, he brushed back his mopish white hair on either side of the metal plate going down the center of his dome, exuding the classic unkempt, mad scientist vibe. "Honestly, for someone your age and lack of experience, you have quite large stores of Nexium," he rambled, monitoring numbers on a holographic display emanating from his wrist. "So, am I to understand that you can't speak," he stated, looking back up at her with his goggle-like eyes, tinted black like gazing into a lost void.

"Just like with Professor Cyton, I want you to think words," he talked down to her like a child, "you do have the capacity for thought, right?"

Lucina's Mind went blank, unable to look away from the walking talking cyborg. Unable to roll his eyes, he rolled his head. "Okay" he sighed, "I'll start, my name is Alkazar Manaphis and I am the Academy Headmaster." Alkazar snapped his fingers and a flurry of golden fabrics wrapped themselves around him, dressing him up in sophisticated robes like a wizard from an age of fairytales. "And this!" he gestured to only a tiny fraction of the citadel, "is Evercliff's Academy for Wayward Drifters."

"Academy?" she wondered, then realized she was in a strange, white, skintight suit covered in hard vector lines trailing across her body like a circuit board. "Oh my God! Did you undress me, you CREEP?" she asked, crossing her legs and arms to hide her shame.

"Basically, yes," he replied bluntly.

Lucina blushed, embarrassed and angry, and on the verge of tears. "Give me a reason why I shouldn't punch you in the face?" her thoughts, although valid, ran wild.