IO17 is a serialized story; Table of contents for this story here.
"Why do I have to die to talk to you?" Kendra heard herself saying.
The Angels were paying no attention to her; they spoke among themselves and she had been here for what felt like hours, her body feeling heavier and heavier and her mind feeling more and more sluggish. She had sat quietly for some time, and then had stood up to try to get their attention, noting how her legs had felt like they were unable to lift her, and then how they felt like they might never bend again once she was standing.
She worried about that.
She couldn't leave until the crew brought her back, and she knew they were monitoring her and were ready to pull her out of it before any permanent damage set in, but this was the longest she'd ever remembered coming here.
Then again, she hadn't been here that often and she had no way of telling time. Maybe it had only been a minute or two, in her life.
Her fingers were growing cold.
She had waited what felt like hours before speaking, and then had asked a simple question:
"Do you have anything to tell me?"
They hadn't paid any attention to her. There seemed to be, maybe, more of them, their weird buzzing guttural language and the way they were shrouded all scaring her. As time went on and they paid no attention to her she'd asked again, a few times, and then had said:
"Is it because I'm me and not Lisa that you won't talk to me?"
Nothing.
Now she was questioning them directly -- albeit politely. She'd asked what they were, where they were from, and why they wouldn't talk her language, and they'd ignored her, just as they'd ignored her question about having to die.
She hugged herself and tried to warm herself up. She felt like she could see her breath, if she were to breath, and then for the first time realized she was not breathing.
"We need information," she said to herself, and tried to catch the ... eye? of the Angel nearest her.
It paid no attention to her.
The talking, if that was what it was, grew louder and more varied, frenetic. She thought perhaps they were arguing.
Her eyes seemed kind of glazed to her -- her vision fogging. She waved her hands in front of them and wondered whether that was her imagination.
How long had she been here?
She could not get her courage up enough to go any closer to the Angels.
When will they revive me? she wondered.
"Hello?" she whispered -- trying to send the signal not to the Angels but to her actual brain in her actual body somewhere out there, waiting to wake up. She wanted to cause it to flicker, to spike, to move, to make them get her out of here.
"I hate coming here," she said.
And all sounds stopped as suddenly every Angel in the area looked at her.
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