The room is always spotless and blinding-bright. The only color I could see was white, even in the places where the light didn’t reach. I am on my back on a soft bed that might have been comfortable if I hadn’t been wet with sweat and full of fear.

Suddenly, there is a whirring sound in the distance, coming from an unknown direction, but coming at me nonetheless. This sound, like that of a horde of angry bees, grows loud and louder still until I hear nothing more and a jolt of pain crashes though my head. A needle is lowered slowly, slowly over my open eye.

Before the needle can go any further, I wake up or don’t recall the remainder of the dream when I do wake up later on. This dream is always the same and always sickeningly realistic. I always wake-up cold and sweaty, the beginnings of a headache peppering my mind and muscles. I have been this way since I was 12-years old and my brother had saved me from GroingTavelers, the place I’d been taken to as a child. The dreams I had were of the tests that the scientists had done to me for the four years I had been held prisoner there.

***

“Wake-up, Audra!” shouts someone over my head in the outer mists of the dream world.

My eyes shoot open to find Murmur, my roommate, looking over me with an expression of worry. His stocky, white hair stood out on end and his tired eyes bore into mine when he finds out that he has—finally—awaken me. I am glad that he has, as I am always glad the dream ends abruptly.

“Thanks for waking me,” I say and sit up, rubbing my eyes as if to make sure they are still there.

Murmur looks up at me from his 4-foot frame, his hands on his hips and his lips pursed. Apparently, I had awakened him as well, and he wasn’t all too grateful about it. I had met the little man when I first moved to The Colony, a vast floating island hanging a few thousand feet from Earth. He had let me move in with him and his wife, Yolanda as long as I kept the house clean and watched their animals when they were gone out. I took