-- Bay --

"Fucking bitch!" I hit my shin for the hundredth time. "This room is so fucking annoying. I've been stuck here for the last eight hours and I've only learned that this place has control panels and absorbs power. So I've learned Jack shit. We're the fuck is the door out?" I was about to try to destroy everything around me but forced myself to stop. I had tried it earlier and almost set my clothes on fire.

"Bay Calm down. Calm down." Talking out loud was the only kind of help. When a surge of frustration, "No, I will not calm down!" I screamed stomping around and bashing my feet and shins all the while just pissing me off anymore.

"Great! I'm making myself crazy here!"

"HEY! CAN SOMEONE PLEASE LET ME OUT!" I shouted as loud as I could for anyone. I had been doing this on and off for the last hour. Only to be met with silence, again.

"Ugggg" I groaned, "Fine...How did I get myself into this mess?" I took a breath, thinking back to how I got myself here. "I followed the flow, and just waltzed into a busy building. I bet they're having a laugh at me right now through their cameras. Someone greeted me at the beginning so they definitely know I'm in here." I reasoned.

I still don't understand why they didn't stop me. All it would have taken was a simple locked door, and I would have snapped out of it. At least I think I would have. I at least wouldn't have destroyed the door. Would I have?

Probably not.

Actually, that's a better question. Why didn't they stop me? I kind of remember someone calling out to me before I entered, and someone did talk to me when I first came in. Did they want me to be trapped in here?

Maybe.

But what would be the point of that?

I started to wander around the filtered room of infinite white. I had learned pretty quickly that if I didn't want to smash my shins or bash my toes I needed to shuffle my feet. That didn't prevent me from running into things it just made it hurt less. The fact I kept getting frustrated and lashing out wasn't helping.

I was frustrated, tired, and thinking in circles. In fact, I had wondered the same things over and over interspersed with shouts for the last couple of hours. I was fully convinced at this point that no one was going to help me, but that didn't stop me from yelling.

I had spent the first couple hours in the room carefully opening myself up, following the flow to find its source. I ended up climbing on some metal machine and finding a giant orb of some kind. At least that was the impression I got when I touched it, but the way the filter affected my senses I couldn't be sure.

That wasn't the only thing to happen when I touched it. I had my channels sightly open when I took the risk to touch them. When my hand barely scraped its surface, I felt a massive tugging that forced my channels completely open, as more power than I could ever dream possible forced its way through me and into the sphere.

It felt like lava flowed through my veins for the second I touched it. I nearly blacked out and found myself on the floor just trying to stay conscious. I am honestly not sure if I did or not. But after that incident, I found myself just trying to find the exit.

I was walking around with my hands out feeling the walls. They felt like a cold stone or some type of steel as I moved slowly around the room. The wall texture never changed, and always had the same feeling throughout the entire circuit of the room.

The only way I could even tell I had made a circuit was...because I could feel the direction of the flow, and even that I only tried sparsely. The touch had really drained me, and every time I opened my channels, even a little, the orb forced my channels open. I think when I touched it I created some kind of link. It made the entire experience unpleasant.

At one point I thought I had found a way out. I was shuffling around when I suddenly felt the pull grow distant. I must have been going deeper into the room or had entered some kind of offshoot. But what really threw me off was I could have sworn I had gone over this wall a hundred times already. There should be no possible way for there to be anything there but there it was.

The entire venture though was a bust, as once I encircled the new area a few times, I finally left it. And even then I never found it again. I knew it had something to do with the filter itself. Somehow it was messing with all of my senses. Including my magical ones. It was one of the reasons why the mages were so perplexed by the entire thing. They have been trying for hundreds of years to get past the filter, and every time they have been rebuffed, sent on wild goose chases, and learned no patterns.

I wasn't going to learn any tricks to it now. I didn't even know how big this room really was. Could I even trust the feeling of the pull or not? This whole thing was making me want to pull my own hair out.

I was tired and a little sore. I had tried to use mana to heal the small aches and bruises, but it was just dragged out of me before I could even attempt to heal. I found myself laying there on the stone steel ground feeling my shins pulse with every heartbeat. I closed my eyes to try to let my mind drift. Maybe a nap will help me.

With my eyes closed, my mind kept whirling around.

How do I get out? Am I trapped? Why would they do this? Why would they allow this? Is this some kind of test for them? Am I a lab rat? That might actually make sense. If this is a mages tower of some sort, they could use the data I'm generating to study whatever this is. Or they might just ask questions of people who enter and escape, attempt to extrapolate more information. I just didn't know.

Sleep was not going to come to me, I realized. So I focused on the only other thing in the room with me. The flow.

I just laid there eyes closed, feeling the power flowing through and around me. It was like laying in a rushing river. With my eyes closed, I felt like I was drifting through the currents. Though I never moved an inch, the energy kept trying to push me towards the orb. The longer I lay there the more I felt how the stream wasn't a simple straight line. It really was like water as it curved and turned literally flowing and crashing against me and things in the room. I could almost see it, except with my body.

If it really is like water then there should be a path of least resistance. I latched onto that Idea and jumped up, eyes still closed. I began to feel the stream, and where it was being pulled from, and began following it upstream. Shuffling all the way. It took a force of will to push through. With every step I felt the orb reluctant to give me up, yanking at my channels. I fought to keep them closed, focusing only on escape when all of a sudden the pull stopped and the ground under me changed from the cold stone metal to carpet.

I opened my eyes and found myself in the middle of an office, with a woman sitting behind a desk looking at a screen board. I turned around to where I came from and found... a solid wall. Not a door, but just a wall. I looked around the room for some indication of the place I just left. There was nothing that could possibly have been where I just left. The only thing in the entire room was a door with glass clearly labeled, "Filter Research" And that led out of the room, into an open hall. There was a door to the side of the receptionist but there was no way I could have come from there. At this point, I was a little delirious. "Where the fuck was I?" I yelled.

That got the woman's attention, "Oh, hey! You made it out." I watch as she turned and pushed a button on the side of her desk. "If you'll please wait here, someone will be with you shortly for a debriefing. Thank you."

Debriefing? "But where was I?" Would it kill them to at least answer that first.

"In the filter itself." The woman said nonchalantly.

"Seriously?"

The woman scratched her head, "Well, one of them."

What did that mean? I found a chair and just fell into it, feeling my bruises. Now that I was away from that room I opened myself up and began to heal.