She lifted her arm to shield her eyes from the brightness, the light so blinding compared to the previous darkness. Sounds of crickets chirping and birds squawking overhead as they flew by rattled her ears within the cage. With one eye, she peeked through her fingers above. The sky was blue tinged with orange, which meant it was early morning or late afternoon. Not sure that the elevator was stopping for good, the young girl quickly scrambled to her feet once again and shoved the metal gates above her head open. It was quite a feat of strength that left her muscles sore, but she eventually got the damn things open.

Brain still reeling from the current events, she looked around in an attempt to figure out where she was. To her right was a large forested area full of healthy-looking trees that reached up towards the sky. To her left, a meadow full of golden grass swaying in the breeze. And fencing the entire place in was an enormous, menacing wall made of stone at least thirty feet tall, green vines growing all up its sides.

She was alone.

Her chest felt like it was going to explode if her brain didn't first. Where the hell was she? Slender, stressed fingers ran through her scalp and she struggled to remember something. Anything. Tongue dry and eyes on the brink of tears, the young girl fell to her knees and she let out a howling scream of agony. Fear. Desperation. She was having a panic attack and she wasn't afraid to admit it. Wouldn't you if you were left in the middle of no where with no idea of who you were or why you were there?

"Calm down...breathe...calm...down..." Her own voice didn't do much to soothe herself, but at least she was trying. Her breaths were short and fast, but with some help from the common-sense area of her brain, they eventually became longer and larger. More controlled. She would get through this. She'd get her memory back eventually. But freaking out and dying from a panic-attack wasn't going to get her anywhere. Worry-time was over.

Survival was all that mattered now.

* * * * * * * * * *

The elevator never went down and the supplies was just sitting there, so the young teen girl decided to make use of it. She took inventory and, using a pen and piece of paper she'd found among the items on the platform, wrote down all the items she'd traveled up with. Six large plastic containers of what she found out was water, two wooden cartons of glass jars filled to the brim with some strong mystery liquid (possibly medicine?), one machete, one ax, around twelve yards of rope, one hammer, two large tin cans full of nails, one blanket, one box of matches, two knives, two burlap sacks of seeds, and so on. Pretty much everything she needed to survive for the time being.

Before she could let herself think about everything she didn't know, she quickly set off to work.

One by one, she tirelessly began to drag the barrels of water out of the elevator and roll them towards the woods. If she was going to start anywhere, it would be over where shelter would be easiest to come by. And the woods looked good enough. Saying the barrels were heavy would've been an enormous understatement. Biggest understatement of the century. The barrel itself had to have been at least twenty-five pounds, which wasn't all that much. But when you add fifteen gallons of water to the mix...

By the time the sun was in the very center of the sky, she only had three of the six barrels out and over by the wooded brush. Back aching, muscles screaming, oceans of sweat dripping down her brow and soaking her pale blue t-shirt. She didn't have much time to think about her problems when she was dealing with six huge blue ones at the moment.

Raking a clammy hand through her scalp liked she'd done before after finally getting the fourth container of water to the edge of the woods, a strand of long hair suddenly fell over her shoulder, resting down the left side of her chest. Her eyes caught the movement from the corner of her vision and she couldn't help but let her heart give a slight jump. Sun glistening barely over the strand, she ran the tips of her fingers along the strip of hair. Blonde. So she was a blonde. At least that was some progress.

Fueled a little more by the improvement of her knowledge of herself- or at least her appearance-, the young female had all six barrels up and out of the elevator by the time the sun was three fourths across the sky.

Next were the easier items.

She slid the handle of the machete through a belt-loop in the left side of her pants and made sure it was secure, then did the same with the ax on the other side of her pants, followed by the hammer in the loop just above her rear. Laying the blanket out on the ground flat, the coiled rope was tossed into its center with the cans of nails and bags of seeds on its tail. She looked at her loot and, after deciding this would be enough for her first trip, gathered the blanket's edges together, making it a bag of sorts. The walk over to her small base was a little easier than when she had to drag the barrels and she set everything down next to the containers of water.

One more trip for the box of matches and the two knives, and she was finished with the load.

* * * * * * * * * *

It didn't take long to gather some sticks and larger fallen branches and start a small fire. The sun was down all the way, revealing a night sky full of shining stars as the fire crackled in the center of her camp. Using the last of her strength, the girl had taken the time to arrange the barrels so that they were two short walls on either side of her, separating her from the land between the forest and the meadow and the forest itself.

The machete and ax were laying against one of the barrels, but she kept the hammer in her belt loop in case something decided to attack while she slept. Her blanket was folded in half on the ground a safe distance from the fire, that was where she'd sleep for the time being. Everything else was in a neat pile next to her other weapons.

Staring up at the sky, one arm tucked beneath her head and the other laying on her stomach, one mind began to drift off in different directions, wondering. Hours previous, her 'survival-high' had gone down immensely, leaving her calm and full of questions.

Who was she? Where did she come from? Why was she alone? Who was responsible for this? Would she ever get out? Did she have a family out there, worrying about her? Had she volunteered for this? Did her parents sign her up for this against her will? Were they getting paid for giving her up?

A slight flame of anger sparked inside the pit of her stomach. She wasn't sure why it was there, maybe it was because of the possibility that her parents left her for this. Or maybe they were dead and she just didn't know it. Maybe she was the last of her bloodline. An orphan. A no-one. Just a piece of living flesh that would never be missed. A science experiment, or a form of entertainment for whoever was running this place.

That was a pleasant thought.

The fire crackled and hissed in a tone that could only be explained as a whine as the flames died down, until they were nothing but embers. Pitiful shadows of what once was. Not wanting to waste every precious match, the girl got to her feet and hiked back over to the woods to gather more fuel for the fire before it died completely. She sighed in frustration the darker and darker it got the deeper and deeper she stepped into the wood. For some reason, she wasn't all that scared. Maybe she'd been numb to that emotion most of her life and she just didn't know it.

For a split second, everything was in slow-motion. Her shoe got caught on the root of a tree before she could save herself. Then she was falling forward, cutting off a scream of shock as her head hit the ground and her jaw snapped closed on her tongue. A copper taste wormed its way through her mouth just as the world was spinning around her in a fuzzy haze. Then one word.

Or, to be more precise, one name.

May!

Someone was shouting it in her mind, over and over and over as the forest spun in circles around her skull. May! May! May! A never ending loop. Was that her name? It had to be. Or maybe it was her mother's or sister's. MAY! MAY! MAY! Her eyelids grew droopy the longer she listened to the person in her head shout that name, repeating it like the steady beat of a drum. And then the darkness consumed her.