"I'll have to unplug it!" James shouted in desperation, figuring that would be the quickest way to at least halt the most immediate problem of whatever the machine was about to do to Nicola. He could figure out how to free her from it afterwards. But it wasn't immediately obvious that the machine was plugged into anything.
"Thirty seconds to subject transformation" the monotone voice chimed in, further adding to James' frustration.
"James, seriously!" Nicola was standing on her tiptoes scanning the room for any kind of clue that might help her, but she was severely restricted by the narrow parameters of the glass wall that were imprisoning her.
"I'm trying!" James shouted back, doing his best not to sound annoyed. There was no sign of a plug anywhere and these interruptions werem't helping.
"Twenty seconds to subject transformation" the increasingly sinister sounding voice interrupted James again.
"Oh God!" Nicola sank into a sitting position in her container and looked up hopelessly at the whirring device pointing down at her from above as it continued to power up. She realised her fate was slipping out of James' hands and into the control of this emotionless machine.
"Shit, I can't find anything!" James banged a wall in frustration before running back to the panel of indesipherable buttons on the sids of the machine "how the fuck does this thing get power?
"Ten seconds to subject transformation" the machine warned for the final time as James quickly realised hitting random buttons did absolutely nothing. Were they just there for effect? Did he really have any chance of rescuing Nicola if whoever was controlling these events didn't want him to?
"James, whatever this does to me, promise you'll fix it" Nicola looked up at her friend sadly as she resigned herself to her immediate fate, whatever it was.
"I promise" James replied as their time ran out. And he meant it. He was determined to find a way to take back control of this crazy situation, somehow.