“We’ve been taken.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “I think I’ve been here for around a month. I’m not sure. I was the first on the ship. Don’t make any loud noises. They shock us if you do. Then they won’t feed us for a few days.”
Taken?
Ship?
Oh, don’t tell me.
“This isn’t a government lab?” I asked, dread pooling in my stomach.
Please be a government lab.
I didn’t mind vivisection.
Honest.
“You—we—were taken by aliens.”
My heart plummeted like a brick, the shock stiffening my spine into a hard line. She dropped that insane information bomb almost casually, but tears had gathered in her eyes. She’d been here a whole month already.
Poor thing.
She’d probably had to do this song and dance over and over again with each new abductee. Because therewereothers. Twenty girls in the gloom of what must be a cargo hold. That strange hum? The engines of a spaceship. A fuckingalienspace ship.
That government lab was looking better and better right about now.
“You woke up a lot sooner than the others have.” She sniffed. “Usually takes a few days. The girl in there with you will be out for a long while. She’ll wake up though. They all do.” She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her head on her knees.
“I’m Callisto, but you can call me Callie. They took me from my hotel bed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Where are you from?” she asked, still whispering. There was only a narrow walkway between us. I could reach out and hold her hand. It sorely tempted me. Her eyes were bottomless pools filled with fear and sadness that sparked all kinds of protective instincts inside me.
Keeping her talking was the next best thing. She might not want the touch of a stranger, no matter how comforting they were trying to be.
“I’m Jack. I was nabbed from a jail cell in New Mexico, along with my friend Patty here,” I said, pointing at Patty’s prone body on the floor; remembering right after I did that she couldn’t see me so I let my hand drop. I waited a few seconds, but she said nothing more.
“You in the Air Force, Callie?” I asked, just to get her talking again. The whirring sound of the alien ship and the muffled whimpering from the other cells was making the panic bubble up again.
She hesitated for a beat before answering me. “Yeah. I’m a pilot.” She licked her lips and wiped at a tear tracking down her cheek. “My roommate from Nellis was taken with me. Her name was Callie, too. We’d laughed about it when we first met.” Her voice wobbled, and she sucked in a breath. “They took her from our cell about a week ago. We heard screaming. I don’t think she’s coming back,” Callie said, her voice cracking again.
Jesus. This wasfucked.
“What did they look like?”
I wanted to know, to be prepared so I wouldn’t freeze in shock if they came into my cell. It could happen to even the most badass person on the planet. New, shocking things made your mind blank for a few precious seconds, and it could be the difference between living and dying. I was a mean bitch with big teeth, but aliens were a whole new ball game.
Callie buried her face in her knees and said nothing. Her shoulders shook with silent sobbing.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. I was an ass. “I’m sorry about your friend,” I whispered to her. I should have led with that.
“They aren’t little gray men, if that’s what you’re expecting.” Another girl whispered from the cell to my left. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was lying on her back with her hands folded across her belly, just staring at the ceiling.
“They look like us, kinda. Bipedal. Only two arms, normal hands, with five fingers, and stand slim and tall. It’s their faces that are truly strange. They have a circular mouth like a cookie-cutter shark and shark eyes, very black, no pupils. No ears, and no hair,” she droned on, almost like she was recording it.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“You a scientist?” I asked.
I didn’t like scientists.
She huffed a quiet, sad laugh and sat up. Her hair was short and wild around her face. She might be a blonde, but I couldn’t tell for sure with all the filth covering her.
