“Medical examiner. Sorry, it’s easier if I pretend I’m at work. I’m Sam. Dr. Samantha Johnson. I’m from Atlanta. They took me right from my desk. I woke up here about three days ago.” She said, her voice broke, and I heard her swallow hard.
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Sam, but it would be a fucking lie.”
She snorted and laid back down.
I stood and had to hunch to avoid cracking my head against the weird bumpy metal that made up the top of my cozy little cell. I paused to see if I was going to be sick again. Nope. Good as new. My stomach cramped a little. Burning calories from ridding myself of the drugs. It was going to get uncomfortable soon, and I was betting they wouldn’t be handing out any snickers bars to return me back to normal after I got all hangry.
I checked Patty again, touching her forehead with my fingertips. She was still out cold.
Lucky bitch.
Okay, what now? I looked around at the room outside my cage. A low metal alien version of popcorn ceiling and matte black metal walls just a few inches away from the bars of the cages. Rough grate metal floors. And, of course, our lovely little five star accommodations. Ten cages. Five on each side of the aisle, with two or three girls in each cage except for Callie’s. She was all alone. I reached out and tentatively touched a fingertip to the bars. It didn’t shock the shit out of me. That was good.
I grabbed a bar with each hand and pulled them apart. They moved easily. I stopped before I bent them noticeably. Alright, so human strength bars. Things were looking up! It had to mean these aliens were about human strength too, right? If they were crazy strong, they’d have super metal or something. Sounded logical. We’d go with that. Now, so long as they didn’t have laser weapons that would burn me to ash before I could try to fight them, this might be doable.
“Did they have weapons?”
Callie was the one who answered me. “Yeah, guns of some type and a cattle prod-like thing.” She stood to face my cage. “Why? Are you thinking of doing something? I tried that. They took Callie and hurt her as punishment. While they were frying me with their cattle prod, she tried to get them off me and they took her,” she said. Her voice was rough and cold, her knuckles white where they gripped the bars.
I raised my hands in surrender even though she couldn’t see them.
“Okay, okay. I understand,” I said. And I did. She probably blamed herself for getting her friend taken, and she would blame me if I got anyone else hurt.
I wanted them to work with me, but I’d worry about that later. I wasn’t about to be cut up, or sold, or both. Maybe they wanted our organs? Did they know what I was? All the other girls were human.
“Did they take any blood? Scan us? Anything like that?” I asked.
Callie shook her head. “I don’t know. We were all unconscious when we were brought on the ship. Nothing hurt when I woke up besides my head and stomach. I don’t think they did.”
Yeah, I’d feel it if they had probed me. Hopefully.
Okay. So not super smart scientist type aliens then. Just smugglers. Most likely sex traffickers.
Huge mistake bringing me on board this ship.
Also,aliens! I could have an internal freak out while planning a daring and violently bloody escape, right? Yes, right.
Okay, Plan. Planning was good. I could plan.
I took a deep, calming breath and sat crossed legged on the grate floor. So uncomfortable. The skin on my ass was being smashed through the little holes. I was going to look like I’d had an ass grabbing competition with an octopus and lost.
Focus, Jack!
I pushed aside the hysteria bubbling in the back of my mind.
Callie said she was a pilot. Maybe she could fly this thing? She said I woke up fast, and Sam said she was brought on roughly three days ago. Wait, no. She said shewokeupthree days ago. So say, three days unconscious, three days awake. A week in between abductions? How anyone was keeping track of the days was beyond me. There was no light inside the ship to mark the passage of time. Maybe they were counting?
Callie said it had only been a few hours for me. Maybe we were still somewhere on earth? Or at least close to it.
Guards would have guns and cattle prods, and drugs. Couldn’t forget about the drugs. Hopefully, they don’t use darts or something that could tag me from a distance. I was strong, and I was fast, but if the other girls didn’t help, it would just be me against many. I didn’t want to bust out of here just to be knocked out and the others punished for my escape.
I could take ten human men on and win, no problem. But aliens of unknown strength and numbers?
“Callie?” I whispered, about to ask her about darts, when the door opened to my left at the start of the aisle between the cells, flooding the hold with bright white light. It looked like a solid wall. So, seamless doors? If I went by movie logic, probably biometric scanners or some shit. I was going to need one of their bodies.
Through the bright doorway came an honest to god, bonafide, fucking shark-faced alien. He was wearing a black ninja costume, minus the mask, that emphasized how slender and wrong they looked. Saliva flooded my mouth, tasting sour with my fear. Goosebumps spread across my skin and I felt all the hair on my body stand on end. It was a horror show. My heart pounded painfully in my chest. I froze, perfectly still, like a cornered animal confronted by a hunter, and watched the aliens with hard eyes.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
