It was like Sam said. Tall and crazy skinny, with flesh-colored skin, a round mouth filled with teeth, and flat shark eyes. They had bald, creepy heads.
Kill it with fire.
I stifled a hysterical giggle before it could escape.
The alien walked down the aisle, hitting the cage bars with his cattle prod and making a gurgling sound when the girls screamed.
He was laughing at them.
My muscles swelled up and roiled. I gritted my teeth to stop it.
Be cool.
Watch.
Wait.
The alien paused at each cage and looked at the girls in them for a moment before moving on to the next until he came to Sam’s. He stared for several minutes, making clicking noises.
My stomach clenched.
Oh God.
Please don’t take her out of the cell.
Another alien came in carrying a girl over his shoulder. He moved past Sam’s cell, mine, and then stopped at Callie’s. She scrambled to the corner when he turned to face her cell. He whistled and four bars slid down from the ceiling and into the floor. The girl’s body hit the metal floor with thud as he tossed her into the cell. He then whistled again, and the bars went back up. He walked back down the aisle and out of the hold without looking at any of us.
Full house again. So much for my week between abductions theory.
It was time to leave.
The alien that was staring at Sam hadn’t left.
He was holding his crotch and gurgling. Sam pressed against the back of the cage, as far back from the creepy gurgling pervert as she could get. She was trembling and sweat rolled down her temple, trickling down her neck while she watched the alien.
Okay. If he took one step into that cage, it was claws and blood. Screw the not-really-a-plan plan.
He didn’t. He grunted, then turned and walked out the door. It closed and left the hold back in darkness. Sam let out a gasping sob of relief and curled up in a fetal position.
I curled my hands into fists and concentrated harder.
Plan A: bust the girls out, especially Callie. Kill all life that isn’t human or me. Preferably with fire, but fangs worked too. Fly the spaceship back to earth. Get off ship and pretend this all never happened.
Good plan. It was a great plan!
Plan B: on the off chance that we have left beautiful Terra firma, I bust out solo. Go full beast mode. Tear everything that isn’t human or me apart. Get Callie to learn to fly a super advanced alien spaceship. Go to earth. Get off ship and pretend this never happened.
Plan A sounded better.
I scooted over to the bars across from Callie and was about to whisper to her my brilliant plan when blue strobing lights and a whomp whomp alarm started going off. My heart skipped a beat, my muscles going rigid with tension. That couldn’t be good. I got a solid grip on the bars and looked at Callie. She was looking at me with wide eyes. I reached out my hand through the bars and she grabbed it in hers. I leaned down to pull Patty’s unconscious body to me with my free hand and clutched her to my side. When I looked back up to Callie’s pale face, the ship lurched violently forward and everything went black.
Chapter 2
Ifeltlikeshit.Again.
This time, though, it was the fault of the wormhole. How did I know? Shark alien number two had come back, threw us all a pill and shocked the shit out of us until we took it. It had been the rudest awakening of the century for poor Patty. She’d come awake swinging, cursing out the shark asshole. She’d tried to yank the cattle prod out of the aliens hands and she’d been shocked again for good measure, but he’d been a little nervous about it. Patty did not react like how people expected her to in any given situation. It's what made us such good friends.
All the girls started screaming and crying once the pills had been swallowed. I’d had to curl up in the fetal position to avoid screaming right along with them. Once the blinding, agonizing pain of having our insides rearranged subsided to manageable levels, he’d told us we’d jumped through a wormhole; he’d given us nano robot things to adjust our biology and install translators into our brains.
