Chapter 9
When Sylvia left Earth to explore an unknown planet, she'd considered the possibility of a hundred things going wrong. A navigation problem that left her stranded in space. The inability to find any traces of life on the planet. Deadly storms. The endless oceans swallowing her up. Malfunctions. Natural disasters. Failure.
She'd never once thought she might end up strapped to a lab table, about to be dissected.
"I'll tell you anything you want to know," she promised for the thousandth time.
No response.
A light flashed on above her, blinding her. Sylvie struggled against the restraints, trying desperately to escape. The restraints held, and soon she exhausted herself.
She couldn't help comparing her current situation with that of all the life forms she'd poked, prodded, and dissected in her time as a biologist. Had they felt this way? Like they couldn't breathe? Like panic was pressing down on their chest like a boulder?
"I'll never harm another living being again, I swear it," she murmured to herself. "I'll do anything. Just get me out of here!"
Her pleas went ignored.
One of the aliens approached her left side and she stiffened, her heart working hard to push its way out of her chest. It was the lead scientist, the one who'd informed her that she was scheduled for dissection with the same nonchalant tone her mother had used each morning to tell her breakfast was ready.
The alien's skin flushed pink with little purple striations as accents. She hadn't seen one of them turn pink yet.
What the hell does that mean?
Yellow was anger. Maroon seemed to signal anxiety. Purple was...
The regent had turned purple when he'd kissed her. So maybe purple was stimulation of some sort. But pink?
She jumped at the alien's voice. "This is Jark'Khal of the Ministry of Science. It is the fourth turn of the eighteenth rotation in the thirty-third cycle of the new age. Today's subject is an Earthling female, unknown age."
"I'm twenty-seven," Sylvie said. "Graduate of UCLA's astrobiology doctorate program, and the youngest faculty member to ever achieve senior research professor status at MIT."
The alien frowned down at her. Apparently her assistance wasn't required.
"The Earthling female has been scheduled for dissection to determine if there are any technological implants inside her that might have caused the planetary defense shielding to fail. Barring that, we are to look for possible biological factors that may have caused the failure."
Sylvie tried to tell him that she had no implants, and there was nothing biological that she knew of which could have caused the shield to malfunction.
The alien ignored her, rummaging around in a drawer out of her line of sight.
"Laser activated," the alien scientist said, clicking on a machine that hung over her shoulder. "First stage will be to slice through the epidermis layer, systematically peeling back the skin. Then we'll move on to organ removal."
This was it. She was a captive on an alien world, and she was about to be dissected.
Sylvie closed her eyes and tried to focus on better things. The beauty of Earth seen from her spaceship. The first sight of Zanthar, all swirling clouds and deep oceans. The striking gaze of the regent when he stared at her with hunger in his dark, glowing eyes.
Tears squeezed their way out beneath her eyelids as Sylvie resigned herself to finality.
