“Yeah, that hurts for a few days,” the girl I’d learned was Sam. “They shoot that thing in deep. We think it might be actually in the bone, not just sort of free under the skin.”
“Wait - are you saying they chipped me? Like a dog? This isn’t from where I banged my head?”
“Nope. Sorry.” She winced. “We only know because Beth woke up while they were doing it to Carol and saw it.”
Right. So even if we did somehow manage to escape, we’d not only either be trapped on a ship we didn’t know how to fly, or stranded on an alien planet where they’d be able to track us because maybe I was being paranoid, but I just knew that the chip was not just an ID but probably also had fucking GPS or whatever the hell they had like it as one of its functions. It made a horrible kind of sense. They seemed to regard us as property, animals to keep alive for whatever reason. I doubted they were experimenting on us themselves, but that didn’t mean we weren’t destined for some alien lab or worse, a live meat market where we’d end up being sold and then eaten. Or bred like cattle to make a herd for some farmer. That seemed more likely as we were in our prime reproductive years, all of us between twenty-one and twenty-five.
The joke was on them, though. I was gay as hell. So gay that they’d have to give me drugs if they wanted Little Robbie to rise for the occasion when presented with a female. A willing female, thank you very much. I was no rapist, no matter what the circumstances, which would probably end up getting me culled and in some alien farmer’s wife’s casserole.
Not that if it was a willing guy I’d met on an app or a club, I’d be all that keen on topping, either. I was very much a bottom and fuck anyone who thought that made me less. Huh. Maybe I’d end up in a brothel instead of as Robbie Fricassee. And how fucked up was my life that now I was hoping I’d end up in the Best Little Whorehouse in the Galaxy so I could find a rich alien dude who’d buy me out of there and agree to pay a doctor to remove the thing in my head because he’d fallen in love with me. Not exactly Pretty Woman, but I’d take it.
The chirps and clicks over the intercom heralded the door opening. As usual, the guards came in first, four of them this time, along with two others who were dragging in a new guy. They dumped him unceremoniously and left. Assholes.
Beth walked over to check him.
“He’s alive,” she said, as if that had ever been in question.
“They dump dead people in here?” I asked, filled with morbid curiosity.
“No, but it’s good to check, right? I mean, he could have died on the way here, and it’s not like they’d have bothered making sure he was still alright when they dumped him off.”
I hated her logic, but it made a terrible sort of sense.
“He’ll wake up in a bit,” Gary said, just as chirps and clicks sounded over the intercom again. This time the door didn’t open. Instead, a small port opened, and a hose poked out and immediately began spewing water into the trough.
“Avoid the end of the hose,” Gary advised me. “A drain opens up and it’s got powerful suction.”
I did not even want to know how they discovered that. Some things were better left unasked.
Carol was first to the hose, her face in the torrent, hands in front of her mouth to catch as much as possible. As the newest member of our little party who was awake, I got to drink last. I managed to get a belly full of metallic tasting water before it abruptly shut off.
I looked in disgust at the trough. A few semi solid bits of waste were still at the far end.
“Yeah, they don’t do a thorough job,” Carol said, noticing my look. “A few more seconds and it would be all gone, but they don’t bother. I think it's on a timer.”
“Well, if that’s the same amount each time, then once that dude is awake, we’ll each have to take less water or he won’t get any,” I pointed out.
Everyone grimaced, but no one disagreed.
The new guy, who turned out to be named Patrick, woke up. He was as confused as I’d been. He’d gotten into an argument with his boyfriend and gone out for a walk. He’d been snatched right next to a patch of woods.
“Well, that’s two of us that are gay, then,” Gary said.
I swallowed. “Make that three.”
“Bit of an odd coincidence, don’t you think?” Beth said. “Maybe we’ve gotten it all wrong. All of us like men. What if we’re destined to be sold as exotic sex slaves?”
I didn’t mention my previous fear about us being cattle or us getting a John to buy us free idea, because now that whole sex slave thing was more likely, the less Dolly Parton movie it occurred to me our ultimate destinations were going to be. There was no sense feeding the embers of despair we already had into full blown flames.
“That’s…no!” Patrick cried out, curling into a ball.
None of us mentioned it again, not even when, as the days passed, two more men and three girls found their way into our private hell. Then, something new happened. This time, when the chirps and clicks sounded and the door opened, a human man walked in. He looked defeated, his face and arms covered in mottled bruises in various stages of healing. The door closed behind the guards escorting him in, and he looked at us all sadly. “Hi, guys,” he said.
“Fred!” Beth exclaimed.
“Yeah, it’s me. Um, so, they forced me into this machine with my eyelids taped all the way open, and it did this thing, beaming hot light in. When it was done, I could understand what they were saying, mostly. Some things they say don’t translate in any way that makes sense to me.”
“And the rest of the time you were gone?”
