"You're going to pay for that, bitch."
"Leave off, Jeff. You know they won't take her if you do it."
"It might be worth it with this one."
I'm frozen now, hopelessness and dread overtaking my fight response. Locking my limbs down and making my lungs burn as I hold my breath. My tears are no longer ones of rage and are building into a torrent.
It blurs his baleful visage.
"Fuck no. You can find someone else. I've got bills to pay."
The man straddling me curses, lifts my upper body, and slams me back down. There's a shot of pain that reverberates through my skull and then darkness.
My dreams are horrific.
Bright lights. Straps and machines. Something forced inside my ear. Glimpses of gray skin with pink slime oozing down it on the other side of a glass window.
Robotic arms holding me down. Needles with tubes of liquid.
Just as I gain enough control of my facilities to resist, I'm being forced into a silver container that looks like a high-tech coffin with a red lining.
My defiance and screaming are useless against mindless machines.
Their bruising metal grip positions me so I'm facing out, and then a glass door slides across, trapping me inside. I'm about to pound on it when I get my first full view of what's watching from another room.
Naked gray skin with oozing salmon-colored liquid. Black bulging eyes that stare back at me.
"This harem should do well on Zentrea."
Aliens.
My mind is still trying to catch up with the fact that I can understand them as needles stab into the back of my neck. A hiss of air and I'm swirling down into oblivion, my limbs still stiff with shock.
2
Thivoll
I always forget just how peaceful it is out here in the dark.
No shift change announcements, none of the usual hissing, popping, and clanging that comes along with being an air technician. Just the gentle thrum of the engine as it propels me out to fix a broken satellite.
It isn't my post, but Shaltann just delivered her first kit and it's an easy enough fix that anyone handy can take care of it.
I let my muzzle settle down on the padded headrest and my hands and paws dangle from where the long bench supports my chest and belly. I'm normally in constant motion, but I must admit the forced stillness is nice.
Though it's only a welcome reprieve if it doesn't last very long or my limbs will twitch and my tail dance with the need to expend energy.
For now, I close my eyes and enjoy the rare silence.
It's interrupted a few short moments later with the rumble of an incoming call. I let out a growl and crack open one eye. As much as I'd like to go back to basking in the silence, there's no ignoring it without losing parts of my scaled hide next time she sees me.
"Accept."
Instead of her usual luminous eyes and dainty features, I see the side of her head. She has one rounded ear swiveled toward me and the other oriented the way she is facing. Her short fur is as immaculate and glimmering as always, but her movements betray her agitation. Her scaled hands flutter around her neck, the two thumbs of one of them twitching, like she's trying to grasp at something unseen.
I've rarely witnessed my dam in such a state and my breath comes faster.
"What's wrong?"
