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Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Nina

T he pounding in my head is so painful at first I don’t think it can be real. My eyes flutter open, and bright light assaults my vision, so I snap them closed again. My body is stiff, as if I’m petrified in place, and I concentrate on breathing for the count of ten breaths. It’s a technique I was taught when studying to be a nurse, to help me keep from panicking when I need a clear head. Only when I’ve counted all ten breaths, and then ten more just for good luck, do I try moving.

The muscles in my neck and shoulders scream at me in protest, but I manage to roll onto my back. Maybe this is how a tree feels when a strong wind finally rustles their seemingly immovable branches.

Questions swirl around my head, each too slippery for me to keep hold of for long. Was I drugged? How long have I been lying here for? Where are my shoes? My phone, watch and keys? My ID? The last thing I remember is being forced into the escape pod, and my stomach clenches with the pain of heartbreak all over again. Those five women: all dead. I can only hope they were still unconscious when the ship imploded. Maybe they never even knew aliens had abducted them.

I wrap my arms around myself.

From this angle, a bright light penetrates my closed eyelids. The pounding in my head intensifies as tears threaten. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was stamping on my skull to the soundtrack of ‘Staying Alive’.

I should sit up. I should take stock of my surroundings. I could literally be anywhere in the entire universe. But I can’t bring myself to move again, not when the alternative is keeping my eyes closed and pretending I’m back home.

Surely by now someone will have noticed I’m missing. I was supposed to be working today. Or was that yesterday? I’ve got no idea how much time has passed.

My grandma … My last living relative and the woman who raised me as if I were her own daughter. It was because of her influence I became a nurse and then specialized in aged care. It was because of her I had a stable life after my parents were killed and I was orphaned at twelve. She was the one who taught me to stand up for myself, even when it felt like the entire world was against me. She was always such a strong woman, a single mother at nineteen, and then a single mother again at fifty-three.

At least she won’t have realized anything’s amiss.

My chest fills with the all-too-familiar overwhelming sadness I always seem to feel these days when I think of my grandma. Tears squeeze through my eyelashes to wet my cheeks. Perhaps that’s the blessing of advanced dementia— that Grandma won’t be worried about me. Even on her best days, she doesn’t remember I exist.

I must eventually fall asleep, because when I next become conscious of my surroundings, the pounding in my head has lessened to a dull ache and my muscles have relaxed enough that I don’t feel like I’m carved from stone. Ironically, sleeping on my back on a hard surface must have done me some good, although I wouldn’t recommend doing it on the regular.

My mouth’s painfully dry. I guess I’ve slept for a full day—probably longer if you count the time before when I was unconscious.

When I open my eyes this time, I’ve got enough sense to shield them from the bright light overhead. It’s only when I move and a hush falls that I realize people had been talking. Although what they’d been saying, I couldn’t understand. It certainly wasn’t English.

I turn my head to the left. My neck cracks.

There are a dozen aliens staring at me.

Fuck.

There’s one of the green, lumpy guys with a belt around his middle and guns hanging down the outer sides of his legs. I’ve got no idea if he’s the same one who was on the ship or a different guard. They don’t have many distinguishing features with which I can tell them apart.

He’s standing in what appears to be a passageway, beyond which is a raised dais that’s housing all the other staring aliens. Like he’s the doctor and the others are his students, all gathered around the bed of a patient with a particularly interesting disease.

Next, he’ll be saying something like Here we have an ordinary Human specimen. She panicked a lot when we first stole her. But don’t worry, we’ve beaten her into submission.

He gives me one last look and abruptly leaves, as if he has no further reason to worry about me.

I’m worried about myself! I want to shout after him to come back and tell me what’s happening. The memory of being slapped keeps my mouth closed. My face heats with shame, but even I know when self-preservation is more important than a show of defiance.

There are maybe a dozen other types of aliens watching me from the dais. Two have purple skin that seems to ripple into a bright green when they move. They’re wearing robes made of a gold material that shimmer when they move, and the effect is only enhanced by the fact that they’re standing in part shadow. Apparently I’m the only one with a personal spotlight.

Scales completely cover another alien, and instead of legs he glides along the ground like a snake, but he’s got arms similar to mine, and a head that’s somewhere between a Human and a lizard.

One has wings, another looks like a walking tree had a baby with an ocean spirit. And there are even more that I can’t quite see properly because of the light difference and because they’re at the back of the crowd. I think I see tentacles...

Regardless, I can tell they’re all watching me with undisguised interest. I feel like an animal on display in a zoo. That’s when I see the bars between them and me, and I realize I’m locked in a cage.

I scramble to my feet. This causes the crowd to start talking again. A few are holding what look like tablets with touch screens.

I grab the bars at the front of my cage and pull. There are no hinges that I can see. No lock. No obvious door. The only point of interest is where two bars are so close together they’re almost touching, but even when I pull on them, there’s no small give, not small movement, that indicates either is part of a door.

The gazes of my watchers bore into me. I’ve never minded being the center of attention before. In fact, I used to think I’d quite like to be an actor. But my stomach clenches uncomfortably as I contract my first bout of stage fright.

I might not have died, but I’ve certainly gone to hell.

The cage. The parasitic audience. Complete loss of control. It’s like they’re preparing to stick a pin through me as if I’m a butterfly in someone’s insect collection.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I snarl, resolutely ignoring the quaver to my voice. “Do I have something on my face?”

As if of one mind, the crowd shuffles as close as it can get. Those with tablets (and fingers) start typing excitedly, and the tension in the air thickens like I’ve somehow done exactly what they were hoping I’d do.

It makes me want to curl into a ball. Instead, I glare at every single one of them and scrub at my face. Pain shoots up my nose. My fingers come away covered in flakes of dried blood, but I think nothing’s broken, because I can breathe easily enough.

Which reminds me— I’m breathing. This … ship? Planet? Building? It’s got breathable air. I glance up at the ceiling and at the wall behind me, searching for signs of an air vent, but the surfaces are just as smooth and artificial as the ceiling and walls of the spaceship I was abducted by.

My cage appears to be one of ten built into a large room. They line three of the four walls, and beyond the cages there’s a passageway where the guards can walk. The dais takes up the entire center of the room and is by far the largest space.

Two of the cages are empty, but the rest all have one occupant. An alien entirely fills the cage closest to the main door. He’s about five times as large as me and so tall he’s got to stay seated and stooped. His ears sit flat against his head, reminding me of a scared dog, but when we accidentally make eye contact, he growls low in his throat, sounding like a hell hound who wants to rip my throat out.

I can’t help but flinch, and my personal crowd chatters even louder and types faster.

Am I their subject? Are they scientists?

This seriously sucks, and they haven’t even started sticking needles into me yet.

I finally allow myself the privilege of drawing away from the front of my cage, slipping and sliding on the super-smooth floor. Even with my back pressed to the far wall, I’m standing in a spotlight, while the rest of the room remains in semi-darkness.

I don’t know how long I stand there. Some of my crowd disperses, but they’re immediately replaced by more aliens. I cross my arms and park my chin on my chest, staring at my feet. I make myself count my breaths in lots of ten, pretending that the next time I look up I’ll wake up, and this will all have been some horrific dream.

I’m not so lucky, and eventually exhaustion overcomes me, so I sit on the floor. I pull my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around my legs and rest one cheek on my knees, trying to keep my face hidden from the crowd.

I’m not scared, I tell myself. I just want a break from the watching crowd.

At least the cage to my right is one of the two empty ones, so I keep my face turned in that direction and try to surreptitiously wipe my nose on the sleeve of my sweater.

The last thing I remember before my abduction is saying goodbye to some of my work colleagues at the bar where we’d been having drinks. I’d waved at everyone as I stepped outside, walking by the bouncer and then …

I sniff. And then I’d woken up on an alien spaceship in a cage much like the one I’m currently in. Five other women had been lying on the floor of similar cages. All had been unconscious, but all had been alive. I’d checked their vitals (well, the vitals of those women I could reach between the bars) and been relieved when I’d discovered they were still breathing.

Soon after I’d been taken to the operating room and strapped to that cold, hard bench.

There’s a creaking noise, and the floor of the cage diagonal to mine begins to rise. The alien in that cage is dressed in a tight-fitting jumpsuit that looks to be made of chainmail. She’s got scars down her cheeks that create deep valleys to which the shadows cling, and all four of her hands are holding daggers.

Not steak knives. Not kitchen knives. Actual daggers. Like she’s the assassin from some sci-fi movie.

She catches me watching her and juggles her daggers so the ones that were in her left hands are now in her right and vice versa. A moment later she fixes her attention on the ceiling of her cage, which has parted to create an opening through which I catch sight of a sky streaked with orange and pink clouds.

Excited shouting, clearly coming from outside, fills the room and temporarily drowns out the chatter of the small crowd still watching me.

I crane my neck, trying to see more, but from this angle there’s just a slither of sky available to me, tantalizing and unreachable. And then the floor of the cage reaches the ceiling and clicks into place, becoming the ceiling. There’s a new floor in the cage and a new alien. He’s pacing back and forth, and shooting the other cage occupants harried glances, although he takes care not to catch anyone’s gaze, including mine.

It was like a slow-moving Ferris wheel, one seat replaced by the next one. How many cages are underneath mine? One? Two? Ten? A hundred?

Are we all prisoners? And what’s up there?

I glance at the ceiling of my cage. There’s a line through the smooth surface, clearly where it parts to open.

My hands are shaking again, and the pounding in my head is returning. I’ve no bloody idea what’s happening. I don’t understand what anyone is saying. And why the fuck did she have four daggers? What’s she going to do that requires four daggers?!

I scrub at my face, find more dried blood and spend a little time cleaning my nose and lips as best I can, using the hem of my sweater. Cleaning my face is a small task, one I would have taken for granted back on Earth. Now it feels like my saving grace.

When you’re a nurse, you spend half your working life washing—your hands and arms, medical equipment, other people. I miss the smell of disinfectant and of freshly washed sheets.

There’s a circle of light to my right, and I stare at it, unable to work out what I’m looking at. I sniff and wipe my dripping nose on the cuff of my sweater. It still smells of wine from when I accidentally bumped into someone at the bar and spilled some of my drink.

That time in the bar feels like a million years ago. Another lifetime.

I’d give so much to be back there, having fun with my friends and complaining about having to work the next day.

The light disappears, but it’s back again almost instantaneously. Two lights, actually. Two bright spots of color in an otherwise shadowy corner of the imposing room.

I shuffle closer to the bars, wrapping my hands around the cold metal. At least I think they’re metal. It looks like metal, but it actually sounds like plastic when the gold ring my grandma gave me taps against one bar.

The lights flicker again and then move closer to me. They’re … eyes. Two bright eyes. One a vivid blue and the other a golden yellow, with narrow pupils like a cat’s. That’s wh en I process what else I’m seeing. He’s crouched low to the ground, balancing on the balls of his feet and on the tips of his fingers. He has his shoulders slightly hunched and his head tipped to one side as he watches me. His skin (or is it fur?) is black, but there are a few lighter patches over his arms and down his back, almost like panther spots, that appear tinged in gold.

“Hello?”

Completely silently, he moves closer. I can’t even hear the swish of his long tail as it whips back and forth.

He has cat-like ears on the top of his head, and the way they move indicate he’s listening carefully. I don’t doubt for a second that he can hear my uneven breaths. If he told me that he could hear my heart beating, I’d believe that too.

His nose twitches, and then he reaches out as if he’s going to touch my hands, still holding onto the bars between us. He’s got inch-long claws, sharp as scalpels, and I snatch my hands away, falling backwards in my haste as the perfectly smooth floor offers no traction for my bare feet. My elbows smash against the floor, sending pain up both my arms, and I gasp as I realize I’ve somehow cut my finger. It looks like a paper cut and stings like a bitch, and I lick the drop of blood away.

All the time, I’m watched by the crowd of aliens gathered on the dais and by the cat-like alien in the cage to my right. He blends so perfectly into the shadows that it’s no wonder it took me so long to see him. Only his eyes give him away, two bright spots in the near darkness.

He blinks slowly, his attention moving from my face to my hand, and I get the uneasy feeling he’s watching the new droplet of blood ooze to the surface of the cut. He breathes deep, and one of his ears flicks forward like he’s interested.

I get the ludicrous idea he wants to eat me.

He’s only about half a head taller than me, but he moves like a predator, and I hurry to remind myself of the six months of karate classes I took last year. If he tries to eat me, I’ll kick him in the balls and scream like a banshee because I’m Nina Huntley, granddaughter of the once-formidable Joan West. I might have been abducted by aliens, but I’m sure as hell not going to stay abducted. Somehow I’m going to escape and return home to Earth, where I belong.

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