3. Kira

3

Kira

What shocks me awake is the realization that I'm submerged in molasses.

The ghostly sensation flees the moment my eyes snap open. I am hard-pressed keeping the cringe off my face as I step out of the pod on shaky feet.

It's subtle, barely lasting longer than a few seconds before I school my features. Not that it stops my legs from quaking with strain.

Bits of black begin to stain the edge of my vision from the slowly increasing stench of something both vile and acrid, and then it hits me that I might be a bit screwed, and not in a fun way.

I'm stark naked.

From the periphery of my vision, I spot an equally nude woman quickly moving to the front of my chamber. She dashes in with just enough time to help ease my sudden fall before my lungs are on fire.

The woman rubs her eyes once the gas is vented out and looks around. Her eyes are runny red, though oddly modified so they are fully light blue.

Dammit. Mine are probably the same. She smiles at me despite the maelstrom of emotions I see warring on her features.

She has the prettiest smile I've seen in a while. Then again, all I've had to see for the past who knows how long have been robots, so my two cents on the matter might not really hold much water.

I fucking hate it when people mix metaphors and have to suppress a growl at myself.

There's also the fact that my vision is still blurry from the noxious gas. Multiple blinks later and I can finally see the details of the woman in front of me.

She's a little over five feet tall, with shimmering indigo hair and aquamarine eyes, vaguely Asian features mixed with white, and a slender build.

I retract my earlier disclaimer. The woman is a beauty through and through.

She reaches forward and touches my arm. "I know you're scared. We were abducted. Those are the ones who took us."

My eyes sharpen just in time to turn to the three disgusting beings watching us interact like a trio of goo-covered voyeurs. I immediately shiver at the mental image, then subsequently frown at the warm sensation between my legs.

It brings up vague, chopped up memories. What the fuck did those blobs do to me?

My go-to instinct is rage.

If I wasn't hacking just to catch my breath and if there wasn't a glass wall between us, I could probably take out at least a couple of the gooey fuckers before they subdued me again, naked or not.

Keep it together, hotshot , I warn myself.

I turn my attention away from the slimes back to the smaller woman, and despite my annoyance, I can't help but look at her peculiarly colored hair and eyes.

Luckily, I stop myself from blurting out my thoughts, because even I know better than to tell a kidnapped woman how pretty her captors made her look.

The woman shifts her weight under my scrutiny, and I blink slowly, realizing I've been staring.

"They did that to you?" I offer, in the way of drawing out this conversation.

She nods, figuring out I'm talking about her eyes and hair. "Yours are pale pink."

I scoff on pure instinct at the fucked-up pronouncement before looking down to the sight of soft coral waves tangled up with my naked body.

What the fuck? We've been so excited at the idea of UFOs we didn't stop to think of the possibility of them being intergalactic pervs who turned women into sex Barbies.

They picked the absolute worst color and the absolute worst length.

"Couldn't even get the texture right."

The woman blinks dimly, and I guess she's realizing that I might be just as unhinged as the space mucus keeping watch over us.

"I'd share my name, but they punish us when I try. I've just been calling you Coral and myself Indigo."

"Fuck that, my name's Kira."

The woman cringes, and I resist the urge to chuckle like a maniac. Getting my squad into trouble is a famous pastime of mine...

Was... was a famous pastime of mine.

I squash that thought before it spirals out of my control. A subtle glance to the side tells me the slimes seem to be ignoring us.

The woman continues. "I'm Ree. It's a relief to not think of you as a color anymore."

I let out a muted, dark chuckle.

"Oh, I'm used to that," I croon with a bit more enthusiasm than the situation warrants.

I should probably tone down the intensity, but I've built a social interaction system on the basis of putting my bad habits on display and letting people decide whether to turn tail and run or to lump me in with the rest of the sociopathic community and, you guessed it, turn tail and run.

Two peas in the same decision-making pod.

Oh my god, Kira, enough with the fucking metaphors , I berate myself.

I'm not at my best, but this is ridiculous.

Fortunately, or maybe, unfortunately, the woman is too distracted to appreciate my dark humor.

Her attention is back to the slimes.

My gaze follows her lead, and I pay attention to their conversation as well. They're sharing nasty jokes and I wrinkle my nose.

"They aren't speaking English."

Ree shakes her head. "No, we have translators."

I resist the urge to give her an incredulous stare, at this point, weirder things have happened since the beginning of this whole mess and I need to move past the little stuff.

"What else?"

She turns her attention back to me and takes a deep breath. "We heal faster. Adapt to new environments. We'll keep changing, somehow, depending on who we're around. Who, uh, buys us."

I don't need a mirror to see that I am making a face. Change into what? A giant dripping blob?

Fuck.

I've got an entire crew of choice words sitting on the launch pad that is the tip of my tongue, but the effort would be wasted ranting to the equally-victimized woman.

I'll have to save the vitriol for any of the slugs providence deems fit to leave at my mercy.

A thrill shoots through me at the thought of it.

Ree takes my silence as her cue to go on. "That belt around your waist will expand to clothes, but if you do it, they punish you. You'll be aroused and can't control it. There's a live feed."

I look toward the camera, and she follows my gaze.

The one in the middle moves forward to smash itself against the glass, leaving disgusting pink smudges. I want to kill him for looking at the rest of the women that way, especially since they aren't even fucking conscious.

My hands are itching to hold a knife.

The mucus should make me wretch, but the reflex is gone. Like a gap in my mind that has always been there but has been over-flooded to the point of being useless.

No... not gone, just switched for another impulse.

I feel the outer edges of my labia peel open slightly, like a flower in bloom at the intense look in its, frankly, stupid-looking eyes, and my brain jerks to a stop at a sudden realization.

I'm turned on.

The sight of these pink cum-covered pieces of shit is turning me on.

Motherfuckers.

She said it, but I just dismissed it as not something that would happen to me.

In my simmering rage, I wonder what it will feel like to drag cold metal across their stupid, nearly non-existent necks and watch them bleed out.

The slime on the right seems bored and is picking at the short claws rising from his webbed fingers with a single index claw.

I wonder whether it can come off easily if I pull the adjoining joint in the opposite direction hard enough. The thought of ripping off its claws and seeing if all of them can fit in one eye socket is almost enough to bring a smile to my lips.

Almost.

Bored Slime turns to Stupid Gaze Slime. "We're nearing the hunting grounds."

This causes him to shift his bulbous eyes away from the red-haired woman it was ogling to join the conversation. "I hear they stocked it with a whole new range of species this year."

The one on the left shivers like it just came on itself, like one of those half-crazy anime antagonists I used to see on streaming services back on Earth. And now I want to gag at the mental image I just scarred myself with.

I mostly tune them out for a while, my gaze shifting all around our sleek white cell, taking in the colorful features of all the women, then looking for a way out.

I note when they talk about a manticorid. A bit later it seems to excite and frighten them, which pulls my interest again.

"Won't it just kill all the rest?" Bored Slime asks, his body somehow still matching his name as he puddles closer to the floor.

Pissed off as I am, that sounds like someone to know. Ree and I share a look.

They keep talking, mentioning there are blocks loaded into the prey to keep them from harming each other, but apparently not the hunters. Tricky bastards.

Clearly, organized violence is not a human-exclusive trait.

Of course it isn't, dumbass , I chide myself.

This manticorid thingy sounds very good at it.

The idea that there is something capable of putting the fear of Hades into them is extremely satisfying, though.

I give Ree a cursory glance from the side of my eye and she seems to be engrossed in the conversation.

While I'd much prefer being the one making them shiver in fear like that, it won't be happening unless I find a way out of this cell, so I'll settle for the vicarious pleasure as I keep scanning.

I suppress a laugh when they talk about snack-sized cats, though I can tell it makes Ree sick. She's a cat lover, if I had to guess.

Idiots. With no fancy gadgets and doohickeys, I doubt they'd consider a full-grown adult tiger a harmless little snack.

That alone tells me a lot about their combat experience.

When you survive near-death experiences, it changes your worldview about a lot of things.

I can attest to that.

"Except with venom," scoffs Bored Slime.

I look over to Ree, and she turns to see that I am staring at her. A small smirk forms on my lips, and, as much as she is doing a great job of hiding it from the slimes, I can tell she's thinking violent thoughts.

They keep fanboying about bloodsport as I catalogue the likely places they are vulnerable, though it's hard to tell for sure since they continually change shape.

Eyes, head, neck, and gut are probably a good assumption regardless of species. Maybe?

Stupid Gaze turns back to us. "The pink one is poor entertainment. Ratings are going down. Bring out the red one."

They argue for a while as I share another long look with Ree. Her face is telling me not to resist, which either means she has no spine, or they have done terrible things to her. Or both.

"Go back to your chamber, pink slut."

I just send knives at the fucker with my eyes and refuse to move. A pointless endeavor, but I have a habit of making a point where there's no need to make one.

Bored Slime presses down on the control to punish us and the noxious gas fills the cell once more, eliciting tears and snot to run down my face, before he pushes another button to make it recede.

He gurgles another order, more forcefully this time.

I flip him the bird, and he froths over with anger and pushes buttons on the control in a mad rage.

More gas fills the room.

I wipe the tears from my eyes and almost go back to sassing them before the sound of hacking and coughing beside me reminds me I'm not alone here.

Shit.

I look over at Ree and let out an inaudible sigh. This crap doesn't just affect me. She's a victim as well.

I have no right to let her suffer because my jarhead stubbornness wants to rear its ugly head like it always does if left unchecked.

She catches my stare.

"I'm with you, whatever you decide."

Alright, she has a lot more grit under all that pretty packaging than I would have thought.

I feel respect flood my system and it's a far better feeling than rage.

They send in more gas and when it lets up, I glance at her before turning my attention to look at the slime and their flipper hand hovering over the controls.

Man, fuck this guy , I grumble to myself.

With those cheery words of motivation, I get to my knees easily enough, letting out a long exhale to expunge any remnant gas in my lungs before I wipe my features and get my head in the game.

No clue how, but I am going to make these fuckers squeal.

I turn to Ree. "I'll see you soon."

I turn and sweep my eyes across them, settling on Bored Slime.

"You're dead," I promise.

Then I stand up, climb back in, and stab out at a screen that reads freeze in some other language with squiggling, ugly lines before he has time to stop laughing and use his controls.

There is a hiss of gasses and then slowly the world fades out of focus around me.

The last conscious thought I have before darkness takes over is the possibility of spit-roasting a live blob over an open flame as I stare with dispassionate eyes.

This time, I let myself grin.