Chapter 2

The clank of my cage door opening wakes me from my fitful sleep. I blink blearily at the gap and the dimly lit corridor beyond for a long moment. My mouth is dry, and I lick my lips, tasting the faint trace of mint.

I didn't think I had any tasks for today. The crazy alien who "owns" me, Aezok Brig, killed the last of the little red beasties two days ago. I don't have any cages to clean or food and water to deliver.

Unless he's already brought in more beasties to conduct his horrifying body modification experiments on. The thought presses against me for a long moment, hollowing my chest.

I shiver, resisting the urge to burrow deeper under my thin blanket. If I don't go out there and see what he wants me to do, he'll come in here to get me. And it's never good when he's in my cell. That was an easy rule to learn.

The skin of my back twinges, remembering the last time he punished me. It wasn't too long ago. Multiple lacerations, hematomas.

I don't like watching him hurt the beasties; sometimes I can't stop myself from protesting out loud or from trying to heal them, even though I know I'll be disciplined. But usually, to my shame, the threat of pain is enough to gain my compliance.

My stomach churns as I shiver again. I won't stop trying to fight his control over my body. I'm still me. I'm still Mara Montgomery, trained nurse and compassionate human being. Even though I don't know where I am in the universe, and I'm completely at his mercy, I won't let . . . I won't let him hurt . . .

My breath hitches. I forcibly remind myself I'm not that woman anymore. I've let him hurt a lot of beasties. And I've helped.

I'm a monster. I pull the blanket over my face and suck in the warm air for a long moment.

At this point—a year into my imprisonment—I know I'm not ever going home. And I know there are no depths to which I won't sink to stay alive.

I press my toes to the cold floor and stand, straightening my hunched shoulders. The translator implant embedded in my ear weighs on me, pulling my head down, but I don't let it sink me.

My clothes are at the foot of my cot, tucked under the blanket with me to keep them safe from the robot vacuums and cleaners that sometimes drift through my cell. I turn away from the open door and dress quickly—a plain shirt and pants, pretty similar to my old scrubs on Earth. My shoes are thin slippers, scuffed and dirty.

When I first woke in this cell after the auction, I'd been terrified out of my mind the pink-skinned, well-dressed male alien, Aezok, was going to rape me, to turn me into some kind of sex slave. But it turns out he just needed a drudge to work in his horrible lab. A drudge with medical experience and no moral compass.

A few times I've seen him staring at my body with greedy eyes, and I know he gets excited when he whips me—his skin darkens to an almost red color as he grabs at my boobs, smearing them with my blood until I'm red, too. But after a year, I've lost my fear of that particular fate. I don't think he can get erect. Maybe our species aren't compatible?

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. Aezok's pretty humanoid, except for his pink skin and his stubby horns. Maybe he senses that's the last straw for me. That's the straw that will break me, and a broken drudge is just trash to take outside and burn.

Staying as quiet as I can, I use the open toilet and sink in the corner of my cell, my modesty long gone, and then brush my teeth and hair. I avoid looking at my face in the mirror. I know what I'll see—dead eyes and pale skin. Probably still bruising at my cheek from the last time I defied Aezok and gave extra care to a beastie. A beastie that's now dead. Like they all die.

I fight the urge to let my shoulders sag. I have to stay strong. I've done too much harm to die now. My soul will never be clean.

I don't even know what Aezok's trying to accomplish, mixing and melding the body parts of the small, red, winged mammals; taking the blood of one and then injecting it into another; making pastes of their bones and small horns. . . He's an alien Dr. Frankenstein, except I don't believe life after death is his goal.

I think he sees himself as an artist, trying to create the perfect little beastie. But that doesn't make sense. The beasties are already highly evolved small animals, like squirrels with bat wings. Not humanoid, thank goodness. I couldn't handle it if they were intelligent, like some kind of a primate. I'd have defied him long ago and been killed for it.

Before I leave, I can't resist a quick glance at the small window above my cot. I worked on the bars last night for a little while, but I'm still months away from prying enough of them loose. I can only work in the dead of night, when no one will hear the scraping sound of my dull, stolen scalpel. And I can't create a pile of dust larger than what the robot vacuums normally clean from my cell, otherwise it creates an alert.

I learned that fun tip about the vacuums the first and last time I tried to escape, back when I first got here, before Aezok put the bars on the window. I spent all night digging a crack into the thick, plastic-like material enclosing it, only to run out of time to finish my hole before dawn. That day, the vacuums alerted Aezok to the scrapings I'd hidden under my cot. He broke my left arm and snapped three ribs, then made me watch from my cot, whimpering in pain as the med unit splinted my body while he welded the bars across the window.

It took two months before I was strong enough to start digging again. My left arm didn't heal right, and I can't put much weight on it, but I can dig at those bars. I will escape here. One day.

Though, I don't know if I can fit through it, that small window. And I don't know what's on the other side of it. But I'm determined to try. I'm determined to keep fighting. Rubbing the remembered ache from my left arm, I check once more to make sure I can't see the thin, broken lines at the bottom of two of the bars. Five more to go . . .

In the corridor, I ignore the chill and hurry to the small kitchen. It's not really a kitchen. There's no fresh food. But the cold storage bin contains a ready supply of frozen protein bars, and there's a small refrigerator, too, where I grab the meat to feed the beasties. Though it hasn't held any meat for a while.

I pour a cup of water from the sink, gulp it down, and then, clutching one of the protein bars in my hands to thaw it a little before I bite it, I head toward the lab. The bars taste better frozen, so I don't want to thaw it too much. Just enough that I don't lose a tooth when I gnaw on it.

For a long moment, my stomach churns in protest. My mind sends me images of scrambled eggs, pancakes . . . waffles. I swallow hard. No waffles in Aezok's lab of horrors.

When I reach the open space of the main lab, my steps slow. Aezok's not in sight, and no new beasties pace the empty, narrow cages, but against the far wall, inside the large cell that's been empty for the past year, a man sleeps with chains around his ankles.

I freeze, my heart exploding into a driving pace. A person, not a beastie, is in a cage.

The scene in front of me, black and white for so many months, explodes into color.

He's large, his arms hanging from the narrow cot, black claws touching the floor. He has thick, sharp horns curling from the top of his forehead and his maroon skin is a bright splash in the white room. From where I stare, I can see his chest move up and down with his breaths. He's wearing dark trousers and a blood-stained shirt. The red on his skin, on his shirt, is a wash of vivid paint across my senses.

I look around, verifying we're alone, before I start to creep forward.

His lifeforce is a beacon. He's new. He's different.

He's going to die.

I swallow hard. Can I open his cage before Aezok shows? Surely a large guy like this can fight his way out of here. I can go back to bed; pretend I was never here. Take my beating for being a lazy drudge. I step closer and closer, my pulse unsteady. I have to be fast.

I hesitate, ears straining, before I peek around the counter into the room on the other side of the lab. It's dark and still. No sign of Dr. Inde. He usually arrives at the lab in the late afternoon and works through the night. It's too early for him to be there, but I know the rules. Always check.

My shoulders hit my ears for a long moment. I despise my cowering, but I can't seem to move any closer. The need to help the caged man beats against my fear. What if Dr. Inde is here? He'll report me to Aezok. He'll watch and grin while Aezok beats me.

I press my wrist to my mouth, restraining my whimper.

Dr. Inde is blue-skinned and tall, and in some lights, I can see the hint of scales at his cheekbones. He's deeply unsettling, with his metal robot hands and red cybernetic eye. He did the surgeries himself, he informed me once in a proud and haughty voice. Enhancements, he calls them. He likes splicing the beasties, and I don't think he cares in the slightest when his experiments fail.

He's sick in the head. He'll splice me if he ever gets the okay from Aezok. He works willingly here, taking blood and tissue from the beasties and melding them, creating the new hybrid animals that immediately die. His lab often echoes with their shrill, shrieking cries.

Averting my gaze from his lab's empty doorway, I focus again on the red guy. How did he end up here? Did Aezok buy him like he bought me? The blood on his shirt suggests, no. My fingers itch to find the source of his wound and fix it. Possible laceration.

That instinct is rusty, a remnant from a lifetime ago, even though it's really only been a year.

I don't know why my cage opened and this man is here. Surely, I'm not supposed to take care of him? I stare at his still shape. My hands are shaking when I press them against the bars of his cage.

The fact that there aren't any beasties in the lab today, just this man, makes my insides shrivel. Can I hurt a person? Can I be a part of something that hurts a person? It was bad enough disassociating from my work with the beasties, knowing it was them or me. But a person? That's a different calculation.

My heartbeat is heavy and sluggish in my chest.

Can I value my life any greater than his?

My shoulders sag. I can't. I can't violate the vow I made when I graduated nursing school, that I would do no evil or malicious thing. I've already strained the bounds of it, if not crossed it irrevocably.

My oath doesn't care I'm bound to this place with no way to escape.

I rock slightly on my heels, eyeing the size of him.

Maybe he'll fight back. The beasties are so small, just the size of little rodents, with horns, wings, and tails, and sharp teeth I know how to avoid. This guy is big. And strong. He'll be able to hurt me if I come too close.

And he'll be able to talk to me, to tell me to my face I'm a monster.

For a year, I've justified to myself the horror I witness without action is worth my continued existence. It's me or them. And they're just little red animals. Like lab mice, right? Wrapping my arms around my waist, I bend over, trying to muffle the pain noise rattling in my throat. If Aezok forces me to hurt a person. . . Nausea builds in my stomach. No.

This is the end, then. I've hit the line I won't cross. My life is now measured in moments, short beats of time until Aezok realizes I won't do what he wants, and he kills me. My body will join the heap at the back of the building, food for the carrion birds of this jungle.

The male stirs, his chains rattling.

Despite the clamor in my ribcage, I can't help but stare at him. His remarkable skin glistens under the lab lights, taut and oxblood red. The horns at his temple curve out and then up, like bull horns. They're obviously designed for fighting, so his species must be aggressive. My throat convulses. His muscled frame certainly suggests a bellicose nature.

And he has two tusks curling upward from his lower lip. They're sharp and thick, drawing the eye to his high, bladed cheekbones and firm chin. He's handsome, in a brutal and devilish sort of way. The scruff on his face and his shock of dark, messy hair suggests he's mammalian, like Aezok and Inde.

I wonder what color his eyes are.

"Ah, I see you've met our new specimen." Aezok's voice penetrates my fascinated mind, stabbing my psyche with a sharp, instinctual jolt of fear.

I flinch and step back from the cage bars, ducking my head and tucking my hands across my middle. I wait for a slap or a blow, sweat beading at my forehead. I gulp back the urge to whisper, "Sorry." Aezok hates it when I speak without leave.

Silence echoes for a long moment. I peek through my lashes to see Aezok glaring at the chained man. Digging my fingertips into my hips, I force myself to keep my head lowered.

I want to ask why he's here. I want to ask who he is and what Aezok expects me to do, but I know better than to open my mouth. Instead, I continue to wait, studying the patterns on the tiled floor.

"Do you think he's attractive?" Aezok eventually asks.

My mouth drops open. My mind blanks as cold drops of fear slide down my spine. A new game and I don't know the rules. How am I supposed to answer that? Is there a right or wrong answer? What will happen if I get it wrong?

I have to answer. I stare openly at the man in chains. He's objectively and subjectively very attractive, with those muscles and smooth skin. I look at Aezok, who's watching me with a kind of impatient attention. He taps his toe.

Swallowing hard against the need to clear my throat, I make an instinctive guess and murmur, "Yes, sir."

He nods sharply, as if I gave the expected answer, and my knees go weak with relief.

"Take two syringes of blood from him. Put them in the cooling unit in Dr. Inde's lab."

He taps on the keypad at the cell door. An opening appears at the base of the bars, just small enough for me to crawl through.

Acid pools in my mouth at the thought of crawling on my hands and knees to do this man's bidding. Still, I whisper, "Yes, sir."

Without another word, he spins on his booted heel and leaves. The miasma of his presence dissipates immediately, but I'm not relieved. I still have to go into the cell.

I grip the bars again, watching the chained man sleep. His breaths are even, slow and steady. I should do it now while he's still unconscious. But my feet don't move. How far do his chains reach?

My lungs pinch in my chest, like I'm not taking in enough air.

Then I square my shoulders. I have to get the blood; there's no other choice.

A few minutes later, I crawl into the cell with one hand in the air to hold the syringe pack off the ground. My knees scrape across the tiles, despite my best efforts to be silent. The nape of my neck prickles as I watch the sleeping figure for movement, feeling vulnerable and small on the ground.

Up close, he's even larger than I expected. And he smells like espresso, nutty and slightly smoky. I inhale, missing coffee with a sudden, dizzying intensity. What I wouldn't give for a shot of the hot, rich lifeblood of my people.

I shake my head hard, trying to knock the urge to sniff him again from my head. Not the time or the place, Mara.

Kneeling at his side, I work quickly to find a thick vein in his arm and fill my two vials. I ignore the way I notice his skin is warm and the way, up close, the coffee scent is even stronger.

I can't stop myself from staring at his face when I'm done, however. The sharp, white tusks curving over his plush lips are a fascinating dichotomy. I want to touch one of them, to see what they're made of. Something like ivory? Or something like his horns, which are black in his dark hair?

His chest moves in a deep inhale, and I skitter out of the cell so fast, I scrape my arm on the bars. Wincing, panting, and rubbing my arm, I feel blood well under my shirt. I'm so stupid, panicking like I have something new to be ashamed of. I'm already ashamed. My life is shame.

I need to get the antiseptic quickly. At least I know I'm only a year out from my last Tetanus shot.

I hurriedly store the two vials in Dr. Inde's lab before swabbing my arm clean with the antimicrobial cream I use to treat beastie bites. The gouge is long but thin, and I don't think I need stitches. I wrap it, then tug my shirt down to cover the bandage. I don't know what to do about the gash in my shirt, however. Maybe I can ask Aezok for needle and thread.

With nothing else to do, and no desire to watch the chained male wake and grow very upset about his new situation, possibly looking at me and judging me. Or worse, expecting me to help him.

I retreat to my cell and curl up on my cot. My arm aches a little, and I'm hungry, but I don't want to get up again. At that moment, the thought of moving ever again is too much.

My ears pricked for any new noises; I try to relax enough to sleep.

WHENI wake, I realize I'm not alone in my cell. I scramble to my knees, slamming my back against the wall, as Aezok prowls inside. His scent, sour citrus, precedes him.

Terror freezes the blood in my veins. Did I forget a chore? Did he call me, and I didn't come? His red eyes are dark and a little frenzied. He's sweaty, his pink skin gleaming under the dim lights.

My brain scrambles to assess the vibes he's emanating. Angry? Not really. More . . . purposeful.

Movement behind him draws my gaze, and I see Dr. Inde's tall shape following. He's carrying a syringe filled with a black fluid I don't recognize.

"Please," I whimper. I don't know if they're planning on injecting me with it, but I know I don't want whatever's inside of it anywhere near my body.

Aezok's never experimented on me. I'm not a part of his splicing program. Or I haven't been, before now. I wrap my arms around my knees, tucking into a ball. "I did everything by the rules today," I whisper.

Aezok ignores me, pulling his dark tunic over his head so he's shirtless in my cell. His wiry muscles, pink and lean, are striated with red veins.

Dr. Inde plunges the syringe into Aezok's arm at the crook of his elbow, then backs out of my cell, slamming the door shut behind him. The temperature in the cell plunges, or maybe that's just my blood pressure. Black spots dance across my vision.

I don't understand what's happening. I hold my hands in front of me, trying to ignore the way they're shaking. "Please, don't."

Aezok's body swells as if he's an inflatable punching bag. His skin darkens from pink to strawberry at the same time his veins purple and then blacken under his skin. His red eyes turn black as well, pupils dilating to the size of giant marbles.

"Holy shit," I whisper.

The small horns on his head shiver at the same time bile swirls in my stomach. Are they growing? That's impossible.

He sucks in a huge breath of air, his nostrils flaring, and his pants tent at his crotch.

Blackness encroaches farther across my vision. Every nightmare I've had for the past year explodes to life in my flickering brain.

"No," I moan. Fear gives my throat strength. "No," I say, louder. "No!"

Aezok cups his erection, his face feral and wild. "It's working!" he crows. Then in a softer croon as he strips off his pants, "It's working."

I scramble from my cot and run to the back of my cell. There's nowhere for me to go. My lungs gasp for air as I pant. I can't get enough air. I'm choking.

Aezok's nude body ripples, muscles bulging and then contracting. His skin flickers from pale pink to pale red, then back again. He steps toward me, a low growl rumbling in his throat, then he stumbles and drops to one knee.

"Fuck," he groans. He scrubs his hands across his face, tugs at his small horns, then tilts his head to glare at me. In the shadow between his legs, I can see his cockstand is gone. He's limp and pink, like a thin, wrinkled thumb.

Acid fills my mouth before I drop my eyes. My relief at avoiding his sexual assault is thin. I know I'm not getting out of this cell unscathed. His black serum, whatever it was, didn't work. And I'll be blamed.

"Get on the bed," he rasps.

My hands flutter in front of me for a long moment. I want to fight back. I should fight back. The cold feeling grows in my chest. But what's the point? I can't get out of the cell. I can't get out of the lab. If I submit now, he'll only whip me. If I fight back, he'll whip me and then use his fists. Maybe he'll break my bones again. That's his pattern, a pattern I know well, though I haven't actually fought back in a long time.

Maybe he won't have the strength to hurt me for too long. He only made it a few steps before he collapsed.

I bend my head and crawl onto my cot, trying not to think about my weakness. And I ignore the dark voice whispering to me that I deserve this. I'm a monster, remember?

Shivering, I lift my shirt up and out of the way so it doesn't get torn up. From behind my closed eyes, my brain catalogs the noises of Aezok dressing again, then the clink of a belt being removed. Trembling on the cot, the sound of my blood whooshing in my ears, I reach for the black void.

As the belt whistles through the air and bright agony flares across my skin, I sink into the familiar pain and shut down my mind. My cold surroundings vanish. The scratchy sheet under my cheek disappears. The scent of iron and cleaning solvents dissipates. In the distance, a roar echoes, and the new sound threatens to pull me back from the dark, but I will myself to close it out. The pain dulls. In the darkness, I go away.