A horn played two long blasts, before I heard the clunky noise of the heavy cargo bay doors starting to move. That was odd; we didn't normally have deliveries during daylight hours. I looked over from the screens on my console through the window at the back of our control room, to see a white delivery van pulling in, the door starting to close again behind it.

The floor manager gave me a tap on the shoulder. "It's a little earlier than expected, but you have new intake."

Great, that meant something must have gone wrong; we hadn't been expecting them till tonight, after I'd finished my shift. Fortunately, that was nothing to do with me, and shouldn't cause any complications for my job beyond a little extra work right now. I handed my headset over to the manager who would cover for me while I was away from my console, informed him that nothing interesting was happening, and headed to the cargo area.

Five masked men had already exited the vehicle and had unloaded a trio of unconscious school girls, and had now moved on to stripping them and searching their belongings. I knew this group, mostly. One of them was new, but I knew the team leader, and he wouldn't let his squad take advantage. Seeing me arrive, the leader put down the backpack he was sorting through, and came over to greet me.

"Right, these three are all going to your section. We have Alicia, Samantha and Lily." He pointed at each of the three in turn, letting me know which was which. "They are..."

I held up a hand to stop him there. "Their names are enough. I don't need to know more, nor do I want to." It was selfish perhaps, and certainly unprofessional, as they might have information that might turn out to be relevant. The truth was simply that the less I knew about who they were, the easier it was to pretend that they weren't people, especially once their minds started to break.

"Fair enough. We'll take them to the cages then."

I led them into my section, my eye scans opening the biometric locks, letting them lay the three unconscious bodies down in their respective rooms. Whatever names and lives they used to have, now they were twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three, giving my section a full population of six. As ever, I felt sorry for them and whatever family they'd been taken from, but by taking this job I was ensuring that my own children were not the ones inside the cages, and that I had the money to keep my family in luxury. My mild insomnia was a small price to pay for that safety.

I locked back up, double checked the seals, and returned to my console. The floor manager handed back my headset, once again letting me hear the constant screaming coming from number eighteen. She wasn't reacting well at all to her captivity, and despite having had a couple of days to settle it didn't seem likely that she'd ever be cooperative. I made a note for the next shift that if she was still going by night time, I advised sedation. I know the bosses disliked sedating subjects during their metamorphosis, supposedly because it resulted in reduced intelligence in the end products, but sometimes there was simply no other choice.

Nineteen and twenty were doing much better. Nineteen was still crying a lot, but was still in good enough condition that we'd been able to start dosing both with mutagen the previous day. Things might change once they actually started showing physical changes, of course, but for now they were both stable.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The new intake were still sedated, and it was unlikely they'd wake up next shift. I'd probably be back on duty by the time they came around. Hopefully I wouldn't get another screamer.

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When I turned up for my shift early the next morning, eighteen had been sedated, and the usual breakfast and welcome note had been delivered to the three newcomers, none of whom were yet awake. Alas, I didn't have long to enjoy the peace and quiet, as twenty soon woke up completely paralysed below his waist. It was unusual for that sort of thing to happen before any other visible changes, but not unheard of in cases like this where the end product wouldn't have legs.

Despite how calm he'd been in the two days since his delivery, he was starting to panic, and I couldn't say I blamed him. I hurriedly typed out a note to reassure him that the lack of mobility would be temporary, and sent it in through the secondary delivery system that was within reach of the bed. I sent a message to the kitchen to use the same delivery system, and was happy to see that by the time I was done, twenty had read his note and calmed down slightly. He was still unhappy and angry, of course, spending some time shouting out some colourful descriptions of what he was going to do to me and my mother. I wasn't even sure what some of the words he used meant. Kids these days...

Nineteen awoke, and like normal immediately burst into tears, crying for her mother. If she had any physical changes yet, they weren't sufficient to distract her from her usual routine. I could leave her to get on with it; she'd quieten down as soon as breakfast turned up.

It wasn't much longer until the new intake started stirring, the sedative finally wearing off. Twenty-one was the first to wake, looking around, and screaming for help. It took her ten minutes before she decided that no-one was coming to save her, and she started exploring her cage and reading the note.

Twenty-three was next up, and immediately attempted to climb out of bed, collapsing onto the floor. She didn't scream or shout though, which was a relief. In fact, she didn't say anything at all, which was a bit creepy in its own way. She stood up and explored the cage in complete silence, reading the note and saying nothing, looking with interest at the delivery system but not trying to stick her arm in like so many others. Then she picked up a book and started reading as if she didn't have a care in the world.

Or at least, that was what she must have wanted me to think. The IR monitors in the room could easily detect heart rate, and my readouts showed she wasn't anywhere as close to being as composed as she was acting. She was recovering though, and at the rate she was going, we might even be able to start with the mutagen before the end of day one.

Twenty-two was a bargainer. She awoke half an hour later than the two that had come with her, looked around, realised her circumstances, and immediately tried offering money for her release. If she had enough for that, she wouldn't have been targeted in the first place, and indeed she was being very ambiguous about the figures she was offering. Thankfully, that sort of thing was easier to ignore than the screaming, but that sort of person tended to panic very easily once the physical changes started. She had a nasty one too, I realised, looking at her notes. A sword spider... Arachnid metamorphoses never went down well. Something to not look forward to later in the week.

It also helped me that of the six, regardless of whether they screamed, cried, panicked, bargained or remained stoically silent, it was all for themselves. Not one of them mentioned any of the others that had come in with them. No-one ever did, at least not for a while, always selfishly worrying about their own situation instead. Just one more little fact I could latch on to to help me sleep at night.