Chapter 10: Feral
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Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. What? Olivia spasmed. Everything hurt. Chest, legs, arms, wings, head, tail. Every muscle and nerve ending in her body ached. Where? She cracked open her eyes. More darkness. Bad.
She tried to move. Not with a sluggish movement as her nerves reconnected from alien technology, but a raw, panicked animal reaction. She didn’t make it very far. Metallic clanks rang out as she struggled against unyielding bindings.
What happened? Let me out, let me out, let me out! She struggled further, thrashing against whatever held her down. Can’t move. People talked in the background, sharp urgent orders Olivia couldn’t quite make out. Then all the air around her became wrong.
Air, need air. Can’t breathe, need… She blacked out again.
***
The next time she awoke, it was to the sound of rattling. Fast movement. Engines hummed, her whole surroundings shook in response. Every breath she took hissed. Something plastic covered her mouth. She twitched, and again tried to get up. Metal, covering her whole body, kept her from moving. No. Got to move. Again, only darkness met her eyes when she opened them.
An urgent voice above her said, “Just like they said. Canisters five and six, now. Up the intravenous dosage.” A squeak from a turned valve, then her muscles relaxed and everything began to fade once again.
***
Olivia came back around, head pounding. Her eyes snapped open, and the blinding light she found made her regret that decision immediately. Sourceless ringing dominated her hearing, near as loud as when they’d first been blown out, and her headache didn’t improve her mood. She shot upright, tossing aside the blanket set over her, and every muscle involved screamed in protest. She took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light, one hand covering them to reduce the glare. As an experiment, she stretched her wings out. One extended as far as she could get it could, the other smacked into a solid wall. OK, I can see and I can move. Where am I?
She got up from the expansive bed she’d been laid out on. Her clawed feet sank into a thin carpet before hitting concrete as she found herself in a mockup of a teenage girl’s room. The pastel blue walls formed a seamless box around her, twenty feet by twenty feet. About fifteen feet up, lights illuminated the room with a yellow glow, pleasant if one didn’t stare directly into them. A pair of posters, displaying young men she didn’t know as part of a band she didn’t recognize, adorned the wall directly above the bed. What are those even for?
The only structural oddity to catch her attention was a small box-like protrusion in the corner. She poked her head around the corner to find a toilet and sink. Where am I? What happened? This is another prison.
She whirled around, looking for any way out. After several panicked moments, a tiny, perfectly straight and vertical crack in the wall opposite the bed caught her attention. She rushed over to it. Door? Maybe? She worked the tip of a claw into it, trying to widen it in any way. With only the bare millimeter deep crack to work with, she got nowhere. A light, set near the ceiling she hadn’t noticed, turned red with a buzz.
Olivia hissed in both frustration and desperation. She raked her claws down where she estimated the door would be, leaving four shallow gorges across it. Let me out. The buzz returned, louder and longer this time. She clawed the wall again and again. The paint chipped, revealing bare grey concrete below.
Right as she backed up to wind up for a kick to the scratched surface, a horrid shriek pierced the air throughout the cell. Olivia dropped, holding her hands to her ears to make it stop. The shriek scrambled her thoughts, made her brain rattle in her skull. Stopstopstopstopstop. Just as suddenly as the noise started, it ceased.
The tinnitus that she’d been dealing with since hearing one too many gunshots up close and personal came back stronger than ever, not fading even as the shriek did. When Olivia’s eyes finally refocused, she removed her hands from her ears. Wet. Something’s wet. What? The headache upgraded from mildly annoying to making her consider carving out her own brain to make it stop.
She checked her hands. On the dark green scales of her right palm was a spot of blood. Red. That’s normal blood. She wiped it off on her pants and held her palm to her right ear again. More blood. A small trickle, but more than ideal, which would be none at all. Normal blood. Why am I so fixated on that?
She struggled to her feet. Let me out of here. Let me out! She snarled and launched herself at the marked door again. A wave of nausea at the violent movement knocked the fight out of her. She collided with the wall with an undignified thud.
Slumped against the wall, she curled her fingers against the floor. Her claws, once past the carpet, dug mere millimeters into the floor as she willed the pain to stop. She took several shaky breaths, until the urge to empty her stomach and the pounding of her headache subsided enough for her to stand back up. No more of that. Not right now, at least. She staggered over to the solid metal bed and dropped down onto the fluffy padding of the mattress, sitting upright. Wait, why was everything all muffled?
She tapped her toe against the solid metal bed frame, set deep into the floor. The claw should have made a clicking sound against it, but it sounded distant, as if several rooms over. She screwed her eyes shut and hung her head. No. Not again. Miya healed me before, but she’s not here. No one friendly is here.
I need to get out somehow. She pushed herself off of the bed. The blood promptly rushed from her head, and she stumbled back onto the bed. Ow. Later.
Olivia forced herself to relax. Why? Why bother? I don’t know if I’m ever going to get out or what they’re going to do to me or if I’ll ever see my friends again. How did I even get here? Last thing I remember, we’d just gotten out of the alien’s imaginary world thing. Then what?
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Some guys, looked like soldiers, shot me a lot. I think. Why were they there? Wait, they were in dark grey. I think that means MHU. She caught sight of a splash of dark brownish red on her pant leg. Her eyes widened and she recoiled a bit as she recognized what it was. Blood. Nothing particularly hurt on her leg, so by process of elimination that meant the blood wasn’t hers.
No, no, no. Not again. Not good. What did I do? The pale, inhuman face of the alien flashed in her mind. She hissed at the memory. Him. I remember. She’d run after it, trying her hardest to kill him. While she expected to feel guilty about that, she couldn’t muster anything but distaste for him.
What did I do? He teleported a bunch of times. That blood had to have come from somewhere. I kept after him. Maybe it was its blood. We wound up in this house, I don’t remember how. There were people in there, people I didn’t recognize. There was that one man, between the alien and me. And his wife.
She cringed, curling her wings tight against her back, heedless of the bed in the way. I just wanted him out of the way. I didn’t mean to… No. I messed up. Some guy died because of me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She fought back tears. No, no crying. Not for me. If there had been anything in her stomach at that point, she would have vomited at that memory, of her throwing her claws into his gut to get him out of the way. He hadn’t died immediately, either, and the alien teleported right after. No, no, no. Not going to forget. Not going to forget. Not again. Even if it’s terrible. Stupid me. I didn’t recognize my friends, either. Ben was trying to get me to stop. To think. I messed up. I messed up and got stupid and violent. I can’t do that again.
A pinging noise caught her attention. She looked down and realized she’d never stopped tapping her toe. She took a deep breath. Calm down or I’ll do something stupid again. Like attack that door again. The others. Focus on them. What are they doing? Did they escape the police? I hope so. But if they come to find me, they’ll get hurt. This is a prison. It’s not like the MHU one I was in for a little bit. It doesn’t smell right, either.
They probably think I’m a monster. Maybe I should just stay in here. I can’t hurt anyone here. And just sit here. And never fly again. And never see my friends again. She gazed up from her hands at the unfeeling walls around her. Monsters are stupid and violent. No, damn it! I’m a person, not a monster. I don’t, can’t just do stupid violent stuff. Do they know that? Maybe I should say something? Don’t be stupid, easy.
“Hello?” she called out, unsure of where to look. “Is anyone there?” I’m not scary, I swear.
A small green light, instead of red, overhead flashed, interrupting her train of thought. A slot opened in the wall opposite of Olivia’s bed, a few feet to the side of the claw marks she’d left. Did I do this? Two trays appeared. One had a fresh change of clothes, a bright orange prisoner’s outfit, with Prisoner conveniently clarified on the back of the shirt in big black letters. The other smelled like food. She saw four different slabs about the size of her palm of cooked meat, along with a sizable plastic water bottle. Of those, the off white colored one piqued her interest. Fish? I don’t think I’ve ever had fish. The beef smells really good too.
“OK. Am I supposed to eat these with my hands?” she asked herself aloud. This can’t be because I said something. You can’t cook food like this in less than a second.
She looked around the room again. The odds of any sort of indication that someone had heard her question seemed low, but she was willing to expend the three calories required to move her head. Nothing.
Back to the trays. She tilted her head to get a good look into the slot the trays came out of. It was about nine inches high, and two feet across, she had no chance of getting through that way. That and she saw two feet of concrete before some white plastic within. How did the stuff get from back there to my cell? She sniffed. The meat caught her attention again. Other than some whiffs of incomprehensible things beyond the slot, nothing stood out to her.
Food. Food is good. Do I really have to eat this with my hands? Her stomach growled. Felt rather empty, now that she thought about it. She shrugged, picked up the fish slab, and took a bite. Mmmmm. Food. She devoured the meat in quick succession. Chicken tastes a lot different when it isn't fried. I kind of liked it! But now there’s a bunch of juice on my hands. Oh, hey, those clothes.
Olivia held up the bright orange shirt once she finished the food. It looked like it would fit, and had far less holes in it than the one she currently wore. She blinked. Why does it have to be so obnoxiously orange? That, and the prisoner label plastered on the back, made her hesitate. I’d rather not wear this. It feels like giving in.
She wiped her hands on it, then folded it as best she could and put it back. A small light overhead flashed, red this time. Olivia backed up a couple paces, not sure that a red light was a good thing. The trays withdrew, and concrete covered up the slot they’d come in through. Silence reigned after.
OK then. Now what?
With nothing to do, she paced. And paced. And paced. Other than the bed and toilet, there was nothing in the room besides her. She stretched her wings out from the center of the room three times in a five minute time span. Even up close, the smooth, featureless concrete walls gave away nothing, except for the small crack and gouges she’d left on the door. Staring at them got rather boring after about five minutes.
She had moved her bed from one wall to another, to see if there was anything at all beneath it. Nothing. The only thing that separated the floor from the walls was its horizontal orientation. She even tried picking at the door again, not even violently. The warning buzz forced her back. That’s got to be a door. Why else would they use that shriek thing?
The lack of any method of keeping track of time wore her down. She lost concept of how long she’d been trapped in the cell. The only thing she could keep track of was five steps in one direction, then an about face and five steps in the other. Over, and over, and over. At some point she stopped and sat on her bed to break the monotony with a slightly different monotony.
An involuntary yawn of hers caught her by surprise. Sleep. Why not? Not doing anything else. The lights are dimmed too. Just now realized that. She lost consciousness the moment her head hit the pillow.
***
The next day started exactly the same. She woke up not knowing exactly where she was. After taking a minute to remember the events of the previous days, she stretched to work out the aches from all her old injuries and resumed her pacing. Soon, the green light came on again, and the food slot opened up. Oh, hey! A fork and knife. They did listen.
She inhaled the food and water, and the red light heralded the tray being taken away again. No clothes this time.
More pacing. Food. More pacing. A nap.
After half a day of nothing new, and Olivia feeling her sanity slipping to boredom, the speakers beeped. A gentle, notifying beep, not the punitive shriek or an alarm. “Olivia?” asked an unfamiliar feminine voice from the crackling speaker.