Captured and Captivated

Chapter 8

Harper

Invisible fire was crawling through my bones.

I'd been injected me with something- not a serum or drug but something far more tangible. It itched. It did worse than itch. It operated, countless thousands of little fire ants cutting a tunnel through my flesh from the inside out.

I clawed at my skin, my nails raking paths from the injection site as the horrid feeling crept upwards. A second alien had attacked us. Or at least I think he did. It had been dark and I'd been carried and then something had hit us. I'd been dragged out of my rescuer's grip only to be confronted by a new opponent.

Adversary? Ally? I didn't know yet, but he'd tried to talk to me. When I didn't understand he pressed a patch against my collarbone. It had burned like acid for a second before I panicked as I felt it sink into me. Now the new alien was holding my hands away from me, keeping me from hurting myself as I fought to get away from him.

"Stop."

The pain ended completely with the word, but an invasive, cold feeling grew in its place. It radiated out along every nerve and, when it reached my jaw, a fresh pinch of discomfort began.

The alien was masked and I headbutted him right in the center of his faceplate. Tried to kick him where it would hurt most. He had been trying to hold onto me, but I threw my weight with such force I wrenched my wrist and fell to the floor.

My bare ass was touching a dirty metal floor. I didn't know why that thought hit me when it did, but I was jarring enough to force me out of my rising hysteria and back to reality. This was really happening. All of it was and I didn't understand a thing that had happened since I'd been prettied up for the auction.

Finally the horrid feeling subsided. It felt like half my jaw was novacained, or maybe my other fight-or-flight instincts had finally taken over and demanded I stop whining about it. Either way, my eyes snapped up as the latest alien crouched near me but far enough away that I couldn't easily strike him.

"I'm sorry. You should have been sedated first. There was no time."

His voice sounded insane. It was like I was listening to an echo of an echo, but my numbed jaw thrummed as suddenly the sounds pulled themselves into recognizable pieces in my head.

Realization dawned on me in a series of rapid-fire blinks.

"I can understand you."

The alien stood. He- or at least I assumed he by the voice- towered over me. He was wearing some sort of strange black reflective armor. It made the light seem to bend around him, but in a very different way from how that cyborg had hidden us. This new alien was wearing a full helmet that masked his face, but at least he looked nothing like the beastly Krynn. There was a blaster at his hip that I noted but didn't let my eyes fall on.

"We must go, human."

The words seemed incrementally less odd this time. I was adapting to- to whatever I'd been injected with. The room wasn't spinning anymore but I scooted further back when he advanced.

Behind him was the other one. The pale, dark haired cyborg who had rescued me. Or maybe it hadn't been rescue, but my heart clenched with worry when I saw him. He was sprawled across the floor in a heap. There wasn't the slightest sign of movement, not even the rise and fall of breath.

"Is he dead?" Did you kill him? The two thoughts came in absolute tandem and I wasn't completely sure which one I actually spoke.

The masked alien didn't answer. He watched me with an angle to his head, almost as if he was trying to figure something out.