Lost Change

Chapter 2

I woke up with a sudden panicked jerk and cried out for help. Something was wrong.

I glanced around rapidly and tried to figure out what had woken me. I was still in the same clear cage, and I was all alone, and the room beyond looked just as empty and dim as I remember... oh.

I looked up and saw that the red light had gone out. The gentle background hum of electricity was gone, too. It was still nice and warm in the cage, so it must have just turned off.

That must have been it. The sudden change in light and sound must have disturbed me. I took a few deep breaths until my racing heart was back under control.

I glanced up at the dim lightbulb and raised a hand up to it. The air still felt warm, but I had no idea how long it would stay that way without the heat lamp. Or if the lamp would come back on again.

A sudden rumbling sound from my stomach informed me I was also very hungry.

I wobbled over to the two dishes, still trying to figure out how to walk on four legs. A closer inspection confirmed they were both as empty as I had feared. I glanced around the cage one more time, but even in the dim light I could tell there was nothing either edible or warm in the cage with me. My gaze settled on the glass again, where the unfamiliar form of a silvery dragon reflected back at me. No - given how small I was, the word 'dragonet' was probably more appropriate.

Was this some kind of test? Was I some kind of lab rat now, that some researchers in a hidden room were watching? Were cameras hidden out of view that I couldn't spot?

I took a closer look around the walls of the room, but nothing stood out. I didn't have any evidence, but this felt much more like a surgical area, where something had been done to me and then maybe interrupted, rather than an area set up to test my reactions. The bed, the machinery, even the fact that the room seemed to be wired into a backup generator. This didn't seem like a random test chamber or even a long term home... though it also seemed like the point of any test would be to seem like something other than a test. Maybe the test chamber had just been designed to look like a hospital room, specifically to see how I would react to waking up in such a situation.

The pounding in my head grew a little worse as I tried to think through everything. My stomach rumbled again, and I shook my head. It didn't matter if this was a test or not - this cage was going to grow cold soon, and I was only going to get hungrier.

I took a closer look at the cage door. A few seconds made it obvious there was no way to get at the latch mechanism from inside the cage. But the glass walls themselves...

The cage was on one of the counters at the side of the room. Given how the egg had cracked when I had knocked it over I considered the possibility of knocking the cage over too, and I tried pushing near the top of the glass walls to see if I could nudge it over, but the base of the cage seemed to be too wide. I just didn't have the leverage or strength it would take to knock it over, at least not from the inside. I wasn't that sure tipping it over would cause it to break anyways - the glass seemed pretty sturdy, and it stood up to even the experimental scratch from my claw.

However, it was a decent distance down to the ground. With some luck a fall might be enough to break the glass. I moved to the back of the cage, took a breath, and then ran straight towards the door.

The impact did nothing for my headache.

I sat on the floor of the cage and shook my head to clear it, making a note to slam into the wall with the side of my body next time instead of with my head, then looked down through the clear floor. The cage had definitely shifted - I noticed four black squares built into the counter, similar to four squares on the bottom of the cage that no longer lined up with the ones on the counter. Magnets? I didn't think I had hit it hard enough to manage that, but the cage had definitely shifted.