Operation S.A.L.V.A.T.I.O.N.

Chapter 10

A sharp click and blinding white light wrenches Lantroupa from her uneasy slumber. She jackknifes to a sitting position on the cot, a gasp ripping from her chest as she stares wildly around, trying to remember where she is.
When her intense gaze is met with the white and glass confines of her cage, despair threatens to devour her again, but she fights it off and pulls her knees up to her chest. Throwing her arms around them, she places her chin on her knees and watches from under hooded eyelids as a man walks into sight in the room outside of hers.
How long had she slept? What time is it?
The questions pile up but don't get answered as all Lantroupa can do is sit there and try to figure everything out by watching and listening.
The man is wearing a white lab coat, just like the ladies were earlier. He walks across the room, throwing a glance at her, sharp blue eyes narrowing as he stares, gaze fascinated and creeping under her skin. She wants to look away, wants to hide, but she doesn't, opting instead for the defiant approach, staring right back at him with heated gaze.
After a couple seconds, the man looks away and shakes his head hard, chest moving in a chuckle as he turns away and heads to one of the rolling tables at the back of the room. Lantroupa can't hear anything except her own movements and breathing and it's starting to annoy her greatly. If she ever wants to figure out what's going on, she'll have to be able to see and hear something. Anything.

She gets up and strides up to the glass with purpose, gaze intent as she stares at the man. Now that the room outside of hers is lit, she can see that the blinking lights belong to a long row of computer banks and data storage files, cables and wires running from them to outlets in the walls. One of the tables farther back has a screen and keyboard on it, and the other table carries vials and long thin metal instruments. Whoever these people are, they have technology from before the Earth fell.

The man walks around the room and straightens these instruments, then stills and throws another look at her. Lantroupa bares her teeth defiantly and the man smiles slightly, winking. Rage swirls in Lantroupa's chest, trying to quench her rising fear.

The man reaches down and presses a green button below one of the tables. There's a buzz and Lantroupa flinches away from her door, staring at it with wide eyes, hardly able to breathe. There's silence for a couple of tense seconds, and then another buzz, opening the door to her cage. For a split second, Lantroupa considers charging whoever is about to come in and not stopping until she's free from... wherever this is, but her limbs don't respond in time. Guards stream in and she can't even count them before they are on her, tearing on her arms and hair to get her onto the ground. Her weak body doesn't offer much resistance, but they jab her in the side anyway, sending a painful electric charge through her entire body, blinding her and rendering her helpless.
She doesn't know whether she cries out or not, her throat still dry and rough from abuse earlier. A knee hits her in the side and a boot manages to nick her temple, but she ignores the hits, thoughts swirling to the room outside. She can feel the man's gaze on her even though she can't see him. The guards don't even bother tying her up,  picking up her struggling form easily, even though she's a writhing mess. The guards drag her out of the container and over to one of the tables. Lantroupa cranes her neck around to see where they're going. Her eyes fall onto the straps lying open across the metal of the table and realization dawns.
They're going to strap her down on the table like some lab rat. She should have seen this coming. The whole reason for the terror every mention of the government raises in hers and Sappheer's heart, the reason their parents had taught them to fear every sighting of a government aircraft, a fear so ingrained it sent them running and hiding like hunted animals back on Earth every time they heard even a whir of an aircraft's motor.
Because to the government, they are animals.
Nothing else but things to catch and keep in cages, poke and prod with no regard to the fact that they are experimenting on themselves, on beings just like them, humans, not rats in a lab. But it makes no difference. To them, they're just another number on a paper.
To them, they are specimens.

Tears spring into Lantroupa's eyes and despair crashes through her mind as she's dropped onto the hard metal of the table and pinned down. The leather straps close around her ankles, wrists, legs, torso, and finally her throat, immediately cutting off any hope she had of trying to get free. She wants to scream her lungs out, tell them to stop, tell them they're in the wrong, plead with them, but she can't. Even the tiny amount of words that are usually at her disposal were dried up when she cried out to her brother to save himself. She doesn't regret it, not one bit.

Sappheer. She squeezes her eyes shut and feels a silent, cold tear slowly tracing its way down her quivering cheek. She just wants everything to go back to normal, back when all they had to worry about was nature and their next meal. She misses her brother.

She opens her eyes, gaze hardening. Slowly, a steady resolve builds in her heart. As long as her brother isn't here, she will continue to believe he is safe back on Earth. Her chest expands in a breath and hits the strap around it, holding her down. She moves her head as much as the strap around her throat allows and looks to the left. The guards are gone and she can't see the other man. 

She slowly twists her head in the other direction and finds him at the table with the computer screen. He's tapping away on the tabletop. She can't see from this angle, but it looks like he's not using a keyboard. Weird.

He finishes tapping and turns away, grabbing something from a neighboring table. Lantroupa's anxiety rises as a couple clinks and taps follow, then the man turns back around with a grand swish of his white lab coat. Lantroupa swallows and stares at the item in his hand.

A very large syringe with a long, wicked-looking needle, the rust-colored liquid sloshing inside the glass tube from the man's abrupt movements. He comes over and looks her fully in the face. 

"Well my dear," he says sweetly. "Shall we begin?"

Sorry guys, another cliffhanger. I just love them. They're so fun to write, but I hate it when another book gives me one lol. Hope you enjoyed and keep posted for the next chapter.

Best wishes, Lietha S.