~ ~ ~Chains of Starlight~ ~ ~

Chapter One: The Transfer

Another pod—two down—had failed. The glass was shattered inward. The occupant lay slumped halfway out, limbs curled wrong. Kyla saw burn marks across body's chest. Or maybe frostbite.

Her stomach heaved.

No. No no no.

She staggered to her feet, heart hammering, legs barely holding her.

A noise behind her—metal, quick, sharp.

She turned too fast and nearly fell again.

Two figures had entered the chamber through a wall slit that hadn't existed a moment ago. They were tall—at least seven feet—and encased in a kind of armor she didn't recognize. Not smooth like sci-fi movies. Organic, almost—plated and ridged like bone, with skin that shimmered faint violet beneath.

Helmets or no helmets? She couldn't tell.

Their eyes glowed.

One of them raised a hand, and Kyla backed away fast, her heel slipping in the condensation again.

"Get away from me!" she shouted, voice scraping her throat raw. "Where the hell am I?!"

They spoke to each other in a language that was music and static at once—vowels that rippled, consonants that scratched the air. She caught none of it.

One raised a glowing device and scanned her chest.

She screamed and picked up a broken shard of glass from the floor. She hurled it at him—it bounced harmlessly off his chest, but it made her feel like she still had teeth.

"Touch me again and I swear—!"

The second figure raised his arm.

There was a click. A pulse.

Kyla didn't even have time to scream before the pain hit.

Her brain lit up like fire—white, searing, blinding. Every synapse burned, and then—darkness.

⸻⸻

She woke again.

Cold.

Damp.

Numb.

This room was smaller. Rounded walls, smooth and silent. No pods. No other captives. Just a narrow slab beneath her and the low hum of machinery somewhere below.

A burning ache flared just under her collarbone.

She pulled her tunic aside—plain, thin, metallic-sheened cloth she didn't recognize—and saw it.

A crescent. Three stars.

Scorched into her skin.

Not ink. Not dye.

A brand.

The room didn't have windows. Or clocks. Or even shadows. Only the same sterile lighting, dim and endless.

She wasn't in a dream. Or a facility. Or a psych ward.

She was in a cage.

Somewhere far, far from Earth.

And Mira...
Mira could be anywhere.

You better be alive, she thought as her hand brushed over the brand again, and her jaw clenched tight enough to hurt.
Because I didn't survive this for nothing.

⸻⸻

Time blurred.

The next several days—at least, Kyla assumed they were days—bled together in a haze of metal corridors, windowless compartments, and the nauseating jolt of being shifted from one vessel to another. Not just her. There were more. 

Sometimes she was shoved into narrow holding cells lined with others—sometimes humanoid, sometimes not. Females, mostly. All marked. All broken in different ways.

The brand on her collarbone ached constantly.

They kept her collared. Not tightly—but enough to remind her she was property. Labeled. Cataloged. Contained.

No one spoke her language.

Every time she tried, the guards ignored her—or worse, laughed. A static-crackling tongue filled the air, spoken with sharp, guttural tones that grated against her ears. The translator device they used between species wasn't offered to captives. Why would it be? There was no need for livestock to understand their fate.

She didn't eat for two days. The food—gelatinous, off-colored, pulsing faintly—smelled of rust and decay. Others ate it without flinching. She gagged and spat it out. She didn't care if it killed her. Maybe that would've been easier.

But the body adapts to desperation.

On the third day, she forced it down.

Constantly on the move. Each stop was a different hell.

They landed. The abrupt excessive upward motion told her as much. They were hurdled like sardines in a can when the floor became a ramp to a orange canvas. Dry. Dusty.

In one station, she was herded with others into an enormous glass-walled chamber—watched from above by beings with elongated skulls and translucent skin. They didn't speak. They evaluated.

In another, they were separated by species and fertility class.

That's when it started to make sense.

She wasn't just abducted.

She was trafficked.

And humans... were rare.

How did she know? In all the fifteen stops—she had counted—only one other girl had survived.  

The others whispered—or clicked, or pulsed vibrations through their neck membranes—but somehow, even across species, the message was clear.

"The Earth girls don't last long."
"Too soft."
"Too short-lived."
"But... very fertile. If they survive the transport."

She wasn't the only one from Earth. She met other the girl once—briefly, in a station cell. Young. Pale. American accent. Said her name was Chloe. Said she had a sister. Said she'd made it through five transfers so far. Hope remained by a threat. Mira had to be somehwere. 

The next morning, Chloe was gone. Sold. 

Kyla never saw her again.

Some girls were sold before they ever reached market.

Others didn't make it through processing.

Some went catatonic.

Some tried to bite their captors.

Some... welcomed it.

She didn't judge them. Not anymore.

When everything is taken from you—your voice, your name, your right to breathe without permission—there's no such thing as weakness. Only survival.

⸻

By the twenty-sixth transfer, she was thinner. Colder. Hungrier. Her skin clung tighter to her bones.

But her fire hadn't gone out.

She memorized every corridor. Every guard rotation. She learned which species had sensitive hearing, which ones flinched when she made sudden movements, which ones didn't care if she screamed.

And she never stopped looking for a way out.

Not once.

Even as her pod descended onto the polished black floors of the auction hall—even as her wrists were bound and her knees forced to the cold surface of the preparation room—Kyla never stopped planning.

She would find Mira.

She would find Earth.

And she would burn this galaxy to ash before she let herself die in chains.