Taken

Chapter 16: En Route

Everything hurt and trying to move only made the pain that much worse. With every crack or divot in the floor that the cage's wheels ran over,  my prison would lurch which in turn, caused a dull, stabbing pain somewhere on my body. If I still had some fat or muscle on me, I thought dryly as the cage wheels got stuck on yet another divot. This would be far less jarring. Every time that I got jostled, one of the scientitsts would mutter 'sorry' under her breath; why she did this, I didn't know- or for that matter- care. I just wanted to be far away from confined spaces... well, the biodomes were still confined spaces; but they were just very, very, very large confined spaces with enrichment. To pass the time, I decided to listen to the idle chatter of my escorts. I didn't bother with trying to distinguish the uniqueness of their voices; as they were all starting to sound the exact same to me.

"Do you think that she'll survive out in the biodomes?"

"Hell if I know. We have had some severely emaciated subjects who've managed to make it on their own."

"Some? That's reassuring."

I detected sarcasm in that comment.

"Shut up. At least it's something positive. She may have a chance out there!"

"Look at her! She's a pile of skin and bones and can hardly move! She'll be extremely lucky if she makes it past a week out there. Especially with some of the more aggressive Mutts that are out there."

"The only things that she'll have to worry about in the Boreal Forest are the Silver Cats and the Saber Wolves. As long as she stays in that area, she should be fine, I think."

"Eh, the Saber Wolves might leave her alone."

Silver Cats? Saber Wolves? What kind of fucked up zoo had they created?  I thought. I wondered briefly if these so-called 'Silver Cats' and 'Saber Wolves' were also once Human Beings as well at one point in time.

"This is only the second Kludde that we've managed to successfully create. I can't believe that the Boss is just going to turn her loose without fattening her up a little, first to increase her chances of survival."

"I don't understand how they work."

"Does anyone, really?"

"Probably not. I certainly don't."

I guess that their boss uses they/them pronouns. I reasoned as I tried to conjure up images in my head of this so far elusive Human Being in order to pass the time as the scientinsts droned on around me while they pushed my cage along a certain route through the numerous, brightly lit hallways that was unknown to me. The final mental image of the Boss that I had decided to settle on was that of a fair-skinned, slightly heavy individual who looked neither male nor female, had very short or buzzed back dark hair, a small nose, dark eyes, and a constantly annoyed or pissed-off expression who's back always faced the door and who never turned around from a large window that was behind their desk despite talking to visitors.

I let out a pitiful yelp as the wheels to my cage were forced over what I only imagined as a small, textured speed bump. The harsh, sudden movement of the cage caused my body to slide forward and into one of the walls of bars.

"Shit." One of the scientists growled. "Stop. One of the cage wheels just came loose."

"Yeah, we might've hit that cable tunnel a little too roughly."

The immature side of me immediately snickered at the amount of innuendos that could be spawned from that one sentence. It seemed that at least a couple of other scientists felt the same way I did, because some barely-restrained snickers floated up from the group of assembled scientists.