Taken

Chapter 7: The Beta Sector and the Kelpie

What the hell are the biodomes? I thought as the scientists left me alone one-by-one. A fancy term for more cages?

Once I was completely alone, a breath of pent-up air noisily escaped my lungs in the form of a dramatic sigh. Soon after, the sound of rustling began to come from the other side of the metal wall that I was facing. Whatever was there, it sounded big.

"'Ello new neighbor~! My name is Alasdair. DE3062 to the scientists." A cheery male voice with a faint Scottish accent announced as I opened my eyes just in time to see a solid black horse wedge its large, heavy-looking head through a gap in the thick metal bars that served as the divider between our stalls and peer down at me with ghostly white, pupil-less eyes.

However, his head was too large to totally fit though. The only part of him that managed to fit through the bars was the lower half of his head. He withdrew his head briefly from between the bars and angled it so that he could look at me properly.

"You're a weird-looking equine~." He continued, a joking tone to his voice.

Great, an extrovert. I thought dryly. I hope he doesn't decide to talk my ears off.

"Clara. Kludde." I replied with a tired sigh as I closed my eyes.

I had been woken up earlier than usually today, and being pumped full of benzos after a mentally exhausting psychedelic trip didn't exactly help me stay awake, either. I was too tired to give a proper introduction.

"Ah, so you're the one the white-coats were talking about! DC6429, right?"

I sent feelings of slight amusement to the dark-colored horse through our link as I opened my eyes, despite my tiredness. I was thankful that I had been set down in a way so that I could look at him.

"So, word of me spread beyond the Alpha Sector then, huh?"

"Yep! Word on the street is that you're just as dangerous as I am!"

"You are...?"

"A Kelpie. Also known as a Water Horse or a shape-shifting water demon. Unfortunately, I can't shape shift."

Alasdair peeled his upper lip back to reveal sharp, jagged, yellow teeth and tossed his head enthusiastically with a short whinny.

"So, you eat meat then, right?"

"Yep! Fish and pork are my favorites! It was kinda hard to keep kosher after being taken, though. Becuase of the instincutal desire for food, I gave into eating everything after about half an hour of internal conflict. My parents would've be disappointed if they found out. Then again, I don't think meat-eating horses can be Jewish."

While my new Kelpie friend rambled on about his previous Human life, I decided to see if the paralyzing serum had worn off by trying to move my legs and tails or see if I could lift my head from the fresh hay of the stall that I was in that had replaced the the sand of my cage as bedding. I didn't move much; just a brief, spastic jerk of one of my hind legs and I was unable to raise my head from the bedding. After a second, third, and even a fourth try that yielded the same results as the first, I growled lowly in annoyance and decided to give up and decided to listen to the equine's life story.

He had graduated high school at he age of sixteen and graduated college at the age of twenty with a degree in mathematics. He got an engineering job for a major company soon after graduating. So in other words, he was pretty smart. He married his high-school sweetheart several months later, and they had a daughter named Ava and a son the next year- whom his wife named Joshua- after her late father. Alasdair was sure that his wife probably would've met another guy and remarried by now; he had told her that if anything happened to him, that she should find someone else not just for herself, but for the kids as well. His wife and brother must've been worried sick when he didn't return from the beach that day in Miami.

"Did they inject you with a paralyzing serum?" Alasdair asked once he was done talking about himself.

"Unfortunately." I muttered.

"Do you remember its label at all and how long ago you were injected?"

"Um,"

I thought back to what the scientists said that the name of the paralyzing agent was and how long the transfer had taken, factored in with how long I had been talking to the Kelpie in front of me.

"P6." I said after a moment of recollection. "I was dosed about... fifteen minutes ago, give or take a few minutes."

"P6's effects last for about half an hour." The Kelpie informed me. "You should be fine in about another fifteen minutes or so. It's one of the longer-lasting serums."

Wonderful. Just great. I thought sarcastically with a huff.

"How do you know?" I wondered.

"I've been here long enough to have every single one tested on me." Came the reply. "There's P1 all the way up to P10. P1 lasts for no more than five minutes and the active period for each serum increases in increments of five the higher its number. P10 lasts for an hour and thankfully, I've only experienced that serum once, when I broke a tooth and had to get it replaced. I now have a titanium tooth somewhere in my mouth. Though, I still wonder why they didn't just put me under for the operation."

"How long have you been here?"

"Coming up on five years. I was one of the first to survive long enough to emerge from my gestation case. I was caught on a crowded beach when I was visiting Miami for my older brother's bachelor party. I was... twenty-three then and maybe a little bit- uh- impaired. I was taken in the resulting panic of someone claiming that they saw a shark in the ocean, close to the beach. Ingenious execution, really. If you're hard to get to, the researchers will think of a way to get you. I met a couple of others- a European Unicorn and a Pegasus- who were taken off of a plane as 'suspects' after it was forced to land due to a 'bomb threat'- Matthias and his older sister Lucy. Really interesting pair of siblings, they are."

He must know a lot about this place, then. I thought as I watched the Kelpie rub his forehead against the edge of the metal base that the bars were set in, which made his long, greasy forelock tangle up in some places. He was either itchy, bored, or both. Maybe he learned where we are being held.

"Alasdair?" I asked the black horse. "Did you happen to learn where we're being held?"

A/N: Sorry it's so short compared to the last chapter!