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.
I took a closer look at them. I could almost make out tiny wires in the dim light. That explained it - the magnets needed power to work. With the power dead it meant the magnets were useless. That seemed like a good sign to me - it suggested something else had tried escaping the cage the same way, and had at least succeeded enough to require the now-useless magnets. I took another moment to let the pounding in my head calm a little, then backed up and ran at the side of the cage again.
My fifth attempt shoved the cage far enough that it was hanging off the side of the counter. I panted in the center of the cage to catch my breath - running was hard in the strange body, and my muscles still felt cramped and weak - then stood up to give the cage the final push. I ran towards the wall, turning slightly to one side to help prepare for the impact...
The entire cage wobbled as my weight shifted towards the empty air. I tried to slow down, but my feet slipped on the smooth surface, and I fell into an awkward slide that caused me to thump harmlessly into the wall.
The glass cage wobbled again... then tilted... then it fell.
I panicked as everything dropped. I spread my wings out on instinct and felt my body rise into the air as I flapped somehow. I felt a brief surge of excitement - I was flying!
One of the metal dishes came out of nowhere and hit me smack in the head.
The world went dark, and I felt something slam into my back, followed immediately by a loud crash, as if a plate had slammed to the floor and broken. Everything shifted, and I had a slow sensation of falling as I slid down something... then I bumped into something else, and the motion ended.
There was a ringing sound that I was fairly sure wasn't coming from inside my head, and the world was still dark. I tried to move, but felt something pinning one of my wings. I squawked and tugged on it, annoyed by the trapped feeling, and it came free with another clattering sound.
I rolled onto my feet and frowned, trying to understand what had happened. The room had been dim without the power on, but I couldn't think of anything that would have caused the light to go out completely. This was almost like being back inside the egg, but there wasn't anything in the cage that would...
Realization slowly sunk in, and I sighed as I reached up and pushed at the metal bowl that was now covering me. It flew to the side and wobbled a bit, making the same ringing noise as it did.
I looked away from the bowl, definitely not holding a grudge against it, and looked back at the cage.
My plan had worked better than I had hoped - the glass cage had shattered from the impact and come apart at the seams. Two of the walls were laying in pieces a short distance away, with shards of glass covering the floor around it. The remaining four walls had held together despite now having deep cracks running through them, but were no longer able to trap me with two of the walls missing. The sharp pieces of glass now covering the floor worried me for a minute... until I realized I had wings, and could simply fly over them.
I spread my wings outwards, stretching them... and stretching them, and stretching them, and stretching them - good grief, just how long were these things? - before I finally felt a tug and a bit of soreness at trying to spread them any further. I took a deep breath... and held them there for another moment, suddenly feeling stupid.
I had no idea how I was supposed to fly.
My wings were supposed to flap up and down... right? That's what birds did... but these were really long wings. If I just started flapping them, they seemed like they would smack into the ground. With the shards of glass lying everywhere I had a feeling that would end badly. Could I jump first? Maybe if I jumped I would get high enough up to trigger that instinct I had felt when the cage was falling, and could go from there. I looked up hopefully, but the cage was in the way - the sides of the cage were gone, but the remaining pieces still formed a ceiling above me.
I gave an experimental half-flap of my wings, but it didn't magically lift me into the air, and I still didn't want to risk slapping the glass-covered floor. And I definitely didn't want to risk trying to walk through that mess. I had scales, but I wasn't sure how well they would protect me against the thousands of sharp edges waiting between me and the door. And with how small I was, I didn't want to find out the hard way how much blood I could safely lose from cuts.
I slumped down a little and wished there was someone else there who could help me.
But I was on my own. There wasn't anyone else here.
I let out a deep sigh, then moved on to plan B.
It took more time than I cared to admit to flip the food bowl over and ride it across the floor. The underside of the bowl was at least flat, and proved comfortable to rest on while I used my legs to scoot it through the glass. The worst part was making sure my tail didn't drag along the floor - it was hard to remember that I even had a tail, much less what I was doing with it, and a couple times I found myself wincing in sudden pain as it dragged over a sharp edge of glass. But aside from that it wasn't that bad - I perched on the upturned bowl, looked for clear areas without glass, and pushed with my feet to move towards the door. It helped that the glass shards glittered a little in the dim light - or maybe my eyes were just better at picking them out. I didn't see why that wouldn't have changed, with everything else about me being different...
I felt a vague memory surface as I scooted the bowl through the glass. A large block... thing, one that was supposed to stand upright, but had fallen on its side somehow. The glass window had shattered and strewn glass all over the floor. Candy and other treats were inside, and I had tried to reach in and grab one, and ended up getting cut for the attempt. Somebody had wrapped a cloth around my arm, and blood was dripping through it to stain flesh-covered arms and fingers. A word followed a half-second later, just as with the memory of the dentist: vending machine.
I shook my head as I gave the bowl another push. I wasn't sure where those words were coming from, but at least the memories confirmed I wasn't going crazy. I felt like there was a lot I couldn't remember... but I could remember that much. Before I had woken up here, I had been something else.
I finally reached the door. I took another look around to make sure there wasn't any more glass, then hopped off of the bowl. It would be a lot faster to explore the rest of this place on foot, and my stomach was eager for me to find food.