Willow awoke freezing, her cheek pressed against a piece of metal that could have been a block of ice.
Groaning, she swallowed thickly and pushed herself up. And kept going. With a gasp she flailed as she floated off the floor. No, not the floor. Ceiling? The little chamber she was in was lit only by a sallow yellow circle of dim light on the wall.
"What the fuck?" she whispered, eyes darting around the little space. She realized if she didn't get moving faster she might slow to the point that she could get stuck floating in the middle of the room. So despite her pounding head and, the confusion, she kicked at the ceiling at an angle that launched her toward the wall with alarming speed.
She cried out and put her arms up to shield her face as she crashed into the wall hard enough to bruise her elbows and knees. But then she found herself floating away from that little yellow circle on the wall once more.
"No, no, no..." she said, desperately reaching out for that little circle of light.
She couldn't reach it with her hands so she brought her legs up and kicked it, the ball of her foot hit hard and a loud beep sounded, just before the door slid open.
With a gasp, she looked over her shoulder to see how far she was from the wall. Just a few more inches already and she could touch it, but she seemed to be moving so slow and she had no idea how long that door would stay open. She had to fight to keep herself from trying to kick off the wall before she could get a better purchase. But once she could touch it with her feet and bend her knees, she launched herself at the open door.
Just as she feared, it started to slide closed again.
"Shiiiiiit!" She said, cringing as she made it to the doors and gripped them, giving herself another shove. If she's been just a little slower she would have lost toes as the door closed behind her.
She'd made it out of the little airlock but the angle at which she floated had her on a collision course with the floor. Not much farther was a contraption of some kind that was tethered down with long straps.
With a grunt she reached for it and just barely got her fingers around a strap before she hit the floor. She still hit pretty hard and her shoulder took a good hard yank but at least it wasn't her bad shoulder. Her body tried to bounce off the surface and float away but her grip held her to the contraption and she steadied herself enough to look around and get her bearings.
It appeared to be a massive cargo hold full of barrels and boxes, and contraptions that might have been vehicles of some kind. All these things were held down with tethers or what she assumed to be magnets.
Willow swallowed and winced. She had an uncomfortable tickle at the back of her throat and her eyes felt itchy. The air had a somewhat astringent smell and taste to it and it suddenly hit her that she was in space!
Her stomach tried to crawl up her throat at the thought.
"Holy shit," she breathed, suddenly feeling dizzy as her perspective changed just enough to make her think the ceiling was the floor. In fact, there was no ceiling or floor. There was no up or down. Every surface was just a surface that served a function.
A little terrified voice in her head told her to find a place to hide and wait until she woke up because this couldn't be real. But her shoulder still hurt...
With a gulp, she took another breath that tickled the back of her throat and shoved that terrified little voice away. She couldn't panic. She couldn't. Not with Evan depending on her.
From somewhere in the cargo hold, a door slid open, and she froze, glancing around. Where had that come from?
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Carefully, slowly, she eased herself beneath the large machine beside her. There was barely enough room for her to fit and once beneath it, she breathed slowly. That tickle at the back of her throat suddenly seemed terribly threatening. What if she suddenly started coughing? What if she had to sneeze? Her heart pounded and despite the chill in the air, a bead of sweat made its way down the side of her face.
A sound came to her ears and she held her breath, tilting her head and listening.
It was the steady comp and hiss of magnetic boots as they engaged and released.
Suddenly lightheaded, Willow exhaled a slow, shaking breath and slowly breathed in. She hadn't realized she'd been holding it.
The footsteps drew closer, louder. Her entire body was shaking and she pressed a hand over her mouth, afraid she might puke or cough or breathe too loud.
It walked right by her. All she saw were the hoof-like feet in their silver magnetic boots through the blurry pools her eyes had become.
In space, tears don't fall. They just pool in your eyes, so she had to wipe at them with the back of her hand to clear her vision.
The footsteps faded as the alien moved away from her and she fought the urge to sniff. Her nose wasn't dripping, but her brain told her it should be.
Finally, she heard a door open and close somewhere in the vast room.
She didn't move though. That could have been the alien leaving. Or it could have been another one entering.
A minute passed, two minutes, then three. She counted the seconds, straining to listen for any sign that she wasn't alone.
Finally, after ten minutes, she had to admit that she was just scared to move. So she pushed herself out from under the machine and oriented herself. Which was hard when your brain kept trying to flip which was up and down on you. The human brain wasn't meant to exist in a place where there was no actual direction. That was her opinion anyway. She was sure people born in space didn't have that same issue. No, they had other issues. Like their spines not forming correctly or their bones being brittle.
Licking her lips, she swallowed her nerves and maneuvered around, looking for a door or hallway or window. Something.
Carefully, she made her way to a crate beside the thing she was clinging to, from there, she moved to a barrel. Then to some kind of vehicle.
Willow spider climbed her way around the cargo hold until she found something that looked like a door. It had a little yellow circle beside it so she figured it would open like the other door did.
When she made it to the door, Willow hesitated. There were no windows. What if there were aliens on the other side? What if it opened to space?
Looking behind her at the massive cargo hold she wondered if she should find a different door. But she bet all the doors looked the same.
With a gulp, she shored up her courage and reached out a trembling hand. The button beeped when she pushed it and she flinched hard, tightening her grip on the strap she held to as the door slid open.
Heaving a sigh of relief that she didn't just get sucked out into space, she leaned out and looked into what appeared to be a hallway. A sound came through it like a low reverberation that came and went. Came and went. Came and went. As though something huge and mechanical was revolving around it. But still, no windows.
Luckily, the hallway had rails she could hold onto as she made her way through it.
Pressing the button on the other side to open yet another door nearly gave her a panic attack. It was the not knowing what was on the other side that twisted her guts up. But when the door slid open, there was just more hallway. Except this one was long and looked like it curved upwards toward the end, from what she could see. And it was lined with doors. These ones did have windows. Long, thin ones with wire mesh not unlike highschool classrooms.
She moved into the hallway and to her surprise, felt a little tug of gravity, pulling her down until she could actually rest her feet on the floor and walk. It was like a moonwalk bounce but hey, some gravity was better than no gravity as far as she was concerned.
The first window she looked through showed her a dimly lit room with walls covered in pod-like bubbles and some kind of tower in the middle that stretched floor to ceiling. The next was the same, as well as the next.
Licking her lips nervously, she glanced up and down the hall. It was still empty.
She pushed the little yellow button and the door hissed softly as it slid open. Willow ducked inside and slowly made her way to one of the pods, praying there wasn't some monstrous alien inside. Each pod had little glass windows and she'd seen enough sci-fi movies to know what a cryogenic pod should look like.
Willow gasped when she looked inside.
Inside the pod was a little girl who couldn't have been older than six years old. She moved to the next pod, and the next. All children.
Dread dropped into her belly like a stone and she rushed back out to the hallway, returning to the first door. She entered and looked into every pod.
No Evan.
Room two, no Evan.
She continued through room after room. There were hundreds of children in these rooms and the hall of doors just stretched on and on. How many children could they have possibly taken? Why?
She ached for the horror so many parents were going to wake up to when they found their child's bed or crib empty and as she looked into pod after pod her terror at being a stowaway on an alien ship in space turned into anger.
How dare they do this? Who did they think they were? How did they even get past Earth's defenses? Hell, she knew there were ships and anti-spacecraft cannons at the edge of the solar system, more in the Jovian System and all throughout the asteroid belt So, how had they slipped by?
The next room she moved into was different. The pods were all connected to the central tower, instead of lining the walls, and extra hoses and tubes were sticking out of the sides. She looked into one to find a girl who looked no older than three years old. But her hair was a pale blue, her skin also seemed bluish. She checked more pods to find similar attributes. One child she could tell had had almost black hair once as the tips were dark, and one was clearly of African descent, by his features and curly afro, but, again, his skin had been bleached to a pale blue.
"Oh, my God," she breathed. "What are they doing to you?"
They weren't just taking the kids. They were experimenting on them. Changing them.
Panicked, she quickly looked through every pod, frightened she'd find Evan with blue hair and skin. When she didn't find him, she felt a mixture of relief and guilt.
She let herself sit on the floor and just breathed the oddly spicy air for a few minutes as she tried to overcome the rising panic that was clamping tighter and tighter bands around her chest. Willow wanted to puke.
Thomas was going to wake up in the morning. He was going to find Evan gone. Her, gone. What would he think? Did he wake up when she called out to him? Had he seen the light? The ship?
Vision blurring with tears that didn't fall, she sniffed and swallowed hard. This was too big. Too much. Even if she found Evan, what could she possibly do? She was nothing but a floor-moper who once had a promising career as an electrician, but fucked it up. She destroyed everything she touched.
"Shut up," she said aloud. "That's not helping."
Stubbornly, she pushed herself to her feet and moved into the next room.
As she looked from pod to pod, her nerves grew and she kept looking over her shoulder in anticipation. Where were all the aliens?
Rubbing her throat, she remembered the terrifying, black claws around her neck. That thing had been so strong and fast. What would she do if she ran into one of those aliens again? What could she do?
Mag boots were standard on spacecraft, but she was barefoot. If she tried to run, she would lose control and just float.
Not that mag boots would help. Where the hell could she possibly go on an alien spaceship anyway?
The answer was simple. If they were merciful, she might end up in a pod, like all these children. If they weren't, the airlock was a runner up.
Willow was betting they were not merciful.
***Thanks for reading! New chapter every Sunday, holidays, and sometimes because I feel like it!***
PD: 1/7/24