Chapter Sixteen: High flying

Flying had been routine before the Catrion War, and to some extent, remained so afterward. I'd never flown on a commercial airline before but I'd heard many stories from those who had. Airline passengers typically faced brutal security procedures, nauseating g-forces, and obnoxious neighbors in the seats next to them. Supposedly, those peanuts in the tiny packets made up for the drawbacks of flying.

I had yet to see a six-ounce packet of dry-roasted nuts anywhere.

It wasn't a stretch to say I was dissatisfied with the Catrions' customer service. I could live without flight attendants but I swore I was the first passenger in all of flight history to experience actual flesh-and-blood, in-flight torture.

The Catrions had conveniently forgotten to spray me with their queer, nourishing liquid. As such, I wasted away somewhere between dehydration and starvation.

And then there was the pain.

My wrists and ankles, sore from their constraints, craved a second of freedom so they could again remember the peace of healing bruises. Likewise, my shoulders longed for the ability to rotate and relax. I didn't know how long I'd been shackled, but it had been long enough for every joint in my body to hurt from being held still too long.

While I dangled there, Aidyn's lifeless body remained frozen. As my condition deteriorated, it seemed my perception of hers did too. The worse I felt, the worse she looked.

Her failing health did nothing to boost my low morale. I was responsible for what she was going through. Deep down, I knew she wasn't cured of whatever sickness she had had because of what the Catrions had done. It felt like her swiftly-approaching death was an intentional part of my punishment.

Defeated, I almost wished I'd never sent that damned cry for help.

While wallowing in my misery, I heard a crash out in the corridor. Seconds passed by without any other indicators of activity happening; I began to think I'd imagined the crashing noise. Just when I felt the most disheartened, having convinced myself of my own insanity because nothing else had happened, the room's sliding door hissed open.

Because I'd attributed the racket in the hallway to the Catrions, when it wasn't, I hoped my shocked expression didn't make me appear too unwilling to leave.

A girl floated into the room. Until she came in further, I couldn't see her face. From teh limited view I had, I saw she was dressed similarly to me before I'd surrendered to the Catrions. Aside from the color of her bikini top, the only difference in her raiment and what I had worn were the pants. She had on a pair of Victor's khakis; I knew they were his because of the extra length bunched around her ankles. Also, she had a sweat stained men's blouse with the front unbuttoned and loose.

In the recesses of my mind, I recognized her wavy blond hair, but I couldn't remember her name.

Before she noticed me, she spotted Aidyn. "Figures," She turned her head, looking around some more. "Ah, there you are--Victor said you'd be in here somewhere."

Her voice reminded me of her name--there stood Nellya in the flesh.

"Is this a dream?" I asked stupidly.

She shook her head. "Nope, I'm here to rescue you."

"My hero!" I swooned as dramatically as I could in my misery.

"I'll remember that," She pulled a short pair of red bolt cutters from a back pocket. Subconciously I prayed she'd be gentle with them; piercing guns petrified me and they paled in comparison to the chain-snipping might of her fiberglass monster.

Fortunately, she cut the other end of each pair of handcuffs, the ends not near my flesh

Once I was free, I thanked God for the absense of gravity. My sore limbs would have suffered even more if they'd dropped limp. Even so, Nellya had to help work the kinks out of my muscles before I could do anything on my own. For seceral tense minutes, she massaged my shoulders and legs by gingerly bending and stretching each muscle group.

When the ability to move had returned to me, Nellya pulled the clothes I'd had on earlier out of another of her pockets; I was too tired to care how much she seemed to have on her person.

"Here, put these on," She said, handing me the clothing while bending to fish something out of her pant leg. Despite looking incredibly awkward, my sword slid down next to her calf. "Take this too, you'll need it in a sec."

Fear welled up inside of me--the condition I was in was not one I cared to fight off Catrions in.

However, I reached for the sword nervously with my tail; I wished Victor and his sledge hammer were nearby.

As I finished getting dressed, Nellya pondered a solution to Aidyn's situation. Concluding she had no choice other than to free her, she attacked the lock on the shower door.

The opening glass door sounded like a plastic food container with slimy leftovers inside, "Shh-lock."

The once-trapped liquid erupted out of the shower. Miniscule droplets and churning globules exploded from the the largest mass of the liquid and bounced around the room. Each time a drop of it splashed me, I winced; each wet spot burned terribly. I was sure it was the same stuff I'd been in before, but it had never burned me like that before. All I could figure was it had been too long since I'd last had the liquid touch me, my skin was reacting to it.

After the momentary stinging, I began feeling slightly better. It wasn't much, but I felt less exhausted. It was almost like eating a banana or granola bar as a pick-me-up after spending the entire day hacking at ivy on the back of the house or trying thin out a wild thicket of bamboo; I got enough out of it to feel replenished for a short while but anymore than that was being wishful.

Nellya dunked her hands into the pool of liquid; more of it splashed out. An icy shiver zipped down my spine just watching her hands plunge further down.

Ripping the oxygen plug from Aidyn's nose, Nellya pulled Aidyn's unconscious body from the slime. Taking her outer shirt off so fast it flipped inside-out, Nellya wrapped it around Aidyn's shoulders. Before doing anything else, Nellya buttoned the shirt and tossed Aidyn over her shoulder.

"Come on, let's go."

The door whirred open again.

"You first," she said, "I'll cover your rear."

Still too tired to fully understand everything Nellya said, I gave her a confused look.

"You're kidding, right?" I fumbled for the scabbard of my katana, "I don't have a clue where we're going."

She shook her head and frowned, ushering me out the door. "Just go--you'll know where when you're out there."

Kicking off the wall behind me, I obeyed despite not knowing any more than I had moments earlier.

"You can't miss all the other humans, you'll be fine."

Brushing past her, I repeated her last words. "Other humans?"

Nellya didn't answer my query, probably because she went into alert mode. Her tense, ready-to-kill-something energy inspired me to try and put my own game face on. Of course, my off-to-war attitude was insignificant next to hers, but I was encouraged to be able to conjure that energy in spite of my exhaustion.

Sure enough, just outside, a man in his late fifties stood guard; between his bare tired chest, his clistening compound crossbow, and the baggy blue jeans that made his bony frame stand out even more, I didn't know what to think. When he saw me, he nodded once and fell in line behind Nellya.

Stunned to even see someone other than my friends, I bounced off opposite walls, zig-zagging in the general direction I thought I'd come when the Catrions carried me to my most recent imprisonment. SInce all the walls pretty mych looked the same, I hadn't had a chance to recover yet, and on my way to be chained I'd been rather distraught, finding my way back to my suited proved difficult.

Fortunately, Nellya was there to point me in the right direction.

"Hey," she called, "We're not going back to the room your stuff was in cause it's too far from Victor's established safe zone."

"Safe zone?" I muttered, again receiving no confirmation of what I'd heard.

"Chuck should be up agead," The man's high-pitched voice wheezed and cracked; he sounded older than he looked. "He'll know which way to go,"

I appreciated the help offered by the stranger but considering I didn't know Chuck either, I didn't know how helpful he'd been.

Where Chuck was supposed to be, I found a frantic Victor; he had his sledgehammer in hand and his dirting eyes told me we still weren't safe. When he caught sight of me, the corners of his mouth curled upwards into a nervous smile; seeing Aidyn in the condition she was shattered his brief happiness. Instantly, his lips tightened into a menacing scowl and a flicker of rage flashed in his eyes.

Experience told me I'd be the one to confront that fury later on.

"Come on," Victor's palm pressed flat against my spine and together we darted down several hallways I'd not yet been in. Every time we went through another door, victor sealed it shut the second Nellya and the anonymous man made it through.

Roughly ten minutes of running brought us to a part of the space ship I'd only seen from a ventilation duct. Judging by Victor's continued frenzy, we weren't safe yet.

Without hesitation, Victor and Nellya stuffed Aidyn and I into the safest corner of their apparent stronghold; it was a spherical shower in an apartment smaller than mine had been. Surrounding this appartment, other apartments and former crew quarters formed Victor's beehive.

Each hallway, room, and closet begged a Catrion to creep through; security was so tight the Catrion would be dead three weeks before it first thought of attacking. The sheer volume of people emprisoned on the Kyokujitsu astonished me. I'd been wrong in assuming my friends and I were alone in our captivity.

Alaric met Nellya, Victor, and I as Victor and Nellya locked AIdyn and I away. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimmer of affection in Alaric's face. As quickly as it came, it was gone. Unless I was mistaken, Nellya's appearance sparked his change in character. Nellya didn't notice Alaric's peculiar behavior although I cringed at the gory mess named Alaric that would have resulted if Nellya had noticed his affection.

In the shower, Nellya helped me change Aidyn's clothing to something more exposing. I also swapped my baggy cargo shorts for a pair of short shorts. Our hope was that in doing this, Aidyn and I could recover faster.

Hopefully, me staying with Aidyn when the spray of water came on would heal her of her condition, like when the Catrions had placed us together to fix what they did wrong to her.

Almost immedeatly after Victor and Nellya shut the shower door on us, the spray started. ONce again, I cringed at the fierce burning although this time it gradually diminished as my body became more accustomed to the liquid. Over time, I felt better until my body could recover no more without a long sleep.

Aidyn however continued looking horrible. I didn't have to be a doctor to see she was sick. Her unconscious body endured constant tremors; if she she shook any more, I'd think she were having a seizure. Not surprisingly, her cold skin was whiter and paler than I'd ever seen on a living person. Blue veins streaked across every inch of her body, some melting into oblong bruises. Her skin was slimy to the touch, and I doubted the constant spray of liquid coating us both was the cause.

This was what I had done to her.

Because I never heard the Catrions mention her sickness since demanding she be healed, I couldn't know for sure they'd done much of anything. For all I knew, Aidyn would need a human doctor to survive whatever the Catrions had done to her. Since that wasn't available, the best I had was from the Catrions, whose level of trustworthiness didn't encourage me.

The possibility existed I'd sealed her fate in sending a plea for help--with a forceful intervention guaranteed, the Catrions could care less about some dumb girl's demands to heal another silly human.

Aidyn's deteriorating health fell on my shoulders.

Worse yet, it wasn't my first screw-up. No, this was just my most recent failure in a growing sequence of successively-worse failures. Because of me, my friends and I would probably never see our families again. Before I gave cause to Aidyn's probably death, Victor alone had had a connection to his old life. Sure, Leroy and I were related but Leroy was my nephew, my responsibility; Aidyn and Victor were cousins, friends, equals. Thanks to another stupid act of selfishness on my part, Victor's sole reminder of the dull, happy peace we'd all had was crumbling away from ever living again.

Sighing to myself, I wondered how far the damage I'd caused would go. Whereas Victor's agenda from the very beginning had been to resist the Catrions, I had strived to be nonconfrontational. Victor refused to stay put when the Catrions first placed him in a cell, thus, he managed to erase the Catrions' memory of him and evade recapture. In contrast, I submitted to the Catrions without question. Each time I knew the Catrions were coming for me, I'd done little to fight back. The most recent time, I'd even stripped down and went quietly, like the good little prisoner I was. How I'd expected my friends to benefit from my surrender, I couldn't comprehend.

Whether hours or days had passed, I knew not. The spray of numbing droplets had ceased for the seventh time a while back yet I still hadn't left the shower once. Nellya had visited twice to deliver fresh clothing and to help me change Aidyn. Apart from her two visits, I never interacted with anyone; every break from my isolation was a welcome relief.

Hence, when Victor knocked on the shower door and invited me to stretch my stiff muscles, I couldn't contain my excitement. We only stayed in the apartment outside the shower's round walls but I appreciated the change in scenery all the same.

"How's Aidyn doing?" Victor massaged the back of his neck. "Have you noticed any improvement?"

My heart sunk deep into my gut, practicaly falling into my left leg. "Oh," I'd heard the truth hurt, though I'd never imagined it could hurt to tell the truth. "She's--erm--she's the same as ever."

He nodded, looking away from me. "It figures," His face scrunched up into a look of smug weariness.

"She'll be fine," I lied; there wasn't any evidence to suggest she'd be fine.

Victor sighed. "It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to worry about her health on top of everything else." He shook his head.

Confused, I sat down next to him, using my tail to better position myself without gravity. "What do you mean?"

"Sorry," He took my hand in his. "I forgot you haven't met hardly any of the people we have on out side."

He was right; I'd only met one other person on the ship and had yet to learn his name.

"How many others are there and how'd they wind up here?"

"I don't know how they got here, but there have got to be fifty or more people." When he saw my astonished expression, he continued. "All I know is they're trapped here too and they expect me to map the ship out for them."

"Is that what you've been doing since I saw you last?" I pretended not to be upset by my isolation.

He shrugged. "When we're not fighting off Catrions, they've got me leading small groups of people as far as I can without getting lost."

"How far have you been going?" Although Victor had already spent loads of time exploring the ship, I didn't know how far he could go before getting lost.

"That's the thing," He cracked his knuckles without thinking. "They expect me to remember exactly where every thing I've ever found is." He inhaled a long, deep breath of air through his nose. "Not only that, but half the time they think I can also take them to the stuff of theirs I haven't yet found."

"It must be tough," I ceded.

Judging by Victor's abrupt change in tone, it was.

"Tough, ha! It's like they think I'm not trying to find what everyone needs!" I can't help it if I haven't found all the clothes we need!"

I didn't know what to say.

"To top it off, we need to find a way to move every one away from here so we'll be safer from the Catrions."

"How so? It's not like we can get off the ship." It seemed to me like there was no escaping the Catrions while we were aboard the Kyokujitsu.

"They aren't as numerous as you think," With no choice, Victor's temper started cooling down. "They're only in about a tenth of the entire spaceship. Most of the ship is empty."

Because I was in shock, I didn't respond.

Shaking his head, Victor either accepted his problems for what they were or accepted he couldn't solve them; I couldn't tell. "We might be able to move small groups of people to a safer part of the ship, but I'm worried the Catrions will attack the first ones to move before we get a chance to relocate enough people to fend off an attack."

He brushed his bangs out of his eyes and pushed his fingers through the rest of his hair; I didn't know why I'd never noticed before, but he was quite dashing with long hair.

"I'm hesitant to try a mass exodus because we'd all have to crawl through the ventilation ducts and maintenance shafts to get anywhere I think might be safer." He hunched forward. "I'm sure there's a way to get somewhere safe without using the them but there's no way of finding it and guaranteeing it's Catrion-free."

Victor's defeated tone of voice reminded me of school, the day my mom started teaching us advanced chemistry. I had understood the concept well enough but explaining to Victor why a gummi bear had burst into roaring flames was imposible. He'd understood the sugar in the gummy bear reacted with the potassium-chlorate yet the exact mathematical reasons why went in one ear and out the other.

Because I wasn't paying attention, another generic response escaped my lips. "Everything'll work out eventually."

Victor cocked his head to the side, staring into my eyes.

Feeling incredibly stupid, I fumbled for something more to say. "Maybe you've just got to wait for the right-" I was an idiot, no doubt in my mind. "-moment."

Victor slumped his head back down. "Maybe," he didn't sound too convinced.

I couldn't take it anymore. I'd had enough of Victor's self-doubt. "Changing the subject, do you know where Leroy is? The last I saw him was submerged in a tank."

As I'd seen him do several times, Victor buried his problems in his subconscious so he could help someone else. "I wish I could say we have him safe and sound but we don't."

Every minute trace of happiness in me plummeted into the abyss.

"Nellya told me she thinks she might know where he is but she said getting to him would be tricky."

Stomach acid climbed my esophagus, leaving a sour bitternes on my tongue; I hoped closing my mouth would stop the upheaval of vomit.

"If we weren't always fighting of Catrions, we would have tried to rescue him already but for the time being we can't spare the manpower." Victor looked liked he wanted to cry. "I'm really sorry."

Though he wasn't the target of my rage, Victor became collateral damage because of it. "Quit talking like he's dead unless you know he is, and if is, then freakin' say it!"

Silently accepting my treatment of him, Victor shuddered away from my anger.

Upon realizing my mistakem I wished I could take back what I'd just shouted. The tear rolling down my cheek as I leaned over to hug him was genuine.

"I didn't mean it to come out like that," I whispered, wondering if our nightmare would ever end.

"I know," He stroked my hair affectionately. His touch felt warm and loving on my cold, clammy, almost-bare back. Deep down I wished never to move from his hold.

"Drib specifically asked me to watch out for him," I wept openly. "I'm responsible for him!"

"We're all in this together," Victor said.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, Victor's wise words angered me.

"We all made the same mistakes but we can each bear each other's burdens collectively. Taking care of Leroy is everyone's responsibility now."

Sniffling, I looked up into his glossy eyes, searching for the sincerity I knew was there. For once, I wasn't alone.

"You don't blame me for getting us in this situation?"

He shook his head, "Nope, not anymore, and I'm sorry I ever did."

The hurricane-sized storm cloud over my head had a silver lining, I just had to fly through the eye to see it.

*****

Author's Note: Though comments are appreciated as always, I'm fairly certain the next chapter of the story is unfinished which means the next chapter will take a lot longer to arrive than this one did since I've got to write the last half of it. The only reason I'm not 100% sure is the next chapter only has like three pages in this notebook, and I'd have to go through piles of school stuff to find the next notebook. Just know that another chapter is coming, even if it takes a while.

Chapter Fifteen: Hard Time

Discipline was one of life's hardest lessons. Children often interpreted discipline as punishment for some wrong-doing. The truth was however that discipline wasn't about punishing the child. No, discipline attempted to prevent said child from becoming an all-around screw-up. Punishment had a totally different feel to it; where discipline carried love, punishment carried pain.

As a young tailed girl, I was guilty of numerous offenses. Some of such childhood crimes were trivial at best yet others were rather serious. Most of the times I was punished, I either cowered in fear or I felt personally wronged, like my parents were out to get me or they refused to believe the whole gosh-darned story (which in kid terms, meant they were out to get me).

Alright, so the time I sat the living room couch on fire, I understood why I got spanked. THe time I accidentally pinned a giant sunflower head to the side of Mrs. Borealis' house with an amazing shot from my bow, that time, my parents seriously treated me unfairly--I'd just wanted some fresh sunflower seeds! In my opinion, the crime hadn't deserved capital punishment in the form of a sore bottom and three weeks of restriction.

Usually, it was my dad who disciplined me. Of course, when he was away, my mother did most of the dirty work; if I did something while he was in space, that night would be spent wincing every time the phone rang. Every now and then, I'd get off easy, even when I should have faced so much punishment I'd still be scrubbing the kitchen capinets with a toothbrush. Since I was an only child, both parents tended to baby me although my father did so a smidgeon more than my mother; sometimes I could give him those endearing eyes and he'd soften up but the same trick never worked with my mother.

Although I never enjoyed it at the time, in retrospect I appreciated what my parents had done in discipling me. My parents did it right; never were they too harsh, too mean, or too judgemental. I couldn't recal a time when they had ever jumped to conclusions about my actions.

Unfortunately, my parents weren't always the ones to punish me--they never were actually.

They disciplined me.

The ones who punished me, normally one of the village elders, they tried but I never listened. Back then, I'd made a habit of refusing to learn anything from their scoldings and knuckle-raps. Several times, I went out of my way to continue defying their pseudo-authority. As such, my antics usually resulted in purther puishment and tyranny but I couldn't bring myself low enough to respect anyone trying to role me.

I just didn't work that way.

"You're kidding, right?" Victor laughed, wiping a tear from his eye.

Hearing a noise that particularly unsettled me, I strained my ears to hear the sound again. "No--shut up for a sec"

Assuring myself I wasn't going crazy, I waited for the sound I'd heard to repeat.

"I'm telling you, the party responsible for the communication must be the Desert-"

Victor started to say something, thus cutting off the last part of what the Catrion said. Before he could finish the first half of his sentence, I socked him in the chest with my tail; I had to know what was going on. I promised myself I'd apologize later for thinking the Catrions were more interesting than him.

"Is this why we've been sent to retrieve it?"

It seemed the Catrions were coming to get something, though I didn't know what because Victor had stopped me from hearing clearly; at first it seemed like I was the topic of discussion, but I couldn't be sure any more.

"In what manner will Lord Nosamar react?" The second Catrion asked, the one who had asked the previous question; it sounded wishy-washy, almost without direction.

In responce to the mention of Lord Nosamar's name, I received the image in my mind of a very, very bad word. Though I couldn't be sure of the exact connotation, I gathered the word was probably the Catrion version of the f-bomb or a derivative. It was at least as vulgar, I knew that much.

Wincing at the disturbing concept in my head, I then heard the actual language the image corresponded to. "Do you think Lord Theoro even cares about that Yrohtsi?"

Again, I sensed the anger which usually accompanied profanity, only this time it was tagged specifically to the word 'Yrohtsi.'

The wishy washy Catrion gasped. "That which you say has the potential to cause our deaths!"

The Catrion potty-mouth scoffed, "The same potential lies within the Desert Arachnid and the fate Nosamar would deal is much preferred!"

A shudder rippled down my spine as the Catrion finished talking.

"Then let us hope it is feeling generous and merciful this day."

That was it! No--I was it! The Catrions wanted the Desert Arachnid--me!

My first thought was the fluid tanks the Catrions always put me in: My second was the well-being of my Aidyn, Nellya, and Leroy.

For them, I had to act! It was possible if I let the Catrions take me again, I'd be able to help them!

Mind reeling, I began screaming at Vctor as loud as I dared, "Get out of her, go!"

Poor Victor looked hurt at my sudden outburst.

"Get into the ventilation duct, now!"

As Victor started to move, I tore at the straps keeping my top on because for my feeble plan to work, the Catrions couldn't find me any different than they'd left me. Victor being within eyeshot caused me to hesitate for a mere second, lest I abandon my dignity, but I hastily concluded the lives of my friends were more important.

Halfway between clothed and naked, I had the presence of mind to give Victor a heads up. "Hey, they're about to take me again!"

In my mind, my words spoke for themselves but apparently Victor didn't get my point.

"Okay?"

That was it? Okay? Shaking my head to refocus myself, I explained. "Follow me, darn it!"

Right as my pants zipper ripped open, I noticed Victor wiggling back out of the airvent.

Flustered with embarrassment, I couldn't believe Victor's stupidity! "No, darn it, I mean follow them when they take me! In the airvent!"

"Oh! Sorry!" He scrambled to get his legs back into the ventilation duct.

By the time I'd chucked the last of my clothes into the chest, along with my sword (much to my chagrin), I started doubting myself because the Catrions hadn't showed yet. On top of that, I was convinced Victor had at least one eye on my fleshy posterior.

Inhaling slowly, I counted the heartbeats pounding in my eardrums; each one accentuated the fact the Catrions still weren't there.

Feeling like I'd humiliated myself for no reason other than to create an awkward tension between Victor and I, I remembered I wasn't that lucky.

The door to the room whirred open, sticking slightly on the weathered frame--I knew the Catrions had been coming!

What I hadn't known was how many would be coming and I'd never expected to see so many. Maybe two dozen Catrions flocked into the room, most of them armed with menacing Biorifles. Grimacing, I wished they'd brought Biospheres since I sometimes could fight off the effects of the gas; I wasn't immune to the gore Biorifles had made out of Mr. Dabahov's body.

Surprisingly, they also brought with them a shiny metal object, handcuffs it seemed.

Biorifles and handcuffs. I was starting to wish I hadn't discarded my sword.

I gulped down my raw fear--it gave me food poisoning--and I prayed this wasn't the end. In an effort to avoid a ball of acid chewing on my skin, I held out my wrists for easy clasping.

With some trepidation the cuff-bearing Catrion approached. As if they were one, six Catrions grabbed me and held me still so the one could lock my wrists together.

Just as the last click sounded, I glanced at the airvent and nodded, praying that the Catrions wouldn't tilt my body at an angle that gave Victor a show I wished were censored.

They didn't carry me to the familiar liquid tanks I'd hoped they would but rather to a room I'd not yet been in.

The room appeared to be a public restroom of sorts. Because my father was the captain of a spaceship whose population rivaled that of any post-war city on Earth, I had a hunch this was a public shower facility, probably used originally by enlisted personnel. Unlike the ones on my father's ship, this one was tiny. On the E.S. Next Dimension, my dad's ship, public showers like this one w ere rather large but then again, the Next Dimension was more than twice the size of the Kyokujitsu.

The odd thing was, along the wall of honeycombed shower stalls, nearly every shower lacked a door or plumbing fixtures. Here and there, such features remained intact, but overall, the room was in disrepair. That, coupled with the skanky pepper of black mold didn't bode well for my health.

One stall over by the far wall, one of the few with both a door and fixtures, stood out to me; whereas the others with doors were open, this one was locked tight. Behind its foggy translucent door, was a still figure, though it was impossible to make out what.

A voice I'd heard only a few times before spoke; I hadn't heard it enough times before to recognize it. I just knew I'd heard it talk before.

"Well, well," For reasons unknown to me, this one was arrogant, cocky, and masterful. "If it isn't the Desert Arachnid,"

In my mind, I was under the impression the voice had paused to savor the moment.

"You should be honored, my friend, for I have only ever addressed two other humans. ONe was the Animal, and the other, a fellow by the name of Erma."

"Whatever you intend to do to me, you should probably reconsider because it won't be long before I'm rescued." I sneered, yearning for an ounce more bravery.

"Ah, then we should get right to it, shouldn't we?"

In the pit of my stomach a nervous dread began churning. It was like getting butterflies in my stomach, only an excited anticipation of what was coming didn't cause it. No, this was the sort of apprehension one experienced just before the math test which would decide whether or not one's spring break would be spent grounded.

The Catrions holding me jerked me into the corner behind me and to the right. I hadn't noticed it upon entering, but the room had a distinct L-shape to it.

The crook giving the room its shape was actually little more than a ressessed area a little smaller than a standard bedroom closet. Although there were a few cupbouards and drawers remaining on each of the cavity's three walls, there were many more missing, just like the rest of the shower complex. Between each row of cabinets or drawers were eighteen-inch-long stainless-steel grab bars to help navigate the room sans gravity.

Freeing my wrists from the chain that bound them at the same moment a second and third pair of handcuffs snapped shut, the Catrions locked wach of my limbs in opposite directions to the nearest handhold. It happened so fast, my mind barely had a chance to register the transition, let alone the jarring pops in my shoulder sockets as they forced me taut. The way I ended up felt like time had stopped while I did jumping jacks.

Only my tail and head remained free, and for that, I was grateful.

"You should be proud of yourself, Desert Arachnid," The voice cooed while the Catrions who'd chained me up retreated to a safer distance.

You are the third human I've ever addressed. That means only two other humans have been worthy adversaries of Lord Theoro."

"I can count, you know," I glared at every Catrion in the room, daring the speaker to pop out. "But you'll have to forgive me if I can't add two and two."

I meant that last part as a mockery of Lord Theoro's intelligence. My tone had been pure sarcasm, my motive pure hatred.

"Yes, I'll have to do that,"

For reasons unknown to me, Lord Theoro came off as puzzled; at the same time, I kept receiving blurry images of my father. Also, his voice repeated my statement so many times, I began to think my father had said them to me when I was a yound chlid as strange as it sounded. Shaking aside that impossible thought, I focused on how menacing my angry face looked.

"To give you an idea of how significant your achievements are, let me characterize the other two humans with the same honor,"

Lord Theoro spoke like a dignified monarch. Never once did I feel as if he were stuck-up or egocentric--I thought it several times, but they were my opinion alone, not anything provable. The actual impression I got was Lord Theoro had the right to sound like he did, and no one thought any differently of him because of that right.

"If the fellow named Erma hadn't been there when the Catrions first landed on Earth, then I doubt the Catrions would have succeeded in the taking of Earth as much as we did. Interestingly, Erma was the only deserving human who lacked a spinal appendage."

Lord Theoro spoke so nostalgically, I felt my stomach prepare to disgorge itself entirely in a brilliant display of projectile puking.

"And then, there was the Animal,"

I saw my father again, standing almost exactly like I was, only he was chained to the floor.

"Without the Animal, humans would be extinct," Lord Theoro sighed. "Yes, I think the Animal was the greatest rival I shall ever have."

His tone changed to utter disgust.

"If the Animal hadn't intervened, I wouldn't have to deal with that Yrohtsi Nosamar."

Unsure of what my dad had to do with the division of power that kept resurfacing among the Catrions, I stayed silent.

"But you, the Desert Arachnid, are an enigma. You're the first human of your sub-species to earn the privilege of this discussion."

"I'm flattered, really." Anger and I were good friends with one another.

"I find interest in that you in particular are in my captivity. Tell me, are the similarities between your current predicament and the imprisonment of your father mere coincidence?"

Had I been thinking clearly at that moment, I would have noticed how uncertain Lord Theoro sounded in his inquiry. Unfortunately, my consciousness focused on other matters.

"My father?" Panic gripped me because Lord Theoro's knowing my father was impossible. "What do you know about my father?"

He was chucklking.

I felt as if Lord Theoro were behind an oversized mahogony desk at a large bank while I slumped in a stiff wooden chair pretending my loan request wasn't the reason Lord Theoro was laughing.

"I assure you the Animal and I are well acquainted."

It was true. He knew I was my father's daughter, the only blood relative of the decorated war veteran Admiral Lygre Grifin. Gulping down the thick wad of warm vomit, I longed for a way out of my hopelessness. With the identity of my father common knowledge, Lord Theoro could potentially know even more. For all I knew, retired Captain Tamina Nicole Griffin's relation to me could come up next. Without a way of guauging the extent of Lord Theoro's knowledge, I had to assume he'd assembled a scrapbook on my entire life. As terrifying as it was, it was entirely possible Lord Theoro knew my every secret, my every weakness.

But wait, whatever he might know would be limited to my life before being captured, at least in theory. If so, I'd discovered one secret dear to my heart Lord Theoro couldn't yet know. Determined not to let the secret out, I smiled at all the Catrions who could see my face; because I had a secret Lord Theoro couldn't know, I had a strength Lord Theoro couldn't destroy.

I had Victor.

Even if he hadn't managed to evade the Catrions since being captured originally, his existence alone encouraged me. If for no other reason, I could handle whatever the Catrions dished out just so I could see Victor again. There was no possible way Lord Theoro could understand the bond I had with Victor.

I had hope.

Determined to squeeze all I could out of my newfound morale booster, I gritted my teeth and turned on my teenage arrogance.

"I'm not telling you anything else until I get treated with respect!"

Alright, so it sounded cornier than I'd expected, but I'd said it because it was the sort of thing adults always used when scolding a child. To my astonishment, the clichéed expression of frustration worked; Lord Theoro was stunned.

"Now that that's over with, you better start telling me why I'm naked!"

Random, yes, but in thinking about Victor, I'd remembered how humiliated I'd been to shed my clothes for the safety of my friends, and as such, my demand was the first thing to pop out of my mouth.

"You and your father are just alike," Lord Theoro mused wile I winced at the second mentioning of my father. "Removing your coverings dehumanizes you. We do it to all the humans we come to possess to facilitate the humans' submission."

Lord Theoro's answer apalled me. The scary part for me, was his answer made sense. I'd never imagined the same state of undress worn in the shower could be a form of torture.

"It is your turn to forgive me Desert Arachnid, for I can no longer continue our lovely conversation due to other pressing matters."

All the Catrions I could see vacated the room, leaving me feeling somewhat defeated, being left shackled there.

The absense of Catrions did however give me a chance to look around my new dungeon some more.

For the most part, the room was uninteresting, except for the shower stall with the fuzzy shape inside. After staring long enough, what was behind the frosted glass door revealed itself to me.

Judging by the relative crystalline pattern in the glass, I gathered the inside of the shower was dry, which helped me recognize the shape inside as that of a girl, her limp torso pressed at an odd angle against the door. The color of her exposed flesh seemed frighteningly colorless, even through the distortion of the translucent door. In a few spots, it looked like I could see the blue and red spider webs of her arteries and veins. Shrouded by her tangled hair, what little I could see of her face appeared gaunt and lifeless. Despite her matted bangs over her forehead, I had what I thought was a clear view of her eyes; they were dark, devoid of color. The frosted glass might have prohibited me from seeing it, but the apparent absense of any white in her eyes worried me.

What frightened me the most however were her jagged cheekbones, Aidyn's jagged cheekbones.

Chapter Fourteen: She Cried From Space

Chapter Fourteen

Families were a peculiar entity. Each one was different yet they were all based off the same basic kinds of people. Families didn't involve rocket scientists, watermelon farmers, or brilliant physicians even though a few families had rocket scientists, watermelon farmers, and brilliant physicians. No, families were comprised of fathers, daughters, and mothers. Families were far from being that simple however.

Back before the Catrion War had really gotten going, my father had had an older brother named Roger and a younger sister named Valerie. From the stories I'd been told, Roger had been something of a hero to his little brother. Roger was humble, kind, and generous; he was also good at whatever he did. My father always admired the way Roger sat his mind to a task and completed it with what had appeared to be a natural talent.

Valerie Griffin, my father's little sis', loved life. She adored yellow dandelions, corny cartoons, and long walks in uncrowded shopping malls. One thing my father had known her for was the grace with which she helped people. She'd been the kind of person who went out of their way to brighten the lives of others, often risking confrontation in elevators for holding the door open a few seconds longer in case one more person wanted a ride to the first floor, or anonymously returning discarded groceries back to the shelf they belonged. It was after her my father had named me.

On my mother's side, there was just one uncle but I didn't know much about him. My mother said he was always very protective of her when they were younger; she thought it might have been because of her paraplegia as an infant. According to my father, his brother-in-law was always irritible and cranky. Mom speculated the cause for such behavior (as it apparently only happened around my dad) was a kiss my parents had shared early on in their relationship.

Thus, I could give Victor absolutely no information on my uncle; I hadn't even met the guy. I still had to put up with Victor's unabating questions.

"How did he know your name?" Victor wondered, sitting next to me.

I shrugged, "I don't know--he could've picked it up anywhere. He is my uncle after all." Deep down, I wondered how much longer I'd have to try convincing Victor I knew nothing about the guy. "I'm actually kind of curious how he knew I was here."

Amazingly, I'd succeeded in getting Victor off my case!

"Hmm," His elongated facial expressions showed how surprised he was I'd been singled out. "The E.S. Pheonix Ashe is an Atlantean Class Carrier, right? Maybe he used some obscure technology that's only available on that class of space ship; they're supposed to be really advanced technologically."

I nodded, "It's possible,"

"It's hard to believe we're close to being rescued," Victor daydreamed.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Almost too good to be true,"

Whereas Victor was rather optimistic, I had my doubts; regardless of how my uncle could recognize me specifically, his ability to track me depended on his nearness to the ship I was on and if a homing device could be attached to its hull. Because my dad captained an Atlantean Class Carrier, I knew even this sophisticated breed of spacecraft didn't have the technology to follow a rogue spaceship without a tracking device of some sort. It just wasn't possible.

My pessimism left Victor with nothing else to say on the subject.

"Maybe," He thought aloud. "There's a way to send a message to your uncle."

Figuring his words were purely speculative, I shrugged them off. "I'd much rather send a message to the E.S. Next Dimension."

Undeterred, Victor acknowledged that might have been possible too.

"If my idea works at all, then you could speak to the President of Mars if you wanted."

He had that serious contemplative look on his face, the same he'd worn when I'd asked him what he wanted for his birthday last year.

"Well, that last bit is probably not true."

Unbothered by my inability to speak to the President of Mars, I listened interested. "What's your idea? I wanna know."

The possibility of speaking to my father again, let alone any of my family members, seemed far-away and dreamlike.

Victor lost some of his confidence right before responding. "I'm not entirely syre we'll succeed, but I think there's a chance.'

Exasperated, I pestered him for more information. "Just a minute ago, you were saying you thought I could talk to the freakin' President of Mars--what changed?"

"You see, I think I might know where there's an active computer terminal that can communicate through space." Victor's tone suggested there was a catch.

"Is that it?" As condescending as my question sounded, I was quite thrilled.

"Yes, well, most of it." He pushed his light-brown bangs out of his eyes; it had been a while since his fast-growning hair had been cut.

"Worst-case scenario is that some of the functions work but to get the computer operating entirely, I may have to rebuild it from other conmputers I can find on the ship and I have no idea how long that'll take."

I nodded, seeing where he was coming from--until a question struck my mind. "Wait, how are there any computers at all on this ship? Isn't it a Catrion space ship?"

Although paying attention in class had never been a talent of mine, I knew beyond all doubt that the Catrions were technologically inferior to humanity in every way. Sure the genetic capabilities of the Catrions were equal to or superior than those of humans but that was the sole exception.

"Didn't I tell you?" Victor shook his head. "We're on a stolen human ship."

Stunned, I stared at him until he spoke again.

"I don't know how they did it, but I'm confident they stole this ship."

The difficulty of throwing aside his news proved challenging. I knew it didn't matter much that I was a prisoner on a hijacked spaceship as opposed to a prisoner on a legally acquired one, but I had a gut feeling that I knew something about the ship Victor didn'/ Whatever that detail might have been, I couldn't say; it was like my mind knew it byt my consciousness wasn't willing to accept it so soon.

"So where's this computer?" I asked, eager to get back to the communicating with family part.

"What?" His expression went blank for a brief instant as his mind lagged behind. "Oh, yeah, that, follow me, I'll show you.

He wiggled away from both myself and the walls we had leaned against. I didn't have to be told twice to go with him; when Victor got to the airvent, he turned to see if I was ready and found my inertia caused me to crash into him. A few minutes later, after we'd finished laughing, we started into the duct work.

Victor headed to the right, towards the intersection which had intimidated me earlier. Reaching the juncture, he paused and examed the entrances to each of the different tunnels. I couldn't discern what exactly he was looking for until I saw a number written at the base of each intersecting ventilation duct.

He chose tunnel number seven.

Upon starting down this dark, curving tunnel, he started another conversation.

"you know, I found some other interesting things while exploring," He tilted his head down, looking as much at his feet as the crown of my skull. Had I not known him as well as I did, talking to his long bare feet would've indubitably freaked me out. Plus, there was the added weirdness of his shorts being baggy enough to showcase his hairy legs.

"Like what?" I asked, forcing myself to look at the dim, machined metal surface in front of me instead of risking an all-inclusive peep show. "Our stuff?"

"Actually, I haven't found all our stuff yet, it's why I gave you a pair of my shorts."

I looked down at the shorts I had on; if he hadn't told me they were his, I wouldn't have guessed it.

"I was talking about something else though." He crawled and talked as naturally as other people sipped coffee and discussed politics.

"Oh," While talking, I wondered how much my knees and elbows would ache if I had to traverse these ventilation ducts in gravity.

"Yeah," Victor negotiated a ninety-degree turn while nodding; he didn't realize his nod went almost totally unseen by me.

"I found the conservatory--it's not Lake Winnapeg, but it's an improvement over the rest of this hunk of scrap." Judging by his tone, the dirt in the conservatory was at least organic; there was no telling what the grit we trudged through had come from. "I can take you there if you want."

"Not to be rude or anything," I mumbled, "but I'd rather go to that computer than a feral park."

"I know what you mean," He consented. "Oh, we're here."

He pulled himself through an airvent I hadn't even seen us approaching. With him helping me, I pulled myself out into a vast and expansive room, a hangar by the looks of it. Roughly a quarter mile in front of me was the opposite wall, and from that wall to a point about thirty feet from where I stood was a long octagonal corridor with each side being about twice as wide as the hallways in Glenwood County High School, my uncle's health clinic. All along the eight walls of the giant corridor were air locks, each airlock had about forty feet between it and the next airlock. In the space not occupied by airlocks, hundreds of drawers, cabinets, and handrails whispered legends of the mechanics, engineers, and flight crews that once mingled near the airlocks.

I saw fifteen other corridors identical to the one in front of me, aside from the markings of each different squadron of fighters. Spaced evenly among the sixteen massive octagonal prisms, were nine more airlocks.

On the wall behind me, there were dozens of steel ladders in a criss-cross grid covering the entire surface. Each ladder led to a round door that said which deck was behind the door. The wall itself also wore a nametag in faded blue paint, "Fighter Bay Z."

If where I stood was the floor, I'd estimate the distance to the roof above me was about two and a half football-field-lengths. The proportions of the hangar certainly made one feel insignificant; spaceships were rarely limited by the same constictions placed on maritime vessels back on Earth.

Victor and I had entered into the bottom corner of Fighter Bay Z from an airvent beneath Deck 7 but above Deck 8. As if the hangar's nauseating size weren't disorienting enough, coming out of the wall sideways and upside-down in relation to the direction the words flowed totally scrambled my sense of direction.

"It's this way," Victor pointed diagonally and jumped three corridors up and two to the right, using the network of ladders to steer him to the opposite wall.

Rolowing his lead, I wondered if we'd be able to find our way back as our world spun on end. Without Victor leading me, I doubted my ability to return to my cell--not that I particularly cared to.

He stopped at the seventh airlock on the side beneath the side opposite the side nearest the side we entered the octagon from, at least, I thought it was that one. This airlock was different than all the others; above it, a tired light shone green. Sensing our presence, the airlock's pneumatic door zipped open hissing slightly.

"Welcome Bravo 74," A computerized female voice announced.

"Go ahead, you first." Victor half-poked, half-tickled my sides. "The working computer's on this fighter; I haven't yet found one that works on the main part of the ship."

"Is it safe?" I wondered, asking over my shoulder. "I mean, I don't want to accidentally release the fighter from the lock."

He nodded. "I'm pretty sure you'll be fine."

"Pretty sure isn't good enough!" I cried exuberantly. "I'm no pilot! I can't fly a spaceship if I do accidentally release it!"

"Relax," Victor soothed. "The fighter's computer even says the propulsion system is offline."

"Glaring at him, I swatted his nudging hands away with my tail.

Tentative in my approach, I sidled into the airlock. At the end of the relatively short tunnel was a fancy-looking red pleather seat. SLiding onto the cushion with my legs slipping into the designated cavities, I wondered what my mother had felt during the Catrion War; she'd been a fighter pilot and according to my dad, one of the best (although I personally always figured him to be flattering her). For a brief moment, I envisioned myself strapping into the seat while other fighters around me scrambled to dogfight hordes of attacking Catrions.

And then reality kicked in again. More specifically, a torn spot on the back of the seat pinched the fleshed beneath my shoulder blade. Wincing, I tried to reposition myself but to my utmost annoyance, the skin of my back stuck to the chair. Peeling my almost-bare back off the seat made a fantastic "shhhhlock" sound.

Once I was situated, I noticed the heads-up-display. The first thing I looked for was the detail Vicotr had promised would be there; "All propulsion units are nonfunctional and offline." Satisfied, I searched for a way to communicate with someone, anyone.

Before finding the icon I needed on the HUD, something else caught my attention; visible through the thin glass monitor and the thicker glass of the cockpit window were twelve letters in a row. Despite the dirt and grime covering the faded characters, I could still read them. Together, they read "E.S. KYOKUJITSU."

Bemused, I quickly found what I needed. Problems arose when I discovered how many different types of communication I had to choose from. There were literally dozens of options at m fingertips, ranging from short-range holographic video feed to intermediate range telephone broadcasts, to long-range HTML encryptions. On top of that, I honestly didn't know who I was exactly contacting; I didn't know if I could reach the E.S. Pheonix Ash or Next Dimension without their specific codes.

Unsure what else to do, I broadcasted my message on all frequencies, channels and methods of communication.

"hi, my name is Préyhen Valerie Griffin. I and at least five others are being held against our will aboard the E.S. Kyokujitsu. I do not know where we are going or when we will get there, but I do know that we need someone to help us. Please, if anyone receives this message, save us. I am sending this message in secret without the knowledge of my captors, so please, please be quick. I-In case help comes too late, I-I want my father and mother to know I love them and am sorry for-for everything.: I couldn't say anymore because I was already crying; those tears had caused me to slur several times already.

I didn't know it, but my family structure had just multiplied exponentially in size; every breathing soul had just adopted little Préyhen Valerie Griffin into their family, including the President of Mars.

Chapter Thirteen: Time Flies When You're Being Held Prisoner

Chapter Thirteen

Time wasn’t a factor in my existence, at least not one I could keep track of. Even when I had a watch, which I didn’t at the moment, I had trouble being prudent. Fortunately, there wasn’t anywhere I had to be at any specific time.

Still though, it would have been nice to know how long I’d been submerged next to Aidyn. Up until the first time I’d fallen asleep since joining her, I watched my blood dance and curl around our bodies.

To my horror, Aidyn was completely unresponsive every time I tried interacting with her. I could poke her, shake her, and tug on her hair yet each action had no effect. Thus, when I woke up and found her thumbs keeping pressure on my wrists, I was shocked.

Discovering her alert enough to attempt stopping my bleeding encouraged me but I quickly slumped back to my former torpor when my efforts to rouse her continued to be in vain.

The second time I fell asleep, I woke up and Aidyn wasn’t holding my forearms anymore although I didn’t notice immediately because the bleeding had stopped. My wrists were far from healed but it appeared a transparent film had sealed the two slits. Shrugging aside the inexplicable saran wrap, I swam as far as my oxygen tube let me; Aidyn’s disappearance was far from desirable. After praying for her safety, I settled down waiting for the Catrions to inevitably retrieve me.

When they finally did come get me, I had been through six or seven cycles of sleep and wake. Unlike the other times the Catrions pulled me out of the tank, this time I didn’t struggle. Disheartened from Aidyn’s absence, delirious from my own blend of emotions, and dizzy from blood loss, I barely had the strength to move my head, much less fight the Catrions.

Heck, I couldn’t even bring myself to count the number of right and left turns back to the room; as such, the Catrions returned me there without consequence.

While mulling in my misery, a memory resurfaced; Victor would be coming to check on me. Since my every movement drained me, the pace at which I redressed wasn’t exactly hasty.

As expected, they were right where I’d left them, though not in the disarray I’d left them in. Instead of being bunched up and abandoned in the heat of the moment, my few clothes were neatly folded and had actually multiplied three times since I’d been gone. Sleeping atop the two short piles of clothes bound to the floor by a half-inch strip of elastic was a sheening metal bar that made my heart skip a beat.

There, in that bench, was a short katana engraved with five Japanese symbols; my father had told me years earlier what they meant, “Evil’s Killer.”

Confident I was dreaming, I stared at the much-needed gift from Victor. Tentatively, my tail inched towards my father’s weapon; I couldn’t believe my eyes until the cool steel sent goosebumps up my spine.

Feeling liberated, I no longer felt obligated to sit tight in my makeshift cell. Though I was tired, my possession of a sword gave me an excuse to ignore my fatigue in exchange for sweet independence. Hence, I climbed into the ventilation duct Victor had come through, hoping to find him somewhere nearby.

Without hesitation, I shimmied into the hole, wiggling off to the left; to the right was an intersection with paths diverging in several different directions and angles while to the left was a downward sloping tunnel continuing for several hundred feet. Opting for simplicity, I went left.

I expected the ventilation duct to be cramped yet I was pleasantly surprised. The shaft was far from roomy, but it was wide enough to fit comfortably. I certainly couldn’t turn around in the tunnel, but I wasn’t feeling claustrophobic or anything like that.

Scrawled on the wall with what appeared to be a permanent marker was my name and arrow pointing in the direction I’d just came. Encouraged, I continued forward, hoping for Victor to be around the next bend.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find Victor after that turn yet I found evidence he’d been there. Written in his messy handwriting was another directional message. This one seemed to be a crudely-drawn map, using the wall it was written on as a reference point. With many two-inch long fingers on the bottom of the line representing “this wall,” there were several different names on a slight angle. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me, although in the closest finger to the side I’d entered from, I recognized the names of Aidyn, Nellya, and Alaric. Sadly, I didn’t see Leroy’s name anywhere on the simple map.

Thinking Victor might be with friends and concluding that even if he wasn’t, I wanted to speak to our friends, I went looking for what I assumed was the first room in the corridor ahead of me. Not surprisingly, I found the room with relative ease.

The first open air vent I discovered since leaving my own room contained one of the three specified people. Deep down, as I approached, I hoped to see Nellya and more than that, Aidyn. Sadly, only Alaric was there to greet me and it wasn’t exactly a warm welcome.

“Well look who it is,” he jeered. “It’s certainly a different look than the last time I saw you!”

Not sure on his exact meaning, I ignored the comment.

“Where is everybody?” I asked, realizing just how much of a challenge forgetting what a stark-naked Alaric looked like was.

“How should I know?” Alaric retorted and folded his arms over his chest, sitting in shorts at the intersection of two walls. “You’re the only one I’ve seen lately, and for once, it wasn’t entirely unbearable.”

Disgusted, I fought off an inexplicable urge to bash Alaric’s face in with the hilt of my sword. “Do yourself a favor and shut your mouth before you lose your teeth.”

Remembering how aroused Alaric had been in the tank almost made me follow through with my empty threat, regardless of whether or not Alaric shut up.

“Where’s Victor?”

Alaric shrugged. “He doesn’t come by here much anymore.” Trying to straighten his uncombed hair, Alaric pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “For all I know, he’s playing solitaire in some obscure corner of this ship.”

I grimaced. “No idea when he’ll be back?”

He shook his head so I pulled myself back into the air vent to return to my room in the off chance Victor showed up there.

“Hey,” Alaric;s tone changed from the biting cynicism he’d had moments earlier. “We’ve got an hour left until the deadline is up.”

I stopped and looked back; he tapped a digital watch on his arm and smiled a genuine display of his humanity. This was the part of Alaric that I didn’t mind so much, however rare it surfaced. It was the part of him that behaved more like a human being than a snot-faced roach. For this tiny fraction of his personality, I found within me the strength to forgive his sick innuendoes, snide remarks, and obnoxious mannerisms.

Leaving Alaric, I resumed my exploration of the ductwork, contemplating what Alaric had just shared. The possibility of an entire week having past escaped my understanding; according to my internal time clock, only an evening had passed at most. My guess was so far from the truth I kind of wanted to believe Alaric was lying or didn’t know what he was talking about. But he’d had a watch and had spoken with sincerity, so I couldn’t very easily dismiss his words.

True, I’d never had any grasp of time since the Catrions had captured us, but I liked to think my internal clock was more accurate than that. Even if my mental clock wasn’t however, my body had another way to keep time, one that should have been reliable. If memory served correctly, I should have started my period at the beginning of the past week, assuming of course we’d only been held by the Catrions for about seven days.

Because I hadn’t yet started my period, I saw only two explanations for what was happening. The simpler of the two was that Alaric had to be lying; the other option was that the Catrions had done something that stopped my cycle.

I didn’t like to think about it.

Nearly back to my cell, I didn’t bother looking ahead of me while crawling; it strained my neck too much. Besides, it wasn’t like I had any intersections to worry about—getting through the air duct was pretty straightforward. A few feet from the entrance to my room however, I regretted my lack of focus.

“Thunk.”

“Ow!”

“What the-?!”

Victor and I both cried out in startled agony as our heads bonked together.

Once we’d managed to recover from our wounded noggins, both of us were thrilled to see each other. Victor could barely contain his excitement as he helped me slide through the airvent into my room. I felt as if we had just reunited at some obscure social gathering and were carrying on about each other’s families, jobs, and lives in general despite not having been in contact for months.

I didn’t find a place to get comfortable when I was back in my cell because I craved attention and companionship from Victor. Opting to pluck Victor from the hole in the wall rather than wait for him to get out on his own, I tugged on his wrists. His knobbly shoulders almost snagged the sides of the tight opening, but I braced my feet against the wall and pulled harder. Poor Victor yelped in response to my lack of patience.

“Hey!” He cried in panic, his eyes darting to the narrowing gap on either side of him. “What’re you doin’?!”

Fortunately for Victor’s sake, I had completely extracted him without incident before he even completed his question.

“It’s so good to see you!”

And then it dawned on him just how overdue this meeting was; he might also have been expressing relief over the unlikelihood of his skin raking across the rough edges of the hole for the air vent.

“Préyhen! You’re back!” He enthused, “I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

Our hug came so suddenly, it was like Victor and I were made of ferrous metals.

“Weeks?” I wondered, hoping it wasn’t another example of my menstrual cycle being out of whack. Surely Victor’s use of the word was just a hyperbolized mark of affection or something. “It hasn’t been that long, has it?”

“I’m afraid it has,” Victor’s hands slid off my upper back and stopped on my hips; I leaned back to stare him in the eye as he started speaking again.

“I found a watch the day you were taken again, and it’s been almost a month since I’ve seen you.” A tear formed in his left eye and his voice became croaky; both details he tried to hide.

“I thought something had happened.”

Feeling sorely missed, I leaned on his chest and realized my tail was stroking his back. “I’m still here,” I whispered, almost afraid he’d heard me.

“It’s been three months since we were captured.”

I gasped. “Victor, I’m sorry—this is all my fault. We wouldn’t be here if it weren;t for me and my own stupidity.”

He kissed my forehead. Those moist lips alone made me want to open the flood gates and release a surge of wet cold tears.

“It’s not all your fault,” He objected; he wasn’t making me feel any less responsible. “We’re all to blame, really.”

His ‘really’ sounded more doubtful than it did reassuring.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter much anyways,” Victor lifted my chin so he could see my face.

Not wanting to destroy Victor’s spirit I feigned a smile. He saw right through it and cocked his head to the side, frowning. The real sign of our friendship however came when he stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes; he knew I couldn’t resist laughing at that.

After wiping a tear from my eye, I appreciated more at that moment than any other how strong our bond was. Oblivious to the snake constricting either of our movements, I marveled at how intoxicating Victor’s eyes were. It was as if I were watching the fondest of our childhood memories play back in those glassy orbs. The allure of those happier days drew me in; I needed a closer inspection to be sure the nostalgia I saw was real.

As I leaned in, a quiet sense of absolute contentedness exploded in my chest. My chest was hollow, I knew, because my heart had abandoned my rib cage and was pounding away at my eardrums. The discovery that the joy framed by Victor’s eyelids was in fact real came after a few anxious moments.

Enlightened, I closed my eyes and inhaled the delicate smell of enrapturement; it smelled like the sound of trickling water.

“Attention unidentified vessel, this is Captain Jamieson of the E.S. Pheonix Ash in regards to the transmission sent exactly one Earth week ago,” The intercom boomed Victor and I flew apart just before tasting each other’s lips.

“From this point henceforth, due to your noncompliance with the previous demands, your vessel is liable to be boarded at any time and is subject to immediate search and seizure upon arrival at the nearest checkpoint. Other consequent charges that may be brought against your vessel and crew, including but not limited to the taking of hostages, will result in further penalties.”

The intercom snapped off.

Victor was overjoyed, ecstatic, and bubbly.

“Did you hear that?! ‘The taking of hostages will result in further penalties!’ They know!”

I shook my head, unable to share in Victor’s enthusiasm. “I don’t think the Catrions care about further penalties.”

“Oh,” I’d killed his excitement instantly. “I guess you’re right.”

The intercom cut on again, only this time, it didn’t echo through the whole ship; it sounded as if it were in this one room alone.

“Préyhen Valerie Griffin, this is your uncle,” Though the volume of the person speaking was significantly less than it had been seconds earlier, the voice remained the same. “I’m coming for you.”

Chapter Twelve: The Savior's Voice

Chapter Twelve

As a twelve-year-old, I had been a feisty headache to my elders. Like most children that age, I had had a potty mouth. My all-time favorite method of greeting someone back then was sticking my tongue out as far as it would go. I even got into fights.

There was one scrap, during one of my dad’s deployments, which got me in massive trouble with my mom. There had been a boy named Leon who was about the same age as me; the reason my fist kissed his jaw was his obnoxious attitude. I could ignore his bullying antics but his idiotic recital of a poem about a man from Nantuckett was too much.

There hadn’t really been any dialogue between he and I before I hit him. I simply slugged him so he’d shut up. The tactic was crude but effective, even though it resulted in me getting punched back.

In the middle of the dusty schoolyard, the scuffle was broken up just before I would’ve come out on top; my mother screamed at me as Leon’s body turned upside-down, suspended by his ankles from my tail.

Although it had been a long time since I was twelve, I acted no differently, except Leon was a Catrion. Three of them to be exact.

I had sensed that Cations were drawing close to me, and for some odd reason, I knew they were coming to take me back to the tank of liquid I had been in before. Confident in my premonition, I flung my clothes into the bench storage area; it was only for Victor’s sake that I even bothered undressing. Personally, I didn’t care if the Catrions found me naked or not, but they’d wonder where I’d found them, thus putting Victor in danger of being discovered.

Barely able to rid myself of the grungy garments I had on, I found myself shocked to be right about the approach of the Catrions. Nervous and apprehensive, I sat there as the three Catrions entered my cell. Instinct suggested that the Catrions weren’t thrilled to be coming for me; once I even thought I had an out of body experience because I glimpsed a figure whose shape and surroundings were not unlike my own. That experience came with a shudder of pain and the realization the tailed figure in the vision was a much younger version of my father on a much older ship.

The Catrions approached me with caution evident in their gate. I couldn’t say what inspired my attack, but whatever it was, it sure motivated me.

Using their own momentum against them, I kicked off from the wall behind me. Our collision happened in less than a second. Oiginally I had aimed for the center Catrion so that the other two would be well within my reach. Unfortunately however, I had misjudged the rate at which the Catrions were moving and hence I ended up hitting the one on the far right. The other two Catrions froze, unsure of what to do; again I saw my father imprisoned on a spaceship at somepoint in the past.

Pink ooze trickled from the first Catrion and a shrill cry hammered the inside of my head. Ignoring the headache-inducing racket, I turned on the nearest Catrion. While that one was held in a stiff bear hug, the last Catrion placed one of its arms on the wall I’d kicked off from and it tried to back away from me as far as possible. Had my adrenaline not been pumping to the extent it was, my tails reaction would have stunned me.

One vertebrae popped beneath my coccyx as my tail jerked between my legs and around the thorax region of Catrion-number-three. For the last time, the image of my father accompanied by the quiver of pain associated with that scene flashed in my mind; my tail paid no attention to the surreal sensation. If it had, I felt the violent spasm my tail produced next might have been rude to the Catrion—well, ruder than it already was.

With the Catrion’s bottom section grasped tightly, my tail slammed the Catrion into the intersection of the floor and adjacent wall. The sides of the Catrion’s head hinged inwards, molding to the pointed shape of the corner.

Meanwhile, the first Catrion I’d attacked sidled out of the room, despite its cracked midsection, and returned seconds later with an orange Biosphere.

In a panic, I scrambled to get out of the room but my efforts were in vain. My attempt to escape only trapped me in the thick noxious fumes just released. Sneezing several times in rapid succession, I surrendered to the numbness enveloping every muscle of my body.

Even though I couldn’t move, I remained conscious while more Catrions came to carry me to wherever they needed me to be. Because my eyes were as immobile as the rest of my body, I couldn’t really map out the way to the new room I was in.

A shudder trickled up my spine as the Catrions lowered my feet into an icy, gelatinous fluid; it was the same stuff I’d been in before reuniting with Victor. While submerging me, they shoved an oxygen tube up my nose and spun me inside the tank so that my back faced the entrance.

Before they’d gotten me in my final position, I thought I saw a pair of wings. Actually, I was sure of it.

The sight disturbed me.

Once in the liquid, I was left to my thoughts. At first, I felt guilty about the two bald wings I glimpsed. More than that though, I thought about Victor and what he would do when he discovered I wasn’t where I had been. In all honesty, I prayed Victor would be okay and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

Eventually, I regained control of my body. As before, I had a limited spectrum of movement but I could look around as much as I liked.

Just as Alaric had been next to me, I found two beings naked and neighboring me. One of them was the same sex as me and the other one, though male, I’d changed the diapers of years earlier so it was only a matter of dignity.

Although seeing both humans nauseated me, Leroy’s confirmed presence yanked my gut out of my body like a lure out of the water on a fishing rod. Wanting to force Leroy out of my mind, I turned my back to him (letting my tail find his hand) and stared at the female on my right.

Positioned clumsily, her body pointed away from my own. Recognizing her would have been hard enough if all I had to go upon was the smooth contour of her left shoulder blade, and the slight pimple behind her ear, but the relative position of her body to mine wasn’t normal. To recognize her, I had to deal with a hundred-and-ten-degree tilt; the clearest part of her body I saw was her upper back, ribcage, and underarm.

Her muddled blond hair hung motionless in an untrimmed bush encapsuling her head. Suspended in the liquid as still as her hair were her arms; she probably hadn’t moved since the Catrions put her there.

The speck of a mole on her right flank looked too familiar to me for this unconscious girl to be a complete stranger. Dwelling on the shape and position of her mole, I thought about who I knew with one like it.

At my last birthday party, Nellya and Victor had spent the night at my house. My mom had arranged it so we’d had plenty of activities to keep us occupied; she’d pulled some strings and gotten us a few movies and four six packs of fruit-flavored soda imported from Mars. Meanwhile, Mrs. Borealis had baked a triple batch of snickerdoodles for us. Due to the cookie inspired sugar high, each of us had been relatively hyper. As such, it came as no surprise when a soda can exploded after a fierce shaking. The violent grape explosion peppered Nellya’s sunflower yellow tee shirt in chilled purple dots

In response to the unwanted graffiti polka dots, Nellya immediately balled up her shirt, trying to squeeze the offending liquid out before the inevitable stains set in. Two inches beneath her shirt, I’d seen that very same shaped mole.

It was Nellya!

“This one is different,” A voice in my head speculated, preventing me from brooding over my most recent discovery; as a result, I spaced out, concentrating on the conversation at hand.

As if I were watching a video clip, I watched one of my recent treks through the corridors, carried by multiple Catrions. “Are you referring to the Desert Arachnid?”

“No,” Back at the scene of Mr. Dabahov’s demise, Aidyn twirled her make-shift bow staff so fast she might as well have been a helicopter. “This one.”

I felt like there was an agreement from the second voice, sort of like a nod.

“I tried modifying it like the others but the organism terminally rejected my changes.” The first voice explained. “I suspect the best thing to do is to start again from scratch. It’s a shame that the only humans available are postnatal.”

“Yes, postnatal humans are difficult to modify however it is doable.” The second voice said; I was reminded of the little engine that could. “I have always enjoyed the challenge of postnatal failures.”

“Challeng? Why don’t you sustain it then!” Voice number one took offence to voice number two’s statement.

“I would prefer not to assume ownership of your incompetence, however there is a way to preserve the life of your specimen.” Voice number two was high-strung, arrogant, and overtly proud.

“Can you support this claim? I think not!”

“You dare to mock me? That only evidences your mediocrity!” Voice number two laughed, sort of. “It is simple really; the mere act of blending your living failure with a genetically perfect specimen would arrest the terminal rejection of your failure.”

“Now you’re the one mocking!” Voice one seemed annoyed, as if by sarcasm. “It is not like we have the Animal in capacity!”

“Then, perhaps, you should let your failure cease to exist.”

My thoughts buzzed so chaotically, my mind somehow blocked me from overhearing any more of the conversation.

Aidyn was in danger, that I was fairly sure of. Although it was entirely possible I’d imagined the entire conversation and I hadn’t just heard two Catrions debating the effects of a failed experiment involving Aidyn, I couldn’t let myself accept such a possibility. A gut instinct convinced me Aidyn needed help or she was going to die; one of those Catrions had the ability to stop her from dying.

If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Aidyn’s presumed fate, I would have noticed Leroy and Nellyas’ absence.

As much as I would’ve liked to claim otherwise, my Aidyn-associated anxiety had nothing to do with me leaving the slimy fluid I was in; I’d had no choice in the matter.

Yet again, the Catrions plucked me from my gooey prison; there seemed to be no order or reason or motive for incessantly moving me. This time, they neglected to remove the oxygen tube from my nose, causing it to sting my nostrils and make my eyes water as it yanked out and splashed back into the clear liquid. As I emerged from the liquid, half-pint globules of the stuff floated out of the tank and coalesced around the room.

The instant I was free of the icy snot, I snapped out of prisoner mode; I could move and move I did.

Snatching the twiggy appendages of both Catrions holding me, I clapped my captors together. To my dismay, the black rubbery armor on these two Catrions bounced them off each other. Not deterred, I brought them back together.

“Where is she?!” Feeling particularly intimidating, I shook the Catrions and spat out my next demand; the Catrion-esque squeals I heard boosted my confidence significantly.

“Where the,” My daddy taught me not to swear, but dramatizing the intensity of the moment couldn’t hurt. “Is Aidyn?!”

The Catrions smelled of fear, sort of like charred wood. Even so, they weren’t responding to my demands yet I knew they could. Exasperated, I tried again.

“Take me to the girl who terminally rejected the changes you freakin’ made to her!” Scowling at the two Catrions cowering at the end of my arms, I thought of another way for the Catrions to understand me. “The failure!”

Feeling their presence before they’d entered the room, I trembled under the might of many, many Catrions flooding into the room. Shaking off my hysteria, I looked around and counted what must’ve been three dozen Catrions.

“What’s the cause for the Desert Arachnid demanding the location of the object of its interest?” This in-my-mind voice sounded authoritive yet defamatory.

“We will subdue it, Lord Nosamar.” The second voice was generic, submissive, and slavic.

Suddenly enfuriated, Lord Nosamar reprimanded the lowly Catrion. “Has my inquiry been reconciled?! We cannot afford the costs involved when dealing with a being such as the Desert Arachnid!”

A shudder of fearful respect rippled through my mind yet I was the one afraid.

“It referred to a terminal failure; I need not question who is responsible for this shameful embarrassment.”

In my head, I heard what sounded like nervous chatter; the focus of Lord Nosamar’s demands had shifted inexplicably.

“Yes, only one Catrion is incompetent enough to to fail in such a simple task, thereby erasing one much needed human from our scarce supply.”

A single Catrion gulped.

“That’s right, I’m talking about the Yrohtsi Theoro.”

Buried in Lord Nosamar’s second-to-last word was a tinge of racism.

In response to the statement made by Lord Nosamar, a brave, stupid Catrion exploded in outrage.

“Even you have no right to accuse Lord Theoro of such an atrocity!”

Lord Nosamar, insulted by the atrocity but able to keep his composure, smirked.

“Unwiser words could not be spoken,”

Before whatever rebellion or act of discipline that might have ensued could happen, a human’s voice intervened, resonating through the ship’s intercom system.

“Attention unidentified spacecraft, this is Captain Jamieson aboard the E.S. Pheonix Ash. You are entering into restricted space. Please turn aroung and head towards the nearest Martian Spaceport for inspection. Failure to comply with this message will result in confiscation of your vessel until further notice. You have one Earth week to comply and after that your ship will be boarded.”

For a fleeting instant, I thought my nightmare was over. Lord Nosamar however, snapped me back to reality.

“Take it to the terminal failure and keep their pulses operating. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action equal to that of the creator of the terminal failure.”

Amidst grumbling protests and obedient salutes, every Catrion that could grabbed me. I didn’t fight them off because the intercom had given me hope, and forced me to forget my original plan. As far as I was concerned, my demands had been met; there was a chance Aidyn would survive.

Victory within my grasp, I stuck my tongue out at the crowd of Catrions; they flinched.

They took me to a nearby room with a tank. Eager to help Aidyn, I moved towards the familiar tank entrance, even going as far as to enter the fluid without being forced into it.

Due to my elation, I couldn’t make out what had been said when a Catrion spoke right before my head dunked into the chilling liquid.

I did however catch the response.

“As you say, Lord Theoro.”

The Catrions still holding my hands tugged them back out of the tank. Confused and angry, I thought they were taking me out so Aidyn wouldn’t get help.

If only that were the case.

A narrow edge pressed into both my wrists, slipped sideways, and drew a red line across my arms. Shrieking in pain and betrayal, I sucked in a mouthful of liquid and began choking.

Shooting up my nostrils faster than normal, oxygen rushed out of the breathing tube and blasted the foreign liquid from my lungs, igniting my tear duct fire sprinklers in the process.

Lashing out at the Catrions who’d slit my wrists wasn’t an option; the hatch on the tank sealed too quickly.

There was nothing I could do except watch the clear liquid which had nearly killed me welcome the life flowing from my body.

Chapter Eleven: The Realization Sets In

Chapter Eleven

“Desert Arachnid?” Baldy asked before remembering he’d forgotten something. “My lord,”

“Fitting, I think.” Lordy commented. “It came from the desert sand and struck like the desert breed of arachnids.”

After that, Baldy spoke no further.

Thanks to the uninteresting opaqueness of the walls surrounding me, I could not see what any of the Catrions were doing yet I knew they’d done something; the physical properties of the liquid were changing. With the decline of conversation among the Catrions came the thickening of the liquid I was in. No longer would the liquid I was suspended in tingle the multitudinous goosebumps on my bare flesh like slimy, grimy motor oil; it was turning into a sludgy gel.

Distressed by the diminishing freedom of motion, each of my limbs, tail included, paddled through the goo. Movement, I found, was still possible though strenuous.

It came upon me so fast, I thought the ability to move had been a mere illusion; abruptly my limbs froze in place. An electric current had silenced my every kinetic exhortation. Fighting the electric current was useless; every attempt to do so only resulted in agony. To my dismay, every muscle in my body was locked where it had been the moment the current killed my kinesis.

The inability to even twitch my eyes was painful although it wasn’t because of a neural response to triggered nerve endings. I was in pain because I was frustrated and afraid. Total paralysis wasn’t an ordeal one easily coped with.

Seconds were hours, hours were days, and time was mortally obese. For all I knew, I had been imprisoned in my inability to move for decades—if not centuries—before the electricity abated.

When I finally felt the electric current stop, I couldn’t tell if the substance I was in was still gelatinous or if it had reverted to its initial state of being; my muscles were so tight and spasmodic from too long a period of inactivity for me to recognize the degree of resistance they met.

Sheer exhaustion forced me to abandon my futile attempt to contemplate my surroundings. Sighing into the oxygen mask, I slipped into a deep slumber.

Some time later, I was looking at a two-dimensional computer display. I didn’t understand what I was seeing but deep-rooted in my memory banks was the knowledge of how to interpret the code in front of me. Relieved to find manipulating the on-screen data came naturally to me, I watched the effects of my changes on the endless spiraled ladder. Alarmingly, the screen flashed twice; the genetic material of the specimen I was working on had rejected my changes.

I tried again. The outcome was the same. My third attempt, even using a simpler modification, had an identical conclusion.

How the genetic material of this particular specimen could combat my attempts to rewrite the protein sequences was a mystery to me. The only possible reason why the specimen was impervious to every change I attempted was that the genetic code of the specimen had already achieved perfection; it wouldn’t likely mutate or evolve unless for several generations to come it was paired with beings that had the same alterations. For the first time ever, there was nothing I could do to rewrite the genetic code of a human, a species usually more malleable than others. A curious intuition of mine suggested the Animal was just the same…

I had no idea how long I’d been asleep; all I remembered about the time I’d spent sleeping was that I’d dreamnt about DNA. The more I concentrated on the details of the dream, the fuzzier they became.

At first glance, everything was as it had been prior to my excursion from consciousness. The liquid I was in was once again truly a liquid; as I stretched my stiff, sore muscles, I realized the liquid was more illuminated than before.

The cause, I found was that there was a second band of light on my right. As with the first light, the new light shined on the back of a human figure; the light trickled around the still silhouette to my sensitive pupils.

For a few minutes, I had to squint at the neighboring human form to learn anything about it other than it too was unclothed. Without looking in a southerly direction, I concluded the body was male; the short combed hair and the flat unremarkable chest was proof enough. Obscured by the angle of the lifeless body in relation to my own, the face pointed away from me. Still though, the peculiar shape of his earlobes made me think I knew the person’s identity.

I did! It was Alaric! All I had to do was nudge his shoulder with my tail to realize he was him.

My gentle push did more than supply a name to the person; Alaric stirred the moment I touched him. Shaking the confusion from his head, looking around, and then fixing his eyes on me, he appeared somewhat relieved. His eyes smiled, surprising me because I’d never seen him happy in my presence, but then they strayed from their position in line with my own. I watched them slide beneath my chin, hover, and then dart lower.

At first, I figured Alaric had never seen a girl before, and that he would stop studying my body momentarily. When his gaze only shifted to reexamine my upper half, I tried to shrug it off. Almost fine with his behavior given the circumstances, I merely scowled.

That all changed when I caught in the corner of my eye, an X-rated organ giving me a standing ovation. It was bad enough that we were in an already humiliating and dehumanizing situation but he really didn’t have to get so aroused. Had my tail not intervened, Alaric might have continued staring; angry for me, my tail snapped at his face.

The resulting purple welt on his upper cheek was an improvement on the vile features of the ugly, ugly boy.

After quite a long time, Alaric mustered up the courage to turn back around. Apologetic, though not nearly enough so, he scratched the back of his neck, nodded at me, and twirled back to the position my tail had left him in.

Satisfied, I returned to my exploits, which were needless to say, nothing in particular. Actually, that was only partly true; I found myself doing some soul searching.

It was all my fault. My friends and I were prisoners on a Catrion ship and I was responsible for it. We would probably never see our families again and we would be lucky to survive. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Catrions weren’t exactly treating us like welcome guests; my own misery plus the hopeless situation extinguished every last trace of happiness. Because of me, my friends and I were being held hostage by the enemy in a war that ended before I was born; something told me they were holding a grudge against humanity.

The image of me dangling from the wires that had been connected to the numerous Dragonflies as well as fragments of my most recent dream flashed in my head. “Take the Desert Arachnid away. I have no use for it at this point.”

“Yes, Lord Nosamar,” I’d not heard this voice yet; with only three words to base my opinion off of, I didn’t know very much about the conscience behind it other than that it obeyed orders.

“Don’t bother restraining it again,” Lord Nosamar commanded. “I’m curious what it will do if it isn’t held in place.”

“Yes my lord,” All of a sudden, this voice sounded as if it was trying to hide an overwhelming sense of panic.

The liquid began to gel again only this time I discovered I couldn’t test the viscosity of the congealing fluid; every cell in my body ached with drowsiness. Forcing my eyes to stay open, however difficult, was my purpose in life at that moment; I longed to know as much as I could about the space ship I was on.

Behind me, a slurping, sucking sound sang sonnets of sealed surfaces. Light poured into the tank from outside; I was vaguely aware of a nylon strap being pushed around my waist. A few seconds later, I felt another one wrapping around my frame.

Too exhausted to be certain how long it had taken for the Catrion to fish me out, I would’ve toppled onto the floor if gravity had been present. By the time I was free from the goop, I had two pairs of nylon straps clinging to my flesh thanks to the residual slime.

As I was floating freely in a microgravity environment, something had to be done with me, so at least a dozen Catrions took hold of me and brought me through many hallways and corridors. Eventually, the movement of the ceiling stopped and one-by-one, the Catrions released their grip and scurried away.

Seconds after the last Catrion let me go, a pneumatic hiss told me a nearby door was closed; the single beep that followed signaled the lock was working.

The effects of the sleep-inducing sludge lasted for a frustrating period of time. My head pressed against a hard wall and my neck bent painfully, I had to wait nearly three hours for any movement to come back to my arms, legs, fingers, and tail.

Now free of the strange fluid, I sighed over the absence of clothing. In the liquid, I could imagine I was taking a bath, but out in the open clothing-less locomotion was bothersome.

First, once I could move again, I explored the cabin I was in, searching for anything with potential usefulness. Unfortunately, the room I was in was bare; there wasn’t even a door on the bathroom or a vacuum in the shower, as was standard on all spaceships. One wall had the remnants of a sleeping sack on it; only the brass eyelets which formerly held the sleeping bag were left. Opposite the wall perpendicular to the one the sleeping bag used to be on was a padded bench; the acrylic padding had deteriorated to almost nonexistence. Beneath the disheveled bench top was an empty chest, except for a botched trail of rat excrement. Another storage receptacle, a bookshelf and dresser combined on the partial wall adjacent to the bench, granted me good fortune.

Inside, beneath another dotted line of rodent fecal matter, was the cloth part of the sleeping bag. It was in pretty shabby condition but useable nonetheless. My hope was to fasten a piece of clothing from it in order to eradicate the queer nakedness.

I picked up the tattered cloth; full of holes, any covering the fabric could offer would be minimal at best. Upon lifting it, I noticed that beneath it was a fraying pleather belt with the fastening system turned off. Excited, I slung the material over my shoulder, tied the belt around my belly, and marveled at my newly-made toga.

Returning to my exploration of the room. It was actually two rooms, rather like a suite or small apartment. In the corner, the shower was shaped into a perfect sphere. Next to the shower was a cramped toilet stall. Around the apartment were the typical handholds found on spaceships; a few of them were broken away, leaving stripped bolts jutting from the walls. Overall, the spacious prison cell wasn’t overtly inviting; it was fitting for the use the room had.

Settling down to wait for something else to happen, I discovered I didn’t have to wallow in my guilt long.

It felt like only ten minutes had passed on the icy surface near the bench when a thumping clanging came from the air vent. To say I was scared was to put my state of being mildly. Thankfully, I had no need to worry, for the face that came through the portal was friendly.

A fiber glass sledgehammer tapped the grate out of place. I watched it clatter around, ricocheting of three walls and spiraling towards the room’s entrance. After the sledgehammer emerged came the momentary forgetting of my sorrow.

Topless and clad only in ragged khaki shorts, Victor pulled himself headfirst out of the ventilation duct; I didn’t wait for him to finish climbing out. Dashing as fast as my toga would allow, I struggled to keep my anatomy confidential (although technically it wasn’t that private anymore since Alaric had seen my business).

Victor had barely freed himself from the ventilation duct when he found himself bound by my tight embrace. The poor fellow probably felt like he’d been pounced upon by a starving mountain lion.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you!” The truth was, I was happy enough to cry.

He chuckled in an odd sort of way. “I’m so glad you’re alive,” He was calm, serious but calm. “I haven’t seen you since the attack; I thought the worst.”

“You mean you’ve seen the others?” Excitement echoed in my shaky voice. “Tell me how Leroy’s doing!”

Taken aback by my sudden urgency, Victor stammered out a response. “I-I don’t know. I-I’ve only seen him once, and when I looked again, he was gone” Victor eased away from me. “He hasn’t returned to the room he was in.”

A wave of nausea bubbled over me. “W-was he okay—when you saw him, I mean?”

“H-he looked fine,” Victor nodded. “But what about you?”

I collapsed back onto Victor’s chest. “I’m sorry,”

His touch could only do so much, but the effect it had on my spirits was worth every ounce his microscopic cells had to offer. Feeling the pressure of his fingertips in my ribcage was a welcomed contrast to the cold numbness I’d gone through while submerged.

This time he spoke, his voice trembled like mine. “Don’t worry about it; I’d rather be on an adventure with you than researching defunct technologies from the Stardust Conflict and waiting for class to end so we could skip our chores and hang out together.”

It wasn’t quite what I expected. His words were comforting in a way, although my preference at that moment involved hiding away , alone with Victor on his little island while an orange sun drifted beneath the faraway horizon.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, still grateful for Victor’s firm farm-boy pectorals.

Pretending my head pillowed by Victor’s chest wasn’t as abnormal as it felt, I let my arms continue to hug hum. In a way, it was sort of like when Victor and I would slack off on the shores of Lake Wannapeg; never were we this intimate, yet it wasn’t unnatural for us to nap in our bottommost layer of clothing after a long swim, or for us to huddle close together on blustery autumn nights. Perhaps this was simply the next evolution of our companionship.

“Hey,” Victor whispered in my ear. “Let’s get you into some actual clothes.”

“What,” I whispered back; the thought never occurred to me that Victor might have real clothes. “That would be great,”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Victor rubbed my arms as he leaned away from our hug. “Oh, and I don’t know if you know this already, but if a strange watery liquid starts spurting out of the shower, don’t stop it from touching your body. Aidyn and I think it’s their way of nourishing us but all we really know for sure is that it’s absorbed into our skin via osteoporosis.”

“You mean osmosis?” I wondered, unsure of how the liquid might relate to the shrinkage of bones.

“Yeah! That!” He exclaimed. “I was never any good at science—Aidyn knew what it was.” He shrugged. “But yeah, if the weird liquid doesn’t make contact with any part of your skin, after a while, the bit it doesn’t touch will become scaly and white. It’s pretty gross actually.”

I nodded. “Can I-can I come with you?”

Victor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s too big of a risk. The Catrions probably put you in your own cell for a reason, and I’m worried what might happen if they discovered you weren’t here.” The reluctance I heard in Victor’s tone reassured me; he wasn’t just telling me to stay put for no apparent reason although I didn’t entirely understand his reason. I just knew he had one.

“I’ll be right back, I promise.” He kissed my forehead. “Just stay here, please.”

Annoyed, I nodded my acceptance. “You better be right back or else.”

Nodding, Victor untangled himself from my tail before leaving; it wasn’t like I was helping him get free either.

With one last tentative peek over his shoulder, he clambered back into the ventilation duct. Disheartened, I slumped down next to the opening. Every second that passed twisted another knot into my already contorted stomach.

Sadly, so many seconds passed before Victor returned, my stomach deserved a Boy Scout merit badge. Even with my prolonged sense of times, hours had to have gone by.

Finally, Victor reappeared.

“What took you so long?” I hoped I didn’t sound too rude; I prayed Victor interpreted my tone as teasing instead of demanding.

The tone of my voice didn’t seem to matter; Victor was somber-faced well before I’d spoke. He tossed a rolled-up bundle at me, shook his head, and mumbled the reason for his distress.

“They’re gone—all of them.”

“Who’s gone?” I asked, forgetting about the real clothes Victor had brought me; Victor’s alarming expression was more important than how fashionable my attire was.

“Alaric and Nellya, and Aidyn too.” Victor slouched on the bench as he spoke. “Aidyn was right, I should have tried to prevent the Catrions from getting to them instead of exploring the ship.”

“They would’ve been taken anyways.” I reasoned. “I mean, even I was experimented on.” The moment the words rolled off my tongue, I knew they hadn’t been the right thing to say; I was thinking about some stuff I’d read in the textbook that related to what we were going through.

During the Catrion War, the Catrions frequently abused their P.O.W.s by altering their DNA or testing the limits of human survivability. According to the textbook, the few survivors rescued from Catrion ships often recounted horror stories of the Catrions taking them or their fellow prisoners into strange laboratories where the prisoners endured all sorts of horrific tortures. Some of the less fortunate ones were used to test new Biospheres. Most however, were pricked and prodded into insanity; a commonality found in almost every prisoner’s testimony was the interest Catrions had in sexual organs and unborn fetuses. There were also reports of forced pregnancies early on in the war, though cases in which a male prisoner was forced to rape a female prisoner were rare.

In all honesty, I didn’t know what the Catrions were doing or even if they were picking up their old habits. Whatever they were doing though, Victor and I really couldn’t be certain our friends were safe. We just prayed we’d see them again.

“You were taken?” Perhaps Victor’s disheveled emotional state was the cause for his momentary lapse of memory. “What’d they do to you?”

“Well, basically,” Honestly, I had no idea what they’d done. “I don’t know exactly, but they made me feel better.”

Where the inspiration for Victor’s response had come from was as big a mystery as what the Catrions had done to me.

“You mean they got you high?” He plunged back into his former hopelessness.

“No, I, uh, I’m not sure how to explain it.” Blaming the absurdity of Victor’s response, I felt stupid for being unable to describe what it had been like. Trying to shake the feeling off, I did my best to clarify for him.

“They’re probably fine—I saw Alaric before they brought me back here.”

“He’s not the one I’m worried about.”

Victor’s words weren’t cold but they weren’t very pleasant either. As a result, I found responding appropriately to be difficult.

“Nellya’s a strong girl,” I whispered.

He just stared at me; we both knew Nellya wasn’t the focus of his angst either.

For several minutes, he and I just stared at each other. Realizing how needed my services were, I kicked off from the wall behind me, floated across the room, and situated myself next to him. To help comfort him, I wrapped my arm (and tail) around his shoulders and leaned my head against him.

Our silence rang for quite a while afterwards.

When we finally started chatting again, it was me who started the conversation.

“Apart from crawling around ventilation conduits, what’ve you been doing?”

“What?” Victor’s head jerked up. “Oh, I’ve been exploring the ship through the air circulation systems and emergency access tunnels.”

“What inspired you to climb into a dusty ventilation duct in the first place?”

Victor repositioned himself on the bench. “After we were abducted, I was the first to wake up and so I started looking for a way out. The air vent in the room we were in was already missing so I just climbed in to take a look.” He took a breath. “Then almost as soon as I’d pulled my ankles through the hole, the Catrions came in and began tagging Aidyn, Nellya and Alaric.”

“Tagging?” This was deeply fascinating. “What do you mean?”

“On their ankles, they put a plastic bracelet with a number on it.” Victor had me captivated. “When Aidyn woke up, she and I figured the Catrions forgot about me because I didn’t get numbered.”

“I didn’t get numbered,” I muttered, not meaning to contradict Victor. It was just that I certainly hadn’t been overlooked.

“I’ll have to think about that,” Victor mumbled. “It doesn’t make sense, at least according to what Aidyn and I reasoned.”

Victor’s doubts weren’t something I could easily comment on.

“It doesn’t really matter now though,” He sighed.

“Don’t say that!” I was appalled at how fast Victor had given up hope.

“No really,” Victor cut me off before I could encourage him. “Now isn’t the time to wallow in despair. We should be helping the others.”

“What?” The sudden change of face startled me.

“I’m going to see if I can find our weapons so we can keep them nearby until we’re ready to strike.” Victor mused. “You’ll probably want to keep whatever I can get you hidden though. Who knows if we’d ever get our stuff back if the Catrions caught us with it.”

I nodded, pretending I understood as well as him.

“That reminds me,” Victor turned his head intuitively. “If you ever decide to change into those clothes, then it might be best not let the Catrions see them either. I’d be willing to bet they would do whatever they could to catch us.”

Embarrassed that the clothes Victor had given me were sleeping untouched in my lap. To hide my shame, I smirked. It was the only way I could find to conceal my embarrassment.

“Y-you’re probably right.”

Victor smacked his lips together and nodded once. Stay here, I’m going to look for more stuff.”

Not exactly eager to comply, I protested. “Wait, why do I have to stay here?!” The way I saw it, staying meant a guilt-ridden anticipation of the Catrions.

“Well, if you stay here, you can’t be wherever the Catrions would take you.” I smiled at Victor’s pitiful attempt at humor. Victor didn’t seem to be satisfied by my weak smile yet he accepted it.

Right as Victor was about to leave, he reconsidered; he came back to me, took my hands, and gently squeezed. “You’ll be fine and I promise to check in every two hours.” Nothing Victor could say would calm my nerves as he left.

And so, I waited. For the first term of Victor’s absence. I tried various tactics to pass the time, but all of them left me bored and uninterested.

Victor had brought me a fluorescent pink swimsuit top and a pair of denim carpenter shorts. Further inspection of the shorts revealed they weren’t mine or even designed for my gender. Touching my shins, the bottom hemline was icy metal; I only had shorts but the half zipper indicated these shorts could become pants. Although they weren’t mine, I recognized the familiar location of the pockets. Like most pairs of carpenter pants, the pockets and straps were positioned within reach of my hands, particularly my right, although the improper fit put the pockets just beyond my finger tips. The familiarity of the pocket pattern was a welcome reminder of the world I’d left, the world I’d loved.

My father had three pairs of carpenter pants; two were made of a durable khaki and the last pair was dulled denim with brown residue on the knees from the days he spent on Mars. I had always liked that pair of jeans of his. They were a symbol of my father’s love for me.

Way back when I was a kid, no older than six or seven, my father took me on a special trip to the moon’s capital city, Luna. At the time, I was afraid because of the gravity variance between Earth and the Moon. To calm me down, my father promised that if I held his hand and the twisted strap on his pants leg, he and I wouldn’t be separated.

Thinking of Admiral Lygre Griffin and the promise he’d given his tailed daughter, I curled my fingers around the same strap on the shorts I wore.

By the time Victor returned, my knuckles ached from the tight hold I had on the twisted strap. Victor’s eyes followed my arm down past my hip to my slightly bent thigh where my hand was clenched on a strip of sewn cloth.

“Are those clothes okay?” Victor wondered as he approached. “I couldn’t find much that looked like it would fit you.”

I nodded. “They’re fine, but what do you mean you couldn’t find much?” I was confused that he’d had to look for clothes to fit me when the pink top I had was obviously mine; I was under the impression Victor had found my travel bags. “All the clothes I packed fit me.”

“Yeah, but the stuff I found seems to be in no apparent order.” Victor scratched his head. “It’s just a random assortment of various things. Some of it is ours, most of it isn’t.”

“Strange,” I muttered. “It doesn’t make sense for our stuff to be separated like that.”

“The only thing I can figure is that the Catrions were sorting through our stuff, maybe looking for something.” He didn’t know any more than I did; I heard the uncertainty quiver in his voice.

“But you said there didn’t seem to be any order in the stuff you found.” I commented. “If they were sorting our stuff, wouldn’t there be some sense to it?”

Victor, frustrated by his ignorance, sighed. “There might be some sort of arrangement but I don’t know what it is.”

“What do you know?” I wondered. “Not that I’m insinuating you don’t know anything.” The second statement came when I realized how condescending my question could have sounded.

“Not much, I’m afraid.” His morbid disposition portrayed the depravity of his message.

Unsure of what other option was available to me, I gently hugged him. As id the same mind controlled us both, we patted each other’s back and drew apart.

“I-uh-I think I should be going. The longer I stay, the longer it will take to find what we need.” Smug and afraid, Victor kicked off the nearest wall and cast me one final glance before vanishing once more the way he’d come.

I was alone yet again.