Part 2
### Chapter 1: Chapter 1
I am currently editing this on Wattpad. Once it is finished there I will update here with the edited version.
Book 2 "ALIEN PREY" is also live on Wattpad for anyone interested.
{Book #1 of the Kohai Chronicles}
While hiking the snowy peaks of Colorado, twenty-five-year-old, Bennett Michelson wakes up to find that the universe he thought he knew is a whole lot bigger and colder than any fourteen thousand footers...
Abducted by strange ugly-looking creatures with beady eyes, misshapen bodies, speaking a language he can't understand, and forced into an alien trafficking ring. Bennett is thrust into a whirlwind of events he never thought possible. Everyday he struggles to survive amid the fear and isolation that grips him the longer he is held in captivity.
Will a mischievous alien duo be what finally breaks Bennetts spirits for good or will becoming their pet be the beginnings of something else entirely?
Complete Chapters 23
Rating 5.0 ( 6 reviews ) Age Rating mature
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BENNETT
.1
I knew I had royally fucked up the moment I opened my eyes. My head swam, the room tilting around me as blurred shapes slowly sharpened into a place I didn’t recognize. The air carried a sharp antiseptic smell that turned my stomach.
The last clear memory I had was stumbling through the Colorado mountains. It had been cold enough to numb my hands and dark enough that every step felt like a gamble. Above me, low clouds smothered the stars, leaving only the jagged outlines of the peaks. The wind howled down the slopes, cutting through my clothes no matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around myself. My teeth chattered, and with every mile my legs felt heavier than the last.
If I’d been rescued, then maybe I was lying in some tiny ER on the outskirts of Denver—or at least in some ranger station made to patch up idiots like me. But another, darker possibility lodged itself in my head: maybe I was dead . The thought carried a strange weight, like an echo I couldn’t shake. Still, if that were true, if this really was the afterlife, then it seemed odd that I would wake up with my tongue sandpaper-dry, a desperate thirst clawing its way down my throat.
Dead people didn’t get thirsty. Did they?
I rolled onto an elbow and pushed myself upright. The movement was awkward; my body slow to respond. Then something snapped taut around my neck. Pain lanced through me, and a startled gasp escaped my lips.
The sudden clang of metal rang through the room, far too loud in the stillness, and my hands flew to my throat. My fingertips met cold iron, thick and unyielding, and a broken whimper slipped free before I could stop it.
Heavy. Solid. Locked tight around my neck.
A short length of chain—maybe three or four feet—ran from the collar to an eyelet bolted into the wall near the floor. My stomach lurched as I grabbed the links and pulled with everything I had. The chain didn’t budge. The tension shuddered through my arms until my muscles gave out and I slumped back, panting.
I let it fall from my hands, my gaze dragging to the wall itself. It had the thickness and stubbornness of concrete, but the surface wasn’t quite right smooth in places, strangely seamless, with none of the porous grit or jagged edges I expected. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural stone. And whatever this place was, it wasn’t anywhere I was meant to be.
Definitely not a hospital. Which meant—dead then. I had to be. There was no other way to rationalize being chained to a wall like some medieval prisoner.
My mother—though I hardly considered her worthy of the title anymore—had finally been right, after all. I had gone to hell. Not for murder, not for treason, not for anything grand or headline-worthy, but for the petty, ordinary sins she’d warned me about since childhood. For the stack of dog-eared porno mags I thought I’d hidden well enough under my mattress. Or maybe it was for the sex before marriage, the shots of cheap liquor, the smokes bummed off strangers behind gas stations. Take your pick. Any one of them—or the sum total of twenty-five reckless years—apparently added up to eternal damnation.
The thought barely had time to settle before a sharp series of clicking chirps sounded somewhere above me.
Pain detonated through my body.
Every muscle seized at once. My back arched off the floor, fingers locking into claws as a strangled scream tore from my throat. For a heartbeat I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except endure the agony racing beneath my skin.
Instinct took over. I scrambled away from whatever hit me.
Pain flared through my throat as the tether wrenched me backward. Stars burst across my vision, and I crashed hard against the floor, coughing and clawing at the iron band around my neck.
Towering above me was the ugliest monster I had ever had the displeasure of dreaming up, a grotesque silhouette that eclipsed the dim light. Too tall, too wrong, with a shape that my mind scrabbled to make sense of.
Because that’s what this had to be, right? A dream. A nightmare. Proof that I hadn’t survived the mountain, that I’d finally crossed over. I had gone to hell, and this thing was waiting for me to show me the way into its depths.
Yet as I stared at the thing looming over me four-foot-tall, lizard-skinned blimp of a nightmare with six beady, lightless eyes, I knew this was far too vivid to be something I’d conjured in my own head. Its greyish-purple skin looked leathery and diseased, pocked with welts that oozed a sluggish, greyish fluid, each drip leaving a sour tang in the air.
Its eyes were small, black, and bead-like, set on either side of the massive vertical mouth like those of a fish. The slit ran from brow to chin, opening and closing with a wet, sucking sound that reminded me of something dragged from the bottom of the ocean. Inside, rows upon rows of needle-like teeth flexed and shifted, grinding against one another with every shuddering breath it took.
Its body made even less sense, a grotesque patchwork of wrong parts. The upper half looked as though an orangutan had been twisted inside out, long arms dangling low enough for its clawed, four-fingered hands to rake the ground. Its torso sagged into a swollen potbelly, heavy and distended, the skin stretched taut and mottled. Below that, it stood on a pair of spindly birdlike legs, each ending in three hooked toes that dug into the floor with a click, click, click as it shifted its weight.
It shouldn’t have been able to exist, but there it was—breathing, dripping, watching me.
I shuddered as another harsh, buzzing chirp rattled from the leathery thing’s vertical mouth, the sound vibrating in my teeth. From an open orifice along its arm, the gray, viscous substance dripped steadily, each drop striking the floor with a wet spat that made my stomach churn. In its other hand, four clawed fingers curled around a long black rod. Twin prongs jutted from one end, curving toward each other like fangs, while a trigger sat beneath the grip.
Before I could brace myself, the creature jabbed the prongs into my side again.
White-hot agony ripped through me. My body locked up, a strangled sound tearing out of my throat before I even realized I’d made it.
Then it moved, grabbing at the chain.
A violent yank snapped my world sideways. For a second, there was nothing but pressure crushing my throat and the raw panic of not getting air.
The thing—my brain offered up something ridiculous like monkey-chicken abomination, and I didn’t have the strength to argue—ripped the chain free from the wall.
I was lifted. Not carried. Not supported. Just... hauled by the collar, my feet scrabbling on the floor looking for purchase and finding none.
I tried to move. I think I did. It didn’t feel like anything worked right. My hands found the collar, then lost it again as the hallway smeared into dark shapes and motion.
Every breath scraped on the way in. None of them felt like enough.
Then the endless corridor opened into a much larger chamber.
My vision cleared as the tears and shock fell to the wayside, and what I saw made my stomach drop.
Lined along the far wall were creatures—dozens of them—each bound by the same chain threaded through collars at their throats. They stood in silent rows, shackled like livestock.
They weren’t like me. Not even one.
Some had gills that pulsed faintly with each breath. Others bore wings that hung limp and useless against their backs. There were claws like blades, scaled hides, twitching tails, and forms so wrong they made my headache just trying to process them.
None of them looked at me. Not one lifted its head. They stood bowed and still, as if even the act of noticing was dangerous.
It was storage. I was being added to the collection.
Once I was shoved into place along the wall with the other captives, the chain clinking as it was threaded back through another eyelet on the wall, more of the chicken-monkey things descended on us.
They moved with brutal efficiency, jerking heads forward, ripping at clothing, stripping every captive of whatever scraps they still had left. Systematic. Impersonal. Like it had been done a thousand times before.
When one of them turned its fishy black eyes on me, something in my chest snapped.
I don’t even remember deciding to.
My hands caught at leathery skin, my foot kicked out, and I was screaming—words I couldn’t even make out—while it barely reacted at all.
Its four-fingered hand tightened around the black rod.
The prongs touched me and my world detonated for the third time since waking up.
Pain wiped everything clean. My muscles locked so hard my joints ached. Sound vanished into a ringing void. I think I hit the wall again, but I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the shock began.
A jolt ripped through me, short-circuiting every nerve. My body convulsed, seizing so violently I dropped like dead weight to the floor. My chest heaved in shallow gasps, but the collar bit so tight I could barely drag air in at all. Every muscle twitched helplessly, my fingers curling and uncurled in rapid, jerky spasms, my legs kicking against stone like they belonged to someone else.
By the time the current faded, I was nothing but a shuddering, breathless heap, tears and spit stringing down my chin. I wanted to scream, to curse, to fight again—but all I could do was lie there, body betraying me, while leathery hands stripped away what little dignity I had left.
Once we were gutted of what little we had left, the chains were unhooked from the eyelets in the walls. One by one, they dragged us forward again, forcing us into motion through sheer tethered pressure.
We were herded into another room packed so tightly with cages that some looked barely large enough to hold a body at all. The air inside was thick and hot, metallic with something sour I didn’t want to think about.
I didn’t particularly try to resist this time, but even so, it was hard to get myself to comply. My muscles shook with exhaustion, every step uneven and weak, reflex more than defiance now. The fight had already been beaten out of me.
Then the black rod came down again, this time unprovoked.
White-hot pain swallowed everything. My body locked and convulsed, a sound tearing out of me that I didn’t recognize as my own. My vision fractured into white static and heat.
When it finally faded, I was still standing—but barely—and my bladder had let go of what little it had left, running down my legs in shameful rivulets.
A cold, distant thought surfaced through the wreckage that was my mental: how many more of those could a body take before it simply stopped?
Hands gripped me by my hair, hauling me onto my knees. My fingers scraped and clawed at the cold, unforgiving floor as I was shoved toward the cage, my body slamming against the metal with a hollow clang . My feet slid across the slick surface, legs trembling under the strain, as the creature jerked me hard again, shoving me headfirst inside. The impact drove the wind from my lungs, the low ceiling pressing down, walls biting into my shoulders and back.
I crumpled to the floor, my body still spasming from the shocks, skin smarting where the rod had struck. I curled instinctively into the farthest corner I could reach.
My sobs were small and choked, barely audible over the chorus around me. From the cages beside me came a sickening symphony of suffering: low guttural groans that vibrated through the metal floor; high, broken screeches from creatures packed too tightly in their cages; the wet, squelching press of bodies against cold steel; claws scraping, chains rattling, teeth gnashing.
Every sound stabbed at my nerves, a relentless reminder that I was not alone in my misery—but that I was surrounded by it.
The grey monsters moved methodically between the cages, cattle prods flashing and crackling in their hands, but the noise of the creatures themselves—whimpers, cries, and suppressed howls—filled the room far more terrifyingly than the prods ever could.
I curled tighter into my corner, hugging my knees to my chest as the cold metal bars pressed in from every side. The cage was barely large enough to sit in, and each shallow breath felt like it scraped against my ribs. A heavy, sick helplessness settled into my bones.
If this was a nightmare, I prayed silently—desperately—that I would wake up soon. But deep down, something cold and certain told me what I didn’t want to admit: this wasn’t a dream.
Time blurred inside the dim, windowless warehouse-like space. Every second was filled with the chaotic noise of the cages around me—chirps, gurgles, rattles, and hisses blending into a suffocating, alien symphony. And amid the sensory chaos, my mind drifted—inevitably—to memories I hadn’t touched in years.
The Banty’s—that’s what I’d started calling them, thanks to their vile personalities, strange chirping language, and those unsettling three-toed chicken feet—reminded me too much of the banty roosters that had tormented me one awful summer at my grandfather’s farm in Texas.
I hadn’t been close to the man—rest in peace, I suppose—but I could still remember those birds chasing me across the yard like it had happened yesterday, their spurs scraping at my legs, their wings battering my face. That memory clung to me now, bitter and unwelcome, every time I looked at the creatures around me.
For what I guessed had been a day or two, they had largely ignored us. They moved through the cages in their routine patterns, but none of them lingered, none of them intervened.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go without food or water, but hunger wasn’t the worst of it. The cold was. With no clothes, I couldn’t stop shivering. It ran so deep it felt like it might crack my bones. Sleep was impossible. The noise and faint humming lighting was never ending.
And still they passed by, again and again. Even if I had tried to get their attention, I wasn’t sure what I would have said. They were more likely to eat me than help me.
I tried to accept the idea of just waiting, to hold still and endure, but fear has a way of unraveling logic. And I had never been good at handling being afraid.
So when a door suddenly shimmered into existence on the far wall—just far enough out of my line of sight through the bars that I couldn’t see it clearly—I felt a twisted rush of relief. Movement meant something was happening, and anything was better than the waiting. Three Banty’s waddled in, chirping and oozing in that grotesque way I knew I’d never get used to, their vertical mouths snapping open and shut in a maddening, insectile rhythm that chilled me more than the metal on my bare skin. They worked their way down the line with mechanical indifference, popping cages open just long enough to hurl in buckets and containers sloshing with some kind of liquid.
When they reached my cage, I pressed toward the door. The space wasn’t tall enough for me to stand—only crouch or kneel—but desperation drove me forward, hoping for even the smallest chance to slip past. The Banty didn’t so much as blink. Its gaping mouth clattered and clicking as it drove the cattle prod hard into my ribs.
The shock tore through me like molten fire, fiercer than any strike I’d endured before. My vision went white. Ears rang. My body convulsed helplessly, every muscle betraying me as the current ripped control away. Time stretched into agony; it felt like minutes before I could draw a ragged breath, before the spasms eased and the world snapped back into place.
When the last of the tremors finally drained from my limbs, I sagged into a slumped sitting position, chest heaving, dragging air back into my lungs. That’s when I noticed what had been left in my cage.
The first was a grey bucket, similar to any 5-gallon bucket you would find at a hardware store or in a garage. Empty, but rimmed with yellow stains and carrying a stench so foul it made my stomach flip. The reek of stale feces clung to the air, heavy and sour. Gagging, I shoved it away with my foot until it rattled against the farthest corner of the tiny cage.
The second item was stranger: a short, cylinder-shaped canister, shaped almost like a thermos but oddly uneven, with no flat surface to set it upright and no twist-off lid. Instead, near the top sat a small black button—like something you’d see on the side of a flashlight. When I pressed it, the lid spiraled upward, breaking the seal with a sharp hiss and releasing a thin curl of vapor into the air.
Inside was an almost iridescent pale substance, shimmering faintly in the dim light. At first glance it reminded me uncomfortably of the ooze that seeped from the Banty’s skin, but the smell was different. Fresh. Clean. Something caught between cucumbers and roses, though not quite either.
Tentatively, I lifted it to my lips and took a cautious sip, praying it was food—and not something inedible that would leave me retching. The liquid was thick and slimy, sliding over my tongue like aloe vera gel. Its taste was almost nonexistent, bland with just the faintest trace of sweetness—like a piece of hard candy that had sat too long in its wrapper.
I waited, braced for cramps, dizziness, anything that might signal I’d just poisoned myself. But instead, warmth spread slowly through my chest and stomach. My thirst dulled. My gut felt faintly full. Even the shivering eased, just a little.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” I muttered. “Two in one survival... goo or something?” A weak, shaky laugh slipped out before I could stop it. The sound felt alien in my throat, but it was better than crying.
Clutching the canister, I steadied my breathing and let the faint warmth from the strange liquid settle through my chest. The fog in my mind was still there, but it had lifted just enough for awareness to creep back in.
I forced myself to look around the cages again. Staying aware might be the only advantage I had.
The creature directly to my left could only be described as aquatic.
Even in the dim light, it stood out. Its skin shimmered in shifting layers of color—opalescent along the torso, deepening into a dark blue along its limbs. The effect was almost like watching light move across the surface of a deep-sea monster from my childhood nightmares.
Thin, almost reptilian eyes sat high on its face, flanking a ridged structure where a nose might have been. Two vertical slits opened and closed slowly, suggesting gills rather than nostrils.
Along its head, those ridges extended upward into a fin-like crest that ran down its spine, tapering into a sharp, deep-blue tail.
The tail flicked irritably whenever my gaze lingered too long.
When I finally met its ghostly white eyes, a chill ran straight up my spine. I gave a small, careful smile—the kind I used to use on my mother, when I was trying to keep the peace.
Long, needlelike teeth caught the dim light, and a thin, serpentine tongue flicked out as if testing the air between us.
My heart kicked hard against my ribs. I was suddenly very aware of how little separated us.
Carefully, I shifted away from the bars, putting as much distance as I could between myself and it—and the creature I still hadn’t fully forced myself to look at on my other side—and curled my knees to my chest.
That was enough reconnaissance for now.
I didn’t exactly feel happy—despite the shaky laughter earlier—but I did feel a little better after a few cautious sips of the strange goo the Bantys had left me.
I didn’t know how long it would be before my bizarre, chicken-monkey captors returned, so I rationed it carefully, even though I was still far from full.
I didn’t trust aliens to know the first thing about keeping a human alive—even if they seemed to have perfected the art of trafficking people. Or exotic creatures, judging by my “Siren”-like neighbor in the cage beside me.
If only I’d remembered that rule before I’d stranded myself on a mountain in Colorado.
I’d gone out there to clear my head after another long, frustrating day—dragging myself through work, patching worn trails, and dodging coworkers I didn’t get along with. Some of them weren’t exactly friendly. Then again, I knew I could be difficult too. High school and college had not exactly help much with my social anxiety either. Not with my reputation for being gloomy, and my general inability to read a social situation.
Still, there were days when the solitude of the forest was the only thing keeping me sane. It was why I had chosen this job field in the first place.
But chasing that feeling—that brief, quiet peace—had led me straight into disaster.
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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2
The days—or maybe weeks, I honestly couldn’t tell anymore—bled together into one long stretch of sameness where time stopped meaning anything.
My only markers were the visits.
The survival goo came only when they felt like it. The Bantys would shuffle in, rattling cages, jabbing cattle prods, or tossing in supplies with all the care of feeding livestock. Sometimes it was the shock of those rods. Other times it was the dull thud of another container of grey sludge landing at my feet, hissing faintly as it opened.
That stuff had become my only food and water—the only thing keeping me alive in this metal coffin.
Captivity had stripped me down piece by piece, until there was nothing left that felt like dignity.
The routine blurred together into something inescapable—eat the goop, shiver through the cold, listen to the cries and groans of the others, wait for the Bantys to return. Sleep came in shallow, fractured bursts, always broken by movement in the cages or the scrape of claws against metal.
Time itself stopped behaving normally. It stretched, collapsed, and twisted until I couldn’t tell whether I had been here for days or something much longer.
All I knew was that the Bantys ruled the hours. Without their visits, there was nothing to measure existence by at all.
At first, I tried to resist it.
I lasted about a day and a half before my body stopped cooperating. Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion didn’t care about pride or dignity—they simply arrived, whether I was ready or not.
I called out. I banged on the bars. I begged.
My voice was just another sound swallowed by the cacophony of the wailing creatures around me.
When the Bantys did respond, it was never mercy. Only the scrape of cattle prods along the metal, or their strange, chirping language echoing through the room—usually followed by something screaming.
It didn’t take long for the humiliation to set in.
Whatever shred of dignity I’d carried into this nightmare bled out onto the cold, filthy floor, leaving me hollow and shaking. The Bantys hadn’t just trapped my body—they were wearing it down, piece by piece, until I felt more like something cornered than someone human.
I gave in to the bucket shoved into the corner of the cage.
It felt degrading in a way I didn’t have words for—just another quiet piece of myself being taken without ceremony. But the alternative was worse, and that was the only thought that mattered.
Afterward, a new kind of dread settled in: whether they would ever bother to empty it.
My voice came out cracked and small. Foreign even to my own ears.
The response was immediate. And my world narrowed to white-hot static once again. When it stopped, I was still spasming long after they had moved on, every muscle refusing to settle back into place.
Worse than the pain was what came after it.
Each shock stripped something away from me. Control vanished completely, my body betraying me in ways I couldn’t stop, leaving me shaking and ashamed in a puddle of my own piss as the aftermath.
It wasn’t just punishment anymore—it was a reminder that I had no say in what my body did or when it did it.
My world had shrunk to metal bars, cold filth, and the constant sting of fear. Everything else blurred into a constant, oppressive noise.
I still couldn’t understand the Bantys’ language—those chirps and clatters that echoed through the warehouse like static—but I no longer needed to. Nothing I said changed anything.
I didn’t know why I’d been taken, what they wanted, or how long this would last.
In the warehouse there was no real quiet. The cages never stopped speaking—metal scraping, creatures shifting, distant cries that never fully faded—but I learned to turn away from it, to curl inward where none of it quite reached me.
All I had left was my own mind.
Because if I stayed out there too long, they always found me.
A Banty would wander over sooner or later, jabbing their cruel sticks through the bars just to watch me convulse. The shocks were a sort of sport to them. A game.
The first few times, I screamed until my throat tore itself raw. I raged; I even fought occasionally though futile.
When it came to me now though, I tried to be somewhere else entirely. Anywhere else.
Dappled sunlight filtering through pine branches. The steady rhythm of my work along the trail. The smell of sweat on my skin mixed with dust and wind and sap. Sleepy summer lunch breaks under trees, sandwiches unwrapped with trail worn hands, sweet tea gone warm in the heat. Wild raspberries picked straight from the bushes, staining my fingers red.
When I was in that other place. For a moment, I felt so free. But I could never stay for long and when it was time to leave the world always snapped back into metal and pain.
Time—or whatever passed for it in that dim, never-ending nightmare—had lost all meaning.
There was no day, no night, only a steady, oppressive glow from an unseen artificial source that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Its colorless light filled the warehouse-like chamber, bathing the endless rows of cages in a sickly, permanent twilight. I didn’t know what powered it, but the unchanging glow gnawed at something in me. It erased any sense of rhythm—when to sleep, when to wake, when to hope.
With each hour—or day, or whatever it was—it wore me thinner, pulling at the edges of my mind.
At some point, without realizing it, I started muttering to myself.
Words without meaning slipped out before I could stop them—scraps of thought, half-formed sentences that felt like they belonged to someone else. I would lose track of time staring at a single patch of floor just beyond the bars of my cage, caught in stretches of blank nothingness.
Every so often, I’d snap back—startled by the sound of my own voice, a brief flicker of awareness followed by shame or confusion—but even those moments were getting harder to hold onto.
More and more, it felt like I was fading into the monotony, dissolving into a version of myself I didn’t recognize.
But I was not the only one unraveling in captivity.
The chamber never truly quieted. It breathed in cycles—rising in waves of sound, falling only when something worse arrived to interrupt it.
When the Bantys descended, silence followed, but only for a moment. For a few seconds, everything would hold its breath.
Their prods cracked against cages, and pain cut through the space echoing against the walls. Then the silence broke. And the entire place would erupt again.
What followed wasn’t just noise—it was collapse. The kind that spread from cage to cage until the whole chamber was alive with it once more.
From what I could tell, not everything trapped here reacted the same way.
Some of the creatures met the Bantys with something like awareness—eyes tracking, bodies tensing in ways that felt deliberate. Others only flinched and thrashed on instinct.
I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
To them, it was all the same. Livestock. Inventory. Noise to be managed.
Whatever they called us, it didn’t change how easily we broke.
As the days drifted onward, uncertainty settled into me like a constant ache.
There was no beginning or end anymore—only a continuous stretch of survival that refused to resolve into anything I could understand. The question kept returning, quieter each time but harder to ignore: was this what I would become? Something stored away, forgotten, reduced to nothing but function and containment?
I didn’t have an answer. Only the pressure of not knowing.
When I finally gave in to sleep, it wasn’t relief. It was nightmare filled and restless.
Even then, there was no escape. The cage remained the cage—cold metal beneath me, too hard and too narrow to truly rest. I shifted constantly, searching for any position that didn’t hurt, any angle that didn’t remind me where I was.
Finally, one day, the door rattle came—the same grinding, metallic sound that had come to mean pain.
The door slid into the wall with a groan of metal on metal, and something cold moved through me at the memory of what usually followed.
But this time... nothing came after it.
No crack of prods against cages. No screams of pain.
Even still it wasn’t exactly peaceful. It pressed in on all sides, heavy and unfamiliar, settling over the chamber like everything in it was holding its breath.
My pulse climbed in my throat as I strained to listen for anything—anything at all that matched what I’d come to expect.
For once, the Bantys didn’t begin their usual routine of violence at “feeding time.”
Instead, they moved differently.
Their beadlike eyes tracked across the room as they worked, adjusting eyebolts, flicking switches, exchanging short, clipped signals I couldn’t understand.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t routine.
Inexplicably, the Bantys began opening cages.
They moved through the rows with a deliberate efficiency I hadn’t seen before, pulling creatures out and forcing them into rough groups. Iron collars and short chains bound them together in groups of five to six, with a single Banty stationed at the front and another at the rear. Their black rods gleamed as they urged their prisoners forward in a slow, uneven procession.
The captives were herded toward the far exit of the chamber, their chains rattling like a final farewell. No groups came back. No cages were refilled.
Then my cage was opening, and I was next.
I realized I was crawling forward and already on my feet before it even occurred to me to question whether I should want to leave. But of course I wanted to leave. Anything had to be better than that tiny cage. Right?
I pushed myself to stand straight, but my body didn’t respond the way it should have. My legs felt unsteady beneath me, like they hadn’t fully remembered how to hold weight anymore. Every movement came slow and uncertain; I felt hunched, awkward, and bony.
When the Banty began to pull me along, I didn’t have the strength to resist properly, yet I flailed anyway.
It didn’t guide me toward my group of captives so much as drag me—forcing me upright despite my gasping breaths as it pulled me by the collar.
Despite the bizarre assortment of beings surrounding me—scales, tentacles, wings, eyes where eyes shouldn’t be—there was no sign of another human. The thought clawed at me: had I been the only one they captured?
Oddly, the act of walking—painful, uneven steps on weak, trembling legs—brought a strange, fleeting sense of liberation. It had been weeks, I realized, since I’d been able to stand upright, if I counted the interminable feedings of the thick, unappetizing goop as time.
I forced myself to maintain a facade of composure, swallowing the panic that threatened to spill over. But I could not hide the trembling in my legs as my group shuffled down the dim corridor.
The weight of the collar around my neck was a constant, uncomfortable reminder of how little control I had over where I was going. Every step pulled against it, a dull pressure that made it hard to ignore my own breathing.
We were ushered into an empty room. Upon arrival, the Bantys assigned to my group left without hesitation, sealing the door behind them. The room was white—featureless, windowless, wrong in its emptiness.
Then the walls began to change.
A strange foamy substance seeped from every surface, spreading outward in thick, cascading sheets. It filled the space with a suffocating density, turning the room into something that reminded me of a car wash—if a car wash had ever been designed to trap you inside it, filling from the floor up like something out of an action movie where the hero is scrambling to escape before it’s too late.
The Siren-like creature I had been caged beside usually unsettlingly still and silent was panicking.
It let out anguished cries as its ridged spines flattened and stretched in alarm, clawing at the slick walls as the foam swallowed its limbs.
Some part of me knew I should have been reacting the same way.
But that part felt distant now, dulled down by everything that had come before.
It coated my face, forcing its way into my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I gagged, fighting to stay upright as it pressed down with an unnatural heaviness, as if the room itself was trying to force me to my knees.
As the foam stung and burned my eyes, I resorted to frantic rubbing, pressing my palms against my face in a desperate attempt to ease the pain—anything to make the unbearable sensation stop. The air was thick, every breath like inhaling wet cement, and panic clawed up my throat. For a terrifying moment, I was sure this would be how I died—suffocating in a room full of strangers, in a place I couldn’t understand, my final moments swallowed by foam and fear.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. The suffocating mass dissolved into nothing, vanishing so completely it might have been a hallucination. I blinked in disbelief, watching the last wisps of vapor evaporate into the sterile air.
The burning in my eyes and nose began to fade, replaced by relief so sharp it was almost dizzying. And then I realized—I felt clean. Not just rinsed, but impossibly, unnaturally clean. The stench of waste, the grime and filth that had coated me for so long—it was all gone.
I inhaled deeply, the air sharp and crisp in my lungs. My teeth felt freshly brushed; my tongue smooth. The heavy oil that had plastered my hair to my scalp was gone too, replaced by the light, soft weight of clean curls brushing against my neck and shoulders.
For one strange, fleeting moment, it was like I had just stepped out of a high-end salon instead of a nightmare. I couldn’t help marveling—confused and wary in equal measure—at the impossible transformation.
That fleeting sense of renewal vanished the moment I saw the Siren half slumped on the floor.
It was partially held up by its neighbors and the chains attached to their collars. It was clear it was no longer breathing; the gills no longer fluttered, but lay flared and strained, painfully still.
I realized it must have panicked because it knew whatever this substance was would kill it, and it had been trying to escape. And the Bantys hadn’t known—or hadn’t cared enough—to prevent it.
I wanted to cry, but nothing came out.
When the Bantys did return, they made no outward reaction of the dead Siren. They simply disconnected its collar from the chain and kept us moving, leaving the body lying on the floor. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
Still naked and disoriented, I was quickly separated from the group I had entered the foam room with and pulled in a different direction by a third Banty I hadn’t seen.
Their prod crackled, jabbing me forward whenever I hesitated. Not quite shocking me—just enough to keep me moving and afraid.
Unease coursed through me as I realized I was being singled out, but it wasn’t as though safety had ever existed in numbers here. The other creatures were dragged off in different directions, swallowed by corridors of cold steel and shadow, never to be seen again.
Without warning, a quick jab from one of the cattle prods to the back of my legs sent me crashing to my knees. It hurt, but still, they did not shock me. The Banty’s chirped and yipped, their excitement unmistakable as they worked.
My head was forced upward. My arms pulled wide.
The cold weight of my old iron collar was replaced by something new—something gold.
Ornate and heavy, studded with ruby-like stones the size of coins, it was fastened around my neck and chest in a grotesque parody of jewelry. A sheer cloth, barely reaching my thighs, was tied around my waist, decorated with more of the same glittering stones. It concealed nothing.
Their hands on me made my skin crawl, but I couldn’t move—couldn’t resist. Even the threat of the prod near me was enough to keep me shaking and compliant.
When they were finally satisfied, I was led to another cage—larger than the last, though no less confining. It was tall enough to just barely stand in, but not wide enough to lie down in unless I curled into a ball. They then drew a heavy red cover over it, plunging everything into darkness. The last thing I heard before the silence closed in was their chirping chatter fading down the corridor.
Alone again, I sat in the suffocating dark, every nerve on edge.
My body was clean—but I had never felt filthier.
Whatever waited beyond that cover, I knew it wasn’t salvation.
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