Imminent Danger: And How to Fly Straight Into It (12 page)

“Who is the monster?” Miguri asked. “Someone who acts like one out of the need for self-preservation, or someone who is one out of greed?”

The scientist flashed Miguri a frosty look. Clutching its hand, which was oozing a greenish liquid, it scurried off down the corridor. In its haste, it left Miguri’s cell door open.

The Claktill jumped to his feet and dashed toward freedom, but the door slammed shut a split second before he reached it. “Proximity sensor.” He sighed and then looked up and saw Eris standing unattended in the hallway. “Quick!” he said, beckoning her toward his cell. “Before he comes back! Try to open the door!”

Eris hurried to the door and spotted a keypad, a few levers, and a bowl of gel. “Not the sensor gel,” Miguri directed. “You do not have the correct DNA authorization. Try the levers.”

Somewhat hampered by her binders, she managed to grab a lever and yank down. Nothing. She tried another. Still nothing. Eris was about to try the keypad when a glowing orb floated across her line of sight. “Uhh …” she said, backing away from the door.

Doctor T bobbed in front of her, pulsing light. “Get away from those controls,” the Triila snapped. “You should learn to obey your superiors. If you are unsatisfied with the current accommodations, let me assure you they could be rendered far less hospitable.”

Emboldened by her brush with freedom, Eris said, “Just because you have superior technology doesn’t make you my superior, you—argh!” She screamed as the binders sent waves of electrically induced pain up her arms.

“Anything else to say, terrestrial?” Doctor T inquired.

“No,” Eris rasped.

Doctor T floated aside when three humanoid scientists wearing thick, elbow-length gloves entered the hallway. When they approached Miguri’s cell, Eris cried, “Don’t hurt him!” She lunged forward to help her friend but was rewarded by another painful wave of electricity up her arms. “Ow!”

“You have a shallow learning curve,” the Triila observed. “I wonder if this shows a lack of intelligence in humanity as a species or if you are a defective specimen.”

As the scientists wrestled binders onto Miguri, he thrashed and clawed at them. But one shock stopped his resistance, and they were able to extract him from the cell.

Now restrained to Doctor T’s satisfaction, the captives were escorted to a long, narrow room filled with tables and lab equipment. There were half a dozen aliens in sky-blue coveralls being examined by technicians.
So we’re not the only lab rats,
Eris thought. She cringed when she spotted one sluglike being at the far end of the hall that was soaking its clothes with its own slime.

Two sets of blue coveralls came floating toward them—one human-sized and one Claktill-sized—suspended in midair. “What’s making the clothes float like that?”

“Not what, who,” the Triila corrected. “It is an Aoratis from the fourth moon of Langlin V.”

“It’s invisible,” Eris realized. She couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the creature. A shock of electricity ran up her arms, causing her to flinch and recoil. “Ow!”

“Aorati do not like to be touched,” Doctor T told her sternly. “And yes, they
are
invisible. We are studying them to see if we can duplicate this effect. We have tried to obtain more specimens, but as you can imagine, it is difficult to locate invisible creatures.”

A technician removed their binders. “Don your uniforms,” Doctor T commanded.

Miguri quickly shucked his brown tunic, pulled on the blue garment, and strapped his lamri belt back on. But Eris hesitated.
Do they really expect me to strip in front of all these people?
“Do you have somewhere I could change?” she asked.

Doctor T bobbed close to Eris as if scrutinizing her. “Larita, make a note.” The technician poised a stylus above her clipboard. “The human exhibits the same sense of propriety often seen in Psilosian and Vekrori subjects.”

“You’re all complete strangers!” Eris protested. “You want me to strip in front of you and are
surprised
that I object?”

“I have experiments to conduct. Do not waste any more of my time.”

“But I don’t even know why I’m here!” Eris exploded.

Doctor T wobbled closer to her. “Do you not know? Fascinating. According to Tetrarchy records, a Rakorsian task force landed on your planet approximately ten thousand years ago. The team was recalled to Rakor, but several members reportedly became intrigued with the natives and chose to remain on the planet. We believe they intermingled with the terrestrial population.”

Eris gaped at the Triila. “You mean some humans have Rakorsian ancestors?”

“Correct.”

Eris tried to wrap her head around the idea that humanity—or some of it, at least—was distantly related to the duplicitous, back-stabbing Rakorsians. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but from what I’ve seen of Rakorsians, we humans are
nothing
like them.”

“Except for your high genetic similarities, your tendency toward confrontation and battle, and your self-righteous attitude? And the fact that I myself have viewed a number of video records proving Rakorsians visited your planet. I could easily describe several off the top of my luminous sphere, but I shall not waste my time doing so.”

Eris scowled. “Well,
I
don’t think we’re related,” she mumbled.

“Larita, make a note: the subject denies historical fact.” Turning back to Eris, Doctor T continued, “So to answer your question, terrestrial, you are here because of your genetic similarity to Rakorsians. Testing drugs on humans will be far more financially and militaristically conservative than trying to abduct Rakorsians for that purpose. Now don your clothing and follow me.”

Eris looked at the uniform in her hands and then at Miguri. The Claktill shrugged.
I guess I have to play by the rules,
she thought,
at least for now.
Very embarrassed, she stripped off her clothing and quickly pulled on the new outfit. Larita took her clothes, and Eris watched as her favorite purple hoodie—her last tie with Earth—was whisked away.

Now that the captives were suitably attired, Doctor T led them out of the room, down a short hall, and into another, smaller room.
Looks like an examination room,
Eris thought, noting the metal slab tables and the two aliens wearing green lab coats. Fear shivered up her spine.
Oh, God, please don’t probe me.

As they led her to one of the tables, she caught sight of her reflection in a round mirror mounted on a wall above the sink. With the dark circles under her eyes, stringy hair, and shapeless garment, Eris barely recognized herself.
Nice look, Eris,
she thought and then mocked herself with a halfhearted wolf whistle.

Doctor T whirred toward her. “Do that again.”

Perplexed, Eris whistled again.

“Your sonic system is very well developed,” the Triila said. “You will be of more use to Dr. Marku. I will keep the Claktill here.”

As Eris was dragged from the room, she saw Miguri squirming helplessly as the two technicians strapped him to a table.
This is not going to end well,
she thought.

Eris was taken to a different operating room where she too was strapped to a table. After placing an oxygen mask over her mouth, the technician jabbed several needles into her arms and pumped her full of pain-killers.

A brown-skinned, blue-haired male humanoid wearing a green lab coat and carrying a clipboard entered the room.
Dr. Marku?
Eris guessed.

“Ah, I see I have a new specimen!” the alien said.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, voice muffled by the oxygen mask.

“You do not know? According to my preliminary research, the human brain is basically a nonenhanced version of the Rakorsian mind. I will need to crack open your skull and temporarily remove your brain so I can run a few tests.”

Eris decided to black out at that point.

13

W
hen she regained consciousness, Eris was sprawled on the floor of her cell. She felt extremely nauseated, her vision was distorted, and she had a peculiar craving for anchovies. Before she could start worrying about what had happened or where Miguri was, she saw the doctor standing outside her cell writing notes on his clipboard.

“Awake, I see,” Dr. Marku said, making a little tick with his stylus. “The skull-fusing procedure was a success, and the skin graft looks seamless. Do you feel any discomfort?”

“Blargurgleplopigarmund,” Eris said.

Dr. Marku made another tick. “I see the Xycopan has taken effect.”

“Jagibookla,” Eris retorted. “Flarp!”

“Fascinating. This speech-impairment side effect is usually only found in Takblinarians.” He nodded to her. “I look forward to working with you again tomorrow.”

As Eris watched him walk away, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass door. At first she thought it was the drugs, but then she slapped her hands to her head and felt nothing but bare scalp. All her lovely, long, dark brown hair was gone.

“Galloooo!” Eris wailed.

Several hours later, Eris had regained some control of her tongue, although she was still having trouble with her spatial orientation. She had also discovered that her fingers were unbelievably fascinating. Lying on her back, she wiggled them in front of her face, then moved them away, then closer, then away again. “It’s like … the universe,” she mumbled, certain she had just uncovered something truly profound.

She barely noticed the lab technician in the hall until she heard a cell door slide open.

“Miguri!” Eris exclaimed, flipping over to get a better look. As she watched her friend stagger into his cell, she thought there was something strange about him. “Why are you upside down?” she said unhappily.

The lab technician squinted at her through her cell door. “You are suffering side effects from Dr. Marku’s brain-removal procedure. I will inform him.”

Something about the technician’s words struck Eris as absolutely hilarious. She started laughing. But the deep, rasping laughs transformed into sobs as they escaped her lips. Eris fell to the floor, clutching her stomach, caught up in a haze of pain-killers and hysteria.

The lab technician made a note on his clipboard and walked away.

Over the next ten days, Eris felt herself slowly slipping away from the sanity to which she had been clinging since she was taken from Earth. Her initial abduction had been horrific, but nothing truly awful had happened to her on the Ssrisk ship. Then there had been the whole fiasco with Varrin, and although she had been utterly crushed by his betrayal, the most he had done to hurt her physically was lock her up. And at least he had treated her like an intelligent being.

But this was a whole different story. Eris was able to deal with abductions, and turncoats, and shocking handcuffs, and not knowing what was going on at any given time. What she could not stand was being cooped up in a cell, mysteriously losing all her hair, being fed disgusting substances, and spending endless hours completing boring, repetitive tasks while a battery of doctors stood by and took notes. It was like living a horrible nightmare, and if she had to endure much more of this treatment, Eris knew she would go mad. Miguri was nearly there.

“I never wanted to leave the colony ship,” Miguri informed the floor of his cell sternly late on the evening of their eleventh day at the Chakra Corporation’s R&D department. “I was perfectly happy living with my family, searching for a new planet to call home.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Eris said.

The little alien wrapped his tail around himself and curled up against the back wall. “A nice, warm bowl of
kilti nik billi
, the occasional new holo-vid,” he mumbled. “Life had its small pleasures.”

Eris sighed and pulled her knees to her chest, hugging them close for warmth. The doctors had lowered the temperature in her cell by twenty degrees to see if she would succumb to hypothermia. They had told her they wanted to know if humans reacted the same way as Rakorsians did to harsh conditions, because if so, they could test a whole new product line designed to boost various physical attributes.