Page 4 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

So, aliens are real. What the hell.

Nothing more happened except for the blue person in the corner facing me, gesturing toward me, and repeating the same short question in language after language. They were trying to communicate with me directly. Maybe it was some kind of computer or cyborg and not alive like the rest of us. I looked again. No, there were cuts on the arm. Definitely alive. With green blood.

I looked away willing myself not to puke. Dear lord I didn't want to be sitting in puke for who knew how long. And why did they take us — me, the squid, the grasshopper, the whole cellful of us — anyway? Sacrifice? Experiments? Interplanetary zoo? I snorted at that last one, imagining myself in a cage with a sign about me made up of crap because they knew nothing about humans. Or did they?

Shit. What was going to happen to me? I looked around the room and jumped when the pile of blankets in the corner moved. Turns out it was not a pile of blankets but another alien.

From the corner, the blue alien spoke, their voice raspy and mechanical. "Do you understand this? Archive language partial —"

I turned so fast I startled her. Her? I had zero facts about blue-alien biology, but the voice read female to me, so I decided she was a she until somebody corrected me — a policy I was prepared to extend to the whole cell. "Yes! Yes! Oh my god yes. Where am I? What are you? What is this? What happened⁠—"

She raised up a hand, apparently the sign to shut up was universal. The next words came smoother, like a bad signal suddenly finding the station.

"You have been taken by slave traders. We will be sold at auction." She said it the way you'd report weather. "The crew discuss their inventory in the corridor. They assume the inventory does not speak their trade tongue." A pause. "They are wrong. What planet are you from? This is a very obscure language."

I think I had my mouth open so long I drooled on myself. Slave trade? Abducted? What planet am I from? Honestly that last one shouldn't have surprised me, not with the company in the cell.

I swallowed. "Uh. Um. Earth. In the solar system. Milky Way galaxy. A spiral galaxy."

I didn't know if that was enough info and I didn't get a chance to ask. Because at that moment we were thrown around the room. I bounced off the transparent lighted wall, which was not just a wall. It was also some sort of electric force field. The shock knocked the wind out of me, leaving my skin stinging and my muscles twitching. A strangled scream tore loose when my lungs finally unlocked.

I landed on the blanket-like alien, which was very warm like a heating pad. It threw me off with such force that I flew across the cell and slammed shoulder-first into solid steel. Pain burst through my ribs; I gasped and folded around it. Across the room, sparks spat from the force field until the alien dragged its fabric-covered mass away from the barrier.

Everyone was making noises, probably everyone's version of pain. So I added to the cacophony. "What was that? What happened? Has this happened before?"

The ship bucked again before anyone could answer. I hit the solid wall and the others collapsed across my back in a pile of limbs, tentacles, and deceptive alien weight. Before I could drag in enough air to yell, gravity let go. We lifted in a heap; then the ship rolled and slammed us into the active force field before dumping us against solid steel. The charge cut off the instant we left the field — enough to convulse you, apparently, not enough to kill the merchandise — but my muscles kept sizzling and twitching like they hadn't gotten the memo. Pain stripped every voice in the room down to sound. If this was a ship and we were in space, the hull screaming while gravity lost its mind was probably not a good thing.

I groaned as I raised my head wondering how much more of this we could survive. The giant grasshopper thing looked like it had broken one of its arms. It was holding it, making a weird chittering sound as green goop dropped out. Oh my god, I'm going to puke.

I looked away and swallowed, trying to get my stomach under control. I could not puke now. I didn't know what was going on, and I did not want to die, but I also did not want to be locked in somebody's private collection.

I crawled until I could get my legs under me and slowly stood waiting for the next time for the ship to tilt for us to be thrown against the wall. The transparent wall lights were off. Dull gray lines remained where they'd been. The electrical hum of the force field was gone, but the physical partition — a thick slab of transparent alien glass or plastic or whatever horrible space material this was — remained.

I ran over — and pulled up short, hand in the air, because I had very recent memories of what that thing did with current in it. No lights. No hum. I tapped it with one knuckle, braced to snatch my hand back. Nothing. Okay. I smacked it with my hand. It was solid, but cold and inert now, no longer buzzing with that convulse-you-senseless current. You could barely tell that there was a wall there at all. Still transparent, even with the lights off. I hit it, kicked it, then I started yelling and banging on the wall. No one came.

And then I stopped, as a new horror filled me. Part of the ceiling was hanging down in the hallway on the other side of the wall. The ship was falling apart. And if the ship fell apart, that meant no atmosphere, no breathing. Oh my god, this was not how I wanted to go. None of this is what I wanted to have happen on a Thursday in the Colombian jungle.

I snapped, screaming and kicking the wall like an absolute madwoman.

"Stop!"

The shock of hearing English knocked me out of my... mindless tantrum. And I spun to the right to see that blue alien standing there, pushing at a small area of dull gray on the transparent wall. That must have been where the controls were — the release for the cell partition, not whatever generated the force field — and the panel was completely dead. But we still had lights in the cell. Well, I mean, they were dim, but at least we had light. And the hallway still looked lit. So the electricity, or whatever powered this thing, wasn't out all over.

I turned behind me, trying to find something we could use. But there was absolutely nothing. Just five of us in here. Nothing else available to use to ram or break this wall. I looked down and thankfully I still had my boots. My tool belt was gone, which meant the slavers had searched me at some point. Still, they had left me the boots, still covered with mud from the jungle. Well, I hoped they enjoyed some earthen muck.

I stepped back and started kicking, slamming my heel against the wall. It had a little give but held firm. Finally, I stopped and stood there breathing hard, staring at it.

"Don't you think we tried that?"

I narrowed my eyes at the blue alien. "Look, I had to give it a —"

The ship tilted again and we went flying against the wall that everyone had been sitting against earlier. I was getting really tired of this shit. Damn it. If this ship was under attack, I didn't know what would be better for me. To stay with the bad guys I'd at least seen, or to go with the bad guys I hadn't. But they could be good guys. And maybe I could escape somehow. Though I had absolutely no idea where I would go. I didn't think there were lifts to Earth in the nearest interplanetary space shuttle system or whatever was out there.

I was amazed at how easily I was taking this introduction to actual aliens. But then again, when you're trying to save your own life, that really does take precedence.

Another bang, and I screamed, covering my head. It came from directly above. I looked up, my eyes probably widening to ridiculous comic proportions. The ceiling was crumpled. Oh my god. Then movement caught my eye. That bang, then — the wall. The blue alien was crawling through an opening where the transparent panel had blown out in the lower right corner.

I scrambled to my feet, ran, and crawled out right behind her, almost sliding over the backs of her boots because I was so desperate to get out. She immediately took off to the right, running, but I stayed put after almost going after her. I mean, that would be a great way to get myself killed: run around the corner and right into a firefight or whatever they had for weapons up here.