by A. G. Wilde
“Fucking little shits,” the red-head murmured. “First a T-Rex and now a fucking saber tooth.”
“I beg your pardon?” Athena’s eyes widened as she stared at the woman. “A T-Rex?”
The red-head glanced at her. “Oh, you have no idea how fucked up this place is.”
Athena blinked in fast succession as her mind tried to process the rapid series of events since she’d woken up in this...place.
Where was she anyway? She still had no idea.
“Name’s Diana,” the red-head said, before turning her scowl back at the light-blue rings hovering in the distance.
“Athena.”
“You’re human?” Diana eyed her.
“Yes. You?”
Diana nodded. “You can never be sure in this place.”
“What is this place?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for the past week.”
“You’ve been here for a week?!”
“Yes. Maybe longer. I can’t really tell.”
A roar pierced the ear not far from them and Athena spun in the direction of the sound, her eyes wide.
They weren’t safe.
That thing that had been chasing them was on the hunt again.
“Fucking pieces of shit! Let us out!” Diana began banging on the glass. “Goddammit!”
“Maybe we should run?!” Her body was teetering on that fine line between fright and flight.
A part of her wanted to run but there was that little thought that no matter how much she ran, the thing would eventually catch her anyway.
“No, it won’t stop till it catches us all. We have to get those idiots’ attention.”
Athena turned to the wall, watching the little light-blue rings as they hovered.
The Isclits.
They had to get the Isclits’ attention.
Maybe if they could break the glass.
Eyeing a large stone nearby, Athena rushed over to lift it. It was heavier than she’d thought it would be, but the heavier the better.
Using all her might, she used her body weight to hurl the stone into the glass wall.
The stone connected with the wall, causing a sound like a deep bong to echo in the vicinity as the wall seemed to absorb the impact and distribute it through a series of vibrations.
Athena stared at the area where the stone hit as another roar erupted somewhere behind her.
Shit.
It didn’t break.
This wasn’t just any normal glass.
She could feel her heart rate rising as she lifted her gaze to Diana, whose wild eyes were now locked with hers.
But the light-blue rings in the distance had paused moving.
They’d gotten the Isclits’ attention and, at that moment, the sun seemed to dim for a second before brightening again.
“Good going,” Diana breathed, her lips breaking into a smile that froze on her face. She remained like that in suspended animation and Athena was about to ask if she was alright when she realized that she couldn’t move either.
Her entire body was frozen. She couldn’t lift her hands; she couldn’t move her legs. She couldn’t even blink or move her eyes. It felt as if she was stuck in some sort of thick fluid that rendered her body motionless—as if time had stopped but her brain was still working as usual.
In the next few seconds, there was rustling in the bushes behind them. If she could move her face or mouth, she was pretty sure she’d be screaming.
Whatever had been chasing them was coming to get them...and they couldn’t move! She wasn’t sure if she believed it was a saber-toothed tiger but it had sounded angry and it had sounded big. That was enough for her to know she didn’t want to have it over for tea.
The scream was literally stuck in her throat when the bushes moved again and she could barely make out the form of an Isclit in her peripheral vision as it emerged from the flora. She only knew it was one for sure because of the light-blue ring. That she could definitely make out. Everything else was a blur.
The only thing in focus was the last thing she was looking at before she was frozen, and that was Diana. It was eerie looking back at the redhead with her face frozen mid-smile. It was like looking at a Madame Tussaud's wax figure.
The Isclit came to hover in front of her and Athena could see that it had yellow fluorescent spots on its back but, apart from that, it looked just like the two other Isclits she’d seen so far.
Behind the Isclit was the devil himself, all green eyes and handsome bull-ness. Well, she assumed it was him. She couldn’t move her gaze and her line of sight was pointing at his chest. But whoever it was had the same soft brown fuzz as he did and, in the blurry part of her peripheral vision, she could see the loincloth.
It had to be him.
But there was no more roaring. No vicious animal was bounding toward them to tear them to pieces.
Had they killed it?
She hadn’t heard it die either.
“Check the. Human cargo.” The Isclit spoke as it reached them in its usual broken speech.
Human cargo.
She was no flippin’ cargo. Even without being able to move she could see the fire in her eyes reflected in Diana’s as well.
There was a burst of air from the soldier’s nostrils and Athena watched, still unable to see him fully, as he circled Diana.
“This one has no visible injuries,” he said.
It was him.
She recognized the voice.
Then it was her turn to get inspected and the soldier walked over to her and circled her slowly. If her chest could heave, she would have been breathing harder.
She was naked.
Stark naked.
At least Diana had the cover of mud to hide behind. She, on the other hand, was open to the world and these aliens’ scrutiny.
Xul seemed to take a little longer inspecting her, circling her slowly before he stooped in front of her so their eyes locked.
She couldn’t read what was in his green gaze—his eyes were difficult to read—but they narrowed as he looked at her and his head turned to the side a little. She took that to mean he was thinking about something.
“This one has no visible injuries either,” he finally said.
Suddenly, a sick feeling grew in her stomach.
Was this a game to them?
Had they put in some animal to hunt them just to see how strong they were? How long they would survive?
He did infer that she was frail.
She couldn’t control the rage that spiked again. Her eyes must have been burning the fire of her anger because that same amused expression passed across his face.
She wasn’t even sure how she knew that. Maybe it was how the muscles in his face relaxed as if he was laughing at a joke in his head.
The yellow dots on the Isclit pulsed.
“Species. Incompatible,” it said. “Incompatibility. Removed.”
The spots kept pulsing.
“Starting cargo. Eleven,” the Isclit continued. “Current number. Five.”
Eleven. Did it mean there were eleven humans in this place and now there were five?!
“Area. Safe,” the Isclit went on. “Bidding in. Fifteen minutes.”
The Isclit began hovering away on its light-blue ring and Athena glared at it for as long as it was in her line of sight.
In the next instant, the bull-man and the Isclit were both gone.
The sun seemed to dim once more and suddenly, she could move again.
It was as if the molecules that made up her body were no longer frozen in time. And, unlike when she’d been frozen, where she hadn’t even realized it had happened, being given the gift of movement came with a rush. Her heart was suddenly pounding hard in her chest again, her lungs were expanding and contracting, and blood was rushing through her veins.
“What the—”
“You’ll get used to it,” Diana said.
“What the hell happened? I couldn’t move.”
“I don�
�t know. Some sort of freeze ray. They do it so they can come in and take out whatever mistake they’d put in here with us.”
“A freeze ray.” She would have laughed at that just yesterday but today it wasn’t so funny.
Diana nodded before turning back to face the wall. The light-blue rings were hovering outside the wall again as if nothing had just happened.
“They did it before, when they put the T-Rex in.” Diana glanced at her again. “As I said, you’ll get used to it.”
“Oh, I’m not planning to.” Athena glanced behind her, cocking her ears. She didn’t hear any growls or chasing. Maybe they had removed whatever it was. “I’m not planning on staying here long enough to get used to anything.”
Diana seemed to grunt at that.
“Well, maybe you won’t have to. There will be bidding in fifteen minutes, it said.”
“Bidding?”
“T-Rex’s and saber tooths aren’t the only things to worry about in this hell.” Diana turned to her, a resigned look on her face. “We’re about to be auctioned.”
4
“We’re about to be fucking what?”
Diana had begun moving after dropping that bombshell, heading deeper into the bush. Athena followed behind her, batting away vines and low-hanging branches along the way.
“Auctioned to the highest bidder.”
“Oh, no no no no. That is not happening. We have to find a way out of here.”
“We’ve tried.” Diana stopped suddenly and Athena almost bumped into her back.
They were at another clearing that had some large boulders in the middle. By one of the boulders, it looked like three other women were huddling together using sticks to mark into the dirt on the forest floor.
“This place is like one giant rectangular box,” Diana said.
“As large as a football field,” a woman from the huddle piped up. Like Diana, she too had mud daubed all over her body and had even made some kind of makeshift skirt out of vines and leaves.
The woman’s platinum blonde hair was a stark contrast against her muddy skin, the white strands falling down to her waist and her gray eyes stood out in her face. She was...gorgeous.
“I’m Evren,” the platinum blonde stood and outstretched her hand. Her handshake was firm.
Another woman from the group stood and outstretched her hand as well. She was small, maybe just a little above five feet tall, and of Asian descent.
“I’m Song,” she said, her lips shaking a little before her gaze drifted behind them to the forest. “Where’s Iliana?”
“Dead,” Diana said and Athena almost gasped at how matter-of-factly she’d said it. As if it was...nothing. Iliana. That must have been the woman she’d seen in the forest. The one who’d gotten eaten.
A silence enveloped the group. No one said anything and Athena’s eyes darted from one woman to another. They all had that resigned look on their faces, as if it was something they’d seen happen so much, it was the new regular.
Glancing at the woman still stooping, Athena frowned slightly. She’d made no effort to stand and introduce herself like the others.
“That’s Piper,” Diana spoke up, stooping beside the woman as she examined the markings on the ground.
“Piper doesn’t speak?” Athena asked, looking down at the silent woman’s rainbow-colored hair.
“I just don’t see the point in getting friendly when you might get eaten in the next five minutes,” Piper mumbled, her focus still on the markings. “There’s nothing here. No door. No gate. Just a frickin’ glass box,” she continued without pausing.
“There must be something. We’re missing something,” the platinum blonde, Evren, stooped beside the other two.
“Maybe we won’t ever get out...” Song murmured, her eyes falling as she choked back a sob.
There was silence again.
It was a possibility no one wanted to discuss but Athena knew it was on all of their minds.
Stooping so she could look at the markings more closely, Athena glanced down at herself as she wrapped her arms across her chest.
None of the other women seemed to mind being naked. As a matter of fact, none of them were making it out to be a big deal.
Diana used a stick to point at a far corner of a rectangle they’d drawn in the ground. “This is where they put us in. The door must be there.”
“Yes, but we’ve been there and it’s just flat glass. There’s no door,” Piper replied.
“It must be controlled by something we can’t see,” Evren spoke up, her frown getting deeper.
“You mean like something we humans can’t see?” Song was fiddling with her fingers and Athena noticed the dried tears on her cheeks.
Evren shrugged.
“We’re somewhere in this region,” Diana said, pointing to another section, far away from where the ‘door’ was. “And I saw the saber tooth somewhere here.” She pointed to another section.
“I think that’s where we first saw the T-Rex too,” Piper mused.
“Wait,” Athena looked from one woman to the other. “You were really serious about the T-Rex?”
Piper’s green eyes were cold. “Saber tooth. T-Rex. At this point, if they’d put us in water I’d expect to see a fucking megalodon.”
“It ate one of the others...” Song came to stoop beside Athena, her shoulders shaking.
Diana threw an arm over Song’s shoulder and squeezed it.
“But how? How is there a T-Rex and a saber tooth? That’s impossible.”
“We don’t know yet. My guess is that these fuckers have been to Earth before. Picked up some shit and had it stored. And now they’re back,” Diana said.
“Look,” Athena glanced around her at the forest. It was deathly silent. Not even wind rustled the leaves of the trees. “I’m guessing they have us enclosed in some kind of box in some forest somewhere, right? Maybe when it gets to nightfall, we can somehow get them to open that door and—”
“There’s no night here,” Piper cut her off.
“What?” Athena blinked, not quite comprehending.
“That,” Piper raised the stick she was holding and used it to point upwards to the sky, “is no sun. It’s like a giant bulb.”
Athena’s eyes widened as she raised her eyes to the sky.
“Whenever that shit blinks, we can’t move. But at least they don’t use that horrible pain remote in here,” she continued. “Out there, however, they don’t bother with the freeze thing. Out there, one wrong move and its whips or the mind-numbing pain.”
“I think the freeze thing has to do specifically with this habitat,” Diana added.
Giant bulb. No sun. Habitat.
What the hell was this place? Really.
“I don’t understand. I—” Athena took a deep breath. “A habitat?”
“My years as an ecologist tell me this is a habitat,” Evren turned to her. “The temperature is perfect. They’ve given us a light source they know we need. They’ve even given us food.” Evren waved her hand over to the right to a pile of fruits Athena hadn’t noticed.
“And animals they think would be in the same place as us...” Diana added.
“Only those animals and us can’t coexist,” Piper had a sour look on her face. “Fucking morons.”
The words of the Isclit came to her head then.
“Species incompatible...” Athena whispered. “Species incompatible.” She repeated, her gaze falling to the markings on the ground as everything the women were saying was slowly sinking in.
“As I said. Morons,” Piper snarled. “Fucking idiots. If it weren’t for them, she’d still be alive.”
A look at Piper and Athena saw the tears that were threatening to fall.
“Iliana?” She asked.
“Piper’s sister was taken. She got...” Diana trailed off. “The T-Rex...”
Athena gulped as she stared at Piper’s furious gaze. She hadn’t noticed it before, but behind the angry exterior, she could see the tortur
e and grief in the woman’s eyes.
“We have to get out of here.” Song began rocking back and forth, pulling her knees up to her chest.
Athena gulped again. “I’m sorry, Piper.”
Piper didn’t respond but the stick in her hand snapped as her fingers closed around it forcefully.
Athena blinked back the tears that were suddenly forming in her eyes. She was never good when it came to comforting people but she could feel Piper’s pain and anger. However, she couldn’t focus on it. Focusing on it made everything feel hopeless. She’d found it was always better to change to subject. That way, she never said anything that was out of place.
“But the Isclit said there were eleven of us. From what you’ve said, it sounds like there were only seven. Us five and the other two that,” she cleared her throat, moving her gaze away from Piper, “died.”
“Isclit?” Evren raised an eyebrow.
“The slug thing. That’s what it said it was called.”
“Oh, we just call it Slug Thing,” Evren mused. “But, to answer your question, the other four were auctioned.”
Auctioned.
Yes.
Diana had mentioned that.
Suddenly, Athena’s heart rate began increasing.
Auctioned.
“Auctioned?”
“Because of these translator things they put in our brain, we could understand what they were saying, and it sure fucking sounded like an auction.” Piper wiped her eyes, still glaring as if she wasn’t crying at the same time.
“Auction us to who?” Athena tried to calm her beating heart.
Just then, the sun...or rather... the giant bulb above them blinked.
“Fuck,” Piper muttered, her face setting into a scowl as Song whimpered. And then, just like that, Athena found she couldn’t move. Her gaze was locked on Piper’s scowl and she wished she’d been looking into the forest to see what was coming towards them. She could already hear the bushes rustling.
Something moved behind her and she felt her skin prickle. Something big. Then the undeniable voice of an Isclit reached her ears.
“You will. Be moved,” it said. “Failure to comply. Is pain.” It circled their group and Athena noticed it had blue fluorescent spots on its back.
As the light source in the enclosure dimmed again for a second, the last of Song’s whimper was released.