by Karmon Kuhn
When I faltered and asked myself why, I thought of tender lips on my skin and fingertips at my hips and I knew. I thought of the bloody mass in the tunnel and the stunning weapons. I was not just fighting through this environment for myself. It was for Penny and for any other woman, man, or child who might be salvaged from the tsez̈ø. They might not communicate or travel or exist as we did, but I knew that humans were our equals. They deserved a chance to live, and I owed it to them to try.
I rounded an area of shore and was surprised to notice familiar surroundings. I stopped and swiveled from side to side, scanning for a somewhat shallow sand drift. There it was!
I rushed over and miscalculated the distance, slamming my shoulder into the side of my bulky, hidden juz̈uṣùs̈. I fought the urge to bellow in pain as webs of sheer hot stung through my arm and into my fingers and chest.
I gathered my composure and clambered along the edges of the invisible juz̈uṣùs̈. I slammed my palm against the identification pad which released the door for me and hurried inside. Even though it was illegal to do so, I planned to drive all the way back out of sight with my camouflage mode intact. I couldn’t risk being seen.
Before taking off, I checked the oxygen mask as it would soon have a wearer, I hoped. I scanned the whole surrounding seafloor and saw no one, sensed no one. Somehow, I’d made it through this part of the journey.
***
I took a round-about route to shelter in sand drifts and rural areas rather than traveling to the populous urban spread. Because I could not be seen or avoided by other drivers, I needed to avoid them as long as possible. The trip was painfully slow at first and the exhaustion and fatigue that I’d built up haunted me.
And then, I nodded off. Just for a moment. But, it was long enough for me to lose control of the juz̈uṣùs̈.
I skidded against a sand drift without pulling up, and in my groggy state, I yanked the direction stick and overcorrected. The vehicle turned over and over until it slammed into a sand drift with unexpected speed and force. A small crack snaked its way down the front shield, and I could tell that my camouflage was slightly damaged. Even worse, I’d have to find another get-away juz̈uṣùs̈ now because Penny would have no way of surviving the intense pressure at this low elevation without protection from the vehicle.
I bolted. If the slight flash of the true shield was seen and the crash was reported, there would be an investigation, and who knew how many people would be notified of such an incident. I barely noticed the surrounding coral as I sped past.
I became paranoid and swam, hiding and keeping my head down as much as possible. I blended into my surroundings and took great care to inspect the area around corners before continuing my descent down to community territory. After some time, I could finally see it. The city. My community. The community of my enemies. A collection of artificial underwater caves suspended above the tunnel system of the underground tsez̈ø.
Before I could think, clawed hands closed around my tail. I tried to whip away, but they kept a firm grasp. I tightened my core and swiped my hands through the water, but I barely propelled forward.
The grip tightened, and I looked behind me. Shaded slightly in the dark, I couldn’t recognize the face, but the body was male. He was abnormally large and muscular for a non-female, but his aggressive vibrations and features were unmistakable.
He dug his claws into my flesh. I tried one last time to whip my tail away, but I couldn’t escape him. He continued to send vibrations through the water and the ripples made my body shudder. This violent creature wanted me to know exactly how ruthless he could be.
Then, rather than just telling me, he showed me his violence, smacking his powerful scales against my face and neck. Blood rushed to them immediately. He hit me several times, reaching his marks effortlessly in spite of the cover that my arms and hands offered.
Instead of ending my life in that moment, he pulled me through the water, inundating my mind and body with a constant stream of sensations: pain from my bleeding tail that was crushed between his fingers; the unsettling ripples of my skin, bones, and organs from his communication waves; and the stares and body language that he flung back at me periodically as he dragged me away from my hiding spot out into the open. He terrified me.
Near a sand drift he paused, and after a moment of fumbling, He freed one of his hands from me, and some of his claws retracted from my flesh. He placed his palm flatly against an invisible barrier and the door of a juz̈uṣùs̈ opened. Inside, there were snake shell bindings bindings that he retrieved with his free hand and affixed around my arms, torso, and tail. He then pushed me into the back of the juz̈uṣùs̈, secured his settings, and dove.
Bruised and bleeding, I fought with the dark that tried to overtake me. It became exceedingly difficult to remember my purpose. To feed the urge to fight. To even want to survive. What was worth all of this?
As if in answer to my silent questions, he set the pressurization settings and drained the water from the cabin, no doubt so that he could speak his threats.
“Puny, human sympathizer. I hope that you have learned your lesson.”
“What lesson is that?” I asked, spitting blood out onto the juz̈uṣùs̈ floor with my falsest fearless voice.
“Humans are not worth the trouble that they cause. You have put your life in danger for what? A lab animal?”
“A lab animal? How can you say that? Have you ever spent time with a human?” I asked him.
“Yes, I have,” he said, turning to face me. “It was a human who did this to me as I wore a skin just like his. The barbarian.”
He showed me an empty and scarred eye socket. In a strange way, it blended with his other severe features. His fangs took up too much of his face, and the slit of his existing pupil was surrounded by a deep and hollow pigmented band. The only thing about him that wasn’t threatening was the cord around his neck that ended in etched sea glass.
“Why would a human do that?” I asked.
“It is in their nature to kill each other and everything else that they touch. They are not like us, and you would do well to recognize that unless you want to die.”
“Not all humans are savages or fools. Some of them are kind. They are like us. Variable. Some good and some . . .”
He interrupted me with a slap across my face. It hurt much more in the air as there was nothing to stop the speed and strength that he put behind it. A bright light filled my eyes, and I could barely see. The aching in my cheek and jaw was immediate.
“Do not talk,” he said, “or I will quiet you.”
I followed his direction, afraid of what he might do to keep me quiet and believed that he would follow through with his threat. I simply laid down, tethered together and waited. What else could I do but see how badly things could get from here?
When we arrived at the tsez̈ø, I didn’t recognize the entrance. What if it was the entrance to human studies? Would it be filled with poor, bleeding creatures? And was I intended to suffer in the same way?
My curiosity must have shown on my face, as my captor turned to me, laughed and said, “You will know what is to come soon enough.”
He hit me with a closed fist that connected with my left temple and everything went black.
Chapter 17
I
awoke in an empty room tethered to the wall by my tail, waist, and arms. My ties were holding me upright in an unnatural seated position, and my head slouched forward. My neck ached and my head was throbbing. I tried to lift my arm to my face, but the bindings were too tight.
“Hello?” I croaked, unsure of who might respond.
The scent of fear seeped from my pores, and I was ashamed that any oɦiṣod would sense my cowardice even from a distance. How could I have been so reckless and stupid as this? Of course I could never have saved Penny, and in my ignorance, I myself was captured as well.
There was no answer to my call or my unconscious, bodily com
munication. I struggled to understand the situation. Pain, panic, and hunger demanded my focus, and the pounding pressure that permeated my entire skull and face was particularly distracting.
The aloneness compounded my fears, but then, it gave me relief. While this was truly a terrible situation, it could’ve been much worse. I could’ve been here with my captor after all.
I scanned the room. It had only empty storage and the perfunctory drainage system on the floor. A repurposed study room or office turned dungeon. What in oceans was I here for? What did they want with me? If there were charges to be filed against me, there would need to be a peace officer present. This unofficial room and the violence of my captor petrified me. Nothing about this situation was common, predictable, or correct. As the questions came, breaths heaved my shoulders up and down in answer.
I needed to get out of there. Each time I refocused, there was more of the same—pain, panic, hunger, doubt, and fear. How could I overcome this challenge if I couldn’t control the one resource that I had? My mind.
I struggled against my tethers and my face became wet. It wasn’t until the stream had made it down to my chest that I paused. Were those tears? How could I be crying in my born body? These tear ducts only flushed particulates from my eyes, but now, they watered without such provocation. How?
This tiny testament to my humanness calmed me. My change gave me hope. It inspired me to take the first small step to freedom.
The tethers were my first obstacle. They were quite tight, and each was far enough from my extremities that I couldn’t easily wriggle my way out. I looked around the room for something that might assist me, but nothing was within reach.
I stared at the drain in the room’s center. Perhaps, I could trigger the water system of this office somehow. Surely, the moisture would assist me in pulling out at least my arms. They were tightly bound, but I was double-jointed after all. With some lubrication, I might just be able to overextend my shoulders and elbows and pull my arms free. I thought about this for a time, looking around the room again and again, but it was too risky. If the water filled the whole room, and I wasn’t able to escape, I would suffocate unless someone came within a few hours.
Once I found my solution, I felt ignorant for taking so long to discover it. I would simply need to secrete venom from my fangs for the lubrication necessary. I opened my mouth wide, overextended my jaw, and spat the venom at my bindings. I missed for the first several attempts, but after some time I was finally successful at reaching the binding on my right arm. The venom oozed between the snail shell cuffs and my skin, and I began to twist my arm back and forth to spread the venom across the surface.
I spat more and more until the binding was saturated in venom and then began the process of freeing my arm by pulling it upward. As much as I wriggled and changed positions, overextending my joints was not enough. I clenched my jaw and yanked my shoulder until it popped.
A scream bubbled up from my chest, so I kept my lips closed tightly to hold it in. I wiggled my body back and forth and up and down to pull my arm free and the pressure and pain building in my shoulder as it flopped around helplessly made my headache seem like a tiny discomfort.
Once my arm was free, I pushed myself down as far as I could until the waist binding was choking my rib cage. Then, I was just barely able to use the end of my tail to grab my wrist and pull it straight in front of me. With my tail wrapped around my wrist, I leaned forward closer to it and pushed my arm hard until the ball of my shoulder popped back into its socket.
Another muffled scream flew around the inside of my cheeks and I had to rest for a moment, panting from the heat that was already filling my shoulder, chest, and back. I scooted back up to loosen the pressure on my upper rib cage and used my free hand to pull at the restraints around my other arm. I wasn’t able to get it loose after many, many attempts. More tears streamed down my face. I needed to repeat the horrible process on the left side.
The pop in my shoulder was maddening, and I nearly doubled over in shock from the excruciating pain in my upper body. Afraid that I might pass out, I quickly popped my shoulder in place with my tail. Luckily, I didn’t lose consciousness but merely went into some sort of otherworldly dissociative state.
There was intense pressure on my aching parts, but none of it felt real. The pain was like a traffic light rather than a blaring siren trying to capture my attention. It was as though I watched myself from somewhere above while I compressed my ribs as small as I could and dragged myself up and out of the restraints, struggling to grip the floor.
I clawed at the smooth, slime-treated floor until I was able to free myself. I watched myself flop onto my back and lay, sprawled across the floor, panting, with my forked tongue darting in and out of my mouth. My body labored to regulate and understand my environment.
By some miracle, I maintained consciousness. I searched every corner and crevice from my vantage point on the floor. The door was the most obvious but least advantageous exit. As some sort of prisoner, it’d certainly be locked and even touching it would alert anyone outside that I was free of my restraints.
I slid across the room and searched for alternatives, taking several rest breaks even though the space was small. I even tested the drain to see if my shoulders might fit through. They might’ve, but I wasn’t sure if I could manage the pain of being jostled around in such a tiny space. Besides, I had no idea where it went.
The door, then, was my only option. Study rooms were not equipped to lock from the outside, so I wasn’t sure how a lab office would be overridden to achieve this. Without touching it, I observed the door from every angle and used all of my senses.
My captor had brought me here himself. The aggressive pheromones that he’d left behind, implied that whatever was in this room was his property. Maybe then, the restraints and scent marking were the only things keeping me in.
I put my ear softly against the door and heard nothing in the drainage/decontamination chamber. So, I pushed lightly. To my surprise, there was give, it was going to open! I listened at the slight gap that had opened between the door and the wall and still heard nothing. I could not smell, feel, or taste anything beyond my captor’s strange territorial scent warning.
With Penny in my mind, I pushed the door and slid carefully out into the chamber between the lab and hallway. Everything was dark, much as it had been in the room, and I couldn’t sense anyone nearby. Without direction, I slithered to my left and listened at doors as I passed them. This was a strange hallway with no windows at the chambers or in the doors. It seemed that the researchers here weren’t as transparent as those in my department, and I worried about where I might be headed.
After some time, I turned a corner and was pelted with sensations. First, a muffled noise, barely audible. And then, a smell almost like mine. Someone was in pain and frightened, but they weren’t just like me. It was a human.
I followed the scent to a door and put my ear to it, letting my tongue speed in and out feverishly, trying to take in data. I heard a deep moan and then a voice.
“Hello? Are you still in there?”
Then there was an answering voice, “Yes! I’m here!”
“Oh thank god!” answered the first voice.
I didn’t recognize the first voice, but the second was hers. It was Penny. I opened the door in front of me and saw the first woman who’d spoken. She was also tethered up but differently than I’d been. She was tied to a strange chair and had a swollen belly. I smelled how pregnant she was, and if we’d been in the water, I would have been able to sense the child myself through my vibrations. The fetus was large, nearly ready to be born, but something seemed off.
I scooted toward her, and she howled in fear of me, “No! No more!”
Taken aback, I scooted away from her a bit, “It’s alright. I’m here to help you.”
She continued to screech, uninterested in what I had to say, and I held my hands up submissively, signaling that I was
not there to harm her. I must’ve been just as terrifying as anyone else here to her. I advanced toward her slowly just so that I could loosen her restraints and then get to Penny.
I slid toward her and reached out to her wrists saying, “I’m going to let you go. You can come with Penny and me, but you’ll have to be quiet!”
Just as I freed her from her first restraint, everything went black.
***
The darkness greeted me before the sensations of my body. When the pain came, I was tender and swollen in several places, and there were heavy weights strung across my forehead, chest, arms, waist, and tail. I tried to move and the cold snail shell of my restraints dug into my scales. They wouldn’t budge and neither could I.
My eyes adjusted poorly to the light. It was dim, and created shadows in every direction. I was prone flat on my back and facing the ceiling of a room, probably the one I’d been in earlier. But, I was closer to the ceiling now. The cold surface beneath me felt like a table.
Then, there was movement in my peripheral vision and a scent. It was a male musk. Threatening and territorial, but not in the same way as my captor’s.
“Who are you?”
There was no answer, nothing verbal nor otherwise. Just the wall of aggression. A warning that floated through the air. I waited to be struck for speaking out, but nothing happened.
My tongue flick in and out of my mouth and obtained no new information. Frustrated, I peppered the guard with questions. I needed answers and was entitled. Prisoners were not kept without trial in this day and age!
“Where am I?”
Silence.
“Why am I here?”
Silence.
“Who brought me here?”
Silence.
“What’s going to happen to me? Why am I being held captive? Where’s Penny? Why don’t you answer me?!”