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Voyager: Chapter 10

The small container I was hanging in was just barely large enough to hold me, but it was made of a transparent material which allowed me to look out into the room beyond. It was a circular, donut shaped room made of an orange metal like substance. A catwalk was on the floor and went over a mesh of wires that run underneath. The ceiling was some three meters above and had pipes running along it that left the room through slats that were positioned above what looked like a closed hatch of some sort . I couldn't see anyone else, there were other containers like the one I was in, but each of them were empty as far as I could tell.

I tried to move my arms against the restraints, but I barely had the strength to raise my head, I wasn't going to breaking free in any short amount of time. What worried me the most were the tubes that were both pulling my blood out of me at a slow, but steady pace and pumping a cold, clear fluid into me at the same time. What was that stuff? Was it going to kill me? Why was I naked? I was entirely nude and actually clean. My fur wasn't in the best shape it had ever been in, but it was clear the dirt that had matted itself onto it for so long. What next? Was someone to come in and expect me to ask him to draw me like one of his French girls? I needed to stop watching old films and get back to what was important.

I remembered that I was with Liam, but I was caught. They dragged me by my tail and it wasn't long before I passed out from the pain. Now I was here, at their mercy, whoever they were. At no point did I actually see the aliens. Listening, the sound of a deep thrumming could be heard through the walls, but it was continuous like machinery. The air smelled of chemicals, masking any other smells that may be lingering in the air. There was no sign of any other kind of life that I could tell from my severely diminished senses.

A sudden feeling came over me. It was odd, as if someone just out of sight was watching me intently and maliciously. I shivered from it and felt very small and insignificant hanging hopelessly. Whatever was watching me seemed to relish in my despair, which only made me feel even worse. There was no fighting it, it came at me so fast and brutally that there was no way I would have been able to fend it off.

"He's awake!" A high pitched voice cried out. It sounded as If it was coming from right in front of me, I felt some sort of presence as well. It was foreboding and dark. I looked around to see if I could discern the location of the voice, but there was nothing to see. Nothing had physically changed.

"It's listening to us now." A deep synthesize answered the first one.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice raspy and dry. I swore the sound was coming from in front of me, but there was only the catwalk there.

"What should we do with him?" The high pitched voice asked, completely ignoring my attempts at communication.

"The fate of the subject is not ours to decide. Another has already gone through the appropriate procedures to lay claim to this one." While the high pitched voice was full of energy and excitement, the synthesized voice was dull and without any emotions. It spoke of me more like an object than a living thing and I had the impression that it thought that as well.

"Pity." I swore I could feel whatever it was, just glaring down at me. "We were going to have so much fun."

"Agreed."

Their presence lingered for a little longer, but slowly faded away over time. When I could no longer feel them, I slumped into my shackles. I didn't realize how stiff I became when they had come and even holding myself up for that small amount of time left my arms feeling like gelatin.

Who claimed me? It didn't sound good in any way, the two that were talking earlier seemed to want to do something to me. It couldn't be good, no matter what it was.

The hatch opened up with a rusty creak and two green collectors came out. Those ones were different, slightly, but noticeable. They had absolutely no human qualities anymore. Each hand had an extra thumb after the pinky and they didn't even have toes, their feet were just rubbery pads that made a wet slapping noise each time they took a step. There was no indication of where the head started after the body, it just all came up smoothly to a bullet shaped head that forced them to turn their entire body to look off to their sides.

*Slap, slap, slap.*

They walked over to me. Jesus, they were uglier up close. No lips, no eye lids and only two small round holes for a nose. These ones didn't stare though. Liam had mentioned that collectors had a tendency to stare and I had begun to notice that as well. These two however were too busy tinkering with the container I was in.

I felt the urge to just insult them in every way imaginable, but I held my tongue. Unlike many times before, I was in no position to crack a joke.

There was a sudden pop as the tubes connected to me separated and fell out of ports on the back of the container. The fluid sprayed out of them, but not me. There were metal seals in me that prevented whatever was inside of me from spilling out. The one on the back of my head however remained there. I couldn't see it, but I imagined a horrid tangle of wires, not tubes, going into me.

The collectors then did something that detached my container from the wall where it slowly slid down and hovered with me on my back and looking up. They wasted no time and began to push my now levitating personal prison out of the donut room into a long corridor.

There weren't any windows or anyone else in the halls as far as I could see. I could only bring up my head a bit to look around, but without a doubt, it was pretty much empty. There weren't any windows or anything or particular interest. Occasionally there would be an intersection and even less occasionally we would actually turn at one of them, but nothing. There weren't even any lights that I could see, I couldn't find a source of light. No bulbs or bright spots that hinted there as something, the hall was simply evenly lit. It wasn't bright or dark, just perfect. There weren't even any shadows.

I should have been more concerned about where the two collectors were taking me rather than trying to figure out light seemed to be coming from now where and yet illuminating everything. But, a tired and confused mind is easily entertained by the smallest and least significant of things.

It wasn't long after I came to the conclusion that some sort of luminescent paint or coating on the walls were responsible that the scenery changed.

One moment, there was just the same old boring empty hall with the still butt ugly creatures pushing me, then the next thing I knew, there was a large amount of natural sunlight coming in through a window that was running the length of the hall.

I strained to turn my head, the wires or tubes were making it tough to do that and look out. It was there that I really saw the full extent of the damage to the city. From the ground, I had gotten a pretty good idea of how much damage was there, but nothing could have prepared me for the view. It looked like old images that I had seen in a museum, it was a spitting image of a carpet bombed city from World War 2. Only the shells of buildings stood and a sullen gray tone seemed to cover the entirety of it from all of the ash and dust that had settled back down. In the center was the remains of the Hawthorne Medical building. There were spires of it skeleton that were still standing up hundreds of feet into the air like ribs.

As I looked farther out, I saw ships. Their rounded black bodies floated silently over the harbor and the ocean. They came in all sizes, a few were hundreds of meters long, but most were no larger than two hundred meters. Very few were over the city, including the one that I was in. Most just hanged out near the edges, making a ring around the city. Then there was one that seemed to float up higher than all of the others. It was actually right over the skeletal remains of the Hawthorne tower. It wasn't any larger to sported anything unique that made it stand out, it was simply it position above and in the center that got my attention. Some kind of command ship maybe. People liked being above everyone else when leading for ruling, why not aliens.

I was pushed away from the mirror back into the mysteriously lit hallways, but not for long. We stopped by another hatch and the collectors simply left me there in front of it. They didn't hook me up to anything, they just simply left.

"What?" I yelled at the sound of their slapping feet. "No goodbye? Just going to leave me after such an invigorating conversation?" Of course there was no reply. The only noises I had ever managed to get out of a collector that wasn't the sound of its head exploding were unintelligible gurgles and grumbling. Even those kinds of noise seemed to be from gas shifting around inside of them.

I was left alone. I was already bored with the lights so I tried to keep my mind off of the stupidly worries that were plaguing the back of my mind by trying to think of where the pipes were going. What would they possibly be transporting around the ship? Air? Fuel? They were aliens and that meant that they may not be reliant on that sort of stuff. I didn't get to think for long before the hatch opened and my container floated in by itself. What was the point of having the collectors push me around in the container could move in its own.

This room that I coming into looked more familiar, like a doctor's offices. It was white, smelled sterile and there was an actual gurney there sitting off in the corner. There were wooden counters on the wall that had basic supplies such as q-tips and cotton balls. There was still the problem of the source less light though and the whiteness hurt my eyes.

The container openly like a brief case, complete with the sound of locks snapping open and then my restraints simply stopped restraining. There was a hiss from behind my head and I could suddenly get up. I was still a bit unsteady, but most of my strength had come back. Whatever that fluid they were putting into me to replace my blood didn't seem to have any effects on my wellbeing at the moment, which was surprisingly disturbing.

I ran my hand to the seals that dotted me. They were rough and had a sharp point in the middle of their circular shape that pricked my finger on, drawing a sliver of pinkish fluid. I sucked on the end of my finger. It tasted a bit like iron like I would expect form blood, but there was also a bitterness to it as well. Good thing I wasn't some sort of vampire.

I spent the next few minutes exploring my surroundings. The cabinets were all empty and they were made of metal, simply painted or something to look like wood. The q-tips were safely locked away in the jar which I found impossible to lift off the surface. It was just made for looks, nothing else. Why? Another question to add to my rapidly growing reserve of questions that also consisted of that one word, why.

I tried the hatch next, but there was no visible way to open it. No control panel or switch to flip. Trapped in a fake room until someone or something decided to do something with me, there was nothing to do but wait. I sat down on the gurney and did just that.

The wait wasn't long. The hatch began to open with a creaking sound. I got up put the gurney between myself and the door, or to be put more simply I hid behind it. Everything was stuck to the ground and useless as a weapon, I didn't even know what was going to come through.

I didn't expect what did come through. A man in a white lab coat holding a clipboard walked in. He looked at me and smiled. I merely looked at him.

"Da Fuck?" I muttered at the man.