Chapter 1
For what felt like the thousandth time I woke up. Again in that dank cage in what seemed to be the darkest corner of the yeerk pool. Again waking to the sight of several dracon beam barrels, always steadily aimed at my head through the cage bars. Again to the screams of the hundreds of other humans who, every three days, caught a glimpse of my life.
I groaned. The biostasis had warn out, and I was left to feel the fresh scars left from the latest "experiments" performed on me while I was under. I hadn't eaten real food in months; they did something during biostasis to keep me alive. Somehow they gave me nutrients directly, through my blood or something. I was kept alive but my stomach still writhed in my gut, screaming for something to fill it.
I checked to see what they had done to me this time. There were almost always burn marks on my palm, punctures from where they took blood or whatever it was they took from me, bruises on my wrists and ankles. Same old same old.
That was my life for over two months. I would have told you my name if I could remember it, because I really had no idea who I was at that time. I knew other things, you know, like names of other people and things, places, language. I knew that my guards weren't normal. These Hork-bajir, and the other creatures I'd seen around the yeerk pool, were definitely alien. That this satanic ritual of people depositing their yeerks in the pool, being locked in cages, and then pulled back into slavery by their yeerk was not right. Not normal. But God help me if I knew my name, or even when I had arrived at this place. Or why I had all this "special treatment": a solitary cage, 24/7 guards. The yeerks were definitely doing tests on me every time I went under, but I didn't know what kind. I did have some idea why they were doing tests though.
I had been having these dreams, though I don't know weather they were dreams or memories, over the past few nights. Usually they felt like dreams. Other times they felt more real than the hell I was living through every day.