One of the few things that separated sapient life from its animal compatriots was a sense of wonder, an endless curiosity about the world beyond the horizon, a yearning for that which was not immediately understood. A lust for the unknown.
For millennia people had stared into the night, gazing upward at the many constellations as, each night, they embarked on their sojourn across the black-and-blue abyss, capturing the imaginations of young and old for generations.
So vast, their permanence had aroused the collective fantasies of endless collectives and cultures, families and empires, prompting theories of ghosts and gods, supernatural powers and the bindings of fate, evolving endlessly as one dynasty replaced the next, as civilisations evolved and grew, finally reaching a far more modern verdict of one's humble place in the broader universe.
With the wonderment of bygone eras replaced by scientific advancement, it was fair to say that the awe surrounding the expanse beyond the horizon had become even more intense, more palpable. After all, as much as technology had changed, the simple act of sitting and watching the stars had not.
When the weather was just right, one could make out the central band of the galaxy, nebulae and globular clusters and stellar giants alike twisted into the most intricate of glowing swirls stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other. If one watched for long enough, one might be lucky enough to catch a brief streak of light as a meteor grazed the atmosphere, disappearing in the blink of an eye. And if one was in the right place, at the right time, one might catch the most spectacular show of all – an aurora reaching across the night sky in shades of green, red or purple, great columns of light reaching toward the heavens in their searchlight meanderings.
But out here, dear God out here, there was nothing.
There was no atmosphere to deflect and ignite meteor showers, nor was there a magnetosphere to capture solar ejecta and light up the night sky. In fact, as unrecognisable constellations rolled past in perpetual darkness, it had quickly become apparent that there was no star here at all, let alone one close enough to discern night from day. There was no central band of hazy light to provide a recognisable waypoint amongst the black abyss.
Pale, bony hands pressed against the thick, grimy glass standing between three cramped walls and complete nothingness.
There was nothing here but pinpricks of light, the same pinpricks of blasted light that had passed by enough times to be in the order of hundreds, never twinkling – without an atmosphere, there would be no twinkle.
With one wall comprised entirely of glass, the rest of this infernal cupboard seemed to be built with a slow but certain descent into insanity in mind. Sapient minds were built for patterns and revelled in the mystery, plucking clues from that which matched and that which did not, and building patterns – and thus answers – from that which they found. With few patterns apart from the meanderings of alien constellations, there was little useful information and even less context upon which one could base any sort of bearings. That, too, he was certain was by deliberate design.
While the endless expanse of stars may have left some completely stumped, there were certain observations that became immutable after enough time spent in space. It was immediately apparent to his seasoned eyes that he was not on the surface of a planet; the stars crossed from the right of his window to the left in one singular dimension, never in the sort of circular arc one's brain was wired to expect. That, too, ruled out being in orbit of any sort of celestial body – the endless abyss in itself confirmed the theory, the frame of the window never capturing light from any external source. The rapid rotation, being in the order of a few hours, at a guess, left him wondering if this was near anywhere at all, or merely a derelict adrift in open, featureless space.
Though, given the odd comings-and-goings of multiple ships as time dragged on, he had theorised it was more likely some sort of station; the ships came and went at some distance, drifting off toward the bottom right corner of his grubby window and returning to the night after what seemed like hours, near enough to discern but never near enough to recognise. In the endless dark, even these refused to conform to any sort of pattern.
And for all the maddening nothingness, it made for far better viewing than every other point in this featureless box.
From what he could tell in the perpetual near-darkness, the other three walls of this cramped box were constructed from the sort of thick alloys one would expect of spacefaring hardware, assembled with little care and painted long ago in a grey, off-green concoction that had since begun to peel. Hastily-placed rivet-like domes tracked down the edges of the murky panels, their rows irritatingly uneven. Between them lay expanses of square corrugation, doubling as sound absorption and an uncomfortable surface to lean against.
The only completely smooth expanse of wall, apart from the glass window, was the thin strip of metal at the head of the sagging, rickety bunk which barely contained his bulk – or significant lack thereof – and had been worn smooth over the years, the grey-green paint yielding to metal polished by many other pairs of shoulders resting against it. Propped against floppy, noisy springs that barely clung to life, the thin mattress shook whenever he moved and threatened to roll him aside and dunk him head-first into the miserable, utilitarian toilet immediately beside the bed. Such was the cramped nature of the room, there was little room for both items alongside each other. In fact, if he reached from his present perch, he could touch the opposite wall.
Hour upon hour of squinting at the corrugated roof from the confines of the bunk had revealed a dim illumination source in the form of a strip above each of the three metal walls, concealed from view and very much out of reach. It barely counted as illumination, given he could barely see his hands in front of him, but what he could make out in the insufficient lighting was the gradual fading of the angry, purple-and-black bruises and welts he'd sported from head to toe below his pale skin when he'd arrived here. The ache in his twisted wrist had faded, and through regular, careful exercise of the limb – like he had anything better to do with his time – he'd regained full movement of the joint in question.
The mighty goose-egg on his head and matching swelling along the left side of his face had faded, too; those he had gained from headbutting the metallic deck of his ship, though he remembered nothing that occurred between that moment and waking up, dazed and in pain, staring at this very roof and left to claw at the glass wall in a confused panic.
At the rate his body healed, he had assumed by now it had been weeks of being cramped in here with nary a word from his captors, largely left alone with his increasingly worrisome thoughts as time droned on meaninglessly, adrift in a haze of stagnant pinpricks of light. There was an inkling in his mind who was responsible for his current predicament; there had been a brief flash of orange immediately behind him as chaos had unfolded aboard his ship, the same orange that presented itself every time his thoughts would be distracted by the wardens of this place. But as familiar as the wretched creatures now were, their murky ochre flesh and sweaty stench difficult to cleanse from one's mind, he still had no idea who they were. The yellowed tusks erupted from large, loose mouths and curved upward towards their swine-like noses were not of a species he was familiar with, and with their formidable bulk standing more than a head above him, they weren't of a species he planned to wrestle freedom from with brute force, either.
They had made appearances at frustratingly inconsistent time periods – that, too, he had no doubt was deliberate. Sometimes he would be left until he was doubled over his stomach in ravenous agony, almost too weak and dizzy to shift from the bed and devour the grey, featureless gruel shoved through the slot in the cupboard's door. Other times they would arrive in rapid succession, perhaps four, five, six times in the period of a day – he assumed – shoving food through the slot or, more commonly, simply making an inordinate amount of noise for their entertainment. No matter how frequently or infrequently they passed by, they took malicious pleasure in crashing and banging against the metal door so fucking loudly that he could have sworn he'd almost suffered several heart attacks. He'd almost lost bladder control from fright on several occasions while he was sleeping the stars away, such was the racket. They were attempting to keep him disoriented. Unfortunately, they were succeeding.
It wasn't like he hadn't tried to resist. At first he had shouted through the door, demanding answers; when his demands had gone ignored, he'd jammed the latch open with his food and hollered through that, trying to get a glimpse of the ochre beasts as they slammed their metal-guarded wrists against the door. That hadn't been wise, in hindsight. The door itself was much of the source of the sound's amplification, and the two attempts at demanding attention through the slot had resulted in deafening ringing in his ears for hours afterward.
More tentative whining had eventually taken place instead, waiting for the silent beasts to move further down the corridor before harrying them with noise of his own. Occasionally he had banged his own fists against the door, though it had immediately resulted in more ringing in his ears as the pounding echoed through his tiny cupboard and into his bones. At times he had shouted himself hoarse to drown out the noise in his own head, yelling until the near-inedible gruel had burned his throat on the way down, but as always, he had been completely ignored.
Eventually, as his bruises had healed, he had simply fallen silent.
Thoughts of escape had haunted his psyche as much as one could expect in that eventual silence, presenting themselves with every detail that caught his eyes. What could be disassembled, what could be done to distract the ogre-like wardens? Where was this place, and how quickly could he navigate wherever it was if he did manage to break free?
Today, whatever point in the day it may be, his thoughts had finally fallen nearly as silent as the universe around him; without trying to tear the toilet apart for useful tools or fragments, without trying to count the seconds and minutes between guard visits, without trying to pace the stream of ships coming and leaving, he simply pondered the starscape before him. Who, if anyone, lived amongst them? What were their cultures like, had they discovered how to explore their neighbouring systems? Had they reached their age of ascension, reaching beyond the heavens and sending themselves amongst them?
Did they know about this place?
If these people – could they be considered people? – intended to break him, he conceded they were slowly succeeding. The growing desperation, he feared, was gradually yielding to dread. And dread, he knew, would finally yield to hopelessness – by which point, no matter the state of his body, he would be as good as dead.
Before he could finish that thought, the distant clank of boots against the metal deck beyond echoed against the hall's bulkheads and toward his cramped cupboard of a cell. No doubt they were headed this way, but they often were. Oh, good, he mused bitterly, more soulless goop for...whatever meal we're up to now.
Predictably, the footsteps drew closer and closer before stopping immediately outside the cell. He awaited the screech of the chute they served their limp, grey meals through, but instead, he was greeted by a metallic rustling he was unfamiliar with. Then, immediately before him, a click.
In a breath he was blinded by searing white light as it poured through the heavy door – until he found himself standing face-to-face with a truly massive Humanoid. Muscular, armoured and damn near filling the cell, the creature was clearly of the same species that had been feeding him for who-knows-how-long: the same speckled, burnt-orange flesh; the same heavy brow ridges, their thick plume of black hair meeting in the middle; the same pig-like nose above significant tusks, although this one's left appeared fractured halfway along its length; the same deadly silence.
There was little time for the swell of panic to grasp at his chest before the monstrosity had curled huge, ham-fisted digits around his upper arm and all but yanked him from his feet, leaving him scrambling in the wake of the creature as the blinding white of the hallway beyond burned his vision in a tear-soaked haze. The warden was easily twice his diminutive size, dragging him as though he were a broken doll. There was little he could do but run behind, bare toes struggling against the cold, metallic floor as he was yanked sideways.
"Who are you? Where are you taking me?"
In response, the enormous guard yanked him forward with such violence that he finally lost all footing and found himself being dragged along as dead weight along the grated surface for a few paces. Alright then, no more questions for now.
A seemingly endless procession through hallway after blinding, white-hued hallway ensued; at more than one point, he was certain they had doubled back on themselves, though through the uniform paneling and near-identical steel door frames that whirled by, the messages embossed in their surfaces unintelligible, he could simply have imagined it. He didn't know why they were bothering – he was already disoriented to the point of near-insanity, there was no need to finish the job.
Just as abruptly as the journey started, it finished; the guard stopped dead outside a windowed, polished door, keyed it open with a small, glowing token, picked him up by the threadbare cotton of his oversized captor-issued overalls, and unceremoniously dumped him onto a large, unpadded, thin seat by the room's table. With a slam of the door, the guard disappeared, and his world was once again descended into deafening silence.
That silence droned on to the point that he had since caught his rattling, panicked breath, and had the opportunity to examine his freshly skinned, bleeding knees through the torn fabric of his overalls. The room was as spartan as his cell, albeit significantly brighter; in fact, the off-yellow tinge of the walls was almost pleasant, if only by virtue of actually being a colour. The table he sat before appeared to be some kind of frosted plexiglass, and the chair of some light, solid artificial substance not unlike plastic. This didn't seem to be a high-cost venture, whatever it was.
More footsteps eventually approached, but the footfalls seemed softer, lighter; idly, he imagined whoever it was had opted out of the thick boots that seemed commonplace around here, and walked with perhaps more of an air of grace than the hulking guards. Hulking...everyone is hulking compared to you, mate.
The room's internal door swung open with a faint squeak, and another of the burnt-orange creatures stepped quietly through, staring down half-heartedly at a thin hand-held data pad; he was predictably large, but lacking the sheer bulk of the guards and the heavy brutishness of their features. On second glance, it appeared he also lacked the oversized tusks jutting out of his jaw, with an aquiline nose distinctly more like his own – there were blatant similarities between the wardens and this particular example, but he was left perplexed as to whether they were, in fact, the same species. Dressed in navy-hued, somewhat plain suit that presumably passed as fashionable in these parts, this alien man would almost have provided a welcome change from what he'd come to expect if it weren't for the thinly-veiled glint of malice in his black, soulless eyes.
With a soft screech, the man pulled the chair on the opposite side of the table away and seated himself, matter-of-fact and slightly off centre, before the shrinking prisoner. Yet more silence ensued, maddeningly; it felt as though yet another aeon had passed before the creature finally glanced across the table, sighed, and rested the data pad against the plexiglass surface.
"Kyrzyk, is it?"
His spine froze, taking his breath with it; it wasn't so much the creature's trollesque gravel tone that chilled him to the bone, but the fact that the first word he'd heard in the longest indeterminate time was his own name.
"Y-yeah…" he responded thinly, every question he had about his current predicament slipping from him like fog.
Glancing back down at the data pad, the creature choked out a subtle, pitying laugh beneath his breath, before staring back across the table at the diminutive man. "My, my; aren't you an unlucky, sorry soul."
He simply sat, jaw agape, unable to find the words he so desperately wanted to say. The creature seemed to observe him for an age before feigning concern with a crease of his heavy, hairy brow, and leaned closer. "You have no idea what happened, do you?"
"Wh-..." he choked. This wasn't how he'd planned any kind of conversation with these people going. What had befallen him? His last memory before finding himself imprisoned had been piloting the shuttlecraft back from a mission on a distant but allied world, and was two days away from rendezvous with the ship...and then, nothing. He had been at the helm in empty space at high velocity. There was a crash – was there a crash? – and then he had woken up, beaten and delirious, on that damned sagging bunk, watching that first bowl of gruel being shoved through the slot in the cell door. He recalled the smell of it left him dry-retching, then emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet next to the bed. No, no; he had no idea what had happened.
In the distant vestiges of his mind, he was certain there had been a momentary glimpse of orange. And yet...
The unidentifiable alien had clearly read the expression on his face. Or was this how it always went? He had nothing to base this encounter upon, no context to which he could place it. He nodded sagely, then stared back down at the data pad, then back to Kyrzyk. "You, my dear sir, are in quite a situation. But an awful lot has happened in the last half-year."
H-half a year! "Wh-..." he stammered again, his voice thin and hollow against his own ears. "Where am I? What are you talking about?"
With a pitying smile, the creature continued. "You're a long, long way from one Hell of a massacre. While you've been sleeping it off here, there has been an incursion throughout the quadrant. Something about the Borg, last we heard. Frankly we intend to stay well away from all of that nonsense, all seems unnecessarily dangerous."
"The B-...the Borg? Again! How!" Spluttering, eyes ready to fall from his skull, Kyrzyk all but collapsed in his seat as his face faded to ash. "I need to get back to the ship, I need to help!"
Bellows of laughter rattled the glass in the room's door, the creature cackling to the point he risked choking on saliva. "My poor idiot, why on Idris would you want to do that?"
"You don't understand!" Kyrzyk shot back, gripping the table with cold, trembling fingers as fire finally returned to his belly, "If the Borg are attacking the Federation, I need to get b-"
"What Federation!" He shot, malice taining his coal-tained eyes once again as he pounded a meaty fist against the tabletop. "There's nothing left to save! Don't you get it? You're a very, very long way from the carnage and you should be grateful! That makes you one of the few survivors of...what would you call it? An apocalypse? Yes, an apocalypse." Lowering his voice to a crackling, wet whisper, he leaned back against the table to calmly observe the pale, quaking Humanoid. "Kyrzyk. The Federation is gone. Your world is gone. Last we heard, almost every world in the region is gone. Fallen. Assimilated. Forsaken. Had your shuttle not strayed upon our furthest reaches, you would be among them. In fact…"
At this point, he wasn't sure whether he was going to throw up, or if his chest was going to rupture and spew his organs onto the floor. The creature's gleeful grin wasn't helping; in fact, in the furthest vestiges of what remained of his composure, he realised that this thing was enjoying this.
"In fact, you owe us quite the favour."
"Favour!" he spluttered, feeling the heat of indignation rising in his chest. "What the devil for!"
"Seeing as you're here," the creature smirked, "And not a drone aboard a Borg Cube, there's that. There's also the, uh, minor detail that we didn't destroy your shuttle on sight for crossing into our territory illegally. And there's the simple fact that, my dear Kyrzyk, you are to be preserved."
...Preserved! "What? Why!"
"We can't very well let your entire species disappear from existence, can we? I suppose you could say you're strangely lucky amongst all this hard luck; you are the last remaining living Banthi in the galaxy. An entire species is now ascribed to you."
Those final words drifted straight past him as deafening ringing overwhelmed his ears, the room turning a searing white. The impossibility of it all almost choked a laugh free from his tightening chest, the only response his shattered mind could procure amongst the endless void that surrounded him.
His captor refused him the right to even begin processing this information, pressing on as he picked up the data pad and idly knocked the top corner of it against the plexiglass surface. "This is a lot of what we do, my good Sir. While we generally destroy unwelcome guests in our territory, we encounter a lot of final examples of a species these days. The Alpha Quadrant is presently somewhat of a disaster, one might say. But all this maintenance, all this storage, incurs costs. And rather than sink ourselves in shouldering all these costs, we place a small portion of these ongoing costs on the preservees."
When a response from the tiny, cowering Banthi was not forthcoming, the ochre beast released an impatient grunt and dropped the data pad back onto the table with an insubstantial clatter. "You'll be repaying your debt by fighting."
"...fighting?" He barely recognised his own voice – thin, wet, hollow.
"Yes, fighting," the creature responded, rising from his seat with a metallic screech before stepping astride the table and grasping at Kyrzyk's pale, exposed forearm and yanking him to his feet. "It's about time, anyway – I'll show you."
For a brief moment he had found himself wondering if remaining in the tiny cell for the rest of his days, blissfully unaware of the carnage that had befallen him and slowly going insane, would have been the better option. There he lacked any sense of scale, of the magnitude of what was going on beyond his glass wall, of the terrible, terrible information that would be crammed into his mind in a relentless barrage that he feared he could never process.
The thought kept threatening to surface as he was marched by guards through the halls of the station, corridor after barren corridor, once again shrouded in weighted silence as he struggled, and failed, to draw sense from anything that had happened to him of late.
The seemingly endless march came to an unceremonious halt before a set of heavy metal twin doors, soaring more than double his height and equally as wide. Two more of the orange-hued species stood astride the door, dressed in pale blue overalls and armed with what he could roughly assume were cleaning supplies; it quickly became apparent that what they were cleaning from the frames, openings and floor in front of the doors were splatters and trails of dark fluid. Dark red stains in the form of a series of heavy droplets and an immense hand-mark a foot above his head had since dried and required scrubbing by the creature standing in front of the left door. A trail of a different substance, dark green and still fresh enough to be easily wiped from the deck, emerged from the middle of the doors and several metres into the corridor they had just come from. Blood. It was unmistakably blood.
Kyrzyk's breath caught in his throat as the cleaners stood aside, allowing access to the twin doors as they began to grind along their rails after a metallic clack and wheezing hiss.
He hadn't a chance to ponder what lay beyond the doors before a large, calloused hand pressed against his back and shoved him into the broad, darkened corridor they revealed; almost losing his balance as his bare feet hit the polished surface, he staggered toward the blistering white light at its end with one of the guards pushing him along as if he were offering resistance. He was, of course, doing nothing of the sort.
His toes found themselves treading coarse, disheveled carpet as the light saturated his vision. Squinting as he forced his eyes to adjust, he continued to pace across the itchy surface toward the blurry outlines of two figures; as he blinked away the wetness the searing light drew from his eyes, it quickly became obvious that the larger of the silhouettes was yet another of the blasted guards. The other, a similarly orange creature far closer in height to his own diminutive one-and-a-half metres, he recognised as something whose likeness to the guards was in colour alone. With a bald, bulbous head between exaggerated ears that stretched from the top of his flat head to his jawline, the small, lithe male was unquestionably Ferengi.
Dressed in the same white prison garb, and with vastly more sinew rippling along his exposed arms than he was accustomed to seeing amongst the pint-sized race, Kyrzyk could not deflect the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. There was little doubt where this was headed.
The whiteness of the numerous overhead lights eventually yielded as his vision adjusted, fading to an uninspiring grey; this room was far more akin to an arena, with plain, dreary bulkheads forming a broad, circular ring around the group beneath a vast, clear dome interspersed with searing lights and a network of unidentifiable technology above them in a web that sprawled from one edge of the dome to the other. What lay beyond the dome was a mystery; the room's dull features were so brightly illuminated they flooded the overhead glass' surface with a myriad of incomprehensible reflections.
One final shove left him staggering toward the Ferengi, who barely moved an inch when presented with the pale, shaking newcomer; he simply watched, stoic and still, as Kyrzyk glanced fearfully at the guard, then well-dressed man behind him, then back again.
"This fine gentleman is going to show you what it's all about, Kyrzyk," his captor purred through choking gravel. "Nexar. You're the current champion of the featherweight class; I'm sure you'll do a fine job teaching our newest guest how to perform."
The Ferengi's dark eyes briefly met their captor's, before locking on Kyrzyk's. For a moment he could have sworn there was briefly a softness about them – worry? Pity? – before returning to their dark, dead glaze. Through the storm of his own thoughts, barely able to keep up with those alone, it was damned near impossible for him to begin assessing those of others. Regardless, his gut told him he was about to be forced to defend himself.
"Go on, what are you waiting for!" Their captor barked, a string of spittle flying from his lips as he enunciated his annoyance.
In a heartbeat, as though by muscle memory, the Ferengi's feet had fallen into a broad stance with one bare foot planted behind him with the other pointed directly at Kyrzyk; fists raised, the musculature about him was now undeniable.
Kyrzyk briefly considered announcing his distaste at this chosen course of action, but before he could even acknowledge it would get him nowhere, he found himself scrambling to block the shin that had, in the blink of an eye, snapped forth directly toward his stomach. He grabbed the limb with both hands, but the strength of his opponent was unexpected – with his wrists protesting the punishment and his insides lurching, he crumpled around the Ferengi's leg and crashed limply into the carpet.
Clutching his stomach with both arms as he gasped for air, the pale creature was barely aware of the guards grabbing the shoulder straps of his prison garb and wrenching him back to his feet. The Ferengi had somewhat relaxed his stance, but his attention remained silently locked on the small, pale man's hunched form; as their captor ordered the violence to continue through increasingly shrill barks, he obediently aimed a flurry of sharp, precise and startlingly swift punches toward Kyrzyk's face.
He was nothing if not a quick learner. This time he managed to deflect the first strike; one thin forearm slapped the flying fist aside, the other catching the Ferengi's right hook as he lurched to his left and staggered aside, toes scrabbling at the carpet.
Caught off-balance, the following left fist was left to strike its target unimpeded. As he recoiled backward the Ferengi snatched his wrist and yanked him back into range of a precisely-aimed elbow to the side of his head, before delivering one final, decisive roundhouse kick to the side that left the small, sallow alien sliding across the carpet with all of the grace of a dropped sack of potatoes.
Shaking, dry-retching, fingernails digging feebly at the arena's carpet, Kyrzyk hadn't noticed the sharply-dressed man squatting beside him until the creature hissed his disapproval at him, hot breath filling one ear. He flinched, convulsing into a foetal position.
"This was just a taste. If you don't want to kiss the carpet again, you best learn to defend yourself more adequately."
The very thought robbed him of the last of his tenuous control over his body, and, with one last retch, the contents of his stomach finally spilled free.
By the time he had been forced back out and across the cold, vaguely sticky metal deck beyond the arena and through two sets of doors at the end of long, featureless corridors, the Ferengi's blows had begun to take form. The right-hand side of his face had swollen significantly, puffy and purple enough that his eye had been forced half-shut. The opposing side of his jaw was in a similar state, with a split lip leaving a trail of drying blood oozing down his chin. Favouring his left side, his march was awkward and hunched though deliberate and resigned, ahead of the two guards flanking him through the halls. Though this journey through the bowels of wherever-the-fuck he was had been devoid of the inane looping and back-tracking of the previous two, it had been long enough that even with the broad strides of his captors urging him to march faster than he was comfortable, by its abrupt conclusion he had since caught his breath, regained control of his roiling stomach, and felt the throbbing, stinging burn of his fresh injuries setting in.
As the final doorway slid open, the guards nudged forward into a corridor lined by two endless walls of iron bars. Mottled with grime but unyielding regardless, their purpose was immediately apparent – these were cells. Two mighty rows of dark, small, sparse, and deafeningly quiet cells.
It quickly became obvious that despite the silence, they were not empty. Each cell he slowly shuffled past as the guards pushed him along the hall by his howling, twisted shoulder was clearly occupied – a hunched figure there, an alien sprawled across a thin, inadequate bunk there. Creatures of just about every colour, size and species imaginable watched him trickle blood across the floor in complete, stony silence.
The heavy gaze of an enormous but dishevelled Klingon stalked him from a cell to his right, silver eyes lacking the sort of malice he would have expected, displaying instead a withdrawn, disdainful scorn. In the darkness and through a subtle side-glance, he had noted the mighty warrior's signature brow ridges and dark flesh, standing proud against his current predicament, but there was little else prideful about the immense creature.
Opposite, an even larger Humanoid sat hunched against the wall of his cell, pale golden eyes watching, disinterested. The man's pallor rivalled his own with a slight purple tinge, though his staunch build left him looking closer to an oversized Human. The cell beside him contained a small, sleeping, wolf-like Humanoid whose dark grey fur appeared to be caked in blood, its tail matted and torn.
Easily twenty cells filled the room, with the open doors at the far end of the block revealing a further bank of cells beyond it. Through the silence he could hear the odd shuffle, the occasional deep breath, an otherworldly cough; almost every cell was occupied by a creature wildly different to his neighbours, all watching his ponderous shuffle past their doors.
Perhaps the most confronting of the figures was what he at first mistook for an enormous shadow being cast against the wall to his right, not far from the block's rear door; his eyes widened as the figure shifted against its bunk, its long, black limbs now obvious – it had to be at least a metre taller than him. Its humanoid silhouette was devoid of any obvious hair, and its only visible features in the darkness of the cell were a pair of violet irises that appeared to emit light of their own. The large eyes narrowed angrily as he caught its glare, and while it balled its clawed fists, it made not another movement.
The guards grabbed the collar of his prison garb as the stopped abruptly outside the final, unoccupied cell at the back of the block. As one held a small, glowing device against the panel on the door, a brief, harsh screech flooded the block followed by a heavy clank, and the moment the door swung open the other guard, cackling, shoved him through the gap with enough force to send him crashing down onto his searing, damaged wrists. The door slammed shut, and after briefly shouting something in an incomprehensible alien tongue, the guard cackled again, and marched out of the block with his colleague on his heels, leaving nothing behind but a return to utter silence.
A/N: Someone's in trouble.
The sequel to Those Whom Fortune Favours, and Intrepid, but can be read in isolation if that's your jive. Both of these stories can be found under the Prometheus tag, or via my profile/bio.
There will be vastly more recognisable characters making appearances as the story progresses.