An orange light flared around my vision and soon faded back to black. Something far away crashed, and then another something pinned my legs to whatever I was laying on. This frenzy couldn't be due to movement on my part—I couldn't feel anything to move. Something pinched the crevice of my left arm and I was engulfed in an inferno that slowly razed my organs and mulched them into heaving black sludge. My stomach roiled and bile coated my throat in liquid fire. Gagging and spitting, my lungs heaved and I tried to sit up, open my eyes, yell, puke, breathe breathe breathe, please!

I didn't want to die. I wasn't even twenty years old. I hadn't earned my Ph.D. I wasn't even employed full time. I'd never dropped acid or seen the ocean or studied abroad or eaten chocolate cheesecake or gotten my eyebrow pierced. I wasn't ready to not exist, but I wasn't allowed an opinion on the matter. Something buzzed right next to my ear, and then it stabbed my heart.

"Langston," I huffed, finally dropping my calm, I'm-trying-not-to-kill-you pretense. I had 287 plant species to memorize and categorize for next week's botany exam. Running on stale coffee fumes and my last can of Red Bull, I was a homicide suspect in the making. "Come on, I don't have time for this shit."

"Calm your mams, I'm almost done."

"You've been almost done for fifteen minutes. Log your hours and scoot."

He whirled away from my scope that he'd been tampering with in an effort to fix the resolution. I might have had better luck asking the samples to fix it themselves. "Exactly who's in charge here, hm?"

I couldn't remain polite any longer. "You make it sound rhetorical, but if you haven't noticed in the last month or so, it's kind of been me! Now move. I have work to do."

"Maybe because I have actual classes to focus on? Stuck up cunt," he growled.

I sneered. "Glad to know I work with a professional such as yourself."

"Whatever. Have fun with this shit." He glowered at me, then stormed out of the lab in a huff. Without logging his hours. Dumbass.

"Actual classes, my ass." Rolling my eyes, I turned to my station to fiddle with the microscope's res, but it was useless. The glass was warped or stained or something, just like the other five 'scopes occupying our cramped lab. I'd have to wait for Jim or one of the technicians to take a look at it, but I doubt anything would come of it before break. I'd just have to hope that these issues ceased once it was just Jim and I in the lab with no one else around to ruin the equipment. In the meantime, there was always Langston's mess to clean up…

I peeled my eyelids open before registering that my heart beat and that I was gulping air like a freshly snipped newborn. Sweet, sweet air filling and expanding lungs…but I was too greedy for visual stimuli to care much. Alas, all I could make out was darkness—not pitch black as before, but more of a general gray gloom that allowed me to pick out some vague contours of the room I found myself in.

I must have actually been alive, because I was back in the cylinder. I entertained the illogical notion that I'd be in a much better lit room if I were truly dead. Probably on a mortician's slab. (Ha, look at this one's liver—she partied! Nope, that's just the Adderall.) It certainly looked exactly like the cylinder, but maybe it was a different one? Maybe one with answers carved into the walls, or some dork waiting to tap out "LOL, bitch got punked" in Morse code. Ever the optimist.

There appeared to be a slight opening about ten feet above me that allowed an odd orangey light to sift in and settle like dust. From this small amount of light and what little sensation my battered body had left, I discovered that I no longer wore my leggings or my tank top or…anything. I expected humiliation, but only felt relief—the heat wasn't so bad now, though my sweaty body gleaned slightly in the low light. Gross.

I tried to switch my line of thinking to something other than my need for a shower. I wriggled my toes and discovered that I wasn't paralyzed. That's always a good deal. The back of my head no longer throbbed with my heartbeat, as it had when I'd initially come-to in this room, however long ago that might have been. I was on something soft, something incredibly soft…so soft that I actually groaned once I noticed how soft it was and I flipped onto my stomach to snuggle in further.

Holy fucking mistake of the century.

"Mother of—" I loosed every filthy word in my vocabulary, including at least three I'd picked up from my Hmong peers, and forced myself not to breathe or move in any way. Right in the center of my chest wrenched an ache that seemed to crack my ribs and stab my heart with their jagged ends. Like an icepick was lodged beneath my sternum. Something inside should have crunched or cracked. I bit into the softness, cursing it for giving so easily and wishing for a thick hunk of leather to grind my teeth into while ripping it a new one.

"No move."

I froze. A voice. Not mine. I was alone, cooking and dying all over again in a dark metal tube, and I heard something other myself talk. Lo and behold, I stopped moving. The pain didn't ebb, mostly because every functioning muscle in my body coiled and tightened at the voice.

"N'got. Still."

It was closer now, on my left, the pitch so low that there was a five second lag period between its utterance and my comprehension, and I still wasn't totally convinced I'd understood the words. Every hair on my body stood on end, my skin prickling. My heart slammed so painfully against my sternum that I was left winded, breathless as my ribs clutched every swollen organ and nerve in its protective cage, and squeezed until black darts pierced my peripherals. A very light, very tepid pressure appeared at the center of my back, causing me to cuss and lurch away with all the energy I didn't have.

"Loose. Re-leeeze. Re…" I can't begin to describe the qualities of the voice itself, but the speaker seemed uncertain about what they were saying. I surmised it to mean relax, which I was desperately trying to do, except the possibility of an entity using voice changing tech, while uttering the most chopped up English I'd ever heard, had me on edge. What the hell were they hiding? And why try to mask themselves from me, the one trying to hold back tears from the heavy, gripping pain in her chest?

"This is as good as it's gonna get, buddy," I managed to grunt through gritted teeth. The light pressure on my back became an undeniable hot weight. Some warm rolling sound, like polished stones clattering together in a bag of velvet, sounded right by my left ear. I tried my best to not jerk at the new noise, but instincts can't be calmed that easily. Even so, the current running through my skin eased up, and my anxious follicles finally allowed every tiny hair to lay flat. The pressure lightened.

"Help now. Still," it rasped. The voice was almost comically smoky, like a clueless frat guy attempting seduction. Couldn't they have chosen a more androgynous setting? Just a little less baritone and I might actually understand the garbling words. The hand made a minute movement and something sharp caught along the ridge of my spine. I jumped, arching away despite the displeased hiss at my back.

"I'm trying, I'm trying!"

With no further warning, two arms encircled me, one scooping under me to clasp around my waist, the other going to my right shoulder to carefully maneuver me to my original position on my back. I grunted and clenched my jaw at what felt like a hug from an alligator—whatever touched me had a rough texture that didn't suit the gentleness of the movements. I exerted next to no effort, but I was still out of breath, though the lack of pressure on my chest eased a great deal at the repositioning.

"Thanks," I wheezed. The mottled blackness gradually receded from my vision as blood reentered my brain, leaving me woozy and gasping. Once my lungs felt decidedly more like living tissue than sand bags, I tried to peer into the gloom to see who my savior (captor?) might be, but he was either gone or completely wraith-like. I furrowed my brow. "You still here?"

"Sei-i."

I jumped. Cleared my clogged throat. "Um…okay." I chewed the inside of my cheek. New word, choppy English…definitely not a native. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

He was silent. Not even a clatter.

I pressed, "What's happening?" I made a weak gesture toward my chest. "Did you take an ax to me or something? Take something out? Am I missing a lung? Are you, like, an organ harvester or something? What the hell just—I mean, why am I here? What the hell is here? And why's it so damn hot?" My rational brain died and instinct was its successor: "Are you like me? I mean, you're human, right? Please don't let me be right about this, I hate it when I'm right about terrible shit—I mean, I love the idea of it, just not me being involved in it and—"

I'd never been much of a rambler, or a talker at all, but you couldn't get me to shut up then if you'd offered to pay off all my loans or get that sharp, jagged ache out of my chest.

"H'ko," he barked, though it was low, almost a growl. "K-why-et. Rest. Speak later."

"I can't sleep with all this uncertainty," the scientist in me cried aloud before I could wring her nerdy neck. "Tell me something," I demanded, my voice climbing in pitch.

All was silent once more as my voice echoed slightly off the walls. He had left. How the hell he had managed that in such an airtight space was beyond me and only served to heighten my distress. Tears of frustration gathered at the corners of my eyes, and I hurt too much to wipe them away.

Something else did that for me.

I choked on a gasp and tried to flinch away from the knobby, warm pressure applied directly to a very sensitive facial region. That rolling sound reverberated throughout the room again, this time deeper and overpowering the omnipresent mechanical thrum of whatever we were in. A small light, like that of a penlight, appeared out of the corner of my eye, as if positioned behind me, and shone on a very large, very clawed, very green and gray and mottled hand splayed wide in front of my face. It clenched into a fist as my brain stalled.

"H'ko. Not liiie-cue." The mammoth hand relaxed from its fist. The claws looked like unpolished onyx and reflected no light; the pale light glinted only on one tear-stained claw. He touched it to my forehead, the minute prick of the appendage forcing my aching jaw to clench tighter to contain a panicked shout. My teeth ground together painfully. "Cor-rect," he said lowly.

"'Kay," I said faintly. My voice did not quaver. It did not it did not it did not. "Um. I'll rest now."

"N'got ooman." The finger retreated and the light flicked out. A brief disturbance in the air told me he'd moved away, if not left my metal compartment entirely. I was not relieved.

My heart started back up and sweat slicked every part of me. I don't know how I wasn't dehydrated or even the slightest bit thirsty at this moment. Stress does wonders on the body. Or maybe aliens do. I don't know.


Mmkay. So. Here's the part where you guys should give me grief for Predator/Yautja portrayal. I know it's basically up to the author, but creative license only goes so far… Lemme know what you think - I take everything into consideration. Also, thanks to those of you who have reviewed, faved, and followed! They're my drugs of choice. Barring caffeine, of course. *^_^* Thanks for reading!

Also, thank you to Stupe for allowing me to use her totally-not-canon-but-totally-should-be Yautja language!