"I will leave you now to refresh yourself. Consider your choice wisely Major Carter, you can make this easy, or I can make things very difficult for you." With that final word, Jason Arden turned and led his entourage out of the room, the door closing with finality. Sam stared at the closed door in dismay, before allowing her weak legs to give in and sinking to the floor of the cage.

Chapter 32

Left alone again, Sam collected herself. The man's words were ominous and she still rankled at his supposition that she was an object that he now owned. Sam shook herself. There was nothing to be done for it now.

The man had all but ordered her to eat, and as much as it went against every fiber of her being to do anything the man had asked, Sam also knew she needed food. With a sigh of resignation, Sam investigated the contents of the bowl. When she could detect no other smells other than the smell of fish, Sam gingerly took a mouthful. This time she was able to eat without nearly choking to death and she forced herself to swallow another mouthful of the food. Sam tried not to think about what the food probably had in it or was made from.

Despite her best efforts, Sam could only finish less than half of the meal, even though it was a much smaller portion than she usually ate, she had no appetite. She did make herself drink a little more water however, before returning to the corner she'd spent the night in, and curled up, eyes half closed, waiting for the return of Arden. There was another need she'd have to take care of soon, but Sam wasn't ready to face that humiliation just yet.

Sam tried not to think too much about what things the man had planned for her, but it was hard to control her overactive imagination. Sam was worried; she knew there was little she could do to protect herself. Still, she refused to give in. She would not cooperate, she couldn't. He had no right. Besides, Sam had been in worse situations than this with SG-1 countless times. Well... maybe not this bad. At least then she'd had her teammates to rely on and share the burden or back her up. Sam's less than comforting thoughts filled her mind as she settled into a light doze.

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Jason Arden watched his latest acquisition eat the canned food. She only ate about half of it, but it was a start. While he didn't intend to make things comfortable for her, he still wished to maintain her health. It would not do to have his newest and most precious possession waste away. Earlier, as he'd watched her choke on the dry food he'd briefly panicked until she'd expelled the piece. He'd mentally cursed himself, he'd read the reports on how she'd initially had trouble with eating and had had to be syringe fed. But the reports had suggested that she'd overcome the early problems and was now eating normally for a cat.

Before he had been able to order someone to the room to change the food, Arden had paused to watch in interest as she had tried to solve her own problem by adding the food to the water. He'd watched her clumsy attempts at retrieving the softened morsel, and her attempts at getting more food into the water bowl. He had smiled softly as she changed tactics. Here was the proof that she was intelligent, more intelligent than any cat. He'd read the file on one Major Doctor Samantha Carter. The woman was apparently brilliant. She held several degrees, including a PhD in Astrophysics. Her IQ scores were unbelievable, and she was also a decorated officer in the US Air Force.

He had a hard time reconciling the report of the woman with the cat who was clumsily trying to eat a meal in a cage in his lab. As the woman turned cat nearly drowned herself in her water bowl, Arden decided it was time to introduce him self before she came to any harm.

Her reactions to his announcement that she was now his property were much as he had predicted. She would not willingly give in to his control, but that just made it much more interesting for him. Sometimes the struggle for power and control was even more invigorating than the power itself. He already had an idea of what her first "punishment" would be; he'd come up with the idea from the reports he had read. Watching her restless sleeping form on the monitor, Jason Arden smiled. Soon she would learn who held all the power.

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