I don't think that Chaos even snapped its fingers or anything like that, one moment we were there and the next we were moving through what felt like an infinite void. In all actuality that's what it was after all. I couldn't really describe the feeling if I wanted to, if you've ever heard of spaghettification I think that is the closest approximation, though I really wished I had soggy noodles and tomato sauce instead of whatever I was feeling at that moment. The whole process made me feel like less than a spec, I was absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I came face to face with the vastness of the Universe, and I was woefully unprepared. Just as quickly as it had started it stopped and I vomited into what I found out moments later was the vacuum of space. Chaos and I were looking down on a planet that I had never seen before, it was comparable to the Earth I was used to but all of the continents were in the wrong places. It was then that I realized I was floating in space like some Dragonball character. My hands went directly to my throat, yet Chaos responded to my panic nonchalantly.
"There are certain benefits that come from being in my presence, one of those being that I define reality. You will not find yourself dealing with the negative consequences of space while around me." Chaos droned on. "Now onto the subject at hand, you have become an agent of my will, meaning that you have been granted immortality much like that of your gods on earth. Though I have not interfered with the potency of your abilities. That is up to you, and I expect you to grow a great deal in stature over the next few millennia so that I can send you to deal with more harrowing tasks than the one you will be assigned today."
"This is a real exciting pitch you've got going on here, I do what you say and then I do it some more." I quipped more out of exhaustion and frustration than for any other reason.
"I will not tolerate disrespect even in the form of humor in my presence, Perseus Jackson." Chaos said. As it said it, its body seemed to ripple and for a moment I felt the air leave my lungs, cold crept into my bones, and my brain seemed to press against the inside of my skull.
"Yes Chaos." I choked hoping that would make it stop.
The pressure seemed to lessen. "Call me Master." Chaos said.
My oxygen deficient brain seemed to think that was logical. "Yes master."
"As I was saying you will do as I ask of you, and in this case that means ending the civil war here on the planet Inus. This will serve as a sort of preliminary test, to see if you are really worthy of carrying out my will. Though there are certain problems that you will run into here, for one your trusty blade Anaklusmos will not work on the people of this planet." Chaos said.
"Ah, because they're mortals." I said. In hopes of finally being able to participate in this conversation in a meaningful way. So far it had felt much like receiving my info dump from Annabeth when I had arrived at camp, but Chaos was being a lot more direct and a smidge more forceful. Who am I kidding, it was a hell of a lot more than a smidge.
"It would be best if you were to move past the mindset you developed on earth, your way of thinking made sense there, but it does not hold up to a cosmic scale." Chaos said dismissively.
"Uh…" I said. I had already been shut down again. I was starting to feel a little bit queasy, Chaos seemed to operate with only one objective perspective that being its own If I wanted this gig to last for any significant period of time I was going to have to conform to that perspective. Though I was genuinely questioning whether or not I wanted the gig, I was pretty sure that I had sworn away my soul and with it any other options. I really hated being so impulsive sometimes.
"Are you familiar with the periodic table of elements, Percy?" Chaos asked, seemingly giving me an olive branch.
"Yeah, big chart hydrogen is number one, electrons and stuff it all checks out." I said doing my best to convey all the information I knew about the topic as succinctly as possible.
"Yes, quite astute. If you were to extend humanity's understanding of the table you would find several more rows of elements, of increasing strangeness. One of those elements belongs to the same family as carbon however it is far more rare throughout the universe. This element is generally known as Khorson, and there was just enough of it on earth to create the so-called gods that brought you into existence. Khorson and many of the other elements beyond the realm of human understanding operate strictly on the other side of that barrier, they don't often react with elements within your realm of expertise. Meaning…" Chaos trailed off as if trying to pose a question to me.
I think I had a vague understanding of what Chaos meant. "Celestial Bronze." I said, trying my best.
"Yes Celestial Bronze also known as Chiralium resides on the other side of that line as well, it is obviously in the same family as gold, silver and copper. It doesn't necessarily react to the Khorson as much as it is simply able to interact with it. In the most rudimentary sense it severs the Khorson bonds that make up a Khorson based life form." Chaos said.
"So I'll need some other sort of weapon if I am to complete my mission here on Inus." I said, grasping the situation.
"Yes, your mission. You are to end the civil war here on Inus. There are two warring factions, of such disparate ideology that they have resorted to total extermination of the other side as their only possible option for progress."
Before I was even able to ask for any further information I was alone in the woods on a literal alien planet. Even with all that had happened, as alone as I had felt I was beginning to feel like maybe I had made the wrong decision. So far Chaos had operated with a cold and calculating level of objectivity that I wasn't used to. If I was being honest with myself, I had gotten swept up in it to an extent. Maybe I was a little too quick to trust it. After all, I couldn't really view my current predicament as an improvement over what had been happening to me on Earth. At least there I knew what the fuck was going on.
I looked around for the first time, from the atmosphere this planet had looked a lot like earth but having arrived on the ground I was starting to notice at least a few differences. The plants were still green, and the sky was still blue. I knew there was water somewhere, but the dirt beneath my feet was red like blood. It looked the same as the soil that I was used to but the color was just too uncanny for me not to reach down and touch it. It was cold, which made me realize that the whole planet felt a lot colder than what I was used to, even though it seemed like a summer day it couldn't have been more than forty degrees fahrenheit. The red dirt felt waxy, artificial even. My brain jumped back to a commercial I had seen a million times as a kid for moon sand. I imagined that this soil is what that stuff felt like.
I took a closer look at the plants around me, that was when I noticed that something was strange about them after all. I could recognize some of the shapes that the flora had evolved into, there were quite a few pitchers and sticky appendages. Though these were much bigger than the ones that I was used to. Some of the slimy looking tentacle types looked like they would be more equipped to eat something the size of a squirrel rather than a fly. I heard a loud screech behind me, maybe I would get a chance to see some of these plants in action.
What looked like a six legged antelope the size of a chihuahua had gotten itself caught in one of the tentacles, and the plant had wasted no time wrapping around it. The more the little monster struggled and cried out the tighter the plant's grip around it seemed to get, until finally I saw it shudder one last time and fall limp. The tentacle continued to wrap around the creature until it couldn't be seen from the outside. I guessed that was how it dissolved and consumed its prey.
Great, note to self don't touch any plants. I looked around again, there weren't any trees in sight, the whole forest around me seemed to be populated by this carnivorous underbrush. If I remembered my high school biology class correctly that meant that the red waxy soil wasn't very high in nutrients, so the plants had to find other forms of subsistence instead. I needed to find water and a place to sleep quickly, otherwise I was going to die out here in the elements. A thought occurred to me, my heart started pulsing and my eyes leveled with the horizon. Would things here be able to smell me like the monster's had back on earth? If so I was doomed, but if not, if it was all related to that sci-fi nonsense that Chaos had been spewing earlier then I might have just found the first good thing about leaving Earth behind.
I started walking in a direction, keeping the planet's sun on my left so that I made sure I wasn't backtracking. Even if I had gotten unlucky and picked a shitty direction, maintaining said shitty direction was far better than backtracking. If I had learned anything from my time in the Labyrinth it was that I didn't like being lost. It was what I assumed to be a couple hours before I saw anything meaningful, one of those little Ant-deer was sleeping in a clearing about thirty yards in front of me. I knew food was less important immediately than water or shelter, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this. I wracked my brain searching for possible solutions to this predicament, I wished Annabeth were there. All the enthusiasm that I had drained from my body, I looked down at the ground. I didn't need her, I didn't need her convoluted plans. I was perfectly capable of surviving a situation like this on my own, I found what I was looking for. I'd show her.
I picked up a rock from the ground and ran it through my fingers, it was kind of smooth. That was a good sign, you usually only saw rocks like this one around a river. If I could find said river I would be in a lot better shape than I was at this moment, however first I had to try and get dinner. I wound up with my best imitation of a Cy Young winner and hurled the rock at the sleeping ant-deer. It sailed directly over top of the little creature and woke it up. It looked at me with a set of compound eyes straight out of a horror film, squealed and ran off in the opposite direction of me. I slapped my hands against my cheeks, what were you thinking? Just because you want to prove something doesn't mean you should go with the first thought that your dumbass brain comes up with. You have to vet that shit otherwise the natives will find your emaciated body in the woods and do untold experiments on you.
I was starting to come to terms with another fear of mine, I was an actual alien. What if the people here started messing with me, and I mean like the real crazy stuff. Anal probes and the like. I couldn't be asked to deal with that kind of nonsense. No that wouldn't happen, Chaos had sent me here for a reason, there was no way that it would devolve into a situation that bad that quickly. I kept walking, and it was beginning to become clear that the planet Inus rotated quite a bit faster than Earth. When I had materialized in the middle of the woods it had been early morning, with the sun barely peeking up over the horizon. Now probably less than six hours later the sun was setting. I needed to find a place to sleep and I needed to find it soon, otherwise I was going to be staggering around in the dark and end up at the bottom of some acidic plant sack.
Just when the light was starting to fail I saw my salvation, an outcropping of rock that jutted out of the predatory brambles all around me. I would at least be safe from the plants there, and if some kind of animal attacked me then so be it. I had the curse of Achilles, and if I was honest I was pretty sure I could fend off pretty much any manner of conventional wildlife. I laid down on the rock only to realize that the temperature was dropping swiftly. Of course that would be the case, how could I be so stupid. Without anything to cover me I would die of exposure, but deep down I knew time had already run out. If I descended from this safe haven I had found for myself I would only find things more dangerous than the cold. I would simply have to grin and bear it. I was dressed for winter after all, it had been a pretty snowy December in New York before I left.
I knew as soon as I started shivering that my mindless optimism wasn't enough to get me through this situation. My black hard-shell north face Jacket wasn't the warmest thing in the world, and I had picked it more because I thought it looked cool than because I expected it to actually keep me warm. My knees were tucked into my body, but the jeans I was wearing were more of a shitty teen fashion brand than a good day at the worksite type. The only clothing choice I wasn't regretting was my footwear. I had started wearing Timberlands mostly because I thought saying Timz was funny, but now I was happy to have a sturdy pair of boots keeping my ankles locked in place and my feet warm. They even still had the tag. Which of course I found myself playing with as the hours passed and my vision seemed to blur.
I was the kind of cold where I was surprised every time by just how big the cloud exiting my nose or mouth was when I breathed. I didn't have much facial hair, but I hadn't exactly been paying attention to my appearance over the past few months so a scraggly mustache and a wispy beard had begun to appear on my face. I was more than regretting that now as there were icicles forming on the shitty little hairs after every time I exhaled out of my nose. I took riptide out of my pocket and pressed it against my cheek. I didn't have a pillow which meant that the emotional comfort from the sword and my right bicep was all I had to prop up my head.
I thought about hugging the sword itself, but that didn't seem like it would be very warm. It also felt like a little bit too overt of a reference, as much as I loved riptide I didn't think I would be talking about campfires made of dreams anytime soon. Though I certainly was dreaming of an actual campfire rather than a metaphorical one. I was seriously starting to hallucinate by that point. If not for the fact that the spin of Inus was a hell of a lot faster than that of Earth I think I would have died on top of that rock. When the sunlight began to unthaw my freezing body I felt an indescribable relief. It had been about twelve hours since I had gotten there, I could handle eighteen hours straight of being awake without it affecting me too much, but if I didn't get to sleep the next time the sun went below the horizon I was going to have a real problem.
I started trekking in the same direction that I had previously, keeping the sun on my left in the morning. I made my way through an ever changing cast of different plants that looked straight out of a speculative biology artbook. The sheer amount of energy it took to watch each individual step that I took was beginning to tax my brain in a way that I had never experienced previously. Then I finally caught my break. Well at least what I thought was my break at the time. I tore through one last layer of fiendish foliage and found myself in what was clearly a field that had cultivated crops on it. They were growing what looked like large pitcher plants, there were thousands of them planted side by side in an endless set of uniform rows. I wasn't sure what the purpose of farming pitcher plants was, maybe they drank the liquid they made. Off in the distance I could see the equivalent of a tractor making its way through the field. For better or worse I had found civilization.
The first person, I'm just going to refer to any sentient life as people for ease of access. The first person to see me was a little boy, who clearly wasn't working on the farm and just lived on the property. He was running through the rows of tilled red earth holding something in his hand and making a sound with his mouth. I figured he was imagining it was some sort of airplane. He kept running looking more at the sky than his surroundings until he was about twenty feet from me. Then he saw me. I'd been watching him dumbfounded for a few minutes, mostly because he looked like the most stereotypical Martian that I could imagine. He was green with long spindly fingers that ended in half spherical indentations almost like suction cups. His skin was smooth and he had massive eyes that filled up almost the entirety of his head leaving barely enough room for a small mouth. Overall he was humanoid, a form that I would later find out tended to evolve pretty consistently in sentient beings. Scholars beyond Earth call this phenomenon something along the lines of bipedal quadappendage convergence. That's besides the point, the boy looked at me and his eyes widened, the floppy little antenna on his head stood straight up at attention. And he let out a guttural scream that was clearly beyond the human range of communication, before letting out a flurry of sounds that I could at least understand was language. Though I still had no idea whether I would ever be able to communicate with these people based on how guttural and slurred the noises sounded.
I probably should have run away, but I was beginning to feel the effects of dehydration, and my stomach was as empty as it had been in a few years. I was exhausted, freezing, and frankly I was willing to accept whatever was about to happen to me. I figured that there was no way that Chaos would have dropped me into an environment that was too hostile for me to survive if seen. That would have been far too cruel and well beyond my current capabilities as an agent of its will. I simply laid down in hopes of communicating that I was non threatening, though that didn't work as well as I intended. One of the farmers immediately shot my lifeless body with some kind of gun. It hurt but of course it wasn't able to penetrate my curse, though I would refrain from pondering just how close it had come to hitting the sweet spot.
I simply kept lying there since it was all I could do to try and convince them that I wasn't going to try and hurt them, but they were clearly xenophobic as they shot me about seven more times before they decided to wrap chains around me and drag me behind their tractor into some kind of city. It took about an hour of travel on a bumpy road, paved with what seemed like some kind of terracotta. The soil must have been high in clay content. As my head bumped in and out of the seventy sixth pothole I thought about the idea of paving all of earth's roads with flowerpots. It seemed like something a hippy would say. Maybe at this point I was down with a little bit of hippy logic, I would prefer free love to xenophobic Martians. When we arrived in the city our surroundings began to change, there was a distinct difference between the look of the photosynthesizing apex predators and this world's architecture.
Everything looked organic, there were spherical bulges in the buildings, spires that looked more like the letter s than the empire state building, and a significant number of what I believed Annabeth had once described to me as living roofs. As I was looking around through sleep deprived eyes and what had to have been a mild concussion due to sustained vibration of the frontal lobe I began to feel the eyes on me. Partners were hugging one another and pointing, there were sharp inhales of breath that sounded quite a bit different from a human gasp, and even the titular hand over mouth to go along with widened eyes and shaking knees. I felt like a zoo attraction, not that I hadn't before. I had gone my entire life sticking out, being the weird kid who couldn't sit still and just never seemed to find a place to fit in. I couldn't help but remember the albino lion in the back of the Kindness International truck. How it felt being so out of place and mistreated to such a degree, where was it supposed to go even if it had escaped its current predicament. Thoughts like that tend to lead to hopelessness.
I wasn't exactly one to give up, but I felt like I was in a cage with a bag of turnips that would never fill my belly. Even if I could escape said cage I would only run headfirst into some octopus tree and end up fertilizer. I was a spectacle for these people, and most likely that was going to be my existence for the foreseeable future. Then I felt it, a calming presence, one that I had been sorely missing since I had set foot on this planet. Maybe I wouldn't have to give in so easily, I had a trump card. I could feel it flowing beneath me in what I had to assume were the city sewers. Fine by me, Clarisse could tell these guys how much I loved sewer water. I instantly relaxed. I was safe now. I could let them take me, and if they started to do things I didn't like I could flood the place and make my escape. They would never see it coming.
I started to hear footsteps pounding against the terracotta, followed by things scraping against the ground. I squirmed trying to reposition myself so I could see what had made the sound. When I managed to roll over enough I was greeted by what was either their military or a swat team. They had begun evacuating people and setting up barricades, all while at least a dozen of them had firearms trained on me. Great. They were all wearing what looked like some kind of gas mask, that made sense. Somewhere in the back of my head I remembered that when the first men came back from the moon they had to quarantine for a long time in case there was some kind of moon flu or something. I figured they were scared of catching smallpox from me, honestly at that point after my drive through the clay paved wilderness I wouldn't have minded giving a few of them smallpox.
I scolded myself, you don't actually believe that. You're just scared and lonely and lashing out. Pull yourself together. As I was hiking myself up by my very own bootstraps, the scientists came in. I could tell they were scientists by the hazmat suits. Though they looked a bit different from ours, they were pressurized and inflated. Kind of like the way those cursed T-rex costumes that you see at conventions look. They wobbled toward me with a litany of scanners and the like, I could hear the familiar ticking static of a Geiger counter. All I could do was hope that I wasn't radioactive. Apparently I wasn't putting out anything that they were afraid of because they quickly called in more backup. They unhooked the chains that bound me from the hitch on the tractor, but they of course left me chained up. I heard the Farmer and one of the scientists uttering something in their alien language, but trying to understand it was about as useful as trying to discern what a frog croak means.
Though I figured he was probably explaining that he had shot me eight times and I was somehow still alive and unharmed, while also having given him no resistance. The scientists brought in what looked like a large metal coffin, I figured it was some kind of high durability box that they planned on putting me inside to transport me. I was correct, and as they were lowering me into the box I realized that I would most likely suffocate if I let them close the lid. Nonconfrontational Percy was going to have to take a backseat for a moment, I quickly wriggled my arm free and latched on to one of the scientists arms. It squealed and wiggled desperately trying to break free from my grasp. I heard several soldiers' feet pounding as they approached us once again training their guns on my body. I stared directly into the eyes of the screaming scientist. He seemed to calm down briefly, I wiggled my other arm out and he tensed, but didn't make a sound.
I was going to have to try and communicate non verbally. Step one is to take the biggest breath that I could possibly manage. This seemed to once again scare the scientist as he pulled back away from me, but I held my grip firm. I used my other hand to point at the air and swirl it around, and then pointed at my mouth. I mimed closing the lid and then cocked my head to the side, closing my eyes and letting my tongue dangle out of the corner of my mouth. I stopped my performance and looked at the scientist again before releasing his arm and resting each of my hands beside my hips. I looked at it desperately hoping that it had understood what I was trying to communicate. It seemed to have at least gleaned that I had been trying to communicate, and began to say things to its colleagues in the alienese that I was hopelessly trying to parse any pattern from. However to my dismay the scientists attempted to close the lid, i decided my only option was to prevent that from happening.
I stuck both hands on the underside of the lid as they tried to shut it on top of me. They squealed and backed away and I heard the guns move into position to shoot me once again. I pushed the lid away from the box so that it wouldn't fall back and close on me and then once again let my arms fall limp beside me. The scientist that I had originally snatched seemed to grasp it, but he obviously had to make sure. He slowly approached me and looked me in the eyes, he grabbed the lid and slowly began shutting it. I gently pressed my hand against the bottom, halting the lid's motion. He let go of the lid and I pushed it out of position once again. The scientist's eyes lit up and it began gesturing and speaking frantically. I remained silent and motionless, though I felt a sense of anxiety finally decrease to an extent. I no longer felt like I only had one option, there was a chance that these aliens and I could interact peacefully, and by doing so I would be able to solve their civil war problem much easier.
They loaded me into the back of some kind of vehicle and never attempted to place the lid overtop of me. I heard a buzzing sound from outside of the vehicle, followed by the distinct feeling of rising into the air. For a moment my body became stiff as I thought about Zeus smiting me and all of these innocent people with his lightning, but I wasn't on earth any longer. Just like Chaos had said, my reality had undergone a drastic paradigm shift. The vehicle was filled to the brim with boxes of what looked like supplies interlaced with various scientific equipment. This operation was clearly a joint one between a military force and a research based one. That seemed to align with the claim that Chaos had made, this planet had stagnated due to two militarized factions deciding that eradicating the other was the only way to move forward. It made sense that every aspect of life here would be somehow aligned with whatever military power was currently occupying the territory.
I had a chilling thought for the first time, which side had found me. Boiling politics on earth down into two sides of the same coin would result in something along the lines of one side being conservative, and the other being progressive. In my limited time paying attention to the real world I had at least learned that. One side liked change, the other didn't. That was the basic instinct of each philosophy if you were to distill them down into their most fundamental building blocks. I couldn't imagine that the conservative faction in a highly militarized society currently participating in a civil war would be all that keen on an alien suddenly showing up. They'd probably do their best to kill me first and then ask questions later. My worry passed quickly though, these people wouldn't have allowed me in a vehicle with them if they still thought that I was a major threat to their livelihood. If they really wanted me dead they would have dragged me into a different field behind that tractor and dropped a bomb on me. I was pretty sure by this point that I was going to have an opportunity to interact with these scientists for a sustained period of time. Whether that would amount to anything remained to be seen.
I felt the buzzing noise lessen and the vehicle began to descend towards the surface of the planet once again. It was nightfall by this point, and soon after touchdown the occupants of the vehicle began unloading it. They saved one piece of cargo for last. Me. They slowly carried the box that I was in out of the aircraft and out into whatever place they had taken me. It was a military base of some kind. That much was clear, the architecture looked closer to what I was used to on earth, sharper edges and more utilitarian design. There isn't really a point in making a watchtower look fancy. It is for function not fashion after all. I was smack dab in the middle of what looked like one giant helipad, there were hundreds of other aircraft identical to the one that I had just ridden in strewn across the expanse in no particular pattern. I looked at them closely but I still couldn't discern how they flew, all I knew was that they made a buzzing sound when they did. I briefly remembered the opening quote from the bee movie and laughed to myself.
That was a mistake, the scientists dropped my box jolting me and the soldiers all trained their guns on my head. I was really getting tired of being in such a stagnant situation. I was going to have to wait another inordinate amount of time now for them to trust me enough to pick me up and move me again. I was on a hot streak and then I had blown it because of the fucking bee movie, I didn't even like that movie. Thankfully they were quite a bit quicker to pick me up and move me again than they had been the other times that I had spooked them. I figured that was because at the moment they were in a pretty compromising position. Me being in the middle of their airfield where I could theoretically start wreaking havoc on some of their most vital infrastructure.
Though their society was technologically advanced, I was beginning to realize that it probably wasn't any more so than the one that I had come from. Everything I saw made sense to me, it just seemed like an alternate version of something I had already experienced. In some ways it felt more like being in a foreign country than being on an alien planet halfway across the universe. The massive door that we went through to enter their base for example, it was a lot less Star Wars, and a lot more slightly different from your average garage door. Though once we were inside I did find myself feeling a little bit sci-fi. The walls were pure white, and the lights that were illuminating the room were hidden within recesses in the ceiling and covered by panels that were flush with the rest of the ceiling. Everything felt sterile. It was a bit creepy to be honest, but there was nothing I could do as I was simply relying on knock off Martians to chauffeur me around inside of the metal coffin until something eventful happened. That something eventful came pretty quickly.
After a few minutes of meandering through nondescript corridors and passing at least two dozen doors we finally arrived at our destination. It was the first time that I caught a glimpse at their written language. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was similar to braille, being made up of different dot combinations to designate what I believed to be letters in a word written on the sign outside the door we were about to enter. I could at least conceptualize dots, there was hope in my heart that I may be able to establish a rudimentary line of communication.
Though I became markedly less excited when I saw what was on the other side of the door. It was clearly a holding cell, however it had been outfitted with a thick window on one wall that was connected to some kind of observation room. One of the militaristic members of my convoy stepped into the room and raised his gun. A scientist yelled something and pulled at his sleeve, but that was all I could see. I had no idea what was inside the room and why they were fighting. The soldier punched the scientist and aimed his gun at the contents of the observation room. He fired and I heard a very audible squishing sound followed by what almost sounded like a splash. I had to fight my urge to gag in hopes of not scaring the people holding onto my box. However, unfortunately that tax became even more difficult when the stench of whatever had just been shot hit me. The only way that I can describe it is that it smelled like wine made of feces. It was sweet smelling, and had several deep odors that felt almost artisanal, but present in the very same whiff was some of the most rancid fecal smell that I had ever encountered.
The soldier stepped forward and grabbed whatever he had shot and started dragging it out of the room. It sounded kind of like he was pulling a bag of what sand that had been dipped inside of a large vat of pudding. It sounded dense, but also slimy. I was appalled, by what had happened, apparently quickly getting me shoved inside of this box was far more important than the treatment of their last test subject. That didn't exactly leave me with extremely high hopes for their treatment of me, but I still had a trump card in my back pocket. Once the soldier had pulled the carcass out of the room and deposited it in the hallway I was swiftly set down inside of the chamber and abandoned. Almost faster than I could even react, the door had been sealed behind me. They of course did not bother to remove my chains or anything of the like.
I suspected that they knew I could have done that at any time. I decided that my best course of action was to wait until I knew they were watching me to make any kinds of movements. Luckily that took all of thirty seconds. By the time I had wriggled enough to be able to see out of the window the room on the other side was full to the brim with scientists. I guess now was the time to put on a show. For the second time in my life I was a guinea pig, however this time I was a lot less sure of how I felt about it.