Chapter 15
"Ah," I stiffened myself, my limbs felt compacted in the small cube I was in. I threw out my arm in the evident blackness with strobes of soft light; I couldn't so much as fully stretch my arm without my elbow wrist bending against the wall.
I was in water, but it did not smell like sea water, it smelled sweet and felt slimy, the cube was full to my neck as I was slumped disorderly, the holes above my head shone through strange light. I tried to straighten myself to peek out, but all I could see was white.
My tail felt tacky and hard, my temperature had plummeted. Raising my hands to the light, I saw they were blue in colour. A faint gasp blew from my lips.
"So you're awake?" A slick voice resonated from outside of this crate that was cold to the touch. I peeked once more out of one of the holes, only for an ugly levitating eye to pointedly stare back, I retreated in fear.
His laughed was loud and sounded ugly.
"Tell me child," His eye loomed closer, blocking one hole completely only to have his eye loop through the hole into the box, I shrieked, pressing my body against the wall of the box fully. "What are you? You are from the water, yes? With that tail and fin you must be from the fish folk."
Without an answer, he pulled his eye from the hole.
"I would tell, lass," He began tapping on something, clinking sounds and brewing of something was heard. "Or I will have to check for myself. Better yet, I have persons coming in from neighbourhood planets to come take a look at you." He came back, both of his eyes poked through two holes quite frighteningly. "Tell me, before them come and be a lot more unkind than I."
"Unkind?" I nearly spat, although black fear ran through my entire being, anger was a quick second in my bloodstream.
"She does speak!" He pulled out his eyes once again and clapped to himself.
"You are the most unkind! Keeping me boxed up like some sort of monster, taking me and putting me in such-such-filth! What is this anyway?" I raged, but shrank back immediately after he rattled the box like some sort of cage and prodded his eyes back into the holes, and pushing through his limbs into the remaining holes, blotting out the light.
"You my dear girl, are in no position to talk back in your current situation, you did not belong in that Inn," He kept on, his tone reaching high fury. "I could be most ruthless, sticking needles and lasers into your flesh and scales. And I do not know what you are, I cannot find you in historical creature volumes or the galactic web, yet there are some speculations I have conjured up!" His sneer came closer. "It seems you are a mythical creature, a legend from the ocean since before time began. There has been no sighting of you since 300 years ago, you are a monster." He snarled.
Slouching and not breathing properly, I winced at his venom.
"You are in a batch of water filled with chemicals of my creation, filled with energy to see how you react to certain pulses." His eyes took on a fiendish twitch.
He backed out again, fiddled with some equipment outside of the box. I leaned close to the holes; his squidgy appeal was layered with slime, his limbs just flesh that appeared to have no bones.
The room was white, walls that were just as white at the smooth tables with different looking things atop them. Some wisped smoke, pots and swirling liquids of different colours, some bubbled while some drained from glasses. The creature ticked away at a large black box, strings attached to the box draped the floor and came close to the box I was in, and the large black box had little buttons and flicks.
He flipped something and all of a sudden, I felt shocks through the water, vibrations pulsating through the current. Wincing, I contracted all my nerves, my muscles locking all at once, the pain travelled up my back and feathering through my entire being.
"Ahhhhhh!" I blurted as the shocks slowly faded to dull pulsing, making me jolt every ten seconds.
"So you feel natural pain, your sensors are just that of any creature." He mused, knocking at things.
"I-I could have t-t-told you that." I stammered, the buzz numbing my tongue.
"You are a creature of the unknown, not entirely researched," He came back to the box, rapping three times. "How do I know you wouldn't lie?"
I hugged myself, shivering to the newfound cold. The light from the holes shone some illumination onto my tail; some parts of it began to bleed.
For some reason, I thought of Jim. How, instead of treating me like this foul thing, he treated me, placed me into water. He was kind to me, and I longed for that kindness right now.
"Ahhhh!" He did it again, the water surged with power. I had felt this kind of thing mildly, when the storms hit the ocean, when the cyclones thrashed the waters and lightening shocked the ocean. I remembered the time me and Adella felt the tinge of power through the water.
"You are taking these tests really well." He chimed.
"Please," I shuttered. "Please stop." The shocks were rattling my bones, and instead of thrashing and swimming away from the danger, I was confined in this cramped space.
I braced myself against the box to peek out the holes once again. I couldn't see what the box was perched on, but assumed it couldn't be anything sturdy. With little force, I slightly rocked the box, the water aiding me to thrash it off course.
I managed to shift it; I heard the creak of weight nudge it slightly. I peeked out the holes again, to see any kind of escape route. The white walls had no windows, and there was an odd looking rectangle at the far end of the room, it was shining rustic silver. There were no weapons, either. The closest thing I could grab if I broke free would be the oddities on the tables just a little way from the box itself.
And I would have to escape when this creature left. If I made a move now, he would surely outsmart my manoeuvres and would possibly lock me up more securely. Yet the way he was tinkering, he looked like he'd be a little while.
Gasping in pain, I screamed in outright horror at the burning sensation that shot up my body, my vision blotting in in white. And through them, I saw fragments of Jim, the bloody gash that gaped in his shoulder and his screams that echoed through the corridor.