A/N: I just wanted to mention to all the adds and follows, thank you so much, I'm so happy you're reading. And to all the reviewers,
YOU ARE ALL LOVELY EXAMPLES OF THE HUMAN RACE AND I HEART YOU SO HARD!
Also, random tidbit. I was driving down the road the other day, and this car in front of me had a bumper sticker that said "Fitz happens" and I was like OMFGWTFBBQ YOU ARE MY FAVORITE CAR EVER! Except I was all alone in my car, so I just looked like a nutjob flailing her arms and giggling.
It was weird.
That is all! Thanks again for reading!
Everything was bad. And dizzy. And nauseous. Mostly just plain bad. Bad like I had jumped onto a swing set and twisted up the chains so much that when the swing finally came to a stop, the whole world continued to shift around me. It wasn't a good feeling when I was eight, and it sure as hell wasn't a good feeling now. I squinted one eye shut, convinced it would help slow the spinning world. It wasn't really working.
"Come on," the pig man grunted, pulling on the chain that was firmly attached to all of our wrists. No one else seemed to be having the same kind of 'I want to puke and never stop' kind of issues.
"Yeah, totally. Just give me a second to die here." When I closed both my eyes, that only seemed to make it worse. Much worse. My arms flew out in an attempt to stop myself from stumbling over and caught the woman in front of me.
"It helps to bend your knees." She patted my hand consolingly. "Before you take off."
It was important enough for me to open my eyes so she knew I was glaring at her, "Thanks." But my lack of enthusiasm seemed to sail right over her head.
"Move it." The chain jerked again, more insistently, and I had to stumble a step forward to keep from falling on my face. "Actin' like ya never been down a portal." He scoffed at me. Yeah, what a shocker. I didn't get the feeling he would believe my whole 'fish out of water' story, and more importantly, I really doubted he cared. Fortunately for my stomach, and the meal I had earlier, the world seemed to be slowing on its own and I could start to march forward without passing out. When I was convinced I could lift my head without causing some serious vertigo, I surveyed my surroundings. I was at the end of a chain of four people, and we had all managed to appear in a narrow concrete hallway. Cozy, like a parking garage and a tomb mixed together. There wasn't a door, or another hallway, or even a window behind us that I could see we had come through. That was unsettling. But then there was all the traveling I did in the TARDIS, so I was a seasoned pro at taking unpleasant impossible things in stride.
"Hey, so uh, what does he mean by chop shop?" I jogged a step so I could almost walk next to the woman who had been kind enough to not swat my hand away. She threw a sympathetic and slightly condescending look over her shoulder and smiled.
"Haven't spent much time here in the quadrant, have you?"
Grinding my teeth together, I tried to put a polite smile on my face. The attitude I could do without. Especially from little miss 'You can fix your hangover by not drinking last night'. But then she was the only one who had even glanced at me, so if I wanted any kind of answer, I was going to have to try and play ball.
"No. Just passing through. So what does it mean?"
"Oh, it's just what they call the harvesting factory."
Well. That didn't make it vastly more sinister sounding. Harvesting like corn? Could I be so lucky? Maybe I was just going to be sold into life as a farmer. The poorly lit concrete bunker didn't really seem like the place for crops. And ugly up front had said something about body parts…
Oh. Oh crap.
"Wait, are they going to take my kidneys?" I asked in a shrill tone as we approached the only visible door. Stainless steel and imposing as all hell. The woman gave me another 'oh you silly idiot' look and the pig man knocked on the door. "Hey," I said louder. "I don't know about everyone else, but I need my kidneys. They're like, the favorite, of all my organs. Seriously." I had done a fifth grade project on them, that sort of counted.
A window in the door slid open and a single eye, a single, very large eye looked out at us.
"Got some meat." The pig man said. The eye nodded once before sliding the window shut and the door swung open in that slow ominous kind of way. Cyclops had a hilariously spindly body compared to the size of his head, but that probably wasn't what I was supposed to be worried about right now.
"No more chatter." The pig man made a point of warning me before he led us inside. Well, that sounded like a challenge.
"I hate cold water too. That whole ice bath thing? I'll scream."
"It's not just the kidneys," the woman said patiently, but very quietly. "Keep quiet or they won't reboot you at all."
"What do you mean not just the kidneys?" If she had hoped I was going to shut up, well, she had been wrong. What the hell else would they take? People can't be organ donors if they're alive. I was going to stay alive, right? "And what the hell is a reboot?"
"Shh!" She hissed as we entered the pristinely white and silver room. She shushed me. No one does that. But I should probably be saving my wrath for the kidnappers, not the fellow victims. Even if she shushed me. We'd certainly be having a serious talk about it after we got out of this mess. Because we were getting out. Any time now. Just as soon as…well, Donna figured out what happened. Even though she didn't see pig man, or have any idea where I had gone. Yeah. Just as soon as she got that sorted, she would find the Doctor. And then I'd be out of this mess.
Maybe.
Okay, I might be in some trouble.
Cyclops shut the door behind us and twisted the large wheel to lock it and remained standing there like a bouncer. Inside, there were a handful of official looking people in lab coats. They had clipboards too, they looked like proper doctors. You know, real doctor's, not just lunatics who fancied an official sounding nickname. People in uniform were people I could trust. But the way they eyed our ragtag group of prisoners with little to no surprise made me feel less confident they were there to help.
"Hi, I think I'm lost." I said to the young woman who was remarkably human looking when she came to stand in front of me. She was making notes on her clipboard as she went down the line, not really listening to what I was saying. "See, I was just shopping, then I got lost. With a crazy pig man. Maybe you could call the police?"
She looked up from her clipboard when she reached the end of the line and gave me a sharp glare. "You know," she said, turning toward the pig man, who had a particularly nasty look on his face, like maybe he had understood that I had called him 'pig man'. "They don't need to be conscious when you bring them in."
"Well, they ain't gonna walk themselves down here." He grunted.
"I'd be happy to walk myself out." I glared at the both of them.
"You could have at least carried the mouthy one." She clicked her pen sharply and stared at me, just so I'd know who she had meant.
"I'll show you mouthy you-" But I didn't get to finish my little tirade, because the pig man took the back of his fist and popped it right into my face. More specifically, right in my nose. My eyes started to spout water and a moment later, my nose did too. Except instead of water, it was blood.
Ow.
"Sedatives cost extra." He snorted, wiping his hand on his pants like I had given him germs. He was definitely on the shit list now. "You payin' or what?"
Paying? I was being trafficked? This weird piggy man had snatched me off the street to some secret bunker and he was going to sell me to some unpleasant woman who had called me 'mouthy'? Except this place looked high end, officially sanctioned even. Real 'top secret' kind of officially sanctioned. Which made it scarier. This wasn't just some random kidnapping by crazy cannibal hillbillies.
Well. Actually, that probably would have been worse. Now I was giving myself the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
But still, this was ominous. This was the government snatching me off the street and never getting to see the sun again. I had stumbled across the sinister underbelly of some kind of conspiracy. I was Mulder! This was the x-files! I knew the truth, but now I was caught up in it. Where was Scully when I needed her to save my ass? Any minute now she'd come- Dammit. I was staring right at her. Red haired, stern looking scientist. Scully had been in on it. Had she always been planning on betraying me? That bitch-
Okay. Focus. Out of fantasy land. This was serious trouble I was in and making snarky comments in my head was not helping.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I'm not actually for sale." I smiled, feeling the blood dribble down my chin. I probably looked like a lunatic. Good.
"You'll get paid when we confirm the count." Scully said sharply. "You brought in a leper last time."
"Not like they announce that sort of thing." Pig man huffed, clearly offended by whatever Scully was implying about his kidnapping skills. As they were talking about prices, there was another person coming down our line. Except when I say person, I mean robot. It was a stainless steel android-y thing, wearing a lab coat. Which was kind of adorable. It pressed its hand against the woman's forehead and with some humming and light flashing, it appeared to scan her.
"Applicable." It said, just as it had for the other two in front of us. Scully made tick marks on her chart. When it came to me, I thought about trying to dodge it, but decided I'd probably just end up looking like an idiot and pig man would likely be happy to hold me down. As violently as possible.
"Invalid type." It said in a soothing tone.
"See? Exactly what I was saying." Scully tsked and made a frustrated mark on the clipboard. "Robert, all but the last. Take her to clean up."
"Oh, that's good news." My favorite captive friend reassured me, even as she was unlinked from my chain and led away. "You'll get rebooted straight off."
It's funny, because it didn't really sound like good news. "Actually, unlike piggy here. I'm all showered up. Scouts honor."
"Tell you what, this one's a freebie." I didn't know what pig man was telling Scully until he reached back and backhanded me so hard my vision went black and I felt myself hit the ground.
Owwwwfuckowassballsshitowwwa ssbutt.
Okay. The lesson I should have learned the first time was 'don't backtalk the creatures who hit defenseless women'. Or maybe, 'don't call them names'. At least while I was still defenseless.
The lesson I was actually taking away, was that I still wasn't good enough to kill people with my mind.
Yet.
And not for lack of trying.
"Much obliged." Scully looked down at me and smiled as pig man hoisted me up off the floor and back onto my feet. My cheek throbbed, actually, most of my face throbbed, and I could definitely taste blood from where I had bit my cheek. I was regretting some of my life choices. But it was only making me want to be more lippy, despite my face screaming at me to shut the hell up. "You're still not getting paid for her."
"Hear that? I'm not even worth anything," but this time when I tried to grin, I could feel the split in my lip and it changed to a grimace instead. Pig man shot me a look but didn't seem interested in throwing down again. I was, not so secretly, relieved.
The rest of the chain gang had already disappeared through the door by the time Robert came forward, he didn't have a nice lab coat, but instead, something similar to a janitors uniform. There was only one way to go besides back the way we had come, and something told me no one was interested in letting me use the exit. Instead he dragged me by my bound wrists through the door everyone else had disappeared through. It was more of the same bunker, except now it was huge. The ceilings were still a good ten feet above me and there were at least a dozen floors of metal grating down below. The whole place had a serene blue glow to it because of the hundreds of glass bathtubs that were filled with what looked like blue water.
They might have been beautiful except for the fact that they were all filled with body parts.
Some were still recognizable as people, or aliens. Others, well, they were down to an arm and a few vital organs that were still floating around them in the blue fluid. It was all still connected together with veins, or maybe some artificial tubing. It looked like some kind of Frankenstein horror flick.
Maybe I hadn't been that far off with the whole crazy hillbilly theory.
Someone cried out. And then another. Hearing one voice seemed to set the others off, like a pack of dogs. But out of the hundreds of people that were down there, only a handful were making any noise at all. Some of them just didn't look like they were capable of it, and others looked as though they had given up. Their moans echoed off the wall and Robert yanked me forward, reminding me that I had come to a complete stop.
"Are those people?" My voice came out as a hushed whisper as our shoes clanged against the metal gangway that crossed over the nightmare beneath my feet.
"Not any more." Robert grunted, evidently used to the scene by now. I swallowed carefully as the taste of bile mixed with the sharp metallic flavor already on my tongue. I looked down and found where the others had been taken. Just one more floor below they were being marched to their own empty tubs. The mousy woman from before saw me looking and flashed a sad smile before she climbed into the pool. She may not have been very useful, but she had meant well. Was she going to slowly be taken apart, just like everyone else here? She was just going to turn into a pile of organs, and then nothing.
What the hell was the place?
"Where am I going?" I asked, realizing that while it was probably good that I wasn't down there joining them, it didn't mean the place I was headed was any better.
"We've got a place for you in the back. Depending on how production goes, we should have you rebooted by the end of the week."
"Yeah, listen. I don't know what 'rebooted' is. Why can't you just put me back where you found me?"
He snorted and pulled me further down another metal walkway, heading toward the far wall where there were several more doors waiting for us. "Wouldn't be very smart to just put you back on the street after you've seen the place."
"What? I didn't see anything," he came to a stop in front of one of them and swung it open. "I just got zapped here. Really, there weren't even any doors the way I came in." The room beyond was much darker than the artificially lit main chamber, actually, it looked kind of like a broom closet. The blue light spilled in through the main door, and from what looked like air vents up above.
"They've got ways to extract that kind of information." He said as he pulled me across the room to where there was a large cage. He produced a key from his pocket, it shimmered and changed shape before he pressed it to the padlock and it snapped open. "Here you are." He waved me forward.
I arched my eyebrow at him, getting into the cage seemed like a really bad idea. I was just trying to think if I could properly strangle him with my wrists locked up like this. He wasn't as muscled as pig man, but he wasn't a slouch either, and he had about a foot on me.
"Don't make me call your keeper. I'm sure he'd be happy to spare some time getting you in here." He sneered.
God damn tall people. And their smugness. I made a kissy face at him as I walked through the cage door. He was also now on my shit list. People here were assholes.
"You're welcome for the company," he said over my shoulder as he slammed the gate shut. "Make the best of it while you can."
Well, that was worrisome.
I turned slowly and realized I could just see another figure, sitting in the corner, his face masked by the shadows. But he looked big.
"Well hello there, sweetheart. You here for a good time?"
Note to self. Never go shopping with Donna. Ever.