Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Word Count: 2,756 (3 of 18)
"Five more minutes, Daddy," Rachel murmured, scrunching her eyes closed against the bright light. Her bed seemed to be vibrating, almost humming. Keeping her eyes closed, she stretched. Her fingers kept moving, not hitting her headboard like she expected. Feeling around, eyes still closed, Rachel tried to find the edges of her bed. Surprised at the unexpected feeling of something smooth under her questing finger tips, Rachel sat up, opening her eyes, flinching at the glare of the light.
As she gazed around the featureless room, the last few moments in the car flooded back. Large white lights surrounding Quinn's car. Brittany crying, and Santana swearing in Spanish and something else. And an oddly quiet Quinn holding her tightly.
Standing up, she rotated in a circle, taking in the extreme lack of anything in the room she was in. No windows. No furniture. No bed. Or clothes. That last fact being the most shocking.
"Oh, my Barbra!" Rachel gasped out, trying to shield herself against any prying eyes. For a few minutes anyway. Until she realized the futility of her actions. "Hello?" she said. She frowned at the way her voice echoed back to her. She had excellent hearing and could tell something was off. She spoke again. "Is there anyone here?" Yes, definitely off. It wasn't a true echo, unless she was in a room a magnitude larger.
Frowning, she cautiously started walking around the perimeter of the room, humming. There were several spots, on adjacent walls, where the echo was deeper. She didn't have anything to mark the spots but she figured she could easily find them again, now that she knew what to look for.
"Doors?" she wondered, speaking softly to herself. "Or just different material?" Shaking her head, she returned to the center of the room and sat down, legs crossed in a lotus position. If the aliens thought she would panic for their amusement, they had another thing coming, she decided. Closing her eyes, she started running through the stage version of Funny Girl in her head.
After several long hours, by her always correct internal clock, of nothing from her captors, not even a squeak, Rachel started singing, something she could keep up for hours.
There was no bed, but the floor was warm. When she ran out of energy, she curled up in a corner and slept, waking up several hours later when the tone of the low, humming sound changed. Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes and looked around.
One of the walls, she wasn't sure which one since they were all identical, now had an opening in it. Standing up, Rachel cautiously approached the opening. Entering the new room, she could see a raised area that looked very chair-like. Curious, she approached it, walking around it several times.
On her third circuit, she ran into something invisible, coming to a quick stop. "Ouch!" she grumbled, rubbing her head. Sticking out her hands, she tried to find the thing she'd banged her head on. But there was nothing there. Turning, she tried to go in the other direction but only managed to walk a step before running into something else. Turning back in her original direction, it happened again.
"I get it!" she shouted. "You don't want me to go anywhere." Shaking her head at the rude alien behavior, Rachel sat down on the chair-thing. Sitting there, she hummed to herself for a few minutes. Without realizing it until it was too late, she lay back on the soft object, feeling sleepy. She struggled to keep her eyes open. She tried to pinch herself awake. Nothing she tried worked.
Rachel panicked when she woke up. She was somewhere else, and her normally accurate time sense was failing her for the first time in her life. She was also wearing clothes for the first time since being kidnapped, some kind of colorful pajamas.
"Hello!" she shouted, turning in a circle, trying to understand what was going on. She could see she was standing between two buildings.
"Follow," a metallic voice said. Turning, she saw that she was no longer alone. It was some kind of mannequin. And it was talking to her.
"Why?" she asked. "Where are my… friends," she asked it. It was only a small white lie. The aliens didn't need to know that she wasn't really friends with the others and that they barely tolerated her on a good day and made her life difficult on a bad one.
"Follow," it repeated. "You must learn."
"Learn what?" Rachel asked, following the talking mannequin up a set of stairs into a large room with a padded floor.
"Follow," it said for the third time. But this time it didn't walk away. It stood in front of her, making strange movements. It did this several times before repeating "Follow."
"Oh! You want me to do that?" Rachel said, nodding that she understood. A little exercise would be good, though she couldn't quite figure out the purpose of the moves.
This went on until she was exhausted. "Enough," she said, protesting. "I haven't had anything to eat and I'm probably stinky. The mannequin stopped and pointed at the door. "Yeah!" Rachel said, quickly moving before it changed it's mind.
When she stepped through the door, she found herself sitting in the chair and naked again. "Huh. I wonder how that happened," she said. "Must be an alien thing," she decided. Standing up, she walked back into what she decided must be her living area. As she passed through the door, her time sense sprung into action, telling her she'd been busy for twelve hours. No wonder she was tired and thirsty.
But there didn't seem to be any food. "Hello!" Rachel shouted. "If you don't feed me I can't do those things." Stupid aliens, she muttered, going back to the middle of the room and lying down.
There was a soft sound behind her. Turning around, Rachel found a small tray containing some kind of soup in a large bowl.
"Is this vegan?" she asked. "You probably don't even know what that is," she grumbled. I wonder how one contacts the management in this place?" She picked up the bowl and sipped the soup. "Not bad, for alien soup," she said to herself. "Now I need something to drink." She said this louder but nothing happened. "Fine!" she huffed.
The days seemed to blur together. She went to the training place twice a day for what felt like a year, though her internal clock told her it had only been a month. She wasn't sure which to trust. But, in that month, she could feel herself changing. She'd always prided herself in being physically fit, taking dancing lessons, exercising every day, but this was on a whole different level.
In the mornings it was some kind of self defense training. It wasn't something she recognized, from her limited experience from watching kung-fu movies with Finn during their brief romance, or from watching Ultimate Fighting with Puck a few times during that doomed semi-relationship. But, as it progressed, she became more confident. Barbra help any school bullies she ran into. She bet she could take them all if she had to.
Half way through that pseudo-year they introduced simple weapons. She learned to defend herself with a knife and the basics of swordplay that she was sure would be useful when she made it to Broadway, even if it wasn't very flashy. They taught her how to use something that looked like a gun, though only until she became proficient enough to hit a target. But the main focus remained on what was clearly self defense.
Afternoons made no sense at first. She would sit in the chair and suddenly be somewhere else, watching people and other creatures do things while a voice spoke in a language she couldn't understand. At first she tried to communicate with the people and creatures but it quickly became clear to her that they weren't really there. It was like she was in a big 3D television, from the inside.
After a week of this things started to click and she could pick out words. Another week and she could mostly understand what people were saying. It was a revelation. The aliens were teaching her their history, or someone's history she decided, since she still hadn't met any of them other than the talking mannequins who rarely talked back except to give her orders and instructions.
In the evenings, she talked and sang to herself, afraid she would forget her own language and history. And danced when she had the extra energy.
The alien history lessons lasted for what her time sense said was a year. In some ways it was exciting, learning about the history of a people that seemed to travel in space. In other ways it was frustrating because she could tell a lot of things were left out. And some things had to be memorized while others seemed to not really matter.
She learned the names of the founders of the twelve original families that made up these traveling aliens but knew almost nothing about their technology. Learned that each of the families had their own languages, though everything she learned was in a thirteenth language that had no name.
She knew of the battles that first brought them together, and when they all first left their home planets. Learned when leaders died and were born but nothing about who they were now. Or where they'd all gone.
And then things changed. She assumed they'd taught her everything they wanted her to know about self-defense when, one morning, the training lasted only an hour. An hour of things she already knew.
"Done with these lessons," the mannequin, that she'd begun to call Charlie just to have something to talk to, said, in its limited vocabulary. "Only maintain."
"What?" Rachel blurted out. "Why?" She had gotten used to the physical activity.
"You are not a warrior," the afternoon voice said, in the alien's language.
"No, I'm a singer and future Broadway star, when you let me go home," she said, replying in the same language, mostly. She'd noticed months ago that her thoughts seemed to make her feel happier when she used their language, a language that had no name.
"All must know the Way of the Warrior. Even the Memory of Us," the voice said. "But now you must learn to save the Now."
"Huh? The what?" Rachel said, confused.
"Someone must remind the lost People of the past," the voice said. "And prepare them for the Return."
"I don't understand," Rachel said. "Who are the lost people and what are they returning from?"
"There is still much to learn," the voice said. "Now, go."
"Stupid aliens, and their stupid words that don't make sense," Rachel grumbled. "A whole year of training. A year of learning about some stupid aliens. And only now they'd decided to explain why?"
She stomped towards the door of the training building that had a name that sounded fancy in the alien's flowery language but caused her to giggle when she translated it into English.
Stepping through the door, she found herself back in the training chair next to her room. It was too early for lunch but she wasn't going to stay in the chair so she got up and went into her room, intent on washing up. She never seemed to sweat while training but often found herself soaked through when she woke up in her chair. Stepping into her room she was surprised to find it had changed.
Instead of the short, blanket-less pallet that had appeared after her first month, there was now what looked like a proper bed, though it was designed like ones she'd seen in alien homes while learning their history. It was covered with very colorful blankets. Her room also now had something resembling an alien wardrobe. Poking around in it, she found clothes in assorted colors, in several alien styles that looked familiar. She wasn't quite sure what they were made out of, though it seemed to be a natural fiber.
That wasn't the end of the surprises. On a short table, that she hadn't seen before, was something flat, that looked like a thing that a lot of the aliens carried around on their space ships. From her observations, she'd assumed that it was some sort of computer but her history lessons hadn't included any details. And now she seemed to have one of her own.
Reaching forward, she picked it up. The moment her fingers touched it, it flickered to life. Back home, she'd considered herself fairly computer literate but the device was definitely not something she was familiar with. The entire front seemed to light up. Along one edge there was a row of icons. Fortunately, somehow, the method escaped her, she'd learned to read the alien language. There wasn't a big 'Don't Panic' sign on it, she noticed, semi-disappointed. But on one icon there was the glyph for writing, and on another was the glyph for library. There were also a number of others she didn't recognize.
She eagerly pressed the one for library and was presented with what looked like a list of subjects. Music? She thought to herself. Surely they had music? The thought had barely escaped her when one of the items expanded. She just barely held onto the device in her surprise. Experimenting, she thought about watching a play. The device's screen changed again, to another, shorter list. Frowning, she read the list, looking for something familiar. The names didn't mean anything so she randomly picked one.
"Oh!" she said, loudly, as a dramatization of an event from the early history of the aliens started to play on her tablet. "So, they must have culture," she said excitedly. "Let's hear some of their music!"
After quickly eating her lunch, Rachel went back to exploring the alien music, until it was time for her afternoon history lesson. That too was now different. Instead of indirectly teaching her the alien culture through their history, the focus seemed to change. Going back to the beginning of their history, she learned their stories. Their music. Their art.
It was fascinating in a way learning their history hadn't been. Every night after her history lesson she submerged herself in alien music, learning new songs, and watching their plays. Songs of love and sacrifice. Tales of ordinary people and their heroes. Tales of survival. A vibrant culture that she inhaled eagerly.
Time passed almost unnoticed. Almost. There was what seemed to be a never ending supply of new and different music. Centuries, possibly millennia, worth. She couldn't wait to perform it for an audience. Or to show off the original dances she'd created for the music, since the only dancing the aliens had recorded in their histories seemed to be folk dances and martial displays.
And then, after what her inner clock claimed was another half year, the bubble burst when she paused long enough in her cultural exploration to remember she didn't have an audience. To wonder, for the first time in ages, what had happened to the other girls. To wonder if they were having as much fun as she was, because, even when she'd spent hours exercising or learning alien history, she hadn't been bored. And learning new music that no one else had heard before? That was heaven.
"Where are the others?" she asked aloud for the first time, wondering why she hadn't even asked the question before. She hadn't forgotten about them but she'd rarely thought about them.
"Your companions are training," the ever present voice said.
"What kind of training," Rachel asked. Having someone else to sing to or dance with would be wonderful, she thought. Santana with her husky, sexy smooth voice, Quinn with her delicate, sweet voice, and Brittany who was almost magical in her movements. Picking up her tablet, she started to excitedly go through her music library.
"What is needed," the voice said.
"Needed for what?" Rachel said, even as she continued to search through her music.
"For the Return," it said.
"When will I learn what that means?" Rachel asked. It seemed to be the reason behind everything.
"Soon," it said. "The training is almost complete."
"Good, a duet partner will be great," Rachel said absently, testing the notes to a song in her head.
Next: We find out what happened to Santana. And Brittany is naughty and spills some beans.