I had to get out of there.
Right now.
As the crack widened, I became aware of a soft whirring sound. It was the ceiling shifting away from me. Some sort of machine, I thought.
A machine was something I knew, something familiar, and I clung to that thought.
Once the gap was wide enough, I slipped my arm and leg through, then my chest and head. I landed on the floor on my hands and knees. My vision was still blurry and unclear, but not with grey, but dark shades of black and brown. The white clouds that’d shifted above me were not clouds at all, but some sort of shell.
It thumped into place and echoed around the room. It was large, wherever I was. Now my wits came back to me and I focused on my surroundings. I wouldn’t run, not yet. I had no idea where I would even run to.
My vision cleared with each blink until I could see normally. I was in a large room with boxes glowing with intense white light along one side.
No, not boxes. Pods.
The word came naturally to me now. I stood up and saw that the thing I’d come out of was one of these many pods.
I felt at my clothes. A gown, something hospital patients wore.
Or mental patients.
Was I trapped in some sort of mental home?
I felt at the gown material. It was rough and coarse. I instinctively felt it wasn’t the right material.
Something bumped against my arm. My bracelet. I clutched the locket between my hands, grateful it hadn’t been taken from me. This small object was important to me. I couldn’t remember how or why, but it was.
I focused. I could remember what happened. I just needed to concentrate.
I shouldn’t be wearing an itchy hospital gown. I should be wearing a cute little dress…
What I’d been wearing in the last memory I had.
My last memory…
I tugged at the thread.
A blinding light had sucked me toward it at an impossible speed…
And before that, clutching at a floating seatbelt…
And I’d been driving a minivan…
With my friends in the back. All six of us. Celebrating my best friend’s wedding the following day…
We’d been partying at a nearby party resort town. I was so happy. Yes, a little sad at losing my friend, but mostly happy…
The floodgates opened and the memories poured into me all at once. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Not with any specific emotion but a confusing miasma. Relief, fear, sadness, excitement…
Everything congealed together in one noxious mix. The only way I could express it was with tears rolling down my cheeks and a giant grin on my face. I must have looked like a madwoman.
My friends…
I turned and peered at the pods, arranged in a single long row. I moved past them, one after another, counting dozens.
They were empty. None contained my friends. Then I came to both larger and smaller ones. In that one, a fat pig. Beside it, two smaller pods with baby piglets inside, still fast asleep the way I had been.
In a much larger pod stood a dairy cow. Her bell was still wrapped around her neck with her name (Daisy) engraved on it.
In another pod, a full-grown male African lion. In another, a female Bengal tiger. That one housed a polar bear…
On and on they went as far as the eye could see.
They were all frozen, asleep, maybe both. They could have been dead if it wasn’t for the fact I’d woken up.
But my friends weren’t there.
And suddenly I felt very alone. There probably wasn’t another living soul for miles around…
“Hello?”
The voice shocked me.
I flew back, my arms waving from forgotten self-defense classes. I fell and slid back on my ass and didn’t stop until I reached the far corner.
“It’s okay,” the soft voice said.
She carried a lantern that illuminated the area around us. She didn’t come any closer.
There was something strange about her voice. She spoke in English but in the background and all around it, there was a slight humming, as if a thousand other voices were speaking at the same time, each in different tongues. One was a twisted grunt, another the shriek of a cornered rat.
The woman reached for something on her throat and yanked it off. It was a flimsy piece of sticky plastic.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just a translation device.”
She spoke with a lilting Scottish accent, and for some reason, that surprised me even more.
I backed as far into the corner as I could get, too terrified to do anything else.
The woman wasn’t big. She was small and might once have been beautiful. She wore a ragged shirt and jogging pants that were too short—even for her. It was cinched around the waist with a length of string.
“Who… Who are you?” I said.
“My name’s Maisie. You’ve just woken up from a long sleep.”
“Where are my friends?”
“They’ve already been delivered.”
“Delivered?” I said. “Delivered where?”
“To their new masters.”
Masters? Delivered? This was not a normal conversation.
Maisie checked over her shoulder. “You should get back in your pod. This shouldn’t have happened. You shouldn’t be awake yet.”
“My pod? No. I’m not getting back in there.”
“You have to. If you don’t, they’ll catch you and make you.”
“They? Who are they?”
Maisie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter who they are. Oh dear, oh dear. This isn’t good at all. You need to go back to sleep so your master can give you a purpose.”
“Purpose?” I said, fear seizing my throat. “I already have a purpose back home! I need to go home. Now.”
“You can’t ever go back home,” Maisie said. “Not without your master’s permission.”
This lady was off her rocker if she thought I would willingly get back in that pod. And yet, Maisie might just be the only reliable source of information I would get in this
